Here is my latest article to be published in a forthcoming edition of The Creative Educator magazine.

Even if my recent “Politics Around the Web” posts have turned you off, I hope you noticed that they are a model of a very simple activity for any number of classes - current events, politics, science and math news, more - that want students to read and exhibit critical thinking about what they read. I say “simple” because all it takes is a Google News account, a Diigo account, and a blog.

This screencast shows you how it works, compliments of screencast-o-matic and Blip.tv:

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If you like this post, please spread it: (But don't tag it "education." That will bury it.)

7 Comments

• At October 19, 2008, M. Walker wrote:

  Clay,

  Very nice! I'm speaking to some student bloggers on Tuesday, reading from a blog and sharing my thoughts, and I may have to share this with them. I'm thinking of using some of the Michelle Bachman material coming out of Minnesota...can you say Joe McCarthy?

  Mike

  M. Walkers last blog post..Wordle

• At October 19, 2008, Seadey Says 10/18/2008 « Seadey Says wrote:

  [...] Creating Critical Readers: A Too-Easy Diigo-Google News-Student Blog Assignment | Beyond School - Annotated [...]

• At October 19, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

  Did you see VandenHeuven's reply / debate after that interview?

  You're right, it's the perfect current event to connect to McCarthyism. Ooh, and she's from your state, isn't she?

• At October 19, 2008, Louise Maine wrote:

  I would never characterize what you present as wacky ideas as you continue to stretch our minds on the possibilities. As my students are working with another class on animal classification and research into an endangered or exotic animal on a wiki, the natural extension would be on threats to biodiversity. Generally, they would prepare a statement as to their thoughts on the subject. Your approach would show reasoning on both sides that led to the students decision and is a great way to show and demonstrate critical thinking. As always, The true gain is in your thoughts and generosity in showing the process despite the issue.

  Louise Maines last blog post..NEBSA Source for Learning challenge

• At October 20, 2008, M. Walker wrote:

  Yes, she came out of our state legislature, where she led the charge against gay marriage and other "anti-American" activities. Famous for molesting Bush after a State of the Union Address...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqSjtIivjnQ

  Mike

  M. Walkers last blog post..Wordle

• At October 21, 2008, Maggie wrote:

  Great idea, Clay! A great way to entice students to stay engaged with current events and cultivate research and critical thinking skills!

• At October 22, 2008, Creating Critical Readers: A Too-Easy Diigo-Google News-Student Blogging Project | Beyond School wrote:

  [...] is a cached version of http://beyond-school.org/2008/10/18/diigo-blogging-current-events. Diigo.com has no relation to the [...]

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Update 1: Wikispaces recorded the webinar as a movie, and will send me the link when it’s up. I’ll post it here. I took the last half-hour of the 1-hour show to discuss 2 history wiki projects, and 2 language arts projects. Highly caffeinated and well-run good time (for me, anyway ).

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4 Comments

• At October 17, 2008, Michael Doyle wrote:

  Dang it, it's October 16th, late, I have a lab to design, tests to grade, I'm just setting up a wiki for my low level freshman, and NOW (another 98 hour week near its end) I see this.

  And I don't even know what a "webinar" is.

  I can learn (and I will), but geez, Clay, the old folks reading this need a day or two's wort of notice.

  [End of harangue.]

  Michael Doyles last blog post..Titrate until comfortable

• At October 17, 2008, Michael Doyle wrote:

  For whatever reason, I can' edit--I was going to fix "wort"--but given the meaning of the typo, it almost makes sense.

  So I will steal from myself.

  "A day's wort of notice...."

  Michael Doyles last blog post..Titrate until comfortable

• At October 17, 2008, Robert wrote:

  Is there any chance that you will post the recording of the webinar at this site? Or somewhere else perhaps. I would be interested in hearing what you discussed.

  Best,

  Robert

  Roberts last blog post..Mid-term Honor Roll

• At October 17, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

  Hi Robert,

  Yes, Wikispaces recorded the webinar and will give me the link to post when it's up. My presentation started 30 minutes in, after they introduced new users to how to drive a wiki, and I covered four different projects (2 history, 2 English).

  I think it went okay. I had fun, anyway :)

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This is just hilarious, and a brilliant idea at the same time: taking the Wasilla Town Meeting minutes (Sarah Palin presiding), and turning them into a one-man drama performance. Do yourself a favor and laugh as you learn about the extent of this woman’s experience, and worse yet, her leadership style.

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[The Unsucky English Gilgamesh series so far: 1: Dangerous Questions ~ 2: The Day I Thought Gilgamesh Would Cost Me My Job ~ 3: this post~ 4. The Seven Deadly Sins, Backwards ~ 5. Good and Evil, Nature and the Hero - Backwards]

~     ~     ~

So there I was: caught, before all my new 14-year-old students’ eyes, with Enkidu’s pants down - and his mythic Sumerian wee-wee in hoo-hoos I knew nothing of.¹ And because so many of these Korean kids were evangelically Americanized, I wondered if it would cost me my job.

When we would come to Genesis later in the semester, I knew I’d be walking the netless tightrope over the heads of the many 14-year-olds who had predictably swallowed whole, since before their first teeth, their literalist childhood teachings about Adam, Eve, and the Six Days’ Creation.

But I had no idea I’d be dealing now, in tender Week Three of their high school careers, with this whopper of a sex scene between Shamhat, the temple prostitute, and Enkidu, the innocent, half-neanderthal and half-Adam “wild man” - and his jaw-dropping seven days’ erection: ²

Shamhat stripped off her robe and lay there naked,
with her legs apart, touching herself.
Enkidu saw her and warily approached.
He sniffed at the air. He gazed at her body.
He drew close. Shamhat touched him on the thigh,
touched his penis, and put him inside her.
She used her love-arts, she took his breath
with her kisses, held nothing back, and showed him
what a woman is. For seven days
he stayed erect and made love with her,
until he had had enough.³

Again, in the schooly translation I read when I was in high school, somebody had forgotten to include that part.

But the alley cats were out of the bag. Since we were all reading this translation for the first time together that night, half of my students were surely at that very moment in pop-eyed sync with me, “wtf?”-ing their margins and asking the same questions:

Would the “good people” students tell their parents? Were those parents emailing or calling the principal at the very moment we were all sitting there gawking at these lines? Tomorrow, when the monster lumbered into the school-building to corrupt their young, would a mob of torch-bearing parents send this poor, misunderstood Frankenfreak to his tragic end?

"Help! It's that English teacher!"

All that monster wanted was to give their kids the deepest, most relevant, coherent, and beautiful year of literary studies they would ever receive. And now, because of an unexpectedly graphic scene about what birds, bees, and each of these parents do - or did, at least once, when they made the shiny-eyed wonders brightening my classroom - would it all come down in flames?⁴

And would they make allowances for the fact that I first found the book in the school library? If I went down, should I bring the librarian with me? (Joking. Joking.)

I was jealous, suddenly, of math teachers. They never had problems like this.

