Did I hear what I think I heard?

No, I did NOT just hear that?

Yes, for sure I did!

I heard a public speaker today, in front of 1000 people, say something that was unfathomable in the not-so-distant past.  I had read this kind of thing in a textbook once about 20 years ago, so I should not have been so totally surprised.  But, it's not that common yet.  I have only heard this kind of utterance about 4 times in the last 20 years.

The text book I read 20 years ago used an example of some people's dialect changing the accepted form of a possessive phrase.  The example was to replace the pronoun her with a more identifying phrase.  To do that, a person thinks first of the phrase like The woman who lives down the street.  A person would next place the noun being possessed after the identifying phrase, in this case, dog.  Finally, the person places a possessive punctuation mark, an apostrophe at the end of the phrase to show that the whole identifying phrase shows possession of the dog, that is, the woman who lives down the street's dog.  That's a big mouthful to say, but it's certainly one way of having a possessive phrase.  It's such a mouthful, in fact, that it is seldom used.

Now about that public speaker.  He used the pronoun we to begin the sentence.  The natural and long-standing way to form the possessive of first person plural is to change we to our. However, the speaker wanted to further identify the two groups making up we, so he used you and I for emphasis of the two elements.  The more standard form of We brought our lives (the phrase he used) was changed to We brought you and I's life.  I was paying only casual attention to what was being said to that point.  But, when I heard the possessive phrase, I had to look full-faced at the speaker to see if he was trying to make a joke.  No, he wasn't after checking facial expressions and noticing the pacing was the same as what had been uttered before.

Amazing!!  He was a young man of 25 with a bachelor's degree, having grown up in a university town.  So, it wasn't as if he had come from the Appalachian outback area of the country.  I know; It's a language principle that any generation can change anything it wants to about the language it uses as a group.  It happens all the time.  Very effectively and consistently the generation of those below 40 have changed the subject pronoun use when using two pronouns as a subject of a verb, such as, Me and him went to Pittsburgh  in the place of  He and I went to Pittsburgh.  The politeness rule of putting a third person pronoun in front of the first person pronoun has also been retracted in favor of speaker first and third person second.  So, when it comes to using a possessive phrase instead of a single pronoun, I know that it can be done any way speakers want to.  I just wasn't ready for it.  And to me it would be an outrageous change if such a change were to take root and spread.  But, every generation has its day in the sun to live how they want, speak how they want.

Maybe it will take another 10 years to take root.  Then, I will have heard the phrase more times, and in that repetiveness I will be better able to accept something that now carries a huge stigma.

Rhythm of the rain

We didn't receive 10 inches of rain or anything.  Far less.  But, it was a flash flood.  The area between my house and my neighbor's was completely underwater.  In fact, it was about 3 inches above the grass level and above the level where the foundation meets the brick side of the house.  I couldn't help but recall an old, old song.  So, I found it on YouTube and listened to it as I sat on my patio watching the clouds, sheets of rain, and lightning, and listening to the rumble of the sky.

Yep, an olden goldie.  But, the rhythm of the rain matched the rhythm of my heart and days gone by.  I never get tired of hearing a steady rain and all the accompanying sky activity.  Never.  And I know why.

No cigar

I have heard about this, but never experienced it.  A lady from the northeast had come to Texas and boarded a room in a house.  She told the family that she knew how to "read" people.  The family believed her and the credentials she said she had.  Each one of the family and some of her extended family decided to talk to her.  They would tell her things and she would give a psychological evaluation of why they did what they did.

The family said she was amazing, that she had helped them so much, and that talking with her was life changing.  I didn't want to, but I relented to go see her to keep peace.  She showed her true colors toward me right away.  She denigrated someone who was well known in her own field and in my book.  As she continued talking with the person I was with, I could see that she was "reading" based on what was told to her, and giving a few well memorized root causes for certain behaviors.  She went out of her way not to use psychological jargon (perhaps she was limited in how much jargon she actually knew).  She lead the entire way, not allowing for a person to go off task without her bringing the person back to the topic she wanted to discuss.

