Waiting for Heroes so we can clap.

Posted on by
Reply
Approximate Reading Time: 3 minutes

Most people aren’t bad, merely weak. They will fall in behind anyone who is loud and claims to be righteous – even if they’re not.*

We love to believe that the world is changed by heroes, and, since we aren’t heroes, it’s OK for us to sit around and wait for one to come along, so we can cheer him/her on.
Truth is, that’s not how it works.

Rosa Parks’ OTHER arrest—Feb. 22, 1956 – David LaMotteDavid LaMotte.

And what narrative do we prefer? I call it the Hero Narrative, and it basically comes down to this: Things change on a large scale when someone extraordinary does something dramatic in a moment of crisis. That’s how to address a problem, or so the story goes.

If you don’t agree that this is the dominant narrative of change in our culture, I suggest that you drive to the nearest multiplex theater and see how many of the movies on the marquee have that plot. And not just Jupiter Ascending and American Sniper, but Frozen and Harry Potter, too. The Hero narrative is so pervasive and ubiquitous that it is hard to even see that it is there.

You can find it in history books, too, and that’s where the narrative gets really troubling. We love it so much that we have a tendency (usually unconscious, I believe) to tell even our history in such a way that it fits this story pattern as well.

There is another narrative that is not nearly as popular, but has the added benefit of actually being true. The Movement Narrative says that things change on a large scale when a lot of people move a little bit in the same direction. When we really study Rosa Parks’ story, we find that it fits the Movement Narrative much better than the Hero Narrative.*

I MUCH prefer the Rosa Parks story that shows that she was strong, independent, and willing to stand up for her principles every day. THAT is the example we need to try and follow.

There are several problems with the Hero Narrative. The first is that it teaches us that to solve a problem, you need a hero. Most of us don’t see ourselves as heroes, and don’t know too many people with capes and exo-undies, so it’s a logical conclusion that we are not the ones to make a change.

So we wait for someone to come along and fix the problems, at which point we will do our part: clap.

And even if we can find a hero, what is the next step for addressing a problem in this version of how change happens? We need a crisis.

So again, we wait. And if we find a hero and happen to encounter a crisis, then what is step three?

* I learned the hard way that 95% of the people who claimed to be my friends weren’t really. This is probably always true. They will fall in line with whatever “leader” happens to offer them the best deal. They believe words over actions because it’s easier than thinking for oneself.

At the university where I used to have tenure there were many people who claimed to be my friend, yet when I was being attacked by my head & dean, they simply stood by and did nothing. A few were apologetic about it, a few sided with admin, but most just told themselves that they had nothing to do with it so it was OK to go with the flow.

In the faculty where I got my PhD, everything was fine…. until I had an opinion that differed from the one I was supposed to have (i.e. the one held by those “above” me).

I’m told the best revenge is living well. I don’t believe that revenge ever solves anything, but it *is* nice when you discover that your happiness and success don’t require the approval or help of those who only support you so long as you are making them look better than they are.

1 person likes this post.

Unlike

What if Finland’s great teachers taught in U.S. schools? – The Washington Post

Posted on by
Reply
Approximate Reading Time: 2 minutes

What if Finland’s great teachers taught in U.S. schools?

They’d likely quit in disgust.

The US education crisis is not going to be solved by bringing in great teachers.

  • A great many American systems are based on competition and measuring things that are easy to measure.
  • The American love affair with capitalism pretty much precludes any genuine standardization
    • private interests are profit-driven and do not – by definition – care about serving the needs of the population or the citizens (only customers and share-holders).
    • success is measured in dollars, which has little to do with what makes the Finnish system successful
    • teacher prep programs in Finland accept only the best and the brightest, not those most able to pay
    • teaching in Finland is a respected profession, not the consolation prize
  • The tremendous gap between the haves and the have-nots in the US makes the Finnish system impossible
    • the rich will expect to be treated better than the poor
    • the rich will expect to  be able to buy their way into whatever they want
    • the rich do not want to share their riches
  • The US preoccupation with competition and being able to think of themselves as the “best” also makes the Finnish system all but impossible.

I think it is incredibly telling that the Finnish system came about because they were trying to provide a solid education to ALL (regardless of economic status), and NOT because they were trying to beat anyone at anything.

