Ready for action, not glimpses

To work within the system for change or to work from outside the system because the type of education now needed would require changes that are too far a departure from the current norm?  That is the question.

Hamlet didn't have the only dilemma facing him.  The current model for education has produced a lot of people who have progressed our society.  But, the product produced by that good system has yielded to even newer products, like Bill Gates and Steven Jobs, who didn't use or trust the current system.  They took what it had to offer, junked a lot of it, and blazed their own trails.  The system is broken and in need of fixing.  Gates for one, has opted to stand behind ventures like Kahn Academy through YouTube, and other reform efforts.  Perhaps someone from Generation X, like Alex Kipman of Microsoft, can continue taking young minds and reinvent a system that doesn't have to be circumvented, but used as a vehicle for progress.

I would expect that more schools all over the globe will begin to pop up to try to solve the dilemma of what modern education should be and offer.  I have a feeling that more virtual schools than brick-and-mortar schools will exist within 5 years from now.  I have many indications that the new learning won't happen with books, but with demonstrations, simulations, projects, experiences, and trekking all around the world through virtual reality.  A good geography class, for instance, would suffer irreparably if it used a book instead of all of the pictorial venues available in both true and virtual life.  It would be a travesty to learn geology from written pages given the availability of all the websites and software for use in studying the nature of the Earth, below and on the surface.  And who could learn about the majesty of space and all it has to offer from written pages when Hubble, Kepler, and numerous satellite probes, such as Curiosity, have turned science upside down with what they see?  It would be a travesty if written curriculum continued to be followed in light of all the captured and simulated videos, video games and guides and holographic opportunities in the hands of the youth.

Time moves on. At one time Copernicus taught us new ideas, Newton gave us new insights about the physics of the world in a time after that,  DeBakey offered hope for millions with transplanted hearts 200 years following that, and Jobs put the world in our hands in our lifetimes.  They were at the right time, in the right place.  But it is now, not their time.  Time has moved on.  Who among those in education will take the valiant and lonely step within to radically alter the path to globally compete and lead?  Who outside of education will blaze a new trail for others to follow that will lead to the next quantum leap in civilization's march to a much better, even if less familiar, way of life?

A million people will join you, whoever takes the position of Pied Piper, playing the right tune.  Elon Musk is taking us to Mars and giving us cars to run on regenerative energy.  Who will elevate the game of education into a productive, visionary force driving the engine for tomorrow's better society?

Making the turn

One of the main problems with reforming education is that the main workforce in schools, the teachers, are trained by one of the least progressive institutions in the U.S.  Asking the universities to turn out forward thinking teachers is like asking a chimpanzee to become fluent in English.  They will pick up a few words that enhance their survival, but beyond that...

Another problem is that the same universities that train the teachers, train the experts in the field.  Fortunately, Ed. D.s have been taught to think for themselves, so hope for reform will have to come from their ranks.  They also are the ones who hold the purse strings in most districts, so they have the true ability and resources to turn things around.  However, these experts are many times linked to expectations from a community that mitigate any attempts at true reform without a lot of time, effort, and money being pumped into re-educating them.

But, one can muse.  Wouldn't it be an education of the first order to have teachers who know how to use holographic tools, 3D printers, experience through role-playing and true-to-life reasons for wanting students to learn the principles they teach, and know how to use video gaming for coursework.  Can you imagine partners playing Minecraft to work out a setting for a story, a calculation for some architecture, a test drive for an electric car, or a simulated disaster relief effort for an earthquake?  Project-based education is an interim step for this kind of learning.  Such schools are leading the way in re-educating the public mindset for reform in the idea of mastery and working through a simulation in order to gain knowledge.  They will probably lead the way in turning education into a path for global participation of the workforce.

What is last shall be first

One of the most important components of a global economy is the ability to communicate with other countries.  The U.S. has really not tried hard at making communication something of a priority in the past.  It has taken the position that English is a lingua franca and forced others to learn English in order to trade with us.

And what has been the offshoot of that position?  India has long spoken English since it was  a colony of Great Britain, so millions of people there have grown up with English.  Indians usually learn their regional tongue, English, and Hindi.  So they are trilingual at least.  China, also has sent many students to the U.S. to learn English, and now have made a way for English speakers to teach English in their schools.  They have an equal number of English speakers as the U.S. as a result.

But, the U.S. has decided to give away its golden key to world dominance, its debt.  That makes trading with other countries, the countries holding its debt, rather mandatory rather than voluntary.  With this decision, comes the need now to communicate with other countries like China, in their own language.

Enter the need for Americans to know Chinese, Hindi, and other languages.

Nearly everyday I see job offerings for those who know Farsi, Arabic, Chinese, and Spanish.  Some are really nice-paying jobs, with the CIA for example, while others are merely for part-time jobs translating documents received from other countries.  This need will only continue and grow.  In the meantime, has the U.S. public schools made any alteration on the status of foreign languages?  Absolutely not.

