Posts from ‘Education’

Jul
28

“Well what did you dream of doing in retirement while you were grading those papers or in all those faculty meetings?,” my son asked.  I told him that I dreamed of learning to play the piano in my sixties. I have been a music fan all my life (mostly jazz, R&B, blues) and being a participant and creator rather than a consumer in anything is a worthy pursuit.  If I just wanted to learn to play the piano however I could have done so while I was working, but there was more to it than that.  I wanted to learn something new in my older years.  I wanted to live out my commitment to lifelong learning and to challenge myself. It could have been anything new that I wanted to learn: Spanish, drawing, ballroom dancing, and it still might be.  The important point was to keep building pathways through the neurons in my head, training parts of my body (in this case my fingers) to do new things, and proving to myself that I could still learn. It was also what Bill Murray learned in the movie Groundhog Day.  You need to keep improving yourself if you are going to be of any use to others.

Nevertheless I had hemmed and hawed about doing it.  Is this really the thing I wanted or would it  lead to another thing gathering dust like that treadmill that was in the corner?  Was I willing to make the commitment of time, money and energy to such a years long project? While I was in my Hamlet-like phase unable to make a decision, my son bought me a keyboard.  It was like somebody else suddenly killing Hamlet’s uncle before he had worked up the courage to do it. All at once all my objections dried up.  So what if I lost interest in it.  That was what e-bay and Craig’s List were for.  I could even donate it to some worthy cause if I wanted to. If I did it only for a few months that was a few months of learning I wouldn’t otherwise have had.

As I thanked my son profusely I realized that he had just done for me what we had done for him so often while he was growing up. He had provided me with a chance to pursue a new learning opportunity. We had come full circle. My new keyboard is scheduled to come today and I begin lessons in about 10 days.  I can hardly wait. Education never ends.

Mar
21

This post is occasioned by the article here.  The argument here is that the question of educational equity should really be a matter of national concern.  This was buttressed by this Unicef report (thank you WDP) which points out the low rank of the United States compared to other developed countries in terms of health, education and opportunity equity for its children. The questioned I raised in this conversation was how to “frame” the argument for equity in terms that would gain some traction among the American people and their politicians.  One friend argued: Continue Reading

Mar
08

Way back in my youth in an anthology I read a story by C.M. Kornbluth written in 1951 called “The Marching Morons.”  In it a man from the past awakes in a distant future shaped by a population problem.  Simply put there was not enough reproduction by those with high IQ’s and overproduction by those with low ones.  This has shaped a future where the few with high intelligence must constantly work to ensure the survival of the society because the vast majority of people are not intelligent enough to do so by themselves. You can read the plot summary here.  I have always been skeptical of the story because I saw it as class based one where those of the upper class resent (fear?) those of the lower classes and interpret them as having lower intelligence.  Perhaps African Americans having been called less intelligent and relegated to this caste for so long, have a special sensitivity here. Nevertheless we are moving toward a bifurcated educational system which will eventually make a two tiered society of a minority who know how to do things and a majority who do not. Education was supposed to be the method that kept this from happening.  It was supposed to spread the skills needed to become productive members of society wide even while reserving the best education for the upper classes.  Scholarships and such were supposed to be the lubricant that allowed the “cream” of the lower classes to move up into the ruling group.  Myths of upward mobility and meritocracy were supposed to gain the non ruling classes’ complicity in this system.

In a sense the public education system has succeeded in doing exactly what it was designed to do: make uncomplaining consumers who accept the status quo.  Continue Reading