It’s hard to be running late when you’re in charge of the deadlines, but somehow I manage. So, this is late—in the sense that I’m writing a report about a month after we toured Columbia. Assuming, however, that the throes of college applications have passed by this time of year, perhaps I can just declare that this is EARLY for the next admissions season. There, I feel better.
The Nikipedia is only sophomore-level, but given how LATE we are on just about everything, it seems reasonable to check things out when we’re in an appropriate city. Thus, trip to New York = visit to Columbia. Why were we interested? Okay, I feel a digression coming on.
In the few schools we’ve so far toured (Oberlin, Peabody, Northwestern & Univ. of Chicago) there seems to be two prominent methods of organizing an education. First method: have few to no required courses—student is free to concentrate heavily on major or professional training. This method often allows the student to double or triple major. One might wish, as a parent, that this would result in complementary majors—say, French and Education, or Marketing and Art—you know, something that is likely to enhance the probability that Junior will actually be able to pay off those college loans. Unfortunately, in my observation, it usually results in bizarre mash ups, like French and Accounting, or Piano and Biology, where the kid is majoring in what they really love, and double majoring in something they force themselves to take to get a job. Not so good.
The other route is to require a significant core curriculum, which nearly everyone takes. These often feature heavy reading of classics, along with math and science, or at least enough math and science that the kid will graduate with some idea of the topics (at least enough to discard all the creationist/intelligent design crap.) The idea is that the student will have a depth of cultural knowledge that they can then apply to a concentration in the last two years.
We can argue about the benefits of each until the gargoyles fall off their perches, but at least right now, the Nikipedia’s (and my) strong preference is for the core curriculum approach, à la University of Chicago and Columbia.
Okay, we already all know Columbia is a terrific school. I mean, it’s Ivy League (which really only speaks to sports, but who cares?) and has a roster of famous alumni as long as the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge (including our beloved Barack, who by the way was a dorm daddy while there). If you want to know more about the core curriculum, check out the book Great Books, by David Denby. He’s a journalist who graduated from Columbia, then went back as an adult and retook the curriculum. Education is so wasted on the young.
My top concern in sending my precious to Columbia was safety and security. For a lot of people, that’s a concern for the Univ. of Chicago, too, but I live here and even went there in the bad old days—it wasn’t all that scary then, and it’s a lot safer now. Same with Columbia. I was really impressed with the attention to security, especially in the dorms. Something like 98% of students live on campus—no duh there, given the price of New York City housing. Even better, the admissions counselor said the overwhelming majority of professors live within walking distance of campus.
Mostly what I was impressed with at Columbia was the sense of a real campus community. The layout of buildings tends to feel like a giant hug around the main plaza, with the dorms anchoring the corners and edges. The architecture is interesting with a nice mix of old and modern (engineering, what else?) We ate in a dining hall that could have been lifted from Harry Potter (lots of wood paneling) and the food was terrific. Ever had dessert pizzas? Pineapple, coconut, omigod.
What we both especially liked about the dining hall (okay, after the food) was the interactions we observed. Columbia touts the number of minorities it admits, and that’s lovely, but I always watch to see if all groups appear to be interacting. I mean, it’s not fostering communication if all the Asian or African American kids sit off at their own tables. Not so here—totally interactive.
One interaction we couldn’t help but observe. We happened to sit down next to an African American girl (girl to me, at least, given what an old bat I am). She calmly checked us out, then began talking to Niki—obviously recognizing us as on visit. Her boyfriend appeared, she had a quiet set to with him where she read him the riot act for keeping her waiting—lots about honoring commitments. Yay! just the kind of girl I want my girl to be! After he left, she calmly picked up a book, then kindly spoke a little more to Niki and left—what self possession!
As 1 o’clock approached, the dining room emptied—another yay! No lolling about cutting class. In fact, my dominant impression watching students was, these kids are moving.
The admissions counselor cautioned everyone not to say in their application that they wanted to come to Columbia because it’s in New York, but let’s be real—that’s a huge attraction. I mean, the museums, the arts, the business—geez, imagine the internships. There’s a subway stop right at the entrance to campus, and you can be in midtown in about 15 minutes. My main worry is that Niki would skip class to inhale museums (I guess that’s better than the other stuff you can inhale). With most everyone living in dorms, and not a big Greek scene, it didn’t appear that drugs or alcohol were much of an issue. Or as the tour guide said, who has time? There’s just too much to do.
How would I compare Columbia with other schools we’ve seen? Well, the most comparable would probably be the University of Chicago. My totally unscientific feel is that there’s more eccentricity at the U of C. More kids look like mad scientists or poets, the purple hair quotient is higher, discussions overheard are more serious and esoteric at the U of C. The kids at Columbia look more normal and, dare I say, attractive, with more conventional albeit big city style. Not the chi-chi coed look you see at Northwestern, but polished and clean. I bet Columbia is more fun for social kids than the U of C would be, and U of C a better fit for real academics on the geeky side.
What they have in common is that kids at both campuses seem to love and cherish the common core. But then, if you didn’t want that already you most certainly would not go to these schools. I dunno, but to me it seems to produce an intellectual confidence that allows them to tackle further studies with direction and assurance. I was very impressed that our tour guide had a clear plan for graduate school, was carefully assessing how much money she could land to pursue it, and also had a Plan B that she was enthusiastic about if Plan A didn’t work out. That’s what I’d like to see in Nikipedia by senior year.
As a good daughter of the U of C, I still hope the Nikipedia might get in there, especially because, sniff-sniff, she’d only be a 45 minute drive away. But we’d do a very happy dance if the fat envelope eventually comes from Columbia.
Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
It’s a living
It ain’t easy making a living as any kind of artist. I wish I had a signed contract for every time I’ve heard a parent tell me, “Oh, my kid is so creative [fill in artist, actor, writer, dancer, whatever] but I’m telling him or her to major in [physics, accounting, chemistry, education—whatever the parent thinks is “practical”] because, of course, you can’t make a living at it.”
Well, the truth is, you can and this is dumb advice. Tons of people make a living every day at these professions, and there are plenty of out-of-work computer science majors. But, the employment path is fairly clear for computer science or chemistry: get the degree and get someone to hire you. The path for the arts is not: get the degree (or maybe not), get someone to hire you (or maybe not), sell your services, get a day gig (or maybe not)…but just because it’s not clear doesn’t make it un-doable. What does it require? Well, duh, it requires CREATIVITY.
If you want to eat and be any kind of artist, you need to think outside the box, not only with your art, but with your marketing, packaging, and bill paying. Maybe you will need to cobble together several jobs, sell several different versions of what you do, find a non-demanding dumb job (plenty of novelists have worked for the customs house, or the post office, or waiting tables) so you can still think and are raring to go when you get home.
But what these parents don’t tell their kids, what actually would be worthwhile advice, is that if you want to live by art, you'd better minor in business or plan to teach at some level. Acquiring the acumen to run a business, market, set up your website and social networking blitz—they’re all essential or no one is ever going to hear about your art.
Just like dating. It’s unlikely that anyone is ever going to arrive on a white horse. And if they do, it’s because you already have the door open and are looking out for the whinnying.
Two good books about making a living in one of the arts (writing):
Well, the truth is, you can and this is dumb advice. Tons of people make a living every day at these professions, and there are plenty of out-of-work computer science majors. But, the employment path is fairly clear for computer science or chemistry: get the degree and get someone to hire you. The path for the arts is not: get the degree (or maybe not), get someone to hire you (or maybe not), sell your services, get a day gig (or maybe not)…but just because it’s not clear doesn’t make it un-doable. What does it require? Well, duh, it requires CREATIVITY.
If you want to eat and be any kind of artist, you need to think outside the box, not only with your art, but with your marketing, packaging, and bill paying. Maybe you will need to cobble together several jobs, sell several different versions of what you do, find a non-demanding dumb job (plenty of novelists have worked for the customs house, or the post office, or waiting tables) so you can still think and are raring to go when you get home.
But what these parents don’t tell their kids, what actually would be worthwhile advice, is that if you want to live by art, you'd better minor in business or plan to teach at some level. Acquiring the acumen to run a business, market, set up your website and social networking blitz—they’re all essential or no one is ever going to hear about your art.
Just like dating. It’s unlikely that anyone is ever going to arrive on a white horse. And if they do, it’s because you already have the door open and are looking out for the whinnying.
Two good books about making a living in one of the arts (writing):
Friday, October 16, 2009
Maybe it's NOT the schools
The recent talk given by Dr. Edward Gordon at the Independent Writers of Chicago (IWOC) meeting made my brain hurt. The talk was supposed to be about how independent writers can thrive in the global marketplace. I had hoped Dr. Gordon was going to talk about how to get out of cold, grey, drizzly Chicago and catch the transporter beam to Paris or Amsterdam (which are equally cold and grey this time of year but who cares?)