In a curriculum designed to reflect the needs of the 21st century, technology schools need to dominate the change, but a close second should be the need to communicate with those who could bring the U.S. economy to its knees.  Language schools as a part of a bigger program school of communication or language schools with programs geared to reflect different parts of the world and their cultures, needs to be a close second to technology.

Lingua francas of the past have lasted long periods of time.  Latin was the most recent and most long lasting, about 1000 years.  English is dominant now and has been for about the last 300 years, but everything moves much faster than it used to.  So, too, the life cycle of English will meet its demise sooner than Latin.  Lingua francas are the languages of superpower countries for a time.  In a global economy, it's hard to predict which language will rise to the top.  But, with the rise of a global economy come some commensurate needs.  One of those is a world or globally used language.  English will probably not retain its dominance if its economy is not the dominant one.  The global language to come might even be a new language altogether, like Esperanza, or it could be a mixture of languages contributing to one language.  Either way, communication with the world will take a priority in this new environment.

When reformers speak of a new curriculum, that's what they mean, not a reordering of the old curriculum.  It's a new path for a new world.  The schools should exist for this new world and offer the tools that help to compete well in it.

What did you learn today?

I was standing at the cash register ready to pay for my meal.  The high school student behind the register took my hundred dollar bill.  The student hesitated.  I couldn't imagine why.  The register already had the amount of the money for the meal, the amount of money received, and the amount of the change due.  He called over another high school student to help me, then left for the back.  The new student informed me, "He sucks at counting money.  Sorry about that."  Then, she counted out the bill according to the amount on the register.

Something is really wrong.  I understand that the above example of the high school student is possibly not representative of students in all 50 states, but the sheer numbers of students who describe their math experiences, together with scores from a variety of sources including standardized tests from the states, national standardized tests, the number of students in math related fields in college, the number of 70s or Cs given in classrooms, and the difficulty level of math in grades 1-8 tell me that there is a massive problem.

Curriculum is rarely questioned when discussion of reform occurs.  The subject is usually about teacher accountability, teacher turnover, better methods of presentation, getting learning standards in teachable form, or parental involvement.  Even if curriculum is mentioned, the subject is how to better protect the core subjects of math, language arts, science, and history against the ever increasing number of non-core curricular subjects.

But that should not be true in the schools of the 21st century.  If technology is king in this century, then the center of the curriculum should revolve around the technology in use of it and in understanding its principles.  Teachers should be so well versed in using technology in their presentation that there should be few students who could outperform them in the field.  All other subjects should revolve around the bigger ideas of their use.  For example, instead of a Language Arts class, language should revolve around a larger idea, communication.  That's because there are several types of communication that businesses use.  Business doesn't use the essay form of writing for anything.  Research and reporting, but not the essay.  Politicians and other speakers might use the essay form, but speech writing should be the more appropriate title.  A whole program that includes social media communication (blogs, picture presentation, Facebook advertising, video presentationetc.), business presentation, report and request writing, and other language applications should exist.  The days of the narrow, very narrow English classes of today should die a quick death.

The curriculum needs an overhaul in the worst way.  Whatever form it takes should be a radical departure from what has existed, and it should drive what needs to be mastered to thrive in a globally competitive economy.  It should not be driven by the artificiality of classroom training like today's school.  It should include formal training, and experience, and simulation.  A curriculum should be designed with technology at its heart in each of the three aspects named above.   Anything less will prepare students for second best.  Two countries of a billion people each are working very hard at becoming world class competition for the U.S, - India and China.  They will succeed in displacing the U.S. if we continue education on its current track.  It doesn't have to be that way.  There is still time to change.

Jimmy, here. Janie, here...

It's time to rethink every aspect of education.  That would include the mandatory attendance laws.  In America it is considered a right rather than a privilege to get an education.  That worked for about 50 years.  Now the generation being raised doesn't know that the right also carries with it a responsibility.  They only see the privilege it is capable of producing.

I find it indicative of this generation's parents that they are blaming the standardized tests for their children's poor performance in school.  But they are falling for the distraction, not the root cause for poor performance.  When a standardized test is scored, it compares in one way or another a student's performance to all the other students.  Stanines are used, a Bell Curve is used, or some similar statistical measure is used so that people can tell more accurately where a student stands than does a teachers' manipulated grading system in measuring student knowledge alone.  In Texas, at the moment, parents are up in arms because the "best" students are not scoring well on tests.  It's always possible that a wrong key was used in grading.  It's just unlikely.

It's more likely that student performance in the classroom is so poor that teachers have had to use means other than knowledge in order to boost performance, or even more likely, that a student is not in a competitive environment with a teacher, so a student's average  is high because of the number of revisions allowed for papers, make-up work, and participation grades.  So, this generation of parents want to shift blame than have their children become responsible for their own behavior.