In the United States, for example, there are more than 1,500 different teacher-preparation programs. The range in quality is wide. In Singapore and Finland only one academically rigorous teacher education program is available for those who desire to become teachers.

Teacher quality in high-performing countries is a result of careful quality control at entry into teaching rather than measuring teacher effectiveness in service.

Some commonly held American fallacies

  • “the quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers.”
    False. People tend to live up (or down) to expectations.
  • “the most important single factor in improving quality of education is teachers.”
    False. There are a number of influences, but poverty is a biggie.
  • “If any children had three or four great teachers in a row, they would soar academically, regardless of their racial or economic background, while those who have a sequence of weak teachers will fall further and further behind”.
    OK. This one is just goofy. Do people really think this?

I think one of the big barriers to improving the education system in the US is the almost fanatical belief that they are already the best there is at everything.  Rather than take a good hard look at how their systems may have contributed to the problem, they seem to think that all they have to do is create more competition (through more testing and grading of teachers).

1 person likes this post.

Unlike

Yes, Women Do Code — But @hardaway still misses the point.

Posted on by
Reply
Approximate Reading Time: 4 minutes
Businesswoman looking at computer Credit: Tetra Images

Credit: Tetra Images

Her attempt at an apology just digs the hole deeper.

Yes women do code.

And I have found them all this week, for which I am grateful.

Hardly (on both points I expect).

I am on the board of a STEM charter school, and when I see the public schools rushing to put every child in code camp, code class, etc., I see several recipes for failure.

  1. Not everyone who learns to code will be good at it.
  2. We now have a shortage of coders, but soon we will have a glut.
  3. For women especially, learning to aim higher than simply to code, or to become literate, is not enough.

My gosh, should we really avoid teaching something to someone because they might not be good at it? REALLY? We should only teach people things if they are going to be good at it?  SERIOUSLY??? Even worse, who gets to choose who’s going to be good at something before they’ve even tried?

The “we’ll soon have a glut” argument presumes that the only reason to learn to code is so one can get a job coding. Is that why people learn English? To get jobs in what, talking?

“Learning to aim higher” – hmmm, now THAT’s insulting. What if someone (male OR female) actually LIKES coding? Is she saying that’s not good enough? Not everyone wants to be rich (which is, after all, what much “entrepreneurial” pursuit is about). I’m guessing that aiming higher means we should all want to be like her.  o_O

While I’d agree that becoming literate is not enough, I’m willing to bet that my reasons for agreeing are not the same as @hardaway’s reasons.

So I wrote the article to try to stop the herd mentality. What I meant to say in the article everyone obviously misunderstood is that there should be many paths to success in the tech industry.

Agreed.

I wanted to get all the other women recognized who are in the industry on the business side and have been there for years without getting enough credit for how much they do for the companies they work for. There are plenty of women in marketing, sales, and finance. They just don’t get recognized the way the software engineers have been recognized lately.

So, if I understand this argument correctly, we should not be teaching women to code because women in marketing don’t get enough recognition? That sounds kind of like telling a kid to finish her plate because children are starving in Africa. I expect better of a PhD in English.

As for women programmers are getting more recognition than women in the business end of tech, I don’t agree. Women in tech *still* aren’t getting, and never have gotten recognized the way ‘business’ women have. And, teaching women to code has nothing to do with marketing, sales, and finance (thank God).

I’m all for diversity goals, and for equal opportunity and?—?most important?—?equal respect for women.. I left Intel because I couldn’t get it, and I taught myself to code enough to know I wouldn’t ever be good at it.

OK. So, she taught herself to code and was no good at it, so now she feels qualified to say others shouldn’t learn? By that logic, I should be telling people they should not go into construction (because I taught myself to build things, and I’m not especially good at it), or any of the trades, or,…. business.

Now, I’ve had my share of discrimination based on gender (and talent), and I’ve worked at more than a few places where I did not get the respect I felt I had earned, but given @hardaway’s self-description as pushy, bossy, and polarizing, maybe, just maybe she didn’t get the respect she wanted because she hadn’t earned it. Maybe, there is no way for someone like that to get the respect they want unless they are in charge of things where they can push people around. But, I don’t know this woman, so that’s just conjecture.