Unfortunately for me, Dr. Gordon’s talk was not exactly nuts and bolts. He focused on what workers need to compete in the coming world order as he sees it. His central point was that there is more demand for certain kinds of skills than people to fill them. No duh there. But then he started sawing away on the same old, “Schools need to educate our kids better. We need more math and science. We need to teach writing skills.” Doesn’t anyone ever question this? Even my beloved Barack Obama has been known to blather about these tired chestnuts.
I never got to argue with Dr. Gordon as he was beset by other writers handing him their business cards and giving their elevator speeches (which I usually do and I’m only mad that so many beat me to it this time. ) As with so many examples of entrenched wisdom, maybe the reason we can’t solve this issue is that we’re starting from the wrong premise. What if, in fact, the schools ARE doing a (fairly) good job and the problem is entirely elsewhere?
I live in Evanston, where the schools are supposed to be good to excellent, the median income is nearly $70,000, and the poorest segments of the community are not living anywhere near the level that they are in, say, Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood, where the median income is more like $19,000. No matter which school your kids attend, they’re sitting side by side with kids of other races and income levels. Let’s put it another way, though—no matter the race or income level, from first grade on, kids are sitting in the same classes, with the same (multi-racial) teachers, using the same materials, for the same amount of time a day. However, from the early grades through high school, testing shows a gigantic gap between the achievement of African-American and Hispanic students, and Caucasian students. The most recent data, for example, on Evanston Township High School seniors’ ACT scores shows Black students (their term) attaining an average score of 19.2, Hispanic students averaging 19, and white kids getting 27.2. Folks, this is a GIGANTIC difference. These kids had the SAME schooling.
Even more interesting is to look at the pre-high school statistics. From third grade on (the first time the kids are tested) on through 8th grade, African-American students lag the performance of white students by 20 points or so, and for the most part the gap gets worse the longer they’re in school. (I’m omitting Hispanic kids here, because I have no way of gauging the impact being a non-native speaker might have. Cop out, I know.) Now, in third grade you can hardly blame the schools—they haven’t had the kids long enough to “fail” that dramatically. Is it biological inferiority of one race over another? Oh come on, only Southern Republicans and Fox News fans are dumb enough to believe that garbage anymore.
So what is it? If you give kids functionally identical education and they score wildly differently, maybe it isn’t the schools. I think Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers, has a clue. In it, he talks about the difference between music students who go on to study and become performers (his elite) versus those who either do not go on, or go on to music education programs. The difference is, he says, the amount of time each practices. The magic number, according to Gladwell, is 10,000 hours. 10,000 hours spent doing anything is a gigantic amount of time, but some kids achieve it early on (practicing 6 or 7 hours a day from early childhood) and some never make it. Figure it out—a kid practicing an hour a day, five days a week, 50 weeks a year is only going to put in 250 hours a year, and is going to need 40 years to reach that 10,000 hours mark. A kid practicing 4 hours a day will need only 10 years. Butt-in-seat time makes a huge difference.
My proposition is that it’s the exposure that kids gain outside of class that makes all the difference. Put another way, it’s the haul-your-kid-around factor. Evanston is filled with anxious white parents with eyes on the prize—an Ivy League education for the little darlings, or as close as they can get. From kindermusik on, (white) Evanston parents begin hauling the kids to library story hour, crafts day at museums, soccer, Northwestern kiddie concerts, music lessons, ballet lessons, theater performances and workshops, you name it. Schools eliminated music and art? The parents find it, whether at the lower cost park district or the private music and art programs. Let’s not even get started on all the play groups, support groups, and better parenting seminars. And show me the parent who hasn’t got the kid’s summer all laid out—camp, enrichment, language or creative writing intensive. You can go all summer before you see white kids riding their bike in the street (unless they have an instrument slung over their back on the way to music lessons.)
As a battle scarred veteran of the hauling routine (those moms have sharp elbows) I can attest to the overwhelming color of the participants: white. I don’t know why black kids don’t show up at free storybook programs, or library science night, or why music scholarships go begging. But they don’t show up, at least here. Every once in a while there’s an exception (I bet the Obamas are fine “haulers”), but for the most part, the crowd of kids at any cultural activity is 98% white, even though Evanston itself is nearly 30% African-American. It doesn’t take a sociologist to figure out that white kids in my neck of the woods are getting exposed to, and have the opportunity to learn far more than kids who don’t constantly participate in these enrichment activities.
Wealthy parents know it. Pick out any high priced private school and you’ll see floods of art, music and literature classes, and enough afterschool and before school activities to fill just about all the waking hours of the kids, and the parents or au pairs that drive them. Pick any Saturday at the Evanston Arts Center or Piven Theater workshop and you’ll get run over by all the parents driving Hummers and Mercedes SUVs.
Maybe what we need (with apologies to Dr. Gordon) is to stop wringing our hands over providing “the basics” in schools. Maybe all the enrichment that some kids get really makes the difference—gives them a broader context and a head start on absorbing what schools actually can accomplish. Maybe all the stuff we’ve eliminated from schools (art, music, Great Books clubs) is what really makes the difference. I don’t know how to get all kids participating in enrichment. At least here in Evanston, it’s been “built” but they haven’t come. And there might be a topic for some worthwhile research.
Unfortunately for me, Dr. Gordon’s talk was not exactly nuts and bolts. He focused on what workers need to compete in the coming world order as he sees it. His central point was that there is more demand for certain kinds of skills than people to fill them. No duh there. But then he started sawing away on the same old, “Schools need to educate our kids better. We need more math and science. We need to teach writing skills.” Doesn’t anyone ever question this? Even my beloved Barack Obama has been known to blather about these tired chestnuts.
I never got to argue with Dr. Gordon as he was beset by other writers handing him their business cards and giving their elevator speeches (which I usually do and I’m only mad that so many beat me to it this time. ) As with so many examples of entrenched wisdom, maybe the reason we can’t solve this issue is that we’re starting from the wrong premise. What if, in fact, the schools ARE doing a (fairly) good job and the problem is entirely elsewhere?
I live in Evanston, where the schools are supposed to be good to excellent, the median income is nearly $70,000, and the poorest segments of the community are not living anywhere near the level that they are in, say, Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood, where the median income is more like $19,000. No matter which school your kids attend, they’re sitting side by side with kids of other races and income levels. Let’s put it another way, though—no matter the race or income level, from first grade on, kids are sitting in the same classes, with the same (multi-racial) teachers, using the same materials, for the same amount of time a day. However, from the early grades through high school, testing shows a gigantic gap between the achievement of African-American and Hispanic students, and Caucasian students. The most recent data, for example, on Evanston Township High School seniors’ ACT scores shows Black students (their term) attaining an average score of 19.2, Hispanic students averaging 19, and white kids getting 27.2. Folks, this is a GIGANTIC difference. These kids had the SAME schooling.
Even more interesting is to look at the pre-high school statistics. From third grade on (the first time the kids are tested) on through 8th grade, African-American students lag the performance of white students by 20 points or so, and for the most part the gap gets worse the longer they’re in school. (I’m omitting Hispanic kids here, because I have no way of gauging the impact being a non-native speaker might have. Cop out, I know.) Now, in third grade you can hardly blame the schools—they haven’t had the kids long enough to “fail” that dramatically. Is it biological inferiority of one race over another? Oh come on, only Southern Republicans and Fox News fans are dumb enough to believe that garbage anymore.
So what is it? If you give kids functionally identical education and they score wildly differently, maybe it isn’t the schools. I think Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers, has a clue. In it, he talks about the difference between music students who go on to study and become performers (his elite) versus those who either do not go on, or go on to music education programs. The difference is, he says, the amount of time each practices. The magic number, according to Gladwell, is 10,000 hours. 10,000 hours spent doing anything is a gigantic amount of time, but some kids achieve it early on (practicing 6 or 7 hours a day from early childhood) and some never make it. Figure it out—a kid practicing an hour a day, five days a week, 50 weeks a year is only going to put in 250 hours a year, and is going to need 40 years to reach that 10,000 hours mark. A kid practicing 4 hours a day will need only 10 years. Butt-in-seat time makes a huge difference.
My proposition is that it’s the exposure that kids gain outside of class that makes all the difference. Put another way, it’s the haul-your-kid-around factor. Evanston is filled with anxious white parents with eyes on the prize—an Ivy League education for the little darlings, or as close as they can get. From kindermusik on, (white) Evanston parents begin hauling the kids to library story hour, crafts day at museums, soccer, Northwestern kiddie concerts, music lessons, ballet lessons, theater performances and workshops, you name it. Schools eliminated music and art? The parents find it, whether at the lower cost park district or the private music and art programs. Let’s not even get started on all the play groups, support groups, and better parenting seminars. And show me the parent who hasn’t got the kid’s summer all laid out—camp, enrichment, language or creative writing intensive. You can go all summer before you see white kids riding their bike in the street (unless they have an instrument slung over their back on the way to music lessons.)