But testing and grading are results of a wider problem.  Attendance is indelibly intertwined with grades.  Parents don't always see the number of absences, the amount of make-up work allowed without instruction, when 20 or more groups on a campus are pulling students from classes for one reason or another.  School sponsored absences account for a lot of absences for athletes on trips for out-of-town contests, for theater and band competitions, for club conferences, for shortened days and stunted weeks for holidays and testing, for UIL competitions, for field days, for number of days allowed for "sick" absences, for sitting in the waiting room of a vice-principal or counselor, for schoolwide fairs and science projects... the list really is almost endless.

Reconfiguring the school's instructional system would naturally affect all of the above activities, so attendance would have to be addressed.  The bottom line is that attendance laws make education ineffective.  Attendance laws have the effect of turning educational institutions into daycare learning centers where "well-roundedness" of a social and instructional mix of activities lead to not enough time for learning.  It leads to a very different definition of mastery than is used in most other circumstances.  In fact, if mastery were defined well and adhered to in the newly reconfigured school, attendance would take care of itself.  It would also draw a line between those who are responsible and those who are not.  And when responsibility is tied to money and basic needs, an individual's creativity in a gifted area rises to the top.  Everyone responds to incentive.

There should be a definite end to the attendance laws since they have not produced the quantum leap forward in education that the WWII parents had envisioned or that the Great Society of Lyndon Johnson's policies predicted.  They have produced a generation of those who want the right to an education with the privileged economy it is designed to produce without the responsible learning that it takes to support and improve the economy.  Reconfigure the schools, then watch the performance of the students change.  Attendance does affect output.  The natural consequence for lack of attendance tied to productivity and total time in a program would force students to switch program schools for not meeting deadlines or the mastery required when proceeding to the next level of training, experience, and simulation.  Also, if proven productive principles are adhered to, then most of the reasons for poor attendance disappear.

If incentives and productivity are linked to progress, attendance will not figure in to nearly all students' progress.  For the very small percentage that it does figure in, it would be easy to fund an all-experience school or type of business where lackadaisical students can either store up experience credits for a time in their lives when they have more incentive to complete a program or make a little money for their time spent in a service or retail business.

Formulating another model

If game playing is what the people of the country are satisfied with, then the current status of evaluating student learning will continue.  But, from what I see from those in their late 20s and early 30s, the status quo will be changed.  That's a breath of fresh air.  To what?

Perhaps, "mastery" of a discipline to be learned will be the focus.  It will be hard, after all, to fake what you don't know about writing an app or running software that becomes a usual skill for business.  If mastery is achievable, then the breakdown of the graduated k-12 system should happen.  Various schools will begin to take their places that offer fields where basic knowledge, experience, and simulation can be gained.  A person "graduates" when all of the foundational knowledge has been gained, all of the necessary experience gained, and all of the simulations achieved.  A communications school, for example, would offer all of the various ways that business uses presenting, selling, social media communication, and marketing communication.  Technology might offer programming skills in all of the basic formats for use on the internet, all of the hardware, experience in both solving problems that arise in business applications and fixing "glitches" for personal use.  They would explore a majority of the types of apps that are available for making life easier.  These are only two of the types of schools to emerge.

And how would student evaluation happen?  Grades would not be given, simply a mark for completion of a training regimen, the number of experiences needed, and the completion of simulations required. If an experience or simulation breaks down or goes awry before completion, the student simply goes through the experience or simulation again, or goes back to the formal training that prepares for the activity that had gone awry.

And what would people in society expect from a graduate of one of these schools?  If from a technology school, that they would not have had a survey course in World History or in British Literature, but that they could fix the technological problems faced by businesses.  If from a communications school, that they would know how to make presentations to sell to the public on the internet, how to communicate within a corporation or with a buisiness' customers, and how to communicate in person with employers whether in a corporation or an entrepreneurial endeavor, but that they might not be so knowledgeable about cellular respiration or the digestive system of a worm.

Other exciting arrangements and possibilities exist for schools.  The above is merely one configuration.  Schools would be more productive and efficient rather than taking 13 years of one's life to teach that average behavior and achievement is all right, that chemistry and introduction to analytic geometry are for everyone, and that credits are awarded based on some subjective, unpredictable, and manipulated grading system that has little to do with "mastery" of anything.

A picture of disarray

If student evaluation were a love affair between the public perception and actual learning it would be captured in this song by Dwight Yoakum

What would you think of a graduate who regularly scored a 40% for every subject all year for 10 years?  Right.  Me, too.

What would you think of a student who regularly scored Fs or 50s in one school and then switched to a different school, for example a public school, then a charter school, and scored 70s and 80s or Cs and Bs?  Right.  Me, too.

What would you think of a student whose record showed an absentee rate of higher than 20% of a semester and a score of 80?  Right, me too.

What would you think of a student whose record showed an A in one class where the teacher scored 60% of students with an A and a B where the teacher scored only 15% of students with a A?  Right, me too.