That’s okay. I’ve done fine as a writer of English. Or at least I thought I had until this week, when I was so roundly misinterpreted. My bad. I should have been clearer, and less strident.

I don’t think there was a lack of clarity; the explanations here don’t actually fix anything. As for the part about being less strident, well, probably, but I didn’t actually detect any softening in the explanation, so this apology* misses the mark.

I mean ‘apology’ in the “presentation intended to justify or defend something” sense.

Thank you “ladies. “I admire all of you and I’m happy you chose to speak out.

I’m still trying to figure out the intent of the placement of the double quotes in the above statement. For someone who holds 3 degrees in English, this seems curious. If it’s a typo, then a bit of proof-reading might be helpful. If she meant to say “ladies”, then that’s kind of insulting. Let’s take the more charitable stance and assume it was jut a typo.

This is really not someone I’d ever want to advise people on issues of STEM. She may see recipes for failure in what public schools are doing when it comes to STEM, and I’ll happily admit there are many things that could be improved, but the attitudes displayed in Hardaway’s post (and the previous one) only make things worse.

Be the first to like.

Unlike

Women Shouldn’t Code — Seriously???

Posted on by
1
Approximate Reading Time: 3 minutes
When in Rome by lilsip

When in Rome by lilsip

Trying to justify the status quo? Written by a woman, but one who admits to basically being a bully. So, there’s that.

Why Women Shouldn’t Code — Medium.

First here are the arguments, quoted from the post.

First of all, coding itself is a narrow function in which you write instructions to tell a computer what to do. People are fond of saying code is the next language, and that’s all fine, but there’s a difference between language and syntax. Coding is syntax. It is finely detailed work in a binary world, and it requires both attention to detail. When you write a line of code, you have to close the parentheses and make sure you put in the semi-colon or the code won’t run. It requires enormous concentration, and it is exacting. It’s often done in a dark room with no interruptions. But the most important people in the company don’t write the code, they tell the coders what to write. Coders don’t make the big decisions.

The first statement indicates that, even though this woman claimed to be a good coder, she did not understand what she was doing at anything but the immediate level. I no longer ‘code’ very often, but what I learned about logic and systems while learning about programming is useful to me every day in a whole host of places – not just tech. I understand how the tools I use work – they are not magic. AND, I can not be bamboozled by tech types – most of whom are men – who try to tell me what I can’t do, or what’s not possible. If this were the only reason for women to learn programming, that it would be worth it.

Women don’t seem to want to code. They don’t choose it as a career, despite all the job openings and the high pay. In general, women are more intuitive and more perceptive. There’s mountains of research about that. They’re also more nurturing. That’s hard-coded into them for the preservation of the race. I’ve got grandchildren of both sexes and I have about sixteen data points from which I draw this conclusion. But PET scans of the brain have led scientists to similar conclusions. The girls are not drawn to the same pursuits the boys are, no matter how hard you try to bring them up with gender equality.

There are many reasons why women “don’t seem to want to code”, most of which have nothing to do with the code or learning about programming. The truth is though, that thinking that we ‘don’t want to’ is part of the problem, and makes it easy to dismiss the whole issue. Also, it’s not true.

  1. Women don’t like being treated like crap (big surprise), and that is what many of them face when learning to code, and then later when trying to work as programmers. That has NOTHING to do with programming and everything to do with the culture of the places where they have to learn and work.
  2. Girls are often discouraged from exploring their interests in many of the STEM fields, for a whole host of reasons. This discouragement is sometimes subtle (they get interrupted more than boys), and sometimes not so subtle (like being told that they should do something else).

There will be plenty of coders in the future. We happen to be in a period in which software rules, or as somebody once said, “software is eating the world.” But we’re fighting the last war here; we will eventually do the same thing with coders that we did with every other occupation where we identified a shortage: create a glut. We’ve done it with doctors, physical therapists, nail technicians, and lawyers. And then who will make the robots?

First, so what? Second, I disagree. Third, how is THAT a reason to discriminate against an entire gender?