But there was nothing to be done, for now, but finish the homework by finishing Book One. In the end, I realized, it all depended on whether these three-week-old high schoolers could handle it. I couldn’t wait to check the chapter annotations I’d assigned.

I finished the chapter and went to sleep.

The Next Day

“Beautiful.”

“Profound.”

“Deep.”

“Lovely.”

I couldn’t believe my eyes. All the students’ annotations sang this section’s praises. Not a single immature reaction.

I was so proud of them. And I was saved.

The class discussion was even better.

“It’s a different culture, so it’s not surprising that sex would be treated with a different outlook,” said one.

Answered another: “The sex scene itself is wonderful for its simple narration of the events we study in biology - the voice is so objective, it’s almost scientific.”

A third: “And that shows how radically different this culture saw sexuality. It’s just another thing in life, described as simply as the weather, or a flower, or a beautiful sunset. It’s not pornographic or anything. It’s just part of life.”

A fourth: “But it’s more than that.”

“Explain that,” I said. “What do you mean?”

This student went on to give the most perfect explication of what happens after the sex scene, and what a deep, beautiful, mysterious, and alien point of view the world’s earliest civilization had, 2,000 years before King David and 3,000 years before Jesus, about the meaning of sexuality.

Before Shamhat

Shades of Shamhat?

“Look at what happens to Enkidu after the sex scene,” he said, “and compare it to who he was before it.

“Before it, Enkidu was this weird wild man, created by the goddess Aruru - in exactly the same way, by the way, that the later god of Genesis created Adam - from clay - which makes me wonder if this isn’t another Judeo-Christian-Islamic borrowing from the older Sumerian/Babylonian culture.

“He was ‘one-third man, two-thirds animal,’ remember: the perfect ‘double,’ just as the god Anu ordered, for the ‘one-third man, two-thirds divine‘ Gilgamesh. And I mean ‘perfect’ in the ‘balancing’ sense too. Remember, Anu said Gilgamesh’s ‘double’ should ‘balance’ him - to bring ‘peace’ to Uruk by making Gilgamesh stop snatching all the new brides from his subjects’ beds.

“But the ‘balancing’ doesn’t stop there,” he continued. “It gets deeper.”

“How?” asked another.

“Setting, basically. Gilgamesh is the king of the first city in the world, and he knows that and is proud of it. He’s proud of civilization.  I would argue he sort of symbolizes it.

“But the setting associated with Enkidu?  ‘Wilderness’ - Nature. Enkidu drinks with gazelles at watering holes, runs with them (and as fast as them), and knows nothing, literally, about cities and civilized humankind.

“So Enkidu ‘balances’ Gilgamesh by symbolizing Nature - the opposite of the city, and its civilization, which literally has a wall to keep Nature out.

“But it gets deeper still, this ‘balance.’ Because contrary to what we’d expect, ‘civilized’ Gilgamesh is not superior to ‘wild and natural’ Enkidu. We see that because Enkidu saves the other animals from the ‘civilized’ hunter’s traps. He’s compassionate, this natural man. And he’s innocent. Gilgamesh, though, is screwing the brides of every groom in town. The civilized king is glorious, yes - he built Uruk’s walls and is semi-divine, after all - but he’s also really flawed by his heartlessness. Enkidu ‘balances’ this, too.

“Finally,” he continued, “Enkidu ‘balances’ Gilgamesh in his physical strength. It’s like Achilles and Hector in the Iliad - perfectly matched superhero types. So that’s it: Aruru did a bang-up job of creating exactly what Anu ordered - a ‘balancing double’ to Gilgamesh.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. Who was this kid? I had to break in: “Did you steal my annotations?” I asked. “Who are you? I haven’t memorized all of your names yet.”

“Not now, Mr. B.,” he said. “I’m on a roll. Don’t interrupt. I’ve only covered the ‘before Shamhat’ Enkidu. I want to get to the ‘after Shamhat’ stuff now.”

Could I adopt this kid? Buy him from his parents? He was too good to believe.

“Wow. My apologies. Go for it.”

After Shamhat

“I’ll keep it short. It’s this: Gilgamesh’s mysterious ’solution’ to the ‘problem’ of the wild man worked brilliantly - though I don’t quite get why. Sex with this prostitute from the goddess Ishtar’s temple transforms Enkidu. And it does it in clear stages. I numbered them when I annotated.

“First, this sacred sex lifted him above the other animals that he used to hang out with. He doesn’t realize it - this is the weird thing - but the other animals do. They all run away from him when he tries to rejoin them at the watering hole.

“It’s mysterious, for sure,” he said, while I fought back exultations over this kid’s genius. “But the best guess I can give is this: All animals have sex, so it can’t be the simple sex that makes the other animals realize he’s no longer like them. So the only thing I can figure is that the poet is trying to say that sex seen as a holy thing - initiation into Ishtar’s mysteries, maybe? - is what separates man from animal. Seen this way, it’s not a brute act with Shamhat.

“And did you notice,” he went on, “that thing where Enkidu tries to run after the fleeing animals - before Shamhat, he was as fast as them, remember - but now he can’t catch up with them? Where is it . . . . yeah, here:

He tried to catch up
but his body was exhausted, his life-force was spent,
his knees trembled, he could no longer run
like an animal [he emphasized this line], as he had before.

–doesn’t that remind you of the story of Samson and Delilah in the Bible? It did me. I tell you, Mr. B., you’re right about that one. You see a million things in Gilgamesh that you thought were unique to the Bible. My preacher says the Bible is ‘the word of God.’ Well if that’s true, God sure seemed to plagiarize a lot from the Sumerians and Babylonians.

“But he also reverses them. Because in the Bible, Delilah is bad for Samson, while in Gilgamesh, Shamhat is good for Enkidu.”

“I never thought of that,” said another. “I think I see what you’re saying.”

“Yeah. It’s all there. The next thing that happens because of Shamhat is deeper still: Enkidu realizes - where is it -

‘his mind had somehow grown larger.
He knew things now that an animal can’t know.’

“So what are these things he ‘knew’? It doesn’t say. But it reminds me of the scene in Genesis where Adam and Eve eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and it doesn’t tell us what they learned either. All it does is show us that they covered their private parts.

“But here, they don’t cover anything, and no god gets angry. Instead, Enkidu just keeps transforming. Since the bell’s about to ring, I’ll rush: the next thing he learns sitting ‘at Shamhat’s feet’ is language and communication:

‘He understood all the words she was speaking to him.’

“And man, those words were interesting:

‘Now, Enkidu, you know what it is
to be with a woman, to unite with her.
You are beautiful, you are like a god.’

“‘You are like a god‘” he repeated. “So what’s happening here? Gilgamesh is ‘two-thirds god,’ remember. Is it okay, Mr. B., to read into this that sex with Shamhat maybe makes Enkidu less of a ‘balance’ to Gilgamesh now?”

“It’s okay to read anything you want into it, as long as you can justify your interpretation with good evidence. And you’re doing fine so far.”