This should lead to the question of what the value of a score is of any kind.  In the case of the first example, schools hide this 40% grade by limiting teachers to only giving 10% (usually) of grades of 69% or less, and then further limiting a teacher to giving no grades below 50.  That limits the grading field to 1/2 of the 0-100 range.  So, a 70 is really 35 (70% of 50 points in the range).  A failing grade of 60 or below is really a 30% or below.  The school just uses the numbers of the upper end of the range they cut in half.  50-100 is really 50 points.  Even though a student grade of 70 is given, it is not a percentage, or it would be half as much as a percentage.  So, the school only uses 50 points, but continues to use scores on papers and report cards of the upper numbering of the range 50-100, not the 1-50 that it really is.

In the case of the second example, a charter school is designed for students who are "not the norm" of students in the public schools.  It is still funded by the public taxes, thus is a "public" school, but it is for students who don't do well for one reason or another in the public schools.  So, the teachers count participation much more heavily than tests by memory.  An assignment turned in at a charter school might be turned back to the student as many times as it takes for the student to revise it until a passing grade is "earned."  There are other tricks as well to the more simplified system, such as assigning much smaller (but representative) portions of a text for reading or a smaller number of problems to solve.  Sometimes, only the first half of textbooks are used so that foundational knowledge is the only information given, not the next layer of complexity.

In the third example, problem students many times can do a "community service" project like picking up trash around campus or delivering equipment from field house to playing field for coaches in order to replace failing grades in an academic subject for days missed in school on which tests, quizzes, or homework were taken.  This last example happens all the time, but mostly at the end of semesters so "grades" can be raised.

One teacher has more participation grades than another, or one teacher places more value on a test grade while another teacher treats tests, homework, and classwork all the same.  One teacher teaches by projects, another by reading and writing essays.  One teacher relies on group grades, another on individual grades.  So, what does the average represent?  The answer differs by teacher, department, school, even by elective versus non-elective courses.

One can gather that evaluation is by no means even, fair, justified, objective, or leveled by grade.  The system is in great, great need of change because no one knows really what a passing and failing grade means.  When standards are set, schools and teachers know how to manipulate the systems and hide the reality of the amount of learning that is taking place.  Suffice it to say, that the term "mastery" is not happening as a whole in most educational institutions.  Student evaluation is in total disarray.  The ripple effects of disarray usually last a generation.  I shudder to think...

Needing new medicine

Evaluating students by giving an average or a letter grade has been a rather recent development in the long history of education.  The reason for that is that in ancient times, education was by mentor to student, one on one.  In the Middle Ages, the privileged of society were able to pay for their teachers, so education was more widespread, but still the master/apprentice idea was the model.  One learned how to do something, trying again and again until he or she got it right.  Finally, England brought in the teacher/students model with a ratio of about 1:10.  At that time scoring knowledge became fashionable since teachers wanted to distinguish between students who did well for them and those who didn't.

By the time America was established, schooling was well underway and scoring knowledge using the teacher/students of a ratio of about 1:15 was practiced in populated places.  America has practiced this model since its inception.  After World War II, schools became much more populated since about half of the women stayed in the work force and school was a logical place for children in cities to go.  So, the ratio increased by about 60%.  Then mandatory attendance laws raised the teacher/student ratio to its current levels.  Because of this increase in student population, a more uniform grading system had to be implemented.

The system settled on two grading systems, A-F and 0-100.  Many schools had a D in the first system, which meant only one step above F since E was stricken from the scale.  The number system settled on 60 as the lowest passing grade at first, but a decade later, 70 became a more standard passing grade.  The numbering system is a little more popular these days than the lettering system, but they correspond nicely.

The scoring system itself is a plague on our society, but the games teacher play with the system are a travesty.  While evaluation is a necessary part of learning, other systems would better serve any reform that emerges for the next century's schools.  Our businesses deserve better to maintain the competitive edge in the global economy.  Our children need desperately to know that an average is not their best.  They need to know that 60%  or 70% of a knowledge base is not "passing" in society.  One gets paid to do a job well, not 60% well.  Or that payment for a job is for one's A game, not their C game, not even their B+ game.

The video below is a message for the generation coming into adulthood to change their world.  It's upbeat and altruistic.  A new form of education and an evaluation system that promotes reality and grit will allow this generation to fulfill their goals.

Take it to the next level

Initial experience, at least the kind that schools could offer, is limited in its scope and practice because people at some point want the experienced person's touch for things of great interest.  That is why simulation is vital to an education.  Through simulations students learn how to navigate the tough situations.  A student can crash and burn without doing real harm.

True-to-life situations can be simulated for most problems that arise in the world in most fields of endeavor.  Sometimes role-playing is a really good simulation.  I learned the Peter Principle by playing a role-playing game when I was in college.  It taught me something I about a deficient area in my life that I had to work on considerably.  The computer game Civilization was a great experience in trying to see if the world could have developed any differently than it actually did.  It was fantastic fun, and I learned a lot about history and people's ability to manage complexities in life.  Video games containing levels of difficulty are great simulations to have on hand.  They teach students about skills, levels of skills, and can be applied to many different areas of life.  Playing stock markets with groups, against groups, or in competition with only oneself has always been one of the best simulations to play and to analyze as follow-up after an extended period of time.