As a battle scarred veteran of the hauling routine (those moms have sharp elbows) I can attest to the overwhelming color of the participants: white. I don’t know why black kids don’t show up at free storybook programs, or library science night, or why music scholarships go begging. But they don’t show up, at least here. Every once in a while there’s an exception (I bet the Obamas are fine “haulers”), but for the most part, the crowd of kids at any cultural activity is 98% white, even though Evanston itself is nearly 30% African-American. It doesn’t take a sociologist to figure out that white kids in my neck of the woods are getting exposed to, and have the opportunity to learn far more than kids who don’t constantly participate in these enrichment activities.
Wealthy parents know it. Pick out any high priced private school and you’ll see floods of art, music and literature classes, and enough afterschool and before school activities to fill just about all the waking hours of the kids, and the parents or au pairs that drive them. Pick any Saturday at the Evanston Arts Center or Piven Theater workshop and you’ll get run over by all the parents driving Hummers and Mercedes SUVs.
Maybe what we need (with apologies to Dr. Gordon) is to stop wringing our hands over providing “the basics” in schools. Maybe all the enrichment that some kids get really makes the difference—gives them a broader context and a head start on absorbing what schools actually can accomplish. Maybe all the stuff we’ve eliminated from schools (art, music, Great Books clubs) is what really makes the difference. I don’t know how to get all kids participating in enrichment. At least here in Evanston, it’s been “built” but they haven’t come. And there might be a topic for some worthwhile research.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Good books about Great Books
Whenever non-homeschoolers find out that I’ve homeschooled the Nikipedia for the past 8 years, I immediately get one or both of the following questions: What about socialization? and, How did you know what to teach? The first question is usually asked by someone who has just spent a lot of time complaining about peer influence on their kids, disinterested, crazy or cruel teachers, etc., so I’m usually able to answer, “Yes, I’m so glad she’s avoided most of that.” The second question always leaves me square mouthed.
Why? Because it’s invariably asked by a college educated adult, often one with many years of post- graduate study. Holy baccalaureate, Batman, if you’ve spent more than 16 years in the halls of academe, you should have some idea what you found valuable to study, some grip on the basics of at least an elementary school education, and some ability to organize information into a logical order. Add to that the amount of sample syllabi online, the plethora of educational materials catalogs that are often as thick as phonebooks (particularly if they’re peddling to homeschoolers), and I don’t think it should take a parent all that long to come up with some direction. How on earth do the same parents judge whether they are happy with the education their children are receiving in regular schools?
My guess is that most parents don’t think so much about what content their child is learning so much as whether said offspring is “doing well” according to the school’s standards. Maybe if the child starts zooming through math or gets in trouble for inserting a more interesting, higher level book inside the duller, dumber book the class is reading, the parent will get an inkling that the child needs more challenging material. By the time college application season rolls around, some parents will start to seek lists of 100 books Every High Schooler should have read.
There’s a minor industry, however, in books about books, telling us what we should have read in high school, college, and most of our adult life, instead of being the slackers that many of us were. Because the Nikipedia was bored with kid’s books by about sixth grade (except for science fiction and an 8 foot shelf of Star Trek novels she bought at a used book sale), I’ve acquired quite a collection of these books on great books. In case anyone else has many spare hours that they can’t think what to do with, or actually might consider homeschooling, I offer this review. Beats Cliff’s notes.
The granddaddy of the genre has to be Clifton Fadiman’s The New Lifetime Reading Plan. Fadiman has been dead for 10 years, and the book was updated by John Major, especially to include non-Western literature. A lot of people have objected to the revisions, but I am so grateful to finally have solid suggestions for something not written in Europe. I find the summaries to be a bit short, however, and not all that opinionated or thought provoking. Still, it’s a good catalog to order from, so to speak. Definitely a book shelf basic.
Susan Wise Bauer has a collection aimed at adults who would like to self-educate, The Well-Educated Mind. Bauer wrote a homeschooling war horse that we have followed more or less closely for curriculum suggestions over our homeschooling career, The Well-Trained Mind. WTM is definitely aimed at parents trying to think through what to teach, but I suspect Well-Educated is for all those parents who took a look at WTM, gulped, and decided their own education was woeful. Bauer treats great lit by genre (WTM works through it chronologically by subject, which I prefer, actually) and is heavy on the ancients, although she does include some modern literature as well. I’ve enjoyed owning both of these, but I’d browse them at the library to see if you need all the background instruction in how to read each genre. Otherwise, you may just want to note her suggestions.
Book Smart is billed as “Your essential reading list for becoming a literary genius in 365 days”. I like this one, but I suspect it’s because I’ve read a lot of the books she suggests and so I feel smart and smug. Jane Mallison has organized her lists by month, and given each month a theme. She has some good advice on how to work your way through the list and which ones to choose (way more than I could possibly get through in one 365 day period and I read pretty quickly). All of the selections are fiction, and most are Western. However, the non-Western works are terrific, and she includes two of my favorite lesser known authors, Sigrid Undset and Naguib Mahfouz (both Nobel prize winners). Nice book for ideas, but not, and not intended to be, a comprehensive compendium.
A great one for browsing in the little room is Steven Gilbar’s Good Books, which really is a compendium of books that you should have read, have read, never heard of but want to read now, etc. Good Books has plenty of info for non-fiction selections, and is organized by topics (e.g., the World, Society, Work, Nature, etc.). I stuck so many post-its in this one that it looks like a porcupine, and you never want to have this in the same room as you have access to Amazon. Each description is only a few sentences, but it was enough to do me in.
I’m not a huge fan of Michael Clay Thompson’s homeschooling books, but I really enjoyed Thinkers. This consists of essays on why you should want to read the 20 books discussed: literature, history, and science, for the most part, with satisfying discussions of each book. You’ll feel compelled to read them all, and wish for a sabbatical to do so. BTW, I'm not including a link for this one, as Amazon only has a listing for it at $100. Geez, it's a small paperback. Try to get it from the library.
David Denby makes me crazy with Great Books. It recounts his effort to go back to Columbia, attend their core curriculum classes, and re-read all the books he had first read when he attended college there 30 years earlier. As I’ve said before, education is so wasted on the young, but this guy made a book of taking that literally. I got through about 96 pages until I realized I have to read or re-read along with him, and boy that’s a big project. If you want to embark on a similar project, or just look up what he has to say on the books he covers, I can’t imagine a more entertaining companion. Definitely a personal vision.
Invitation to the Classics is beloved of homeschoolers, although more so with those of the conservative Christian stripe. I’ve found it to have very useful summaries and backgrounds on the authors and their time periods, but I think the authors have sometimes selected lesser works by great authors. It includes college-type discussion/essay questions, but they nearly all ask you to think of these works as a Christian, or what would Christians do. I suppose how you define Christian will have something to do with your answers. I’m still wondering what a “Christian world view” is, and I don’t think Jesus joined the Republican party, but what do I know? Not a bad reference work to inflict on your high school age child, with some lively discussions possible.
If you can dig it up used, Gail Thain Parker’s book College on Your Own is a great edition to refer to. Parker kicked up quite a bit of controversy while she was (briefly) the 30-something president of Bennington, but this is a very serious look at the basics (and then some!) of various fields of college study. It’s dated (1978) and contains a lot of really dull books, but it’s great for a glimpse at what you might read if you had majored in the subject (or have a child who’s thinking about the major). That said, I majored in Sociology at just about this time, got a stellar Graduate Record score, and read maybe 25% of the books suggested. But I do feel guilty. You can, too.
Beowulf on the Beach (Jack Murninghan) is one I just picked up last week. It’s highly opinionated and personal. So far I’m not totally in sync with what he likes and dislikes, but he is funny. It’s pretty clear that he’s a lot younger than most of the people who do these greatest hits books, and it’s nice to see that sort of take on some of these hoary chestnuts. No non-Western stuff (he says it’s beyond him to compile). I really appreciate that he’s willing to wade through some looong works that I’ve always meant to get to (Canterbury Tales, Decameron, etc.) and picked out the “good parts”. I think the Nikipedia will also appreciate some abridgement in her assignments.
A sub-genre of books-about-books is writers-about-books. In this category, I’ve enjoyed the following for browsing (haven’t read them thoroughly).
The Top Ten, edited by J. Peder Zane, allows you to look up what an awful lot of contemporary writers like. There was apparently great agreement on some books, but many writers mention some very offbeat but interesting selections, and quite a few contribute memoirs and appreciations. Nice book for a Sunday afternoon.
