comments...

I think ktmguest's comment is interesting and almost certainly true of me — although I'm not completely sure what he/she means by "blame-shifting." I assume ktmguest means that "blame" is in order; the problem isn't that I'm blaming people, but that I'm blaming the wrong people, namely teachers.

I assume this means that I should be blaming my child, or me, or both.

I've thought about this.

At some point this year I decided to "blame-shift" on purpose. That's what makes me a radical, as opposed to a reformer who eschews blogging in favor of "trying to bring about meaningful change," as our guest recommends.



how to succeed in middle school without really trying

part 2

I've mentioned that Christopher is in fantastic shape.

Other children have had a tougher time of it this year. I've been talking to parents, and the stories they tell me are distressing. I haven't asked anyone's permission to write about their children, and I think that some of the things they've gone through at our middle school are so painful that even with details disguised, it would be wrong for me to try to create a disguised version.

All I can say is that some parents feel their children are different now, after 6th grade, from what they were last summer. They aren't smiling the way they used to; their sweet faces are closed. Summer will put them right, I hope. (side anecdote: Ed came home from picking Jimmy & Andrew up at the Y last winter and told me that Jim, the teacher who runs the program — wonderful guy — had said the reason our students do so badly compared to students in other countries is that we have long summer vacations. I almost snapped his head off. If the year-round calendar "movement" picks up steam, I will march in the streets.)

Christopher's face is still sweet. He's still open, trusting, cheerful — and responsible! (How any teacher could miss the connection between responsibility and trust in the world is beyond me.) He likes his school (!), he likes his teachers, and he likes his friends. This summer he's having a blast at camp & he's even reasonably OK about his reading, vocabulary, and math program here at home.

In the spring, when the school planned a 1950s School Spirit day (I'm repeating a story I think I already left in the Comments), Christopher put together his own costume. He was so excited! Then, when he got to school, he discovered that only four children had dressed up for the day. Four. If you didn't wear a costume, you were supposed to wear the school colors, and nobody was wearing the school colors, either.

Think about it. Ed and I have produced one of only 4 children in the entire 6th grade who has school spirit.

This weekend my neighbor hired Christopher for the first time to look after her dogs for two days while they drive their son to camp.

Christopher has remembered the exact time he was supposed to go to her house, without reminding. Apparently he's fixing to become a punctual adult, a quality he didn't pick up from either of us I'm sorry to say.

It's almost as if this year never happened. Christopher is his same self.

His same self, only older and more mature. This feels like a miracle.



how to be on your child's side

Ed and I have both had the sense that our war with the school, which on the face of it sounds like a dreadful idea, turned out to be some kind of Brilliantly Counterintuitive Parenting Strategy. (sorry)

I couldn't understand it.

Then Ed said the reason war-with-the-school worked was simply that it meant we directed our anger at the school, not at our child.

Which is exactly what ktm guest objects to. In this, he/she is typical of the tone set by our own middle school. Our middle school triangulates parents against their children. We are told constantly that our children need to "take responsibility for their learning"; then, when our children get bad grades, we are encouraged to see this as a failure of character, not teaching.

This works. Parents here are tremendously responsible, hard-working people. Most of them were also good students for whom learning and good grades came easily. Suddenly they have children bringing home Cs, Ds, and Fs, and they're shocked. They know their children are brighter than a "D" or an "F" (they're right) so they conclude that the child would have earned an A or a B if only he'd studied.

Then of course we all signed our children's Contract to Improve My Grades: "I am responsible for the grades I receive. I can improve my grades by changing my study behavior." Ed and I are the only parents in the entire 6th grade, to my knowledge, who refused to allow our child to hand the contract back in.



when the baby is crying, the parents are fighting

Years ago, when Jimmy was a baby and we didn't know he was autistic, our family motto was "When the baby is crying, the parents are fighting."

Jimmy cried constantly; he was a very, very difficult baby. We didn't know how to help him, we didn't know what was wrong, we didn't know why he cried so much when other people's babies didn't.

We had as happy a marriage as anyone we knew, but inevitably, at some point, we would snap at each other. When your child suffers, your marriage suffers.

Our middle school stresses children and families. The K-5 schools never, ever did this. Never. Nor does the high school. Our middle schools is the problem child of the district.

More than once children in Christopher's class cried at school when they got their Cs and Ds and Fs returned to them in class. "My mom is going to kill me." "My mom is going to ground me."

Christopher would tell them, "My mom blames the school."

He would!

Imagine how beloved we are!

That kept him safe.

His job was clear. He was supposed to do his homework, behave himself in class and on the playground, and learn.

Those were his responsibilities.

If he did all those things and still got clobbered, we blamed the school. We intend to keep right on blaming the school if things don't change next year, under the new principal.



two moms I know

I know two other moms who took this path.

Both began the year believing that their child had to be responsible, and both adopted the school's definition of the word.

Both found their relationships with their children under stress. Anger, arguments, tears.

One was looking at the possibility that her son would have to attend summer school or even repeat 6th grade. He was failing, and the household was in an uproar.

When we talked in January, she was at her wits' end with her child.

I told her she needed to be at her wits' end with the school, not her son. She didn't believe me, so I pushed.

Finally I said, "Is there any family in town who wouldn't welcome your son into their home."

No.

I said, "J. is a good person. He is responsible. He has good character. He is doing the best he can. It's the school's job to make sure he learns the material they're teaching. They are the adults; they are the employees of the school district; they must teach him."

I didn't talk to her for a few months after that. When I did she told me that that one conversation changed her life! "We don't argue about school any more," she said. "J. comes home and he wants to do his homework. He gets right down to it. He knows he can do it."

This is what a pep talk and a $90-an-hour tutor will do for a kid!

Joking aside, she and her husband did what they had to do. The school was going to fail their child, literally fail him in his case. When they hired the tutor — and $90/hour is money they can ill afford to spend — and stopped all anger about his spacy ways, he soared. His face is still sweet like Christopher's, too.


For my