But simulations can also be for training as well as virtual experience.  The Microsoft 10 Hologram beta testing is something that will soon be available for public consumption.  Every school should invest heavily in this experience.  It would change people's attitudes rapidly and beneficially toward educators and education.  It would produce a "product" of students that come with a based knowledge ready for the workforce.  It would be the best way to fight minimum wage earning.

Replacing direct instruction

One of the best examples of giving students experience that I have seen in the last 6 years was in an elementary school.  Every Friday they operated stores in a town.  One grade level was responsible for setting up the stores, another providing sales in the stores, and still another for cleaning up after the event.  Grade levels rotated from one responsibility to another each Friday.  Each store was responsible for counting and reporting the amount of money (tokens) they collected, the mayor of the town was responsible for reporting how close to the goal they were, and if reached was responsible for implementing the distribution of the goal.  After a goal was reached a new mayor was selected for the next goal.

It worked well, the children looked forward to it, and they learned a plethora of lessons that "seat time" could never teach.  That's just one example.  I have seen others that weren't so regular, but that were still good.  I have seen greenhouses for raising a variety of plants.  I have seen miniature aquariums for raising fish to sell and to eat (and to learn about aquatic life).  I have seen regular trips to the planetarium with a different objective for each trip (one for almost each week of the school year).  I have seen art galleries maintained weekly that feature the artists and the stories behind either them or their particular piece in the exhibit.  I have seen others that would classify more as projects, which would work for beginning experience, but not the kind of experience that more consistent repetitions yield.

There are a million ways to give experience to the training students receive in the early grades.  When experience makes training relevant to present and future needs, students engage in and learn valuable, immediately useful lessons.  Making experience the norm would require a change in the way space is used in a building.  It would also require a different kind of lesson planning on the part of teachers.  And, it would require a different type of evaluation of student performance.  It would change the focus of schools away from the classroom model, and a reallocation of money for the needs of the new focus.

Parents of the classroom model are the greatest resistors to a the idea of experience as a teacher.  It's not something that can be measured with an average on a report card.  They think there is no accountability for teachers who don't spend their time endlessly reinforcing basic knowledge.  Redirecting parents' expectations would have to precede and continue any reform moving to an experience model of teaching.  Change has happened before and it wouldn't stop with this leap forward.  But, it would have to happen with plenty of solid answers to many questions.  Providing all the proof in the pudding would need to happen for a couple of years in advance of the change and continue at least the first three afterward
.

Efficiency is the new game

One of the most accepted principles in educating children in grades 1-3 is to be sure that reading is taught to all of them.  The second most accepted principle is to teach children the fundamentals of mathematical operations.  Beyond those two principles, people add good citizenship, fundamentals of life science, and writing stories.

Grades 1-3 are the formative years for children in that they form their opinions about school that rarely change past the third grade.  Surveys that are published don't usually deal with children's affective attitudes about education, but rather their performance because parents think that children's attitudes follow their performance.  If that logic is used, then performance tests at those grade levels should tell us the opinions children have of school.  And, given the data of performance of the two academic subjects of reading and math, children would have poor opinions of what happens at school.  Two indicators tell me this is true.  Observations in the classroom portraying students' actual engagement with the work going on and a record of the number of interruptions to activities, exercises, and short tests requiring behavioral comment or redirection show that disinterest in reading and math are rampant - to the levels of 60 and 70% for each indicator.

It's time to redirect all right.   But, not for the students, nor the teachers, but for the environment in which efficient, productive learning happens.  The classroom model would have students learn from their seats with books and instruction.  The occasional engagement with a board activity or a silent personal activity, sometimes a group activity with manipulative work of objects or a paired activity for a speedy learner to help a less speedy learner isn't efficient for productive learning, isn't efficient for lasting learning, nor is it efficient for natural cognitive learning.

If a person needs to present formative training for the generation that could, and will at some point, learn completely by computer, subscribe to the ABCDisney.com website and app.  It can teach students without a teacher or with a little adult guidance and monitoring.  So if a machine can do the training part, what is left?  That's a question for the old school educator and for those educated by the classroom model.  But, there are major steps left, not the least of which is presenting oneself through social media presentation, programming syntax, website setup and presence, and many other preparations for modern instruments and tools.  Giving students experience is so necessary for taking on the modern world and making it a better place.

A better way

Education should provide several benefits for people.  It should train the very young.  It should give a limited amount of experience to children during late childhood and early teen years.  It should contain true-to-life simulations for the jobs people prepare for.  It should culminate in an entry level skill set for the jobs and careers that people choose to be a part of as they enter adulthood.  And, it should impart a skill in knowing how to entertain and act on new ideas if people decide to switch jobs or careers.

Training young people has never been a problem.  That kind of education is at the heart of the classroom model adopted by the U.S.  Early childhood education has developed many good ideas and processes over the many years it has been in use.  A number of methods exist, also, such as Montessori/Discovery learning, laboratory learning, project-based learning, curriculum-based learning, and mentor-based learning.  All of them have significant merits and have contributed to a modern understanding of education.