Francine Prose (no slouch herself at the book production biz and is that a perfect name?) tells you how in Reading Like A Writer. While this is a very different format than the other books I’ve mentioned (the chapters focus on how to improve your writing, with examples from great books), she does provide a neat list of “books to be read immediately” at the end. You’ll have to read the rest of the book to find out why. This would be a great companion to a reading program (or high school class) introducing reading from a more skills oriented perspective; call it creative writing through literature.
Finally, A Passion for Books is one I’ve enjoyed for its often thought provoking essays by prominent literati about books, experiences, and just general book amour. It’s another one for the little room or in bed for nights when you really should already be asleep, as most of the essays are just a few pages long.
Okay, if you’ve read this far, I get to gripe a little. What about modern works, and I don’t mean Hemingway and Faulkner? Can’t someone stick their neck out a little and pick something less than 50 years old? Gosh, maybe I’ll write one myself. And another thing, what about creative non-fiction? Tracy Kidder, John McPhee, Peter Matthiessen, M.F.K. Fisher…?
But, as they say, that’s a story for another time.
Why? Because it’s invariably asked by a college educated adult, often one with many years of post- graduate study. Holy baccalaureate, Batman, if you’ve spent more than 16 years in the halls of academe, you should have some idea what you found valuable to study, some grip on the basics of at least an elementary school education, and some ability to organize information into a logical order. Add to that the amount of sample syllabi online, the plethora of educational materials catalogs that are often as thick as phonebooks (particularly if they’re peddling to homeschoolers), and I don’t think it should take a parent all that long to come up with some direction. How on earth do the same parents judge whether they are happy with the education their children are receiving in regular schools?
My guess is that most parents don’t think so much about what content their child is learning so much as whether said offspring is “doing well” according to the school’s standards. Maybe if the child starts zooming through math or gets in trouble for inserting a more interesting, higher level book inside the duller, dumber book the class is reading, the parent will get an inkling that the child needs more challenging material. By the time college application season rolls around, some parents will start to seek lists of 100 books Every High Schooler should have read.
There’s a minor industry, however, in books about books, telling us what we should have read in high school, college, and most of our adult life, instead of being the slackers that many of us were. Because the Nikipedia was bored with kid’s books by about sixth grade (except for science fiction and an 8 foot shelf of Star Trek novels she bought at a used book sale), I’ve acquired quite a collection of these books on great books. In case anyone else has many spare hours that they can’t think what to do with, or actually might consider homeschooling, I offer this review. Beats Cliff’s notes.
The granddaddy of the genre has to be Clifton Fadiman’s The New Lifetime Reading Plan. Fadiman has been dead for 10 years, and the book was updated by John Major, especially to include non-Western literature. A lot of people have objected to the revisions, but I am so grateful to finally have solid suggestions for something not written in Europe. I find the summaries to be a bit short, however, and not all that opinionated or thought provoking. Still, it’s a good catalog to order from, so to speak. Definitely a book shelf basic.
Susan Wise Bauer has a collection aimed at adults who would like to self-educate, The Well-Educated Mind. Bauer wrote a homeschooling war horse that we have followed more or less closely for curriculum suggestions over our homeschooling career, The Well-Trained Mind. WTM is definitely aimed at parents trying to think through what to teach, but I suspect Well-Educated is for all those parents who took a look at WTM, gulped, and decided their own education was woeful. Bauer treats great lit by genre (WTM works through it chronologically by subject, which I prefer, actually) and is heavy on the ancients, although she does include some modern literature as well. I’ve enjoyed owning both of these, but I’d browse them at the library to see if you need all the background instruction in how to read each genre. Otherwise, you may just want to note her suggestions.
Book Smart is billed as “Your essential reading list for becoming a literary genius in 365 days”. I like this one, but I suspect it’s because I’ve read a lot of the books she suggests and so I feel smart and smug. Jane Mallison has organized her lists by month, and given each month a theme. She has some good advice on how to work your way through the list and which ones to choose (way more than I could possibly get through in one 365 day period and I read pretty quickly). All of the selections are fiction, and most are Western. However, the non-Western works are terrific, and she includes two of my favorite lesser known authors, Sigrid Undset and Naguib Mahfouz (both Nobel prize winners). Nice book for ideas, but not, and not intended to be, a comprehensive compendium.
A great one for browsing in the little room is Steven Gilbar’s Good Books, which really is a compendium of books that you should have read, have read, never heard of but want to read now, etc. Good Books has plenty of info for non-fiction selections, and is organized by topics (e.g., the World, Society, Work, Nature, etc.). I stuck so many post-its in this one that it looks like a porcupine, and you never want to have this in the same room as you have access to Amazon. Each description is only a few sentences, but it was enough to do me in.
I’m not a huge fan of Michael Clay Thompson’s homeschooling books, but I really enjoyed Thinkers. This consists of essays on why you should want to read the 20 books discussed: literature, history, and science, for the most part, with satisfying discussions of each book. You’ll feel compelled to read them all, and wish for a sabbatical to do so. BTW, I'm not including a link for this one, as Amazon only has a listing for it at $100. Geez, it's a small paperback. Try to get it from the library.
David Denby makes me crazy with Great Books. It recounts his effort to go back to Columbia, attend their core curriculum classes, and re-read all the books he had first read when he attended college there 30 years earlier. As I’ve said before, education is so wasted on the young, but this guy made a book of taking that literally. I got through about 96 pages until I realized I have to read or re-read along with him, and boy that’s a big project. If you want to embark on a similar project, or just look up what he has to say on the books he covers, I can’t imagine a more entertaining companion. Definitely a personal vision.
Invitation to the Classics is beloved of homeschoolers, although more so with those of the conservative Christian stripe. I’ve found it to have very useful summaries and backgrounds on the authors and their time periods, but I think the authors have sometimes selected lesser works by great authors. It includes college-type discussion/essay questions, but they nearly all ask you to think of these works as a Christian, or what would Christians do. I suppose how you define Christian will have something to do with your answers. I’m still wondering what a “Christian world view” is, and I don’t think Jesus joined the Republican party, but what do I know? Not a bad reference work to inflict on your high school age child, with some lively discussions possible.
If you can dig it up used, Gail Thain Parker’s book College on Your Own is a great edition to refer to. Parker kicked up quite a bit of controversy while she was (briefly) the 30-something president of Bennington, but this is a very serious look at the basics (and then some!) of various fields of college study. It’s dated (1978) and contains a lot of really dull books, but it’s great for a glimpse at what you might read if you had majored in the subject (or have a child who’s thinking about the major). That said, I majored in Sociology at just about this time, got a stellar Graduate Record score, and read maybe 25% of the books suggested. But I do feel guilty. You can, too.
Beowulf on the Beach (Jack Murninghan) is one I just picked up last week. It’s highly opinionated and personal. So far I’m not totally in sync with what he likes and dislikes, but he is funny. It’s pretty clear that he’s a lot younger than most of the people who do these greatest hits books, and it’s nice to see that sort of take on some of these hoary chestnuts. No non-Western stuff (he says it’s beyond him to compile). I really appreciate that he’s willing to wade through some looong works that I’ve always meant to get to (Canterbury Tales, Decameron, etc.) and picked out the “good parts”. I think the Nikipedia will also appreciate some abridgement in her assignments.
A sub-genre of books-about-books is writers-about-books. In this category, I’ve enjoyed the following for browsing (haven’t read them thoroughly).
The Top Ten, edited by J. Peder Zane, allows you to look up what an awful lot of contemporary writers like. There was apparently great agreement on some books, but many writers mention some very offbeat but interesting selections, and quite a few contribute memoirs and appreciations. Nice book for a Sunday afternoon.
Francine Prose (no slouch herself at the book production biz and is that a perfect name?) tells you how in Reading Like A Writer. While this is a very different format than the other books I’ve mentioned (the chapters focus on how to improve your writing, with examples from great books), she does provide a neat list of “books to be read immediately” at the end. You’ll have to read the rest of the book to find out why. This would be a great companion to a reading program (or high school class) introducing reading from a more skills oriented perspective; call it creative writing through literature.
Finally, A Passion for Books is one I’ve enjoyed for its often thought provoking essays by prominent literati about books, experiences, and just general book amour. It’s another one for the little room or in bed for nights when you really should already be asleep, as most of the essays are just a few pages long.
Okay, if you’ve read this far, I get to gripe a little. What about modern works, and I don’t mean Hemingway and Faulkner? Can’t someone stick their neck out a little and pick something less than 50 years old? Gosh, maybe I’ll write one myself. And another thing, what about creative non-fiction? Tracy Kidder, John McPhee, Peter Matthiessen, M.F.K. Fisher…?