“Because I was thinking that again, it was Gilgamesh that sent Shamhat in the first place. He wants to bring Enkidu over to his ‘civilized’ side. And it seems like it worked.”

“How?”

“Because the next thing that happens is that Shamhat tells Enkidu that he should not ‘roam the wilderness and live like an animal,’ but should instead come with her to Uruk, to Ishtar’s temple, and to Gilgamesh’s palace. And he goes. Because of Shamhat, a temple prostitute, Enkidu is no longer an animal. He’s closer to the gods now; and because of Shamhat, Enkidu is about to become civilized.

“And that’s like Adam and Eve upside-down and inside-out.”

Bizarro-World

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“It’s obvious,” he said. “Eve seduced Adam and the result was God’s curse. Shamhat seduced Enkidu and the result was Ishtar’s blessings of godliness and civilization for Enkidu.”

“Strictly speaking, weren’t Adam and Eve cursed for disobeying their God?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “But it’s still pretty opposite. After all, the gods here aren’t giving any orders at all - the absence of orders is the opposite of their presence, right? - and the result of the seduction is a blessing, the opposite of a curse.”

“Maybe,” I said. “We’ll see what happens. It’s been ten years at least since I read this story, remember - and I’ve never read this version, either. I’ve forgotten most of it. So I’m as clueless as you about what will happen next.”

“There’s just one thing I wanted to ask, though,” he said.

“Shoot.”

“The plot’s really weird. The gods create Enkidu to make Gilgamesh change his ways.  But now, instead, we see Enkidu changing, not Gilgamesh. What’s going on?”

“It’s a mystery to me, too. We’ll see. But you left one thing out.”

“What?”

“You didn’t mention the last way that Enkidu changed: when Shamhat described Gilgamesh to him, isn’t his reaction confusing? The narrator tells us Enkidu ‘felt‘ something ‘deep in his heart . . . . the longing for a true friend.’ So that’s one more point for your theory that Shamhat civilizes him - he wants to escape his solitude and join human society, enjoy friendship.

“Again, that’s what he felt. But what he says is totally unexpected:

‘Take me with you
to . . . the palace of Gilgamesh the mighty king.
I will challenge him. I will shout to his face:
I am the mightiest! I am the man
who can make the world tremble. I am supreme!’

“Those hardly sound like words of friendship to me,” I said. “So maybe the gods’ plan for Gilgamesh is not as off-track as it seems.”

End of Class

The bell rang.  I turned off the alarm, and rose to get ready for work. An interesting bit of fantasy that was. “Too good to believe” indeed? I could only hope. I’d find out after the shower and drive to work.

~     ~     ~

Just kidding. I wouldn’t pull that on you. Here’s the real story:

Most of the annotations from the girls in the class were minor variations on: “ewwwww.” Sometimes three w’s, sometimes ten.

The boys? Smiley faces in the margins.

I wonder if those gender reactions for this age group are cross-culturally similar, or different. And I don’t know.

I imagine I tried to elicit discussions like the points made by the dream student above.

When I explained to them that I was as shocked as they were to read the scene, and was afraid they wouldn’t be able to handle it, they all assured me it was unexpected, yes, but nothing they hadn’t seen before online, on TV, in the movies.

“But it was weird to see it in English class.”

~     ~     ~

Can You Take a Minute?

If anybody has made it this far, I’d appreciate feedback on the three approaches I’ve tried so far in this Gilgamesh series. Number One was straight lecture style; Number Two was told as a “teacher story,” but in the second-person “you” point of view - I wondered if that would make the experience more immediate for readers, but also feared it might get old, especially if I continued it for months. This one was still a “teacher story,” but told in first person, with heavy Socratic dialogue.

If any of you care to share which of the three you think I should stick with, I’d be very appreciative.

Photos:
Belly-Dancer by macwagen
Bizarro World © DC Comics,
used under Fair Use Law

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1. I stole this “wee-wee/hoo-hoo” line from Bill Maher’s brilliant “New Rules” rant about how American Puritanism silenced John Edwards, the most important voice for the poor “since Robert Kennedy,” per Maher. It’s very relevant to the discussions we’re having in this series.
2. And did I later joke in class, “This guy’s a walking Viagra commercial”? Or, “And you thought the Six Days’ Creation was impressive”? Or, “Talk about needing a rest on the seventh day”?  I don’t remember. But if asked, please say that I did.
3. all excerpts taken from Stephen Mitchell’s admirable 2004 translation of Gilgamesh.
4. If you think I’m exaggerating, check out this and this from readers who have seen it happen to other teachers.

33 Comments

• At September 4, 2008, The Day I Thought Gilgamesh Would Cost Me My Job | Beyond School wrote:

  [...] [The Unsucky English series so far: Gilgamesh 1: Dangerous Questions ~ 2: This Post ~ 3: Adam and Eve in Bizarro-World] [...]

• At September 4, 2008, Unsucky English, Lecture 1: On Gilgamesh | Beyond School wrote:

  [...] [This post had major problems in its original draft. I heavily edited it for all you stumblers. Subsequent posts in this series: 2. The Day I Thought Gilgamesh Would Cost Me My Job, a serious farce ~ 3: Adam and Eve in Bizarro-World] [...]

• At September 4, 2008, Narro87 wrote:

  Your posts on this topic are absolutely wonderful! It's a highlight of my day to see another ready to be read. Keep up the amazing work! And as for your style, simply do what's more natural in your mind--all of them are very effective and very engaging.

• At September 4, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

  Thanks for that. Please spread the word. I'm possibly losing a lot of readers uncomfortable with this series. I'd love to find new ones who might appreciate it. :)

• At September 4, 2008, Jack641 wrote:

  Came across your site quite by accident but I've read up on the Gilgamesh series you've had going here. This is some really great stuff; everything so far has been easy to read and fascinating at the same time. I had a teacher in high school who would teach a bit like this, and he really opened my eyes to a lot of things. Surprisingly, no one ever gave him any trouble for challenging us and making us uncomfortable with our preconceived ideas, even though we went to a catholic high school.

  Anyway, reading stuff like this makes me think about a career change. Keep it up; I'll be reading.

• At September 4, 2008, Alyce wrote:

  I stumbled upon the first lecture in this series and have since added your blog to Google Reader. I am loving it!

  I must say that I enjoyed the first post's format the most. With the latter two, the story of Gilgamesh seemed to get lost in the story you were creating of the classroom. We are the students, and I think your brilliance has a better chance of standing out if your writing takes the form of a lecture. Believe me: your thoughts can stand on their own!

  My two cents. :)

• At September 4, 2008, Louise Maine wrote:

  I particularly cared for the third followed closely by the first. Love the posts and will be coming back to them when life is less hectic to digest further. Religion, science... great fuel for the mind...

  Louise Maines last blog post..Wiki woman?

• At September 4, 2008, Hannah wrote:

  Hello!

  I particularly liked the writing style of this one. The first one was enjoyably readable as well, but the second I couldn't finish - wayyyy too much teacher-jargon on how to teach a subject. I was lost.