Learning, or training young people's minds in areas of knowledge, is an important facet of education, but as one can see from the provisions listed above as benefits for a population, learning is not the end point of education.  Simulation, experience, and a "starter kit" of skills is on the list as well.  These three latter facets of education are not so evident in a student's current educational regimen.  They should be.  They're part of the definition of education that adults in the work world want for their children in order to take society to the next level of productivity and quality life.

Schools are not set up to provide the last three facets on any kind of ongoing and consistent basis.  Since people's desires are contrary to education's current state of affairs, then leaders who represent people's desires need to start to come to the forefront of the public's attention.  Activism is necessary.  That's usually the first step.  Reform is slightly behind.  It's time to hear the voices from innovative leaders across the educational spectrum and from the heartland of America's workforce.  It's time!

Change more to our liking

It's astonishing what people define as "good education."  Some are really loose with their definition, saying that education is just what people learn in life about life.  Some are really narrow in their definition, referring only to what young people learn between ages 4 and 18 in a classroom.  Others see education as what it takes to get a job for making money, and still others want education to be either well-rounded to encompass many disciplines to ready them for a profession or trade-oriented to become good at a few specialties within a particular discipline.

It appears important to define education before anyone can proceed to other steps.  It is clearly in a society's best interest to educate, but to what end?  A definition allows them to determine how to achieve the definition and eventually how to measure the learning that takes place as a result of the education.

As the state of education stands now, far and away the consensus is to educate via the "classroom model" which is deemed the most efficient system for the economic source funding it.  Even classes via internet use the virtual classroom model although instruction is not by a group in one place but by an individual in one place.  However, there are so many reform movements afoot in the U.S. that any onlooker would conclude the system to deliver the definition is broken or the definition of education needs to change.

Many people don't like one aspect or another about the current state of education.  There are those who would reform curriculum, for instance, or those who would change the idea of grading and mastery.  Two of the biggest areas of discontent are the funding sources and funding allocations used for the public school system.  Deriving a definition for education would allow a discussion for the funding source to change or the funding allocation (formula) to change.

An example of changing the funding source would be to replace the corporate tax due to a school district placed into a state mandated funding source for public schools and charter schools.  Instead, schools who teach to a specific set of skills would be funded directly by an account set up outside of the state/city government.  For instance, a software developing company would send a "tax" to an organization for disbursement to a general technological account, which in turn would send a percentage of funds to a technology school which has as a part of its course of training different types of software coding and development.  Other technological companies would do the same.  The tax would be sent for specific, but targeted and excellent training for technology only.  An oil company would send its "tax" to a general geo-science organization for percentage disbursement to a geological/geophysics/geoengineering school which has as a part of its training the exploration and operation of oil.  Other oil related companies would do the same.

Funding is always the major issue in education.  Defining what education is and should do, would help resolve the problems of this major issue.  Other issues would follow.  But a definition would guide people through the other issues as it would through the issue of funding.  It might even result in a change to the "classroom model in the U.S.  I would think, in fact, most Americans would support finding a definition for welcome change to this model and its current state of affairs.

Check out the register

For at least 80 years people have used the word register.  It is the word used to indicate that some words are commonly used and others are not.  People don't use words for a variety of reasons.  Sometimes people have rather restricted vocabulary banks.  That is usually a function of educational level, but not always.  Sometimes people have limited experience in a lot of different fields while others expose themselves to many different disciplines.   The more limited the experience, the more restricted the vocabulary.  Some people have decided that reading is tedious.  That results in having vocabulary disappear even if they have exposed themselves to words because of the principle, "Use it or lose it."  Reading regularly is a cause for an increased vocabulary, while limited reading yields a smaller number of words learned.  Sometimes people find themselves in a cycle of only associating with a certain group of people.  The words of the group are the words of use while other words are actually eschewed.  This happens with religious groups who have a closed approach on group admittance.  Of course, educational level is one of the greatest indicators of restricted vocabulary.

Since vocabulary choices are a function of various factors, one might think it would be impossible to use it in detecting deception.  Quite the contrary.  Lies have to look like the truth.  Thus, it is easy to assume that the vocabulary choices would be the same as for words of truth.  But, a principle higher in the hierarchy of choosing words is the principle of looking smart.  The idea is that if one appears smart/intelligent, then the listener more easily will view it as the truth.  That has the affect of changing register from usual one used by the person.

One of the most common word changes involving register is the opinion many people have of using verbal extensions, what some call phrasal verbs.  Verbal extensions are the use of adverbs mainly to extend or slightly modify the meaning of the verb being used, for example hand out for deliver or give, or figure out for discover or calculate.  The word out is an extension to the verb hand and figure and extends or slightly modifies the meaning of hand and figure.  Many see the verbal extension construction as ordinary or less formal.  To sound smart, people will revert to one word synonyms.  Examples abound: return for come back, accept for buy into, leave for check out, produce for put out.  The list is long.

