Common Ground

Needless to say I'm done with the partisan approach to settling our problems. It is truly hard to find voices on either side that can keep their cool long enough to thoughtfully present their own arguments. So I would like to find a new center for dialog that includes both views that can be appreciated from both sides. I'm not talking about the wimpy center of independents who are more political weather vanes than independent thinkers but voices of reason and tolerance.

So I offer some voices to include in this new pantheon. On the right (I am obviously on the left so I'm on shaky ground here) I would offer David Brooks. I disagree with some of his conservative stands but see him as a man of reason who can support good solutions on either side of the partisan divide. On the left I suggest Tom Hartman from Portland. He is an Air America DJ and I think presents a fair and receptive argument. I would love to see these two lead the new dialog of the center.

This new dialog should not consider any of the loony comments from the extremes. I can list a lot of those I think are loony rights but I'll have to listen to the new center voices who the loony left is that we should exclude (they all seem reasonable to me). I hope others will suggest voices for this new common center ground. If we can amplify their dialog maybe we can get somewhere.

Dave

The new "Orchestra"

Recently, on a cruise of the Caribbean I asked a fellow passenger what we should expect from the entertainment when those my generation and younger dominated the passenger list. His response? -- This music is timeless and will always be a part of sophisticated entertainment. I was listening to tired old standards played by musicians who did not love them.

Well, I just went to the Trans Siberian Ochestra concert. It was loud with massive lighting effects and video screens everywhere.

Yes, this is the new Orchestra. They played Beethoven with special lightening, video and fireworks.- massive visuals.

In ten years, the orchestra as we know it will require a rhythm section, full sound, and lighting. I find it exciting. I sat behind a white hair that was 15 years my senior. She was totally in it. There were over 10K+ in attendance at the concert. We can't get 75 people to attend our orchestra concerts at the college. There is some writing on the wall here.

There were hundreds of programmable lights. I could not get the college where I once taught to think owning one was of any importance.

Whew!!!!

Don

Such fun to see guitarists with long hair in tuxedos with the low hung phalic guitars. Perfect blond Barbies dancing in lacy black outfits. Violinists running and dancing around the stage while playing.

Wow! The new two party system

Can you believe the partisan conflict on almost all issues? The war(s), health care reform (not insurance reform), who should have money and who does not deserve to have money, etc. Don't tax me but give me government services (example: MediCare, clean streets, fire departments, police, etc).

Wow! what confusion.

I asked one of my conservative friends why they are so angry.

He responded "us -- angry?" because liberals are so angry.

"Really?" I questioned. "Why?"

"Because liberals only want what they want. They are selfish."

I was shocked. When liberals want services for those who have nothing does not meet this mantra.

It is obvious that both sides see the other side as angry. Where did this come from? I thought that a "liberal arts" education was to insure that tolerance was a necessary component in conflict resolution. I have not held a sign since college but none of them had demeaning symbols or pictures with name calling.

Shouldn't we discount the extremes and concentrate on the middle left and middle right? I think that the Blue Dog Democrates should now be the new right and the center of the Democratic party is the new left. Let's just ignore the far right and even the far left (however, that is where I live most of the time.)

So the new two party system should be this new alignment because they are not so reactionary and do not exhibit the anger the cable channels love to display.

Don

Public education is not easy

This was a response to an article about the need for merit pay and Charter Schools.

Really !

Who will teach the unteachable? The criminals? I had them in my class. How do you measure success? Good grades? Good citizens? I would love to see what the religious (Charter Schools) would do with an atheist. Should they deny funding rather than accepting an atheist?
How about the unmotivated?

Can a great teacher motivate students in the gang infested urban schools? If you think so, you have watched too many movies.

It is easy to be a great teacher -- only teach those who need good grades to move on -- don't work in a school where students (or their parents) do not think that graduating is important. Don't teach in a school that requires more than 20 students in a class. Teach in a school where the parents are willing to pay for more attention to students.

Students and parents who have will always have greater education -- even from teachers who are not stellar.

Those who do not have will always need to share the attention of any teacher -- good or bad. However. the business model will measure success on a short term time-line.

Education for the masses is a very very long term venture. No bottom line measured each year is meaningful. Success comes one student at a time over a very long time.

A Charter school is a great way to separate those who will succeed anyway from those who need to be educated.

My $.02

Don

BANG!

This is an article recently published in the FACCC Journal.


Imagine the instability at the point of the big bang -- transition at the speed of light.