  I guess I should actually get a copy of this book before continuing... :D

  Hannahs last blog post..What I'm Going To Do With My Life

• At September 4, 2008, Jazzyblueteach wrote:

  The third was definitely my favorite of the three, but you killed me when that alarm went off! Don't ever ruin a perfectly good dream again! I was in awe of this boy wonder and then you had to go and wake up. For shame!!

  Ok, I can say this much. The version I am being forced to read for this Babylon class is not even close to as much fun. I am tempted to suggest a text change. Of course I can read what I want and no one will ever be the wiser. :)

• At September 4, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

  Your teacher was a lucky person.

  If you're thinking of going into teaching because of me, that's ironic - I just left it :)

  School-teaching, anyway.

• At September 4, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

  Thank for that, Alyce.

  I hear you on diluting the message with stories from the classroom.

  I think I just wanted to paint a picture of the silly but very real fears teachers have because of all these social forces at play in schools.

  Now that I've got that out of my system, I'll probably do as you suggest for most future posts.

  Thanks again.

• At September 4, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

  Louise, Hannah, Jazzy,

  Thanks for the feedback.

  Without being defensive at all (I'm really not), it's ironic that my own favorite so far is the second one - "The Day I Thought Gilgamesh Would Cost Me My Job."

  I think it has something to do with the set-up via the Sedaris stories. That "seeing with your ears" syndrome is so real, and Sedaris proves it with "Us and Them" (and what a pregnant title).

  But I know, anyway, that I'm pulled in two directions at least when writing these: to write for the old "edublogger" audience that I said (and meant) I was bored writing for; versus to write for students anywhere.

  I'll figure it out (or not).

  Hey, Jazzy, what translation are you reading? A.R. George? Mitchell has taken some heat for his liberties. He claims to have based them on the most accurate translations - and George's is acknowledged to be that - but others charge him with too much lassitude at times.

  It would be interesting to hear what your prof thought of the Mitchell translation - would love a report back if you do :)

• At September 4, 2008, Tim wrote:

  Hi Clay.

  All of the posts so far are fascinating, but I have to say the first was my favourite, stylistically-speaking, but then I'm neither a student (currently) nor a teacher so maybe I'm not your intended audience.

  In any case, I'm loving this series and can't wait to see where you take it next. Keep up the good work!

  Tims last blog post..http://caananite.stumbleupon.com/review/24728827/

• At September 5, 2008, Michael Doyle wrote:

  I loved all three, but I enjoyed the second the most. I could analyze all the reasons why I love blueberries, too, but I come here to be entertained.

  (I enjoyed the third, and maybe I am too naive, but I've had the rare kid take off in thought in science, and I was going to compare notes, then you woke up. That hurt.)

  Any sort of well-crafted Socratic dialogue is always welcome. (Works well in the class once kids get used to it, but it leaves them a bit exposed. I have to work hard to erase any hint of "aha!" when using it--but if I can get the dialogue going on in their heads after class, I've done my job.)

  Michael Doyles last blog post..First day of school, biology (sophomores)

• At September 6, 2008, Uniasus wrote:

  Well, I totally wish I had you as a teacher in high school. I haven't actually read Gilgamesh, but have always wanted to get my hands on it. I'm enjoying your series immensely, and as for the feedback you requested I liked the second one the least. It might be because I find it hard to imagine myself as a high school freshmen. Personally, I enjoyed your latest edition the best. It was amusing at times, the dialog certainly broke things up and made it less daunting to read, but the information still got across. Your first installment wasn't bad either. I could picture a professor pacing the classroom and accenting his lecture with dramatic hand gestures. That lecture would have stuck.

• At September 6, 2008, Ted Mateoc wrote:

  I stumbled upon this blog, and I really enjoyed reading it.

  Speaking as a current student in high school in NYC, I really enjoyed the Socratic dialogue in this post. The first post and the second post also made incredibly stimulating late-night reading; however, I liked exploring the implications of the main characters' actions.

  What you said concerning indoctrination in your first post really struck a chord with me. Last year, for example, I had an English teacher who was a very nice person, but extremely...in touch with modern ideals, to put it nicely. For example, when we read Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "Chronicle of a Death Foretold," she refused to accept the idea of moral relativism, and that different cultures will have different takes on (among other things) honor killings. And she also exaggerated when grading papers; one time I lost a full 4 points on a paper because I used the term "mankind" instead of "humankind" - she commented that it was a "dangerous term" to use.

  Oh, and I don't know if you've seen

  http://www.somethingawful.com/d/news/ap-reading-exam.php already, but I can actually picture some of my English teachers taking that approach. I found it funny - I hope you will, too.

• At September 6, 2008, Agnes wrote:

  I liked the first straight lecture style. I like to feel like I'm being taught something and not just mildly entertained.

  Keep up the good work though. :)

• At September 7, 2008, Bunny got Blog wrote:

  Well I stumbled upon you literally. I enjoyed all three and my favorite is Lecture 3.

  Keep up the great work.

  Bunny got Blogs last blog post..Bunny’s Bucket List - In Celebration of Dave Freeman’s Life

• At September 7, 2008, diane wrote:

  Never thought about it this way before, but Eden was a "wilderness". No original sin, no journey into the larger world and the future...including technology.

  In Adam's fall,

  Benefited we all

  dianes last blog post..Classroom Rules Part 2

• At September 7, 2008, Michael Doyle wrote:

  [F*ck technology, the internet just ate my last response. And that I am even responding here highlights my hypocrisy. Read at your own risk.]

  Ahem. Of course Eden was "wilderness", that's the beauty of The Fall.

  No original sin, no journey into the "larger" civilized world, an arc that will, I suspect, end disastrously in the next few hundred years. I'm thinking your sympathies lie on the other side of the fence.

  At 3 AM, when a tropical storm howls over my roof, the electricity fails, I (for a moment) can imagine my mortality. I glimpse wilderness, and lulled by my belief in technology and immortality, I fall into an abyss, a Nietzschean nightmare where god is dead, and I have nothing left to hold.

  Before the apple, Adam and his love were in the wilderness, with boundaries. (Clay talks of happiness and limits in an earlier post--reduce the options, and people smile.) Adam dared to eat from the Tree of Knowledge, and got tossed out of the garden.

  Eden was indeed a wilderness without a "future," just the herenow. Before Constantine and his ilk defiled what was worthwhile in the Christian sect, the focus was on the herenow.

  Should Clay live long enough, I hope he tackles the Tree of Knowledge and original sin. (Yeah, I know, ClayClayClayClay, but it is his blog). Clay has bitten me on the nose for my occasional lapses into irrationality, but he gets the gist of the question, and I may be one of the few westerners left who think maybe Adam should have left that apple alone.

  Clay's discussion on Gilgamesh has strengthened my resolve.

  I would gladly trade technology, even my indoor toilet, for that peek into the web of wilderness we are all a part of. We lost our way once we put knowledge above wisdom.