The difference between good and bad code is like the difference between grammar and writing. Writing requires much more than just a knowledge of grammar and syntax. It also requires organization, imagination, creativity and experience. The analogue to writing in software development, IMHO, isn’t coding per se, it is system architecture and user interface.

Again, SO WHAT? She’s saying, in her FFHO* that coding is beneath women and that women should strive to do what SHE’s doing (which, by the way she wouldn’t be able to do if she hadn’t learned coding FIRST). So we can add narcissistic to the list of adjectives used to describe herself.

FFHO – Far From Humble Opinion…. she admits to being pushy, bossy, and polarizing, which really doesn’t fit with the H in IMHO.

On “The difference between good and bad code is like the difference between grammar and writing.”

Um. No. Syntax is grammar. Programming is writing. The difference between good and bad code is like the difference between good and bad writing.

She’s completely missed the point of having people (see what I did there? I included men as well as women) learn to program.

Getting everyone to learn to code is about learning to think logically.

So much of our world is managed by programs now that learning to code is about learning how your world works so that you are not left at the mercy of those who can code.

It’s about becoming more than a mere “user”.

2 people like this post.

Unlike

Why is it so hard to figure out transfer credits?

Posted on by
2
Approximate Reading Time: 2 minutes
Photo by stockimages. FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Photo by stockimages. FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I came across an article about a U.S. college cracking down on shoddy transfer credits, and it got me to thinking. I think I’ll never understand the U.S. obsession with athletes – is it about ego? Money? It’s pretty clear it is NOT about academics. But that’s not what this post is about.

American peculiarities aside, figuring out transfer credits really shouldn’t be that hard – if the syllabus is fairly close to the target course, just let the student write an exam – and grade it the same as any other student. If they can pass the exam, then it’s reasonable to assume that the course is close enough. If not, then don’t give them credit.

I know it takes a bit of time, but not that much – when I was still at the UofC I set up challenge exams* for the 1st year computer science classes. If someone was starting and thought they knew the 1st year material, they could write an exam that covered the 1st or both CS courses, and if they passed, those courses were waived. They didn’t get credit, but they also didn’t have to sit through stuff they already knew. They still had to make up the credits, but that was never a problem. Even when we had 1200 people enrolled in 1st year, I only dealt with a few of these each year. No big deal.

If the student has verified credit for a course that is fairly close to a local one, then let them write the exam. If they can pass the final exam for the course, doesn’t that mean they know the material well enough to get credit for it? If you’re not willing to do that, then why force the student to take the course again? Money? Arrogance? Some narcissistic need to prevent people from getting a break you didn’t get?

What purpose is served by forcing a student to take what for them is a remedial course?

What One College Did to Crack Down on Shoddy Transfer Credits – Athletics – The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Last summer Mt. San Antonio stopped counting the online classes. It found that several failed to meet the college’s minimum math requirements. College officials also found that Adams State was lax in its oversight of examinations, according to emails obtained by The Chronicle in a public-records request.

…

Of all the people equipped to catch shoddy online classes, admissions directors would appear to have the most tools. They can tell when students take courses out of sequence and detect other suspicious patterns in transcripts. But they don’t always have the time or inclination to challenge the abuses. Athletics-compliance directors, whose jobs include certifying players’ eligibility, say they sometimes spot questionable credits but often can’t do anything about them.

* I had created programming language independent exams so they could use whatever language they knew. If the language they knew was other than the one we were teaching, it was up to them to make up the difference.

Be the first to like.

Unlike

Peer review could reject breakthrough manuscripts, study shows

Posted on by
Reply
Approximate Reading Time: < 1 minute
My father's Hermes. Bought sometime in the 1950's.

My father’s Hermes. Bought sometime in the 1950’s.

Peer review could reject breakthrough manuscripts, study shows.

The peer review system serves as a gatekeeping system for scientific research, designed to ensure the publication of only the most well researched studies with the most important findings. Scientists depend on publication of their research in for career advancement. While peer review can prevent the publication of unimportant or poorly researched manuscripts, some scholars are concerned that it protects the status quo and suppresses innovation.