I just as easily could have been at a palm reader's session or a tarot card reading.  She kept insisting that she was not conducting a counseling session (reminding me of the Shakespearean quote about protesting too much).  Although I engaged her on a casual conversational level, she tried to direct me into her questioning of my intentions or telling me what I was thinking because she could read me.  Although she read the body language correctly, she provided no motivation for the thoughts.  She wanted me to provide that.  I was not there to engage her in anything but casual conversation, so she failed at her attempts.

I chalk this up to one of life's experiences, interesting, but no cigar.

Triangulation

When people lie and why people lie are very different things.  At least that is what many detectives and attorneys think.  But there is a correlation between when and why people lie.

A good comparison can be made between lying and making a phone call.  When police are trying to trace a phone call, they "triangulate" the signal used in the call.  There is a signal from the originating phone to a cell tower and from the cell tower to the receiving phone.  That creates two sides of a triangle.  Draw a hypotenuse between the point of origin and the point of reception and instantly there is triangulation.

When a person lies, there is a signal in the words.  The cell tower, the capture of words on paper or recorder which allows analysis of average words used in speaking, relays the signal to a receptor.  The person on the other end hears some form of a hedge normally, even if it is merely a 1/2 second pause in delivery.  Then, a hypotenuse can be drawn, between originator and receptor, a subtopic through which the hedge is made.  It's a triangulation, a triangle graph showing something like a target.  It works every time, just like a trace on a phone call.

And how does that show more than the place in speech or "when" people lie?  Because there is a structure to get to a certain point in a subtopic.  Analyzing the structure of why topics are brought up and the order in which the subtopics appear under that more general topic, allow one to see "why" people lie.  The place and reason are inextricably linked.

Yep, all in a day's work one can debunk people's lying words.  It may keep them up thinking about how to lie and rehearsing it, but I get a good night's rest after exposing it.

Use it or lose it, again

Repetition has long been debated as to its benefit in education.  Proponents of repetition say that things are learned for mastery by repeating the principle involved a great number of times when one starts to learn a new precept.  Lots of homework is usually given by a teacher who believes this.  The idea is to see an idea explained, see it used in its basic form, and practice, practice, practice.

We've all had a teacher like this.  Memories of such a teacher rank right up there with dentists who have not been to dental school in the last 30 years to update their skills and knowledge of what's available in dentistry.  But, are these teachers' approach to repetition right?  If so, there are quite a few soft teachers in the business who practice only a small number of times comparatively.

Studies about memory show that any kind of memory is created when something memorable happens.  Memories are not created by things that are part of an unnotable nature.  Experiments abound in working with people's recall.  For example, in one experiment, people were allowed to watch an accident happen.  They participants were not told there would be an accident before it happened.  When interviewed after watching the video clip, the participants agreed on the fact that an accident happened because that was notable.  But, they agreed on little else about the clip because nearly all else that had happened was not remarkable.

The brain turns things to the gist of what happened rather than remembering a lot of details about an incident.  Some experiments actually ask people to take the same survey a day after watching the video, again after a week, and again after three months.  Details disappear from memory if they were present in the beginning.  Many times, details are not even present in the beginning.  Details such as what people were wearing, what colors of clothing people saw, makes and models of cars, heights of buildings, names of streets on street signs, number of people involved are not remembered well to begin with, but certainly disappear over time, if remembered to begin with.

If applied to learning, a person can see that a great deal of homework doesn't achieve what those teachers giving it say is the benefit.  Principles learned don't really stay.  They disappear over time.  That's why people forget the rules of how and when to use commas, what the formulas for right triangles are, or the principle involving where cold and hot air can be found in a house.

What promotes learning is not mere repetition, but whether or not use of an idea learned is applied somewhere else in life.  Is there a reason for learning commas?  Yes, if one writes real world material a lot.  Is there a use for know the formula for right triangles?  Yes, if one designs interiors for house blueprints.  Is there a reason to know about cold air and warm air?  Yes, if one has to fill up a tire on a car often in the early spring or late fall of the year when daytime and nighttime temperatures are about 30 degrees apart.

Oh-h-h! What do we do with dinosaurs in life who don't want to keep up with knowledge that grows more current.

Dominoes falling

Over this weekend I have watched two stream of consciousness movies, Babel and The Meddle,  shows portraying people other than the main character being affected as a result of decisions made by the main characters or of events that happened to the main characters beyond their control.