  (Yes, Clay, I'm overstating my case. Still, we need some kind of substitute for that Man With The White Beard, some formal way to acknowledge our limits of knowledge. Many Westerners (particularly those with any power)would not recognize hubris if it smacked them in the nose.)

  I'm ranting. I'll stop.

  But maybe, just maybe, Adam screwed up.

  Michael Doyles last blog post..Science, dogma, and the American Way

• At September 7, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

  Hi Michael -

  I think the "F-bomb" may have thrown you into the spam bucket. (And you know I don't mind colorful language, but I don't think I've ever tossed an F-bomb in these pages, probably out of some hangover from Camp Joy.)

  I take it the bulk of this comment is a reply to Diane, commenting above you?

  As for the rest, I'll only ask you to hold on and be patient. We're only approaching Book Two of Gilgamesh, and by the end, I think you'll find it a pretty superior substitute for the Man in the Gray Beard - the teacher with all the rules and schooliest god I've ever had the displeasure of meeting.

  Seriously, I think you'll be impressed by the way the "Nature v. Civilization" theme plays out in this oldest book.

  And Michael, I've never bitten you in the nose or anywhere else. At most, I've rubbed you behind the ears. As you have me.

• At September 7, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

  Thanks Bunny. It's interesting getting instant reader feedback. Lots of cognitive dissonance, which isn't necessarily bad. What a new world for writers :)

• At September 7, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

  Thank you, Ted. I love the link and hope others follow it for a good sad laugh.

  You point to a variation of schooliness I haven't dwelt on much - the teacher who actually docks you for any "critical thinking" that differs from his/hers. Ugh. I would have fought her on the "mankind" thing, though I'm sympathetic enough to her argument. Half a grade is a harsh way to make a feminist point about terminology.

  Thanks for your help re: style, too. Hope you comment again soon, as seriously, I'm trying to stay true to the intended audience, which is people like you.

• At September 7, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

  The only problem I have with that argument is that the wilderness has no authoritarian rules telling the wild-life what it "shalt and shalt not" do.

  Eden seemed more a sort of theocratic monarchy with Adam and Eve as the lucky goat-herds. They didn't have to worry about predators, foraging, inclement weather, shelter, etc, because it was a fairy land of nude-friendly weather, always-fruitful trees, and toothless lions, etc.

  The "fortunate fall" thing is very Milton. I've always liked Blake for calling the entire notion of an angry god and a guilty humanity as an "invisible worm" that makes us all "sick roses." (That's my reading, anyway, of the great Billie Blake.)

• At September 7, 2008, diane wrote:

  Ah, but you know my feelings on this

  http://tinyurl.com/22wrqw

  Better to have sinned and known

  Than never to have known at all

  dianes last blog post..Transformation

• At September 12, 2008, Unsucky English, Lecture 4: The Blessings of the Flesh (Gilgamesh, Book Two) | Beyond School wrote:

  [...] Dangerous Questions ~ Gilgamesh 2: The Day I Thought Gilgamesh Would Cost Me My Job ~ Gilgamesh 3: Adam and Eve, Backwards (Book [...]

• At September 13, 2008, Peter wrote:

  Awesome posts, really peaked my interest. I really dug the style in the first one, I wish I had a teacher like you in high school!

• At September 14, 2008, Charlie A. Roy wrote:

  I think I need to reread Gilgamesh. I don't remember it being so entertaining during high school.

  Charlie A. Roys last blog post..The Debate on Drug Testing

• At September 16, 2008, Shannon wrote:

  Clay,

  I am currently living in Wichita Falls, TX, getting my Master's in Curriculum and Instruction. I hope to be teaching high school English by Fall of next year. That said, I have been trying to catch up on all the reading I know I should do, and your series of Gilgamesh has been absolutely lovely! I have never even heard of it before, can you believe that?! Now I want to read it on top of my 18 hours of graduate course work. Posts 1 and 3 were my favorite, but your writing style is so amazing and clear that any way you post will bring new insights and ideas. Thank you for your wonderful reads.

  -Shannon

• At September 16, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

  Shannon, it's weird that we in the West fairly ignore the first half of recorded history - I mean the Sumerian and Egyptian above all (not to mention the Chinese, who've been literate for 5,000 continuous years, if memory serves, without any of the "dark ages" breaking Western literacy in Greece for 400 years, and Europe during the Medieval Period - and China's rightly proud of that, I learned while living there).

  We seem to act like civilization started with the Greeks and Hebrews, when they're really at the mid-way point. It's just weird.

  Anyway, this is a horribly convoluted comment. Tired. Just wanted to say thanks, really, for the kind words. And good luck in the classroom (hint: those Sedaris stories mentioned in Lecture 2 are great light vehicles for heavy lessons).

• At September 21, 2008, speroni wrote:

  There were rules in the Eden wilderness before civilization. The punishments were pretty harsh, by and large breaking a rule means death. They weren't authoritarian rules though. They're more subtle than that. I don't want to say the rules were as simple as kill or be killed, but one did have to learn how to survive. The rules kind of revolved around a limited aggression pact. You have to hunt to eat, but you can't go crazy and start killing all willy-nilly. Even with other tribes, you have to fight to protect your territory but it doesn't work well to go commit genocide either. I think one theme in the garden of Eden was when Adam and Eve broke these rules. Not the rule of God says don't eat this apple, but the rules that people had been living by to keep in balance with nature for the hundreds of thousands of years before our brand of civilization came along. Since then we've extinct how many species? Polluted how much of the planet? Our society may well come crashing down around our ears in the next few hundred years. Perhaps not, we do have a pretty good track record for pulling through.

  At the same time there's this idea of the noble savage. That these ancient tribes had more virtue than current humans. I don't know about this, there was still murder and adultery in tribal life. On the other hand it really meant something to be part of your community, not to have it was death. Now, I don't even know my neighbors.

  Still its not the technology thats to blame. Humans a hundred thousand years ago still had tools. Thats part of what defines being human, thumbs are cool. (Aaayyyeeee!) This doesn't take us out of the web of nature though. I own a computer but I was made the same way that all animals are made. I'm at a point in my life where I'm considering making some of my own. Am I less of an animal because I can do this on a space age memory-foam mattress? I'm well aware that I'll be returning to the earth as well. I accept that. I don't envy those who live long enough to make it into nursing homes. I know if you were to ask me at any given moment if I was ok with dying right now, the answer is always going to be no, but in the general sense I'm ok with it. All that and I don't even believe in God. Or if there is something that powerful out there he's literally beyond our comprehension. Its not some father figure with a swishy white beard who wants to save me. (Or in my case condemn me.)

  (I've just ordered my very own copy of Gilgamesh. From stone tablets to amazon.com)

  speronis last blog post..Spore

• At September 21, 2008, speroni wrote:

  I like the style in part one. Sounds more like you're talking to me directly, more engaging. The others were good stories, but felt more like being told a story with its own conclusion and less like a conversation that is starting out.

• At October 1, 2008, Chris wrote:

  I wouldn't worry about picking just one style for all of this. The content is superb. I like the variety in style. Keep it up.