When a person uses fewer verbal extensions than his or her usual habit, the person views the topic or environment one in which he or she needs to appear smarter.  So, the person makes a register change.  That is precisely the place where prevarication appears.  So, one has to figure out if the person has true knowledge of the topic or a good comfort level in the environment.  If not, perhaps a little deception is occurring.

What is meant?

Word choices are pretty important when speaking.  Early on in the second half of the 20th century, linguistics became a full-fledged discipline of study apart from psychology although before that time the two were indelibly linked.  One of the first matters of interest to explore was to find a universal grammar.  That ended up being a street that has branched many times as it has been explored.  But, the second matter of interest was a part of Noam Chomsky's work (the father of modern linguistics wrote a dissertation that spawned transformational grammar) that went unresearched and left for others to investigate, the area of semantics.  Now, of course, a number of good theories exist as to the nature and generation of meaning assigned to words.

Eventually, forensic linguistics would intersect with the study of semantics and produce tailored theories and methods for delineating between truth and deception.  Some of the first methods developed worked with word choices.  People usually think of vocabulary when mentioning word choices, and sometimes that is the case.  But, many times it has to do with the placement of adverbs in particular positions in a sentence or the type of conjugation of a verb.  The linguist working with detectives on the Susan Smith case a number of years ago, for instance, noticed that she spoke immediately following the drowning of her children in past tense.  Most people would have spoken in present tense since they would not have been used to the idea of their children being dead yet.

Because all words have assigned meanings to them by society, the choices people make can definitely be important.  In casual conversation, people don't really think too much about the words being spoken because they are speaking for the reason of merely communicating information.  But, when people think they are being evaluated, judged, or taken more seriously for some reason than casual conversation allows for, then they become much more aware of the words they are using and start making more particular choices.

The tricky part sometimes about evaluation of word choices is that society allows words to have double and triple meanings.  Deciphering meaning sometimes can be very context dependent.  An example from the famous DeLorean car case in New York illustrates this concept perfectly.  The person who broke the case  was told that if he did so, the defendant would kill him.  Sometimes, the word kill means to take a life, but it can also be used to metaphorically express anger without any action taking place.  Attorneys worked hard to show the context was a case of the latter, not the former meaning.  The defendant for this and other reasons was found innocent.

People say things all the time that they don't mean to follow through on.  So, eventually, everything boils down to words being figures of speech or literal in nature.  Once that hurdle is discovered, then the business of truth or deception can be taken up.

Word capture

People usually feel comfortable when talking to others they know.  Most personality types feel comfortable making conversation with people they don't know.  But when people feel out of their comfort zones, they try not to talk unless forced to.  When people get on elevators, they tend to clam up, not feeling the compunction to make even small talk with other occupants.

If someone has been accused and has to give a deposition for an attorney, if someone has to make a statement to a detective, or if someone has to talk in front of cameras unexpectedly, then the speech changes.  It is not a natural situation.  They are forced to talk.  That uneasiness is captured in words believe it or not.

The beauty of such captured words is that people cannot tell that their speech changes, it's so subtle.  It happens below the conscious level.  Unlike polygraph tests that measure nervousness and temperature rises, speech changes are so unapparent it can't be controlled even if the person knows what the changes are.  A person would have to know what changes about speech and practice it for a long time to fool the speech change test.

When a person begins speaking, and continues for any length of time, a comfort mechanism forces the language into a certain range of words being used.  The range is not a set range of words, but unique to each person's vocabulary base.  A quantity-based value for this range, called the type/token ratio, can be established.  The more and the longer one talks, the more the baseline of the ratio becomes certain.  A second statistical test performed on the range on various segments of his speech reveal the areas where misleading speech has been made.  Choices of vocabulary might be important to other types of analysis, but word choice semantics in the type/token ratio analysis are not important.

Such an analysis makes the 5th amendment an important principle if someone knows that a forensic linguist is in on a case.   Incrimination is the name of the game.

Following junctures

The word crafty comes from an Old English word meaning skilled.  By the time the Old English period slipped into the Middle English period shortly before the time of Chaucer in the 1300s, the word crafty began to be used as skilled in being deceptive. 

Part of the meaning for crafty is that someone designs the construction of the deception.  That idea lies at the heart of finding deception in speech.  People have to design their lies, so they have to decide at what point in a person's story it begins to vary from what actually happened.

The idea of design enables those who analyze discourse structure to know where to look in people's stories for their deceptions.  Stories have juncture points.  These are points where either the action ends or changes or points where a change in cast is introduced.  From one juncture to the next, one can judge the plausibility of the story happening the way it is told.  Some deception designers decide to change multiple junctures.  But, no matter how many junctures are changed, the story has to end in the same way as it was reported to the police or investigative team. 