But, as they say, that’s a story for another time.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
University of Chicago tour
This week we bagged school for a day and trekked down to the University of Chicago for an unofficial college tour. Sure, it’s early for the Nikipedia, but hey, with three years to go before grinding out the college essay, there’s plenty of lead time to get the anxiety level to the appropriate fever pitch. Although we live in the area, the connection was actually made through a friend in West Virginia (long way ‘round!) We met a third year student, who I’ll call V.S. (for very superior, like cognac) since I don’t have her permission to identify her.
It appears that things haven’t changed much since the days I was there, in grad school. According to V.S., there are actually clubs to join and some kids who (try to) play sports, but pretty much it still appeals to the same kind of nerd that loved it 30+ years ago. I mean, broomball is one of the main sports on campus. As Robert Hutchins once proclaimed, “Whenever I feel the need to exercise, I lie down until it goes away.” You don’t get into the U of C (or enjoy it there) if you were homecoming queen, or because mommy went there (although I’m hoping it helps), or because you had an armload of volunteer experiences. You find yourself there because you’re SMART, and because you want to be with 4,000 other undergrads who won the eccentricity award at their own high schools. I mean, the school has the unofficial motto, “where fun goes to die”.
As luck would have it, we ended up there the same day as freshman orientation, with tons of geeky looking parents wandering around with apples who didn’t fall far from the tree. Nikipedia was rubber-necking like crazy. Not one to be attracted to football players, these were her kind of (guy) people. I was particularly bemused by the name tags on the parents—“I’m the proud parent of a University of Chicago student”. I’m glad that wasn’t me because I would have felt obligated to take a sharpie and alter that “proud” to “exhausted” or “soon to be broke” or maybe “free-at-last”.
I pretty much knew my way around campus, and Nikipedia was anxious to dump me anyway, so I hiked over to the Seminary Coop bookstore, where I bought the traditional shopping bag full of books you’ll never hear of at Barnes and Noble, and which I won’t get to for another 4 or 5 years. Meanwhile, Nikipedia and V.S. must have travelled in a hovercraft, because when I next located them about an hour later, they were in International House, having already covered Rockefeller Chapel, the Music building, Fullerton Hall, and another dorm or two. We met for lunch at the Medici, where Nikipedia had written her initials on a wall when she was 3 (don’t worry, it’s traditional.) I’m going to try to work that into her future admissions application.
Being the old bag that I somehow have become, I often lament the state of young people today. Except for Nikipedia, who keeps talking even in her sleep, I often find young people to be, well, rather dull and inarticulate, and sport that deer-caught-in-the–headlights look. Not at the U of C, and certainly not V.S. She was poised, articulate, and able to talk clearly about her impressions, the development of her ideas and change of focus over time, and how her education was exposing her to far more ideas and possibilities. Really, she should be the poster child for the value of a liberal education. When we made contact, she told me she was an anthropology major with an interest in Hindu epics. Now, that kind of passion makes parents shudder. I mean, we’re forking over $200K and facing the fact that the kid with that major will be living in the basement until they’re 45, right? Not so fast. Turns out V.S. worked for an international non-profit this last summer, and got interested in non-profit management and international development. She’s now headed for a semester in India, with the background to know what she’s seeing, and an interest in a field where that background will be unique and valuable. My guess is that while all those people who majored in something practical like physics or accounting are grinding it out in their cubicles, V.S. will be traveling the world, doing something that actually is meaningful and productive.
Hutchins once railed against the impetus to make college a trade school, and the U of C is still a bastion of a core Great Books-style curriculum, although it has been modified over the years. People complain it’s been dumbed down, but compared to what? Not much of this double-major stuff, where you major in one thing you love, with the recognition that you’ll never work in it, and another thing so you can sell your soul in the marketplace. Those kind of students always tell me how grateful they are not to be stuck with “requirements”. But if you belong at the U of C, those arts and humanities classes are why you picked U of C, a school where English is still one of the most popular majors. Or put another way, as one Northwestern student tour guide once told me, Northwestern trains CEOs, Chicago trains professors. She did not seem embarrassed by this.
V.S. emphasized to both of us that classes were really HARD. Given the fact that plenty of these kids have 99th percentile SATs and a string of AP classes (for which they get little credit towards a U of C degree), this puts the school in perspective. On the other hand, V.S. glowed about her professors, and said she had never seen so much depth and detail in her readings before being re-sculpted by the core curriculum. One of my standards of a school is to listen to the conversations around me in the student union, the campus hangouts, etc. At Northwestern, I hear a lot of analysis of parties and the weekend’s date (or shortcomings). At the U of C, you hear snippets of “I have never experienced such transcendence as when I read…” or “I finally got the breakthrough I needed to explicate…” I kid you not. Yes, they’re 19 years old.
At Northwestern, they know designer brands, and the coeds are beautiful. At the U of C they’re still wearing the same stuff they beat up in high school, no one bothers about hair “product” as far as I can see, and significant butt-in-seat time is spent at the library. That’s not to say there’s not plenty of drinking, both when I was there and now. It’s the only time I’ve ever attended parties where you could be having a very significant discussion with someone who suddenly keeled over like a felled tree. It’s one of the few places where the campus drinking hole (Jimmy’s) has an encyclopedia over the bar to settle arguments. V.S. didn’t seem all that into the booze scene (her parents can probably sigh with relief) but didn’t seem to lack for fun. After all, she pointed out, it’s a little college surrounded by a big graduate operation, and you get to know everyone, while being able to take advantage of great facilities and connections. While the school is an ivy covered enclave, downtown Chicago, with its great museums, arts scene, opera and symphony is a public transit ride away.
One thing has changed—safety. When I was there, muggings were not uncommon and you never went anywhere at night without a group. The University really stepped up security in later years, and Hyde Park became much safer. However, about a year ago there was a terrible murder, and the consensus of the community was that security had become complacent. That consciousness has really been raised, and V.S. says she feels comfortable and safe, although it ain’t Kansas, and one needs to exercise the caution that would be reasonable in any major city in the U.S.
All in all, it’s still a great place, but certainly not for everyone. It might be the back up school for a lot of Easterners who really hope they get into Harvard, but for those for whom the University of Chicago is first choice, there just really isn’t any other place like it. Education is so wasted on the young. I want to go back.
It appears that things haven’t changed much since the days I was there, in grad school. According to V.S., there are actually clubs to join and some kids who (try to) play sports, but pretty much it still appeals to the same kind of nerd that loved it 30+ years ago. I mean, broomball is one of the main sports on campus. As Robert Hutchins once proclaimed, “Whenever I feel the need to exercise, I lie down until it goes away.” You don’t get into the U of C (or enjoy it there) if you were homecoming queen, or because mommy went there (although I’m hoping it helps), or because you had an armload of volunteer experiences. You find yourself there because you’re SMART, and because you want to be with 4,000 other undergrads who won the eccentricity award at their own high schools. I mean, the school has the unofficial motto, “where fun goes to die”.
As luck would have it, we ended up there the same day as freshman orientation, with tons of geeky looking parents wandering around with apples who didn’t fall far from the tree. Nikipedia was rubber-necking like crazy. Not one to be attracted to football players, these were her kind of (guy) people. I was particularly bemused by the name tags on the parents—“I’m the proud parent of a University of Chicago student”. I’m glad that wasn’t me because I would have felt obligated to take a sharpie and alter that “proud” to “exhausted” or “soon to be broke” or maybe “free-at-last”.
I pretty much knew my way around campus, and Nikipedia was anxious to dump me anyway, so I hiked over to the Seminary Coop bookstore, where I bought the traditional shopping bag full of books you’ll never hear of at Barnes and Noble, and which I won’t get to for another 4 or 5 years. Meanwhile, Nikipedia and V.S. must have travelled in a hovercraft, because when I next located them about an hour later, they were in International House, having already covered Rockefeller Chapel, the Music building, Fullerton Hall, and another dorm or two. We met for lunch at the Medici, where Nikipedia had written her initials on a wall when she was 3 (don’t worry, it’s traditional.) I’m going to try to work that into her future admissions application.
Being the old bag that I somehow have become, I often lament the state of young people today. Except for Nikipedia, who keeps talking even in her sleep, I often find young people to be, well, rather dull and inarticulate, and sport that deer-caught-in-the–headlights look. Not at the U of C, and certainly not V.S. She was poised, articulate, and able to talk clearly about her impressions, the development of her ideas and change of focus over time, and how her education was exposing her to far more ideas and possibilities. Really, she should be the poster child for the value of a liberal education. When we made contact, she told me she was an anthropology major with an interest in Hindu epics. Now, that kind of passion makes parents shudder. I mean, we’re forking over $200K and facing the fact that the kid with that major will be living in the basement until they’re 45, right? Not so fast. Turns out V.S. worked for an international non-profit this last summer, and got interested in non-profit management and international development. She’s now headed for a semester in India, with the background to know what she’s seeing, and an interest in a field where that background will be unique and valuable. My guess is that while all those people who majored in something practical like physics or accounting are grinding it out in their cubicles, V.S. will be traveling the world, doing something that actually is meaningful and productive.