  I don't recommend using this as a venue for extreme experimentation with style, but I do suggest keeping things varied. Your writing has thus far been easy to read, regardless of the style. The variety makes reading the pieces all in one go more pleasant than if they all shared the same tone.

[See here for Part 1: On the Death of Genius for the Sake of College]

The fact is that human beings come into the world with a passion for control, they go out of the world the same way, and research suggests that if they lost their ability to control things at any point between their entrance and their exit, they become unhappy, helpless, hopeless and depressed.
–Daniel Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness, p. 21

No Control

Psychologist Gilbert cites in this section an experiment in which two groups of seniors in a nursing home were given plants for their rooms.  The first group was given the responsibility for watering and keeping the plants alive; the second group was denied any control over the plants’ care, which was the responsibility of the nursing home’s staff.

Six months later, 30% of the seniors with no control over the plants had died; only 15% of the group with control died in the same period.

They did a follow-up study with the same “control” variable to study the roles of control and autonomy in fostering mental and physical health. In this study, youth volunteers began a weekly visitation program to seniors in two groups. The first group was given the autonomy to schedule the visits and decide their durations themselves; the second group had no choice: the young visitors came on a schedule prescribed by the nursing home administration (in cahoots with the experimenters).

Again, two months later, the group with control and autonomy was healthier, taking fewer medications, and showing various other symptoms of increased well-being compared to their state at the beginning of the experiment.

That’s interesting enough¹ - but the more interesting thing happened next, and was completely unexpected:  when the visitation experiment was over, the visits stopped - and so did the exercise of autonomy and control enjoyed by the “happier” seniors.  And within a few months, “a disproportionate number of [seniors] in the high-control group had died.”

Gilbert concludes:

Only in retrospect did the cause of this tragedy seem clear. The residents who had been given control, and who had benefited measurably from that control while they had it, were inadvertently robbed of control when the study ended. Apparently, gaining control can have a positive impact on one’s health and well-being, but losing control can be worse than never having had any control at all (21-2).

Implications for Schools

It should be obvious, but more and more I learn that the obvious should never be taken for granted.  So here goes:

1. Students given some control over the content and demonstration of their learning are happier.

This is an old saw in education, but it doesn’t hurt to support it with psychological research.

2. The basic structure of schools - prescribed course selection, prescribed schedules and durations, prescribed timetables for learning and moving on - are innately “depressing” for students.

In other words, even those students given the freedom, in this or that class, to choose their content and design their own projects to demonstrate learning, are still stuck within a larger system of no control.  For these students, the autonomous classroom is an anomalous blip on the screen of a much larger matrix of no choice, no autonomy, no “passionate control.”

3. If not the norm in schools, student experience of autonomous learning under one teacher may do more harm than good.

Graham Wegner and I touched on this in an exchange a while back², and it bears repeating here: Graham told of hallway talks with students to whom he had given this autonomy the previous year, students now back in the passive mode in their current classrooms. And the students were predictably uniform, if memory serves, in their doldrums. Like the seniors after the visitation scheduling was taken away from them, the students who had control and lost it may have been worse off for that brief moment of learners’ happiness.

The Law of the Fall

Let’s call it the Law of the Fall:  the higher you climb, the harder the fall - especially if you’re pushed from that height.  And the pushers here are the teachers who keep control of everything that happens in their students’ experiences in their classrooms.

The bigger pushers, though - aren’t they the administrators?  I don’t mean to admin-bash here, but only to ask the obvious question: if autonomous learning is the miniscule exception in a school instead of the norm, who is ultimately responsible for that, if not principals?

Conversely, if the loss of autonomy is more damaging than the benefits of its brief possession, might that not mean that administrators have to make a choice? Namely, the choice between requiring all teachers to provide autonomy, or else, paradoxically, requiring that no teachers do?

–

Photo: Waiting by RebelBlueAngel

Bonus: TED Talk with Daniel Gilbert

Gilbert’s Stumbling on Happiness is my kind of scholarship: witty, playful, devoid of the constipated, jargon-stuffed voice of most academics. Reading it, you laugh as you think along.  Here’s a TED talk for those of you interested in learning more about this guy:

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If you like this post, please spread it: (But don't tag it "education." That will bury it.)

1. and you statisticians and scientists are welcome to weigh in with criticisms of the experiments, because I can only trust the authority of a Harvard professor’s citation of it here
2. and Graham, if you can give me the link to that, I’d appreciate. I searched but did not find

13 Comments

• At August 24, 2008, Your page is now on StumbleUpon! wrote:

  [...] Your page is on StumbleUpon [...]

• At August 24, 2008, M wrote:

  And yet another thing to worry about. I am one of "those" teachers. The ones who do away with as much schooliness as possible as we try to move forward in the school environment. The one who kind of sticks out as different.

  So, do I need to change my teaching style back to stifling in order to prevent my kids from crashing back down next year?

  Ugh!

• At August 24, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

  @M, Instead of worrying, maybe share the findings with admin and your department?

  I wouldn't sweat it that much. More of a question than anything. And maybe the long-term benefits of the taste of freedom you provide benefit the students in other ways than "happiness."

  Hm. I should point that out in the post.

• At August 25, 2008, Jon Becker wrote:

  Other bodies of research demonstrate that the vast majority of the variance in teaching practices is within-schools and not between-schools. Some might argue that this is a good thing; teachers should be free to be creative professionals, yada, yada, yada...

  Are you suggesting that all schools should become Summerhill schools? Wouldn't that be interesting...

• At August 29, 2008, Kent Chesnut wrote:

  Clay,

  Great article!

  What a deal! One of the things I want most for my kids... an educational setting that provides the freedom to allow their intrinsic motivation and love of learning to flourish will make them depressed when that is taken away.

  I totally agree that this is true... and have seen it in one of my own children. After a school with some really good experiences, the next year was pretty pathetic.

  However, I view the good experience as a good thing... my child now knows what it is like to really enjoy learning. She may not get to enjoy it right at this moment, but she knows that given the right environment she will! She also seems to have a better understanding of what is going on when classes are not any fun... she doesn't blame herself anyway.

  Just my 2 cents... keep up the great articles.

  Kent

• At August 29, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

  Hi Kent,

  Good points, and I agree. The article was flawed by point three being put too simply. You added the complexity that was missing with your comment :)

  Thanks for the kind words and keep enjoying fatherhood. Sounds like your daughter is lucky to have you.

  Clay

• At August 29, 2008, SchoolFinder Blog wrote:

  [...] Being told to sit and listen is not only difficult, but it could be down right deadly. [...]

• At September 7, 2008, LearningForward » What can we do to help our kids thrive? wrote:

  [...] I read and commented on Clay Burrell’s post “How Freedom Can Depress Students“.   Clay discusses research that indicates that “good” school experiences [...]