I don't always like stream of consciousness movies, but these two showed with great impact the domino effect of decisions made by one or to one.  These movies are good for showing me the application of Newton's third law of motion: for every action, there is an equal but opposite reaction (when it comes to the force involved in motion).  Not always applicable to life, but in many cases, yes.  In this case there were equal but opposite reactions as ripple effects in many, many directions.

The movies showed me again the truth of John Donne's poem below.

John Donne
Meditation 17
Devotions upon Emergent Occasions

'No man is an iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee....'

Donne's final thought above is a different application of the principle he cites from the application I am giving, but it would apply to these two movies regarding decisions people make.  I forget many times to look for possible consequences in mundane decision making.  I am pretty good at following threads in major decisions, but not always the mundane ones.  I am grateful to have had these two reminders on a weekend designed to remind us of the ramifications of freedom in its various forms in our country.

Semblance

People were greeting each other with hugs.  There were smiles all around.  Later in the evening sounds of laughter rose from the tables, chairs, and benches around the dance floor.  Lights had been hung especially for this occasion.  At the tables plates, of barbeque and chicken, mashed potatoes and pork & beans filled everyone's plates.  One would think an ol' country hoedown was in high gear.

But it was a wedding, held at a really rustic place for retreats.  The two buildings were a chapel that would hold about 150 people and a mess hall with concrete floors.  A stable with a few horses wasn't too far away.  The couple getting married had grown up on farms and around horses.  So their venue for their wedding was this rustic place.  Dancing and dining were outdoors.

The frivolity of celebration was all in place for this usual joyous occasion.  What was not in place was the gravity with which the bride and groom seemed to approach this celebratory time.  The groom stood at the front of the room with his groomsmen awaiting the bride and her entourage to walk the aisle.  The groom never once smiled.  His family had traveled 6 hours to be there, yet no smile for them.  The groomsmen at his side, his best friends by him, still no smile.  I thought he was staging this gloom so that everyone would see the radiance of his smile when his life's choice entered the room.  Not so.  His bride entered, everyone stood in honor, no smile - from either bride or groom.  The father gave away the bride, the ceremony began.  No smile.  The groom took the bride's hand and vice versa, slipped on the wedding ring, but no smile.  After the kiss of marital union, the faintest of all smiles touched the corners of the groom's mouth, but it was ever so fleeting.

The bride smiled from time to time during her time in front of the audience gathered, but not as much as a person would think when (s)he attends a wedding.  Everyone except the main two participants seem to be enjoying the occasion.  I thought of the word I would apply to this ceremony.  It's from Latin simulare, meaning to imitate, and from similis, meaning like.  I'll write again about this couple in two or three more years.  It just doesn't seem this occasion was the stuff dreams are made of for this bride and groom.  I think I just experienced a semblance of a wedding.

That smile on your face

Well, I got to meet a woman from the Ukraine last night.  She knew no English.  Now that was interesting.  Her daughter had moved to the U.S. about 8 years ago on a student visa and acted as her mother's translator.  The daughter had had to learn English mostly when she got here although she spent a few months in Europe before arriving here where she learned British English.

Through a translator we talked about her stay in the U.S.  I asked her what the biggest difference was between the Ukraine and the U.S.  She said that the people here are generally more friendly here.  Store clerks and people on the street smiled much more and were eager to help if asked.

That surprised me since, in my experience of the U.S., it seems that people shy away from talking when possible and store clerks have to be hit on the head with a brick if you want them to notice you need help of any kind.  Maybe I need to pick up a Ukrainian accent.

The woman was really pleasant.  I met her grandson of 5 months.  He always smiled.  Maybe he mirrors the value my new Ukrainian friend saw so readily in this country.  I have a feeling she is friendly in her country like what she saw here.  We tend to do that.  I remember my mother's proverbial words so well that she graced me with often while growing up, "If you want to have friends, show yourself friendly."

People and their semantics

Sometimes people just want what they want and nothing else will do.