To evaluate this claim, Siler and his team studied a dataset of manuscripts submitted to Annals of Internal Medicine, British Medical Journal and The Lancet in 2003 and 2004. These journals rejected 946 of the 1,008 manuscripts in the dataset. 722 of the rejected journals never made it past the editor’s desk and therefore, never even reached the peer review stage, at one or more of these three publications.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-12-peer-breakthrough-manuscripts.html#jCp

Be the first to like.

Unlike

Education Should Step Away from Apple Devices | Anthony Carabache

Posted on by
Reply
Approximate Reading Time: 2 minutes

IPad_2_front_view

By Tom Morris (Own work) [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

More on why I hate my iPad, AND why using them in schools is a bad idea:

Education Should Step Away from Apple Devices | Anthony Carabache.

3 Reasons to Stay Away from iPads in the Classroom

Now don’t get me wrong, I am an Apple guy through and through. My house is mired in the Apple ecosystem and we love every single bit of it- despite the maladies of the latest update. But this article is certainly not about an individual consumer purchasing Apple products, which I think is the root cause of why Apple fails in the classroom- especially if it is a shared device. To get straight to the point: if you cannot purchase iOS devices for each student – don’t bother. Here’s why:

1. “Get Your Head Out of Your Apps” – Apple’s Favourite Line is a Quiet Lie

There once was a time that I highly recommended the iPad as an excellent device for integrating technology into the classroom but no longer is this the case. After examining iPad implementation across the province, country and abroad over the last six years I have come to determine that it is simply not designed for shared use in education. This contradicts the very idea of what it means to collaborate – a 21st century skill we can all agree upon. It would seem that Apple’s philosophy when it comes to education is share less buy more.

2. Privacy (How confidently can you answer the questions below?)

If you really want to understand what I’m getting at when it comes to privacy (and I’m not talking about the countless teachers using their personal devices to ‘document’ student learning) see if you can answer the following questions with confidence:

  1. What is the deletion procedure for pictures stored locally on iOS devices in your school, board or region?
  2. Who is responsible for deleting pictures of students or student work?
  3. What are the criteria for using 3rd party apps to house your students’ photos or work? Are they local or international? Who owns the 3rd party? Are they for profit? Do they give to charity? Do they lobby for education? Do they run criminal background checks on their employees? What is their policy for sharing data with other 3rd party marketers?
  4. Surely you must be aware that when iCloud is turned on, photos taken can be uploaded to iCloud on PhotoStream – so who deletes those pictures? Did you know that they can remain ‘deleted’ for up to 30 days? Yet another delete has to be performed before they are permanently deleted. (Does Apple run criminal background checks on their employees?) Remember what happened to Jennifer Lawrence? A tad dramatic I know – but it happened.

3. Management Software is Half-Baked at Best

The management of multiple iPads becomes a nightmarish experience when you learn that Apple itself does not produce a manager for multiple iPads. In fact when you meet with Apple they suggest the purchasing of a third party software to manage the devices such as MDM or Airwatch, both of which have been on the market for less than 2 years and both of which have to play catch up to each and every iOS update. In fact, I have witnessed school district technicians put finger to glass on thousands of devices because of an iOS update that no longer communicates with the 3rd party manager such as AirWatch. 

Be the first to like.

Unlike

Is Rabbit the New Ethical Meat? — Vogue

Posted on by
Reply
Approximate Reading Time: < 1 minute

Is Rabbit the New Ethical Meat? — Vogue

Rabbits make sense as a meat on so many levels. I think it’s time to start an urban rabbit movement.

UEC-2013-06-13_14-43-00_wm

“Meals that are at once ecologically and gastronomically intelligent are much on my mind, and rabbit is the ne plus ultra on this front. Rabbits require neither grain nor land to thrive, subsisting happily on clover, wildflowers, twigs, bark, garden scraps. They don’t produce enough waste to poison the air or water (see cows and methane, pigs and lagoons—best to read up on this on your own). Rabbits are so inexpensive to raise that organizations such as USAID, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, and Heifer International have, since 2010, funded tiny rabbitries in Haiti as a way of alleviating the many burdens of poverty. The Haitian Rabbit Project’s 1,250 farms provide dependable income and create more food than its rabbit keepers’ families can typically eat.”

2 people like this post.

Unlike