• At September 10, 2008, Graham Wegner wrote:

  Clay, I'm sorry that I am so late to this post - probably shows that my head has been in other places of late. I know the conversation you are referring to but I don't think that I blogged about it. I think I shared that anecdote with you during a Skype call late last year.

  The thumbnail version of the story was when I visited the computing lab where a bunch of Year Sevens were working on their "personal research projects". A number of them had been Year Sixes in my 2006 class and I just wanted to see what they were up to. To my surprise one of my brightest and most receptive (to self initiated inquiry learning methods) ex-students was cutting and pasting slabs of text out of Wikipedia into a powerpoint. I expressed my surprise that he would choose to construct his project in a manner that seemed regressive from his 06 work and he just said to me quietly (paraphrased and subject to faulty recall) so his current teacher wouldn't overhear, "Mr. Wegner, I like what we did last year and I liked having so much say over how I did things. Believe me, if I had my own way, I'd like to be still using those ideas and skills. But it's easier and less hassle to do what the teacher wants, in their style, instead of trying to do things my way."

  Graham Wegners last blog post..Just Add Technology And Mix For Instant Engagement

• At September 14, 2008, Charlie A. Roy wrote:

  As one of those administrators mentioned above it works from the other way as well. I often find myself pushing staff to be more creative and give more freedoms to their students. Sometimes the mule stuck in the rut isn't the pencil pusher stuck in the office.

  Another great post!

  Charlie A. Roys last blog post..The Debate on Drug Testing

• At September 15, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

  Charlie, your point (as usual) is well-taken.

  And I don't know why I'm adding this, other than that it's true: I think I'll regret never working in a school you lead. That's not smoke, either.

• At September 15, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

  No worries, Graham. Hope you're well. Life here is too full too.

  Thanks for telling the story.

• At September 22, 2008, speroni wrote:

  I'm just at the tail end of my education "career", I'm finishing up my masters in mechanical engineering while I am working full time as a ME designer for a rather large company.

  I pretty much hated all of school. I was a bright kid, but I also had a knack for picking up on what it was the teacher wanted. I'd sit through class hours at a time diligently taking notes. I'd pick out the key points of what the teacher was looking for and had a pretty good idea of what was on the test. Just a matter of memorizing a few key points and some methodology for problem solving. Nothing out of the box mind you, all problem solving in a school environment has a specific method. I have to admit I really disliked it when a teacher gave us a project that was too open ended, or where we had to come up with too much of our own content. It became impossible to figure out what they wanted. All I wanted was to keep my head down follow the 80-20 rule, get good grades and get the heck out of there. I understood I wasn't really learning, I'm just going through the motions to get a shiny degree so I can land an equally stifling job where I make the big bucks.

  I do keep up on my own education outside of school. Where I can decide whats interesting and work on constructing my world-view as best as I can. I spend a lot of time trying to separate objective reality and my subjective experiences and piecing them together and trying to figure out whats going on in this world. Most of my personal education simply comes from reading a large cross section of books and working hard to keep an open mind. This site does seem to do a good job of lending some ideas, and proposing some interesting reading material. I'll comment often, I look forward to your replies.

  One thing I've learned so far is that it seems most conducive to give the person who assigns your grade or the person who signs your pay check whatever it is that they want. Keep a nice shell of "good" student and "good" worker, with a rather strong core of the real self. Then search far and wide for people who do appreciate the real self.

  speronis last blog post..Spore

Web Legacies Audience

1. Why I Like the Assignment

Again, this series was originally assigned by Dr. Tonya Huber, for a multi-culturalism in education class I took in Mallorca, Spain, five or six summers back. It was an intensely engaging project, so let me summarize the process for anybody interested in the pedagogy:

1. Select any personal belonging as an “artifact” of who you are - or were.
2. Write about it in the personal narrative genre, but connect it in some way to teaching and/or learning.
3. Identify key factors of culture represented by your artifact, and the experience for which it is an emblem. Touch upon those when you write.

That’s about it.  Though not part of the assignment, my own decision to select “artifacts” from early childhood to all later stages of my life made the assignment much richer.  At the end of the ten pieces I wrote over eight weeks (and I decided against publishing the last two here because they seemed sub-par), I’d sketched out a series of memoirs that formed a skeletal autobiography.  It’s not every class that affords an opportunity to write your entire life.  And this is why, I think, those papers didn’t suffer the fate of most of my college writings, which I’d never dream of inflicting upon general readers.  This assignment was different; it didn’t suffer from . . . what’s the word? . . . oh yes: schooliness.

2. How It Felt to Write Personal Narrative Instead of Edu-Stuff

Crickets aside, I have to admit it felt good. It raises an interesting dilemma for a guy who feels a bit cramped by the “edublogger” pigeonhole: Deliver what the imagined audience expects, or what the writer feels like writing?  Just writing that opposition makes the dilemma less interesting by far: it’s a no-brainer, isn’t it?  As soon as I begin writing for someone else, I lose the essence of writing.  So I suspect there will be more of these tangents in the future, and let the readers fall where they may.

Because I have to say:  More and more, I feel like we get the technology and 21st century skills thing, and it’s threatening to become old hat.  In a nutshell, with 30,000 or so new applications in development as we speak - and the number will surely only grow - it seems a fool’s errand to try to grab at them all. Further, all our tools seem reducible to a few modes  (visual, textual, aural, kinesthetic), and a few skills (reading, writing, speaking, listening, and info-finding, -evaluating, and -managing).  More and more I wonder if a few tools for each of these purposes aren’t easy enough to find at will, or simpler still, if most of us don’t already have a sufficient number in our tool-belts.  I feel like I do, anyway, at least somewhat.  And I feel a pull to pull back from the tools, and gravitate more toward meaning when I write.

I’m really much more interested in thinking critically about cultural factors that retard education than I am about tools that, used retardedly, enable us to learn conventional unwisdoms more efficiently. In other words, I want to fight the idols of the mind that we worship instead of question. Since I’ve quit education school-teaching and won’t work for schools again, I can speak the unspoken without fearing for my livelihood - which is the only explanation I can find for the deafening silences in educational weblogs about such idols as religion, patriotism, consumerism, workaholism, and the educational system itself.  It seems to me that “21st Century Education” needs to question ideologies from the Hebrews and Romans to the Cold War far more than it needs to teach the uses of Twitter.

Still, I do use technology when I teach - have been using it in new ways over the last two weeks in my freelance teaching, in fact - so I’m sure I’ll share the occasional item about tech from time to time.  But be warned: I have a box of old journals from the past 30 years. I suspect they’ll be fodder for more Web Legacies, more reflections of my history, and the roles of education and ideas in that history.