Hutchins once railed against the impetus to make college a trade school, and the U of C is still a bastion of a core Great Books-style curriculum, although it has been modified over the years. People complain it’s been dumbed down, but compared to what? Not much of this double-major stuff, where you major in one thing you love, with the recognition that you’ll never work in it, and another thing so you can sell your soul in the marketplace. Those kind of students always tell me how grateful they are not to be stuck with “requirements”. But if you belong at the U of C, those arts and humanities classes are why you picked U of C, a school where English is still one of the most popular majors. Or put another way, as one Northwestern student tour guide once told me, Northwestern trains CEOs, Chicago trains professors. She did not seem embarrassed by this.
V.S. emphasized to both of us that classes were really HARD. Given the fact that plenty of these kids have 99th percentile SATs and a string of AP classes (for which they get little credit towards a U of C degree), this puts the school in perspective. On the other hand, V.S. glowed about her professors, and said she had never seen so much depth and detail in her readings before being re-sculpted by the core curriculum. One of my standards of a school is to listen to the conversations around me in the student union, the campus hangouts, etc. At Northwestern, I hear a lot of analysis of parties and the weekend’s date (or shortcomings). At the U of C, you hear snippets of “I have never experienced such transcendence as when I read…” or “I finally got the breakthrough I needed to explicate…” I kid you not. Yes, they’re 19 years old.
At Northwestern, they know designer brands, and the coeds are beautiful. At the U of C they’re still wearing the same stuff they beat up in high school, no one bothers about hair “product” as far as I can see, and significant butt-in-seat time is spent at the library. That’s not to say there’s not plenty of drinking, both when I was there and now. It’s the only time I’ve ever attended parties where you could be having a very significant discussion with someone who suddenly keeled over like a felled tree. It’s one of the few places where the campus drinking hole (Jimmy’s) has an encyclopedia over the bar to settle arguments. V.S. didn’t seem all that into the booze scene (her parents can probably sigh with relief) but didn’t seem to lack for fun. After all, she pointed out, it’s a little college surrounded by a big graduate operation, and you get to know everyone, while being able to take advantage of great facilities and connections. While the school is an ivy covered enclave, downtown Chicago, with its great museums, arts scene, opera and symphony is a public transit ride away.
One thing has changed—safety. When I was there, muggings were not uncommon and you never went anywhere at night without a group. The University really stepped up security in later years, and Hyde Park became much safer. However, about a year ago there was a terrible murder, and the consensus of the community was that security had become complacent. That consciousness has really been raised, and V.S. says she feels comfortable and safe, although it ain’t Kansas, and one needs to exercise the caution that would be reasonable in any major city in the U.S.
All in all, it’s still a great place, but certainly not for everyone. It might be the back up school for a lot of Easterners who really hope they get into Harvard, but for those for whom the University of Chicago is first choice, there just really isn’t any other place like it. Education is so wasted on the young. I want to go back.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Fair’s fair—throw the bums out
The recent University of Illinois admissions scandal has the Chicago Tribune in a tizzy, but most of the reports I’ve seen are missing the critical ethical point. The press seems to be riled by, gasp, the fact that patronage and privilege has entered into college admissions. Next we’ll see headlines about rich kids doing better in school than poor kids. Or that the sun rose in the east this morning.
Influence, money, and where daddy or mommy went to school have always had a profound influence on where junior gets in. But not at STATE universities. Those are the ones that are supposed to be fair—that striving, hard working kids who are smart, get good grades, and test scores above a certain level can rely on admission (barring getting arrested, having a known drug habit, or plagiarizing someone else’s novel—which, by the way, don’t seem to bar you from some Ivies.)
If you were smart enough to get into Harvard, but your family had 8 kids and you spent your summers working on the loading dock, the University of Illinois was always a place you could depend on for a solid education, one that you might be able to pay for. Sure, maybe the dorms have the hardest mattresses on earth, and many of your classes will be taken with 200 of your favorite freshmen, but the instruction’s fine, the libraries extensive, and sooner or later you’ll cut the herd experience down to size via all the campus groups available. When we toured the U of I, it bothered me more to see the extensive tutoring facilities for athletes and the attention paid to them than the quality of the student digs. Sports bring in money and alumni loyalty, I guess. Never been a big factor for me at the University of Chicago, and maybe I’m wrong, but studying at the Sorbonne probably doesn’t have a big athletic component, either.
The University of Illinois has always been the place for smart strivers, a place where you could be certain you could get in on your own merits, not because you knew someone. It was pretty easy to figure out the rules—right GPA, right test scores, you’re in. No sucking up to daddy’s law partner, no beating yourself into meaningless volunteer activities just to look good. No wondering what you said wrong in an admissions essay read by a snooty admissions officer five years older than you. You got in based on what you had achieved, not whom your family knew.
The trustees and politicians who put the fix in have destroyed something good and true, fair and dependable, something truly democratic. If I were a University of Illinois graduate, I’d be organizing lanterns and pitchforks rallies in front of their homes.
Influence, money, and where daddy or mommy went to school have always had a profound influence on where junior gets in. But not at STATE universities. Those are the ones that are supposed to be fair—that striving, hard working kids who are smart, get good grades, and test scores above a certain level can rely on admission (barring getting arrested, having a known drug habit, or plagiarizing someone else’s novel—which, by the way, don’t seem to bar you from some Ivies.)
If you were smart enough to get into Harvard, but your family had 8 kids and you spent your summers working on the loading dock, the University of Illinois was always a place you could depend on for a solid education, one that you might be able to pay for. Sure, maybe the dorms have the hardest mattresses on earth, and many of your classes will be taken with 200 of your favorite freshmen, but the instruction’s fine, the libraries extensive, and sooner or later you’ll cut the herd experience down to size via all the campus groups available. When we toured the U of I, it bothered me more to see the extensive tutoring facilities for athletes and the attention paid to them than the quality of the student digs. Sports bring in money and alumni loyalty, I guess. Never been a big factor for me at the University of Chicago, and maybe I’m wrong, but studying at the Sorbonne probably doesn’t have a big athletic component, either.
The University of Illinois has always been the place for smart strivers, a place where you could be certain you could get in on your own merits, not because you knew someone. It was pretty easy to figure out the rules—right GPA, right test scores, you’re in. No sucking up to daddy’s law partner, no beating yourself into meaningless volunteer activities just to look good. No wondering what you said wrong in an admissions essay read by a snooty admissions officer five years older than you. You got in based on what you had achieved, not whom your family knew.
The trustees and politicians who put the fix in have destroyed something good and true, fair and dependable, something truly democratic. If I were a University of Illinois graduate, I’d be organizing lanterns and pitchforks rallies in front of their homes.
Monday, July 27, 2009
STEM the tide
I’ve been listening to the ballyhoo about the need for more trained graduates in math and science since Sputnik shot up in 1957 and if I’d been around earlier, I’m sure I would have heard it then. Now the “rose” has another name—Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM)—but I’m not sure it doesn’t still smell of wrongheadedness. Corporations have been crying to the government for more support for these training programs for over 50 years now, and if I live another 50, my guess is I’ll still be hearing about it.
However, as soon as the STEMmys get jobs, the corporations start howling about how they can’t think beyond their technical specialty, can’t see the big picture, and can’t write any better than a fifth grader. Duh, why not? Could it be that they never studied anything that allowed them to see beyond the edge of their computer monitors? And a degree in STEM is no guarantee of a job, either, despite what the corporations would like us to believe. Ask anyone who’s worked for Motorola or Lucent in the last 20 years.
Unfortunately, even our beloved president—no graduate of STEM, he!—seems to be mouthing this conventional wisdom. It’s shocking that a guy whose thinking is so innovative on so many fronts seems to have a big blind spot where education is concerned. So, Mr. President, I’m going to make a really radical proposal.
Drop all special initiative for STEM. If the corporations need specialists, let the corporations PAY for that training. Maybe they’ll get the employees they need if they design the program. And why shouldn’t they foot the bills? They’re not going to reimburse the feds, like the banks have. But the role of government should be to support those important programs that do not necessarily have a direct profit price tag attached, but enhance and protect the quality of life. We are living in a world where too many governments have taken on the role of corporate partner, and in fact are impotent in the face of multinationals. But government is of, by and for PEOPLE, not business.
If government is going to support educational programs, I suggest we should be supporting the liberal arts and humanities. These are the areas of learning that lend intrinsic meaning, expression and connection to life, all things the robots of STEM cannot replicate. Maybe they don’t ring a corporate recruiter’s bells, but most of the English, or history, or French lit majors I know do find jobs. I also know plenty of computer science majors who are out of work right now.