That makes each juncture have a plausibility rating as the proceeds from one juncture to another.  A contributing factor to the rating is how well the action of the juncture supports or points to the reported ending.  These pointers are the markers that show an emerging design to the unknown parts of an occurrence.  A second contributing factor to the rating is the amount of detail offered in the juncture.  A person doesn't necessarily have to have too little or too much in this rating.  The person just has to have an equal amount of detail to the level the juncture starts.

The lower the rating of pointing or equality, the higher the probability that the section of the story is the point at which it varies from actuality.  Those who like to deceive are usually very good, but are they skilled, crafty enough, in controlling what lies under the surface of normal discourse?  The amount of practice that one would have to put in to recognize what to do to evade pointing and equality is something deceivers are not willing to give.

Science vs. hunches

Some people don't believe that forensic linguists can tell from words uttered when a person is being deceptive.  They point to the failures of other forensic methods from other disciplines such as eye movement, gestures and facial expressions, and sensors to measure temperature differences or tensal variation in the body.  Experts at telling non-truths can learn to beat any of the above investigative methods.

So what is different about the methods that measure the language used in lying?  People speak all the time to communicate their ideas.  In the first place, most people don't believe words can be turned into numbers or statistical data.  In the second place, language utterances reveal tendencies both in types of words used and in quantitative analysis.  It is virtually impossible to see either of the tendencies since the brain has been trained over a great number of years to produce those tendencies.  Even if someone could spot tendencies in words used and retrained their brains not to use them, nearly all people don't know the calculations to use statistically monitored words for tendencies.

One attorney I know called the linguistic method "voodoo," but he could not find fault with the method because he could not spot the tendencies in speech nor did he understand the statistical method used to find the patterns for analysis.  So, the voodoo became simply a reflection of his ineptness to manipulate language on more than a mere style or substance level as he was used to employing.

Different graphs can been constructed to measure several indicators of deceptive speech people use. Unfortunately, people are conditioned not to truly trust these investigative tools of science since the methods in the first paragraph have been found flawed or possible to beat.  That's too bad.  Many more people could have had their webs of deception exposed by forensic linguistic investigation than by hunches and stylistic/substantive guessing of words' surface values.

Word spinning

I have seen attorneys try to lead a witness without leading the witness according to examination rules. Unexpectant people play along unwittingly, and those who ultimately play along know that something is really wrong with line of questioning going on.

Usually, the attorney asks a few warmup questions to get the witness loose.  Then (s)he begins with "Would you agree that... ?"  No witness should answer yes or no to such a statement.  A witness should always say, "I would say..." and proceed to give her or his own version of what the attorney is referring to.  Sometimes a lawyer will try, "Would you characterize the situation as...?"  Again, the witness should give the answer, "I would characterize the situation as... " and proceed to recount his or her own characterization.

The most damaging kind of leading comes when an attorney phrases a question and asks for a simple yes or no answer.  There are two lines of response to follow if that happens.  The attorney wants to highlight the answer of course and not the context.  The first response should be to say something like, "Yes, I could answer yes or no, but the context is indelibly connected to the answer. "  Then begin with providing the context.  The attorney will probably interrupt the context to demand a yes or no answer.  The second response should be to say, "Because (the event) happened (a certain way), then yes (or no)."  If the attorney moves to strike the comment because it doesn't answer the question, or if the attorney reduces your second answer to a yes or no, then the second line of response is the only one left open - pleading the 5th amendment.

Reducing testimony to yes or no is really not the best way for an attorney to pin down a witness.  Establishing context is important, so an attorney needs to help the witness establish the context.  The jury hearing the testimony is just as likely to think less of the attorney pushing a witness to a fifth amendment answer as it is to think less of the witness.

One other advantage of allowing a witness to speak of characterizations or facts is that the words can be charted according to known linguistic methods of detecting deception.  Exploiting those areas then becomes much more factual and much less dependent on how an opposing attorney wants to cast a case.

What we know

One habit that detectives and attorneys have that leaves them blind to the truth is to ignore a very obvious principle.  Everyone knows that people speak more about matters they know than matters they don't know.  Duh, right?

But detectives and attorneys fail to ask for comments on all relevant topics.  As a result. matters a person knows versus matters a person doesn't know goes unknown.  That unknown information could prove to be damaging.  If a suspect or witness doesn't know much about something, then the topic is harmless. It would be the topics most known that need exploring and probing.  That will be where deception is taking place.

More generally, people new to a relationship should adopt the same philosophy.  A partner is less likely to exploit what he or she doesn't know, more likely to exploit what he or she knows a great deal about.  Being aware of the areas of someone else's knowledge base makes one aware not to open up without trusting the person or situation.  That limits the amount of damage a malicious soul (or uncaring) can inflict.

In legal matters, areas of knowledge are like enemies.  And as Michael Corleone has said, "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer," (Godfather, Part II, 1974).  Areas of great knowledge unprobed are very dangerous.  A lot of truths, half-truths, hedges, and deception can take place in such vast unexplored areas.  It should always be the case for attorneys in depositions, voir dire, case presentation, and witness examination to explore all the areas of strength an individual has.  Therein lies the truth (and his or her deception) about a matter.