USA Today carried an article about people getting upset because the president hasn't identified any of the happenings or people connected with ISIS as radical Islam or radical Muslims.  The article went on to tell what the president has said about terrorism.  He has used words such as "repulsive acts," "disgraceful," "terrible," and "horrific," along with other extreme descriptions of the acts and people of ISIS.  But, "radical Islam" and "radical Muslims" he has not used.

I know it's true that people can get caught up in semantics.  I have seen that happen before.  I knew one person who would not accept the words "I'm sorry" from her children because they were not sorry individuals.  They had to use the words, "I apologize" for her not to spin into a tirade.  Even then, the mother didn't always accept the apology.

Words can trip people up if they want to be obstinate.  But, it's like the play The Emperor's New Clothes.  Everyone but the king can see what's happening.  To quote Romeo from Romeo and Juliet, "What's in a name?  A rose by any other name would be as sweet."  Words are all equal.  It is society that gives assignments such as "profanity" to certain words.  Ever wonder what the difference among "shit," "excrement," and "feces" is?  None at all.  Society just assigns the value of "offensive" to one of the terms for no good reason.

In the president's case, I would rather hear precise, descriptive adjectives used than some buzzword expression any day.  It shows a stronger degree of condemnation of violent acts than some formulaic expression applied by a particular political or religious persuasion.  People need to get over themselves when it comes to word specificity.  Does it fit a big picture or not?  Seriously!

Oedipus' story today

I entered adulthood as a single person with a college degree.  The world was at my doorstep.  I had the tiger by the tail armed with all my idealism and hope.  I knew I would conquer the world at some future point.

I entered my 30s, married, no children, working hard to be the entrepreneur who would be one of America's millionaires without a worry about tomorrow and living the good life.  I figured that would take about 10 years if I did it right.

I entered my 40s still married, two children in elementary school, and working for the state about 10-12 hours a day.  The entrepreneur adventure didn't work out well.  I liked my new job well enough.  I had received an advanced degree to get an edge up on the salary scale and promotions.  The aging process had started.  I still played on an adult basketball team for exercise, but had lost a lot of my quickness.  I sported glasses.  Life had taken a twist.  The family was not cohesive anymore.  The children had become older and younger teens.  Their choice of friends were not the ones I thought I had had at their age, so I didn't like them much.  Their schedules were involved, so it became complex to juggle work and children.  The one value I had put my hope in from childhood and tried to follow faithfully was no longer making any sense.  It hadn't delivered on its promises.  Working for the state had also become a rather dead-end job.  My mate was living a challenging life fighting alcoholism.  The world became a rather large wasteland.

I entered my 50s on a tragic note.  My 19-year-old son died from cancer the year before.  Life stood still for about two years.  My other child made it through high school well enough, but got married, divorced within 6 months and decided to participate in the drug scene with all its attendant pitfalls, which she fell into all in their own turn.  She had a failure to launch after her teenage years.  She ended up pregnant without a mate to stand by her, so she returned home to refresh her life and get help raising her child.  My father had developed dementia and had died 8 days before my son after an 11 month illness.  My mate wanted to divide our belongings and part ways.  Life was beginning to take its toll on happiness and sanity.  I met a person who returned my sanity to me, but life always twists the plot and this person and I had less than a year's worth of an intersecting life.
_________________________________

True story - all of the above.  It's a first person account of someone who started on a hopeful note in life.  It represents so many lives that I run into.  Some of them are worse than the one above, some of them not quite so filled with challenges.  Ironically, I tell this sotry at a time of year when hope springs eternal in the human breast.  It's spring, so all of nature is awakening from winter.  It's beautiful.  Many young people are graduating with the world at their doorstep.

The last chapter of the above person's life has not been written.  There is yet time for a reinterpretation of life's events to offer a beautiful ending.  The person told all of the events to build a worthy character as a gift to offer providence upon entering the door to what comes after life on Earth, to let those following him, whose world is just now at their doorstep, see how life unravels if one is not careful.

The story above is certainly not a new story, not even an old story with a new twist.  A play I read once, Oedupus the King, ended somewhat on the same note as the account above.  The chorus chanted the purpose of the play at the very end to all those in attendance in an old Greek amphitheater long ago in 430 BCE. The last lines are printed below.