More and more, arts instruction has become the province of the children of the upper middle class, whose parents know the value and purchase after-school instruction. But move down the economic ladder a bit and you’re out of luck—music, art, dance and theater programs have been sliced out of nearly all public school budgets.
We are seeing a country where the children of the rich are helped to express themselves, develop thinking ability, access culture and broaden their (already broad) experience, while the children of the working class and the poor are told to focus on getting a job, and get training for—for what? When I took computer science classes, we spent tons of time learning COBOL. I don’t think the schools know what technical skills will be useful by the time the kids graduate.
Mr. Obama did his undergraduate work at Columbia University (a school renowned for its Great Books-style curriculum) where he majored in political science. It doesn’t seem to have hurt his employability any.
However, as soon as the STEMmys get jobs, the corporations start howling about how they can’t think beyond their technical specialty, can’t see the big picture, and can’t write any better than a fifth grader. Duh, why not? Could it be that they never studied anything that allowed them to see beyond the edge of their computer monitors? And a degree in STEM is no guarantee of a job, either, despite what the corporations would like us to believe. Ask anyone who’s worked for Motorola or Lucent in the last 20 years.
Unfortunately, even our beloved president—no graduate of STEM, he!—seems to be mouthing this conventional wisdom. It’s shocking that a guy whose thinking is so innovative on so many fronts seems to have a big blind spot where education is concerned. So, Mr. President, I’m going to make a really radical proposal.
Drop all special initiative for STEM. If the corporations need specialists, let the corporations PAY for that training. Maybe they’ll get the employees they need if they design the program. And why shouldn’t they foot the bills? They’re not going to reimburse the feds, like the banks have. But the role of government should be to support those important programs that do not necessarily have a direct profit price tag attached, but enhance and protect the quality of life. We are living in a world where too many governments have taken on the role of corporate partner, and in fact are impotent in the face of multinationals. But government is of, by and for PEOPLE, not business.
If government is going to support educational programs, I suggest we should be supporting the liberal arts and humanities. These are the areas of learning that lend intrinsic meaning, expression and connection to life, all things the robots of STEM cannot replicate. Maybe they don’t ring a corporate recruiter’s bells, but most of the English, or history, or French lit majors I know do find jobs. I also know plenty of computer science majors who are out of work right now.
More and more, arts instruction has become the province of the children of the upper middle class, whose parents know the value and purchase after-school instruction. But move down the economic ladder a bit and you’re out of luck—music, art, dance and theater programs have been sliced out of nearly all public school budgets.
We are seeing a country where the children of the rich are helped to express themselves, develop thinking ability, access culture and broaden their (already broad) experience, while the children of the working class and the poor are told to focus on getting a job, and get training for—for what? When I took computer science classes, we spent tons of time learning COBOL. I don’t think the schools know what technical skills will be useful by the time the kids graduate.
Mr. Obama did his undergraduate work at Columbia University (a school renowned for its Great Books-style curriculum) where he majored in political science. It doesn’t seem to have hurt his employability any.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Buy Homer, not a Hummer
Recently I heard a school librarian and a reading specialist discuss what kids are reading. It’s enough to chill the bones of any author. I don’t mean only serious children’s authors who have to compete with the likes of Captain Underpants. Adult authors, too, have plenty to worry about. Looks to me like serious writers might need to worry that they’re about to follow newspapers down the sink hole.
According to these women, historical fiction is out. Kids just don’t get enough history in K-8 to have a context in which to place these stories. The organization, content and expectations are just pitiful. Here’s what one local school system does:
3rd Grade: Early Illinois history
4th Grade: Geography
5th Grade: More geography and U.S . History through the Civil War (if we’re lucky, commented the librarian)
6th Grade: Prehistory to Ancient Rome (okay, I’m on board here)
7th Grade: back to Geography
8th Grade: U.S. Government and U.S. History from Reconstruction to the Cold War
Why on earth kids need so much geography, and why it can’t be taught in the more meaningful context of history, is beyond me. At my house dear daughter never studied geography as a separate subject (oh, okay, she did some workbook pages on Fridays in 3rd & 4th grade) until 8th grade, when dd took AP Human Geography, easily passing with a 5. What’s missing from the above curriculum? How about all of European, Middle Eastern and Asian history, with only a smidgen of African history thrown in for political correctness?
By 8th grade, some kids have discovered historical fiction on their own, but the bulk of their early reading is focused (according to these speakers) on fantasy, relationships series (if girls) and horror (if boys). Also, the classic children’s books of the past have either been moved up to high school, being too long with too difficult vocabulary, or eliminated all together, being at odds with modern political correctness. In high school it’s better—our local high school requires 4 history or social studies courses, and a judicious choice can get some pretty good survey courses. Too bad it’s their first encounter.
I firmly believe in the “inoculation” theory of education, by which I mean, you give kids a shot of something several times over a period of years, and eventually that exposure strengthens their bodies’ response to the stimulus. The kid who read a picture book of the Odyssey in 1st grade and a retelling in 5th grade will be raring to go on the real thing by high school (not bored out of their gourds, as my daughter observed at a local high school class.)
Grappling with serious literature, classics, and lengthy works only becomes easy with exposure and training. The child who is exposed to the arts early on, in a meaningful context, by a teacher (or parent) who is knowledgeable and enthusiastic, will be a lifelong fan—at least an appreciative audience if not a creator.
All the stats show that newspapers have failed to reach a younger audience, who has never developed the habit of reading the morning paper (or the afternoon one, remember those?) But ultimately, we as parents and we as artists can’t leave it up to the schools. As an old poem says, children learn what they live. Children who see us anticipating concerts with enthusiasm, reading challenging books, and actually using our museum memberships for our own adult benefit will have a whole different cultural vocabulary from those whose evenings are spent watching reality tv. If only we valued season tickets to the opera as highly as we value ownership of a Hummer.
Friday, July 17, 2009
Nag, nag, nag!
When my daughter was first taking music lessons (piano) her first teacher wisely told me that she had never seen a student progress well without a parent who kept on them. Since I vacillate between being a drill sergeant and a pushover, I never quite got my nagging program in gear. As might be expected, piano progress was so-so.
However, when she began harp lessons, I was convinced that I might as well throw $55 out the window, and my nag switch opened full throttle. Besides the fact that harp turned out to be “her” instrument (see my post on harps), she readily admits that without the...er...motivation I supplied she never would have made the progress she has.
It strikes me that as teachers and learners, we really should just admit something to ourselves and our students: some things just aren’t fun to learn. Fields that require memorization or significant practice to master are going to have a huge quantity of things you have to beat yourself into doing: the foundations of music, math and foreign languages are, let’s say it, dull and repetitious. No amount of cute computer animation or music enhanced audio flashcards, or any of the other tricks we try really make a difference. Expecting a child to have the discipline needed is unrealistic. Someone else, someone who can visualize the long term benefits, needs to supply the superego.
As I used to pound into my daughter, memorizing the 2500 or 3000 words needed to read a French newspaper is no fun, but being able to pick up a French language fashion magazine or make yourself understood while travelling is a lot of fun indeed. Getting to the fun part, at least in some fields, requires a significant amount of grinding away. For me, and for her, the study of literature or history has been intrinsically pleasurable, because it exercises the brain, but requires no particular skill building exercises once you’ve learned to read. But not so with math, languages, music and advanced art: it’s practice, review and memorize for a long time before you can think big thoughts or work with anything interesting.
“Child-led learning” sounds great and is certainly a popular concept in both traditional and homeschool settings. I wish I believed in it. I wish my child had known what she wanted to do and pursued it wholeheartedly at an early age. I wish I could fly. While I recognize that there are kids like that somewhere on the planet, I think it’s a disservice to expect all of them to be that way, or to wait until they are. How could a child discover a passion for Javanese gamelan (or harp) if she was never exposed to that possibility? So, until I’m confident that she can drive herself, I still direct the tour.
However, when she began harp lessons, I was convinced that I might as well throw $55 out the window, and my nag switch opened full throttle. Besides the fact that harp turned out to be “her” instrument (see my post on harps), she readily admits that without the...er...motivation I supplied she never would have made the progress she has.
It strikes me that as teachers and learners, we really should just admit something to ourselves and our students: some things just aren’t fun to learn. Fields that require memorization or significant practice to master are going to have a huge quantity of things you have to beat yourself into doing: the foundations of music, math and foreign languages are, let’s say it, dull and repetitious. No amount of cute computer animation or music enhanced audio flashcards, or any of the other tricks we try really make a difference. Expecting a child to have the discipline needed is unrealistic. Someone else, someone who can visualize the long term benefits, needs to supply the superego.
As I used to pound into my daughter, memorizing the 2500 or 3000 words needed to read a French newspaper is no fun, but being able to pick up a French language fashion magazine or make yourself understood while travelling is a lot of fun indeed. Getting to the fun part, at least in some fields, requires a significant amount of grinding away. For me, and for her, the study of literature or history has been intrinsically pleasurable, because it exercises the brain, but requires no particular skill building exercises once you’ve learned to read. But not so with math, languages, music and advanced art: it’s practice, review and memorize for a long time before you can think big thoughts or work with anything interesting.
“Child-led learning” sounds great and is certainly a popular concept in both traditional and homeschool settings. I wish I believed in it. I wish my child had known what she wanted to do and pursued it wholeheartedly at an early age. I wish I could fly. While I recognize that there are kids like that somewhere on the planet, I think it’s a disservice to expect all of them to be that way, or to wait until they are. How could a child discover a passion for Javanese gamelan (or harp) if she was never exposed to that possibility? So, until I’m confident that she can drive herself, I still direct the tour.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Why do kids quit doing art?
My daughter played startlingly beautiful improvisations when younger, but as her music study went on she began to focus more and more on her lesson material and on learning to play her instrument with increasing expertise. The improvisation dropped off due to no time and a lot of demanding skills acquisition. I worried about the loss of joy, especially during those practice times when I heard her growl in frustration.
Many children produce wonderful images and sounds early on. Think of the freshness of much child-written poetry, melody, or art. Picasso and others often spoke about the need to remain as a child when approaching art. The challenge is to mature into an understanding of what you’re doing, while still maintaining freshness and innovation. Not easy. But also, without training, most artists will eventually get frustrated with their lack of ability to produce the skillful and sophisticated works rattling around in their heads. Perhaps this is why, without serious training in drawing skills, so many kids give up drawing at about age 10 or 11--they start to know that there's something better out there, but need the training to access it.
The age when children decide to give up in frustration is also the age when schools start to regard all the arts as a nice supplement, if they can afford the time and the money (NOT!). Sure, a huge after-school industry in arts instruction has developed, but only for the parents who seek it out and can afford it. We are now a nation who can’t draw stick figures, pick out a simple melody, or even dance. Yet we stop offering any instruction at just the age when children might make some real headway in learning the skills, and then be able to apply those skills to their own creative inspirations.
Real music composing, at least classical, is a very complex endeavor, requiring expertise with a variety of instruments, a historical vocabulary, and much theory. If the spark is truly there, and opportunities and encouragement are offered, I think the young person will return to their art interests with a vengeance. Mine has.
Homeschooling and my own interests have provided my daughter with a veritable flood of arts instruction and activities. Thanks to the greater interest in homeschooling, there’s a cornucopia of self-instructional materials available. If you want to be overwhelmed with what’s available to play with, check out the Rainbow Resources catalog. It’s a treasure trove for homeschoolers, after-schoolers, and even adults. Self-instruction programs are a lot cheaper than many classes, portable, adaptable to your time schedule, and teach self-reliance and how to be a life long learner.
And if you just want to learn to draw a (much better) stick figure, check out Mark Kistler’s books. Talent may be a spark within, but anyone can learn the skills.
Many children produce wonderful images and sounds early on. Think of the freshness of much child-written poetry, melody, or art. Picasso and others often spoke about the need to remain as a child when approaching art. The challenge is to mature into an understanding of what you’re doing, while still maintaining freshness and innovation. Not easy. But also, without training, most artists will eventually get frustrated with their lack of ability to produce the skillful and sophisticated works rattling around in their heads. Perhaps this is why, without serious training in drawing skills, so many kids give up drawing at about age 10 or 11--they start to know that there's something better out there, but need the training to access it.
The age when children decide to give up in frustration is also the age when schools start to regard all the arts as a nice supplement, if they can afford the time and the money (NOT!). Sure, a huge after-school industry in arts instruction has developed, but only for the parents who seek it out and can afford it. We are now a nation who can’t draw stick figures, pick out a simple melody, or even dance. Yet we stop offering any instruction at just the age when children might make some real headway in learning the skills, and then be able to apply those skills to their own creative inspirations.
Real music composing, at least classical, is a very complex endeavor, requiring expertise with a variety of instruments, a historical vocabulary, and much theory. If the spark is truly there, and opportunities and encouragement are offered, I think the young person will return to their art interests with a vengeance. Mine has.
Homeschooling and my own interests have provided my daughter with a veritable flood of arts instruction and activities. Thanks to the greater interest in homeschooling, there’s a cornucopia of self-instructional materials available. If you want to be overwhelmed with what’s available to play with, check out the Rainbow Resources catalog. It’s a treasure trove for homeschoolers, after-schoolers, and even adults. Self-instruction programs are a lot cheaper than many classes, portable, adaptable to your time schedule, and teach self-reliance and how to be a life long learner.
And if you just want to learn to draw a (much better) stick figure, check out Mark Kistler’s books. Talent may be a spark within, but anyone can learn the skills.
Friday, July 3, 2009
Portuguese? Sim! Easy? Não!
If you want to learn French or German, Italian or Japanese, you’ll have an exhausting array of choices. (I put learning Spanish, at least in the U.S., in a category of its own. It’s so prevalent it’s hard to avoid picking up at least a little.) You can choose among immersion style conversation (Pimsleur or Rosetta Stone), intuitive computer game style workouts (Auralog), and shelves and shelves of workbooks, listen in your car, and book/cd combinations. But venture off the path beaten in the aisles of your local Megabooks or library, and you will truly be in another world—following a narrow path with little signage.
I’m on a quest to learn Portuguese, and not the Brazilian kind. I have an idea for a novel set in medieval Portugal and I know from long-ago travel in Portugal that finding translated resource material, even the glossy coffee table books sold at cathedrals, is a quest not for the faint-hearted. All of my favorite language programs are either produced in Brazilian Portuguese or not at all. Think you can find everything you could possibly want by googling it? Take a spin with European or Continental Portuguese. I did run through the 10 lessons of Continental Pimsleur in ten days, and now I can introduce myself, but I don’t think that’s going to be very relevant to reading scholarly works on the 14th century. I’m working through the only other program I’ve so far been able to find, Portuguese in 3 Months (Hugo), but it’s not going to give me anywhere near enough expertise.
Among other ideas I’ve explored are finding a group on Meetup.org (only a Brazilian one in my area); local university courses (all in the area assume that you already speak Spanish), and Live Mocha (not bad, but I need to move faster with heavier grammar). Apparently there’s no market for teaching Portuguese.
It saddens me that learning can be so market driven. Portugal has no strategic political importance like Arabic or Chinese; no cool factor like Japanese (anyone remember when THAT was considered a strategic language); no perceived daily utility like Spanish, and no place in glamorous travel or graduate studies, like French, Italian or German. Still, isn’t it worth learning something for the joy of it, to pursue an interest not shared by everyone, to travel in another culture through the window of their language?
The positive effect of this quest is that I am ever more determined to speak it, and I’m filled with daydreaming about how surprised natives will be if I actually manage to communicate when there. It’s really a beautiful language, filled with soft and wispy sounds, like the beautiful and heartbreaking sounds of the national music of fado. I just with it wasn’t going to be such a solitary pleasure.
I’m on a quest to learn Portuguese, and not the Brazilian kind. I have an idea for a novel set in medieval Portugal and I know from long-ago travel in Portugal that finding translated resource material, even the glossy coffee table books sold at cathedrals, is a quest not for the faint-hearted. All of my favorite language programs are either produced in Brazilian Portuguese or not at all. Think you can find everything you could possibly want by googling it? Take a spin with European or Continental Portuguese. I did run through the 10 lessons of Continental Pimsleur in ten days, and now I can introduce myself, but I don’t think that’s going to be very relevant to reading scholarly works on the 14th century. I’m working through the only other program I’ve so far been able to find, Portuguese in 3 Months (Hugo), but it’s not going to give me anywhere near enough expertise.
Among other ideas I’ve explored are finding a group on Meetup.org (only a Brazilian one in my area); local university courses (all in the area assume that you already speak Spanish), and Live Mocha (not bad, but I need to move faster with heavier grammar). Apparently there’s no market for teaching Portuguese.
It saddens me that learning can be so market driven. Portugal has no strategic political importance like Arabic or Chinese; no cool factor like Japanese (anyone remember when THAT was considered a strategic language); no perceived daily utility like Spanish, and no place in glamorous travel or graduate studies, like French, Italian or German. Still, isn’t it worth learning something for the joy of it, to pursue an interest not shared by everyone, to travel in another culture through the window of their language?
The positive effect of this quest is that I am ever more determined to speak it, and I’m filled with daydreaming about how surprised natives will be if I actually manage to communicate when there. It’s really a beautiful language, filled with soft and wispy sounds, like the beautiful and heartbreaking sounds of the national music of fado. I just with it wasn’t going to be such a solitary pleasure.
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