I have been at smaller big bang moments in which an idea gives birth to a new endeavor that requires a new process. Over time as the process grows and thrives I've watched the progenitors gradually pushed aside because of their creative sloppiness and replaced by those who feel they can leverage the success with better management. The managing process then begins to lose sight of the original idea replacing it with a concern for self sustainability through standardized, neat, and orderly processes. The last step is the calcification of the routinized process, calcified in its own procedural gridlock. I then find little interest in the current expression of our original big bang and slip away.

Can you imagine what it was like at that primordial meeting of service oriented individuals as they banged into the idea of having everyone in our society educated? Can you image their first attempts (one teacher on one end of a log and student on the other)? Pretty inefficient. It could be made so much better. We could teach students just like we make widgets. Mass production. Let's put them all in a room and push standardized content at them and then assess them all in the same way. We could then have cloned thinkers who will move society forward in lock step.

But those of us who still feel the power of the bang find that students are constantly and perhaps fortunately left behind to find their own personal bangs. In fact, those who are successfully extruded from our mass education machine might at best only be capable of service to the banging of others. I think of all the institutional meetings I took part in that had way more than six degrees of separation from the bang's prime directive, student learning--remember the student?

I have just recently retired and made the reverse move of full time to part time teaching. I now have the pleasure of shrugging off all those meetings and simply teaching. I leave just as we are assimilating the no-child-left-behind extension of SLOs. Why in the world have we not stood up to such naive impositions? We all know there are no two students alike. Why do we accommodate such directives that violate our understandings of the diversity of students and the way they learn? We know better yet we rationalize their worth.

The opposite of the dynamic transition of our big bangs is the stasis of procedural conformity. Cults conform, educated minds thrive in the transitional milieu of ambiguity. How do we encourage students to ask the questions important to their lives when we have standardized tests? Life is not standard! Life has no answer book. We are intellectually dishonest when we intimate through our overly specific syllabi that life, like our courses, has specific and known expectations. We should worry less that students know soon to be forgotten obscure details and more that we don't have the tools to rate their ambiguity factors. Instead we should want students, unlike our politicians, to understand why it is important to change your mind in the transitional throws of life.

Rapid transition is exciting and scary. Stasis sucks.

Musings on the Mat

We are a part of a great ensemble. Our instrument chimes at just the right time to add our voice in the texture of the symphony. One thread in the tapestry of life that clings artfully to those around it through a series of interweaving loops, wraps, and knots. A fiber of gold next to a fiber of green; blue and yellow blending with red and brown. The richness of the tapestry, the depth and vibrancy of the symphony depends on the harmony in the ensemble, the sangha.

Sangha is a yogic term for community. Often spiritual, sangha is really any group that works together toward a common goal. Sangha is the ensemble playing a symphony. Sangha is the dance of the loom as it weaves its tapestry.

Yoga is an interesting practice, like music and dance it can be done as individual practice or group practice. I find, while I like practicing on my own, I much prefer to practice in a group, surrounded by my sangha. We are a group of people working individually, but nevertheless unified by our common struggles and challenges, whether it is coming into full lotus or truly allowing our core being to relax. The presence of the sangha assists me in my individual growth.

And, most importantly it reminds me as I roll up my mat and leave the studio, that sangha is out there in the real world and I am a part of it.

With each step, I weave my thread into the fabric and play my melody for the sweeping crescendo.

I am a golden thread.
I am an oboe.

You are my sangha.
Namaste.

A Child Left Behind

Dave and I just got back from Minneapolis at a MERLOT conference and Dave raised the idea that this national group of educators covering most disciplines in higher education should be a policy making group. Why not produce a Merlot report on the state of education in America. The discussion moved to possible topics. Dave hit it out of the park. He wants to investigate the child that is left behind -- like the entire NBA.

There are some very successful individuals that meet this definition. College and becoming a nuclear scientist was not in their DNA. So, why should every student be defined as successful by meeting a college bound agenda? and a failure if they don't. There are many very successful careers that do not need this as a measure of success.

Then we should not make being left behind as a failure, it just might be a success. Glass half full, Glass really full. Just because the student's educational glass is half empty does not mean that there is only failure in the future for them.

If a technical school does not need the "standardized tests" it does not mean that the school or the individual is a failure.

What is illiteracy? Not enough English? Math? Who sets these rules. I am a musician - these standardized tests don't test anything that is really important to me -- music theory, playing the clarinet, writing world class songs.

So this might be the problem. We need more music in the standardized tests. Just get rid of some of the English and Math. All students must be able to play the piano and the oboe.

Yes, this could save the world.

Don