     CHORUS: You that live in my ancestral Thebes, behold this Oedipus, —
Him who knew the famous riddles and was a man most masterful;
not a citizen who did not look with envy on his lot—
see him now and see the breakers of misfortune swallow him!
Look upon that last day always.
Count no mortal happy till he has passed the final limit of his life secure from pain.

Good morning vibes

I think it's my stage in life, but I love walking out my door or driving out of my driveway and seeing an array of colors.  Lavenders, whites, and purples say hi to me as I walk out the entryway.  Two different shapes of flowers slightly move in the breeze as I pass by the two pots of sunshine-loving, petunia-looking petals.  I smile when I see them.

Behind them I am greeted by four fully-blooming red rose bushes.  They're about head high so I stop briefly to take in their beauty.  Then, I move out to the driveway and see the beautifully lush grass at this time of year.  It serves as a nice contrast to the purple-red pots and bushes I passed to get this far.

As I open my car door, I glance at the foot of the tree in the middle of the yard.  The flowers there smile back at me with hues of yellow and the designs of white stars in the center of more purple flowers.  The purple leaf and green leaf shrubs are a good background for them and a good harmony of colors to please the eye.

I back out of my driveway, and right before leaving the scene of my yard, I look over at the corner of the house and wave goodbye to the yellow roses and yellow daffodils growing at the bush's foot.  It's quite a send-off day after day, all spring and most of the summer.  I never arrive at work thinking I haven't started my day off right.

Developing a view

Perspective is related to our backgrounds - our upbringing, our education, our fields of interest, our motivations.  Together they are the ingredients of our value systems.  Values are formed from the different inputs as mentioned above, which is why the saying, "One's judgment is only as good as her/his information," is so very true.

The other day I was in a conversation with my mother.  She brought up the subject of a news story recounting that various school districts were complaining to the Texas Education Agency that the state tests were not scored correctly since a good number of students who usually made top grades in their schools were not showing as high scorers on the state test.  My mother is adamantly against state testing.  So, she jumped on this news story as support for her opinion.

I said that while that conclusion could be true, there were other factors that might show up that would not support the complaints at all.  I mentioned that teachers inflate grades in the classroom, so the more statistically accurate state tests might just be showing a faulty grading system used by many school districts.  I started to launch into a more detailed response about the statistical nature of scoring the state tests when she interrupted me.  "You're always on the other side of whatever people talk about."

I stopped short of my launch, considering she has had a considerable history with me.  It's true that in both politics and religion, we differ greatly on our perspectives.  Many times in education, we see the source and causes of problems differently, typically in handling of curriculum.  Other areas over the years have shown differences, too.

But, I will say this.  If I had her set of facts, maybe I would reach her same conclusions.  If she had my set of facts, maybe she would reach my conclusions.  We bring our experiences and our backgrounds to any decision we reach, any philosophy we might have developed.  I ended my comments with "The school districts could be right, but there might be more to it than they think.

Recently I was called contentious by someone.  In my mind, I was merely "showing my work" for a a conclusion I had drawn.  The other person wasn't using the same logic that I was using, so she cut me short and called me contentious.

Perspective is all we have to express our thoughts.  I try to be respectful both of others' opinions or of their wishes not to hear the logic of how my conclusions are drawn.   People must coexist, so respect is an important value to have alongside of the perspectives we also hold.

Reminders from an unlikely source

Sometimes watching a story from childhood again brings us back to our right minds.  I watched the animated version of Tarzan again today.  It's been a while since I saw it, but it has been one of my childhood favorites since I watched it originally.  It puts me in touch with my moral self.  Three scenes act like a compass to me.

The first scene is the one that starts the story.  A mother ape finds Tarzan as a baby and saves it from a tiger who would eat him.  Thus, he starts his journey being raised by the ape family.  This scene tells me I also had a beginning in which someone was brave and kind to bring me into this world and protect me from disease and other circumstances that could have ended my life.  Someone from the beginning made it possible for me to live, grow strong, and seek my destiny.  I honor that person for life.