3. A Few Take-Aways I Offer from This Series

If you hadn’t noticed, I revealed in these posts that I was a pot-smoking, school-skipping, low-achieving high school student. For those of you who think punitively, that’s cause for suspension and a “bad boy” label. If you got nothing else out of reading this, just notice that that behavior was a mechanism for dealing with the hell that was life incarcerated in a public high school institution.  If I’d had the choice to escape the two-years’ bullying by simply absenting myself from that environment, I quite likely would have felt little need for the pleasures of sedation brought by that weed. (It’s also interesting to note that the popular kids were all heavy drinkers, but that was somehow morally less scandalous than smoking marijuana, though to this day I don’t get the double-standard. I’ve always argued that “stoned drivers” at worst are a hazard because they drive a little too slow, as opposed to your daredevil drunk drivers. And rarely do you find a belligerent stoner getting in your face and wanting to fight¹, the way our worst drunks do. Instead, you get a giggler or navel-gazer, who I’ll take, if forced to choose, every time.)

You also might notice that the only hero in the bad high school years was a closeted gay athlete. Yet another “bad sinner” to punish or, goodness help us, “convert” - or good young man to understand.  Your choice.

I also revealed that I became an above average language user during my teens not by doing homework or assigned readings - I rarely did either, though it was easy enough to get that “A” on that Iliad paper by writing an essay on the Classics Illustrated Comics version of the epic - and that my literacy grew instead by reading (stolen) comic books and sci-fi/fantasy - and later, after high school, literature - with my friends, outside of school. So again, I’m left questioning the value of mandatory high school. I still lean toward the position that it retards growth, rather than accelerating it.

That’s about it for now. Finally:

4. Links to the Entire Web Legacies Series

1. Fear and Trembling at Camp Joy: Unborn Again
2. The Hulk Leads to Hamlet: Reading Despite Teaching
3. Of Jocks and Fags: The High School Bullying Years
4. In the Crumbling Temple of the Dead White Males: The Beatnik College Years, pt. 1
5. Human Sacrifice: The Academic College Years, pt. 2
6. Learning the Enemy’s Language: The Army Years, part 1
7. Teaching Killing: The Army Years, part 2
8. Stereotyping Soldier-Students: The “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Classroom

–

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9 Comments

• At August 9, 2008, Harold Jarche wrote:

  "In other words, I want to fight the idols of the mind that we worship instead of question." Could you imagine if schools only focused on one cognitive skill - critical thinking? You could still cover a myriad of topics, without the constraints of subject mastery. No matter what the subject, it's just grist for the cognitive mill (stole that line from Kieran Egan). If the mill can't process the stuff, it's of no use.

  Harold Jarches last blog post..Blogs and social media for beginners

• At August 9, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

  @Harold, That's so sane it's radical.

• At August 9, 2008, Paul C wrote:

  'So again, I’m left questioning the value of mandatory high school. I still lean toward the position that it retards growth, rather than accelerating it.'

  Summerhill school in England has the motto: 'where kids have freedom to be themselves.' They have a great site to see how essential decisions about their education rests with them. Spend some time at: http://www.summerhillschool.co.uk/

  Thanks for your Web Legacy Series; great introspective writing!

  Paul Cs last blog post..Unleashing a Child's Creativity

• At August 9, 2008, Paul C wrote:

  'So again, I’m left questioning the value of mandatory high school. I still lean toward the position that it retards growth, rather than accelerating it.'

  For some, I think you are right. But for others depending upon the program and teachers, of course, it can lead to empowerment, to finding one strengths, and life long interests. Shaping a program to fit every student would be the ideal.

  Summerhill is an interesting school in England which addresses the genuine interests of all its students. Their motto:where students are free to be themselves. It's worth taking a look at their website:

  http://www.summerhillschool.co.uk/

  Enjoyed your 'web legacies' series very much.

  Paul Cs last blog post..Unleashing a Child's Creativity

• At August 9, 2008, Nate Stearns wrote:

  Thinks for sharing your ideas. It felt very English-teachery with all of the narratives and reflection. It's a great way to start thinking about school next year.

  I've always thought it was interesting that you think that teachers don't comment on "such idols as religion, patriotism, consumerism, workaholism, and the educational system itself." My readings have suggested that if there was really a common thread on those topics it would be a pretty liberal, skeptical take on most of what you listed. How often do you read an edublogger saying, "Hey, American schools don't do a good enough job in persuading kids to love their country." It's possible that the great mass of edublogs are in this vein--but my RSS feed is missing them.

  We teachers tend to be (but aren't always) garden-variety liberals (so am I) and your viewpoints seem to be reasonably similar but perhaps taken a bit farther. Is that fair to say?

• At August 10, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

  @Paul, I agree that schools work for some (though perhaps no school would work for them as well?), and I share your interest in schools like Summerhill and Sudbury. I'm hoping to focus on them in depth in this space soon, and satisfy that curiosity.

  @Nate, I can't say I'm aware of many e'bloggers that address the flag and the cross with anywhere near the levels of skepticism (or outright debunking) that they could receive. School reform in terms of technology, pedagogy, and so forth? Yes, we read a lot about that around here. But the sacred cows are rarely spitted for a bar-b-que. Or am I unaware of some feeds in your reader?

  (BTW, "loving your country" is nothing objectionable, in my book. But jingoism and American exceptionalism are. That's what I had in mind with the "patriotism" reference.)

• At August 13, 2008, Legacy 9: On Traveling Blind (or, “The Reproductive Life of Stereotypes”) | Beyond School wrote:

  [...] my Web Legacies Wrap-Up post, I said I'd decided against publishing the ninth and tenth "Culture Clip" pieces I wrote that [...]

• At August 14, 2008, On the Meaningful, in Quantum Contexts | Beyond School wrote:

  [...] I feel a pull to pull back from the tools, and gravitate more toward meaning when I write. –Web Legacies Wrap-Up, 9 Aug [...]

• At August 16, 2008, Bill Farren wrote:

  Clay: It does seem like many people get the tech and 21st century skills stuff, but unfortunately, that group (those who bounce around the edublogosphere, mostly) is but a very small minority of educators. It's scary how many people in positions to legislate what happens educationally, have absolutely no clue. Their sole goal seems to be, as you say, to perpetuate conventional unwisdoms more efficiently. The unquestioning masses (too often those charged with getting students to think critically) are only too happy to see any measure toward efficiency and novelty as a sign of progress.

  Until schools decide to become places devoted to curiosity, joy, solving real problems, and the fostering of well-being, there will be plenty to write about.

  Keep it coming.

  Bill Farrens last blog post..Myth Busted

(or, The Marlene Dietrich School of Human Relations)

Artifact: Ear Plugs
Date: Early 1990’s-Present
Elements of Culture: Kinesics and Interpersonal Relationships; Proxemics; Values

Commentary:

I thought, therefore I smoked. (Not me in photo.)

During my final years in college I went into study overdrive. The printed page accompanied me everywhere. I usually studied at a coffee-house near my university that was always packed with other students, often friends or acquaintances, who would usually sit around a table in loudly talkative groups. I didn’t want to hear them. I didn’t want to join them. I didn’t want them to join me and interrupt my reading. So I took to wearing earplugs so I could study. They were my salvation.

People would see me in the courtyard and approach to say hello, and rather than say, “Sorry, I’d rather read,” I could simply point to my earplugs to give them the message. I could obliterate social invitations from other groups sitting at ne