The second scene happens when Tarzan has grown to be a young man in the jungle.  He has still had no contact with humans, so he only knows his ape family and their ways.  A leopard one day haunts the ape tribe, so Tarzan defends his people and kills the leopard.  All the apes yell and applaud, showing their appreciation for his valorous deed.  This act was something the leader couldn't do, so he retreated to allow Tarzan to take over the tribe.  Tarzan, however, realized what had happened, so he took the leopard and laid it at the feet of ape leader to show that he was still subservient to the leader, that he wasn't trying to take over his position.  This shows me that no matter what our good fortune comes to us to in life, we never are too good or outgrow our roots.  I have a family that I never outgrow.  I have friends that I developed early in life that I am never to good to talk to again or meet for lunch with.  And, I have mentors that allowed me to learn from them, so I could take what they offered, build and mold areas of strength with what each contributed, and live contentedly and productively.

The third scene comes 2/3 of the way through the movie when Tarzan wants to show off his ape family to Jane and her father because he is proud of his roots.  The scene turns south on Tarzan when a hunter with Jane and her father wants to kill and capture some of the apes.  The leader of the apes looks at Tarzan and says, "I asked you to take care of the family.  Now you have betrayed us all."  That hurt Tarzan deeply because he had not intended any harm to his ape family.  I know that I can easily make things turn south without intention.  One time in particular is representative of wishing outcomes had turned out differently.  I had mentioned that I would let someone know when I would move, if I ever did.  A couple of years passed, but the time came to move.  I made the phone call to tell the person I was moving.  Although we talked briefly, a meeting was pressing for the other person to attend, so the person said to expect a call later that night or the next day.  The call never came.  The other person eventually learned of my move and thought I had betrayed my word.  Not receiving the expected call at a later time was a game changer.  Tarzan was later allowed to mend the relationship with the leader and make it better than it had ever been.  Perhaps that will be my story too.  I have faith.

It's good to watch those childhood stories no matter what age we turn.  They keep us grounded.  They remind us of the paths we had wanted to travel whether or not we were actually able to do that.

Acknowledgment

I have found more than one place in my life where it is wrapped in symmetry.  I guess that's true of everyone.  But, the symmetry of greatest influence on me comes from the teacher who taught me ancient Greek.  I have kept up the work of translating through the years, mainly because he taught me the value of knowing what was said "from the horse's mouth."  He was also a prolific writer.  He contributed to a magazine that he also served as chief editor for, and his article contributions dealt with translations from Greek.  I don't know that he knew other languages, but I know he had exposure to Latin and ancient Hebrew at least.  He taught with a great deal of patience in the classroom, and he made translation principles very apparent with his explications in his articles.

The symmetry is that the young me learned a language from a man who taught me to love that same language and desire to translate it with certain goals in mind.  Now, years later, an older me still loves the language and translates it regularly with the same desire.  Because of this man contributing articles routinely for people to read, I also have decided to dedicate several websites to several projects dealing with either languages or forensics using the English language.  We traveled down similar paths in different eras, but unmistakably my mentor from youth affected my work as a
seasoned adult.  Thank you J.W. Roberts for your exemplary life in the eyes of a young soul in search of a cause.  I thank you in particular for the translation principles you embraced and passed on,
allowing my work and life to morph and become something enjoyable instead of lumbering down a path of slavery to a miscreant belief system.

Headphones and memories

Some evenings I sit at my dining room table and just listen to music, typing occasionally on a blog.  There's something really serene about that.  My headphones that bring the music to my ears block out all reality.  I get to recoil into my mind, listen to words and music and let my thoughts ramble down any crook and cranny of my mind they want to go.

That's what I'm getting to do tonight.  I enjoyed the rains storming their way through about an hour ago.  It was a short, fierce rain, but it soothed my soul.  Now comes the aftermath of my choosing - mellowing my mind listening to music and thinking of the most special time in my whole life.  It's been a while.

I'll have to go back to the real world shortly, but I have a few more minutes to spend eternity inside my mind.  I get lost there feeling, smiling, totally absorbed in enjoying the flashes of images like a slide show across my inner projection board.  My, I could stay here all night long.

My last song is playing.  It's appropriately the song Every Mile a Memory by Dierks Bentley, one of my favorite song artists.

Red sundown out across the western sky,
Takes me back to the fire in your eyes,
Texas stars in a purple night,
Not seein' 'em with you baby,
Oh, they never do look right, no.

Every mile a memory...
Every song another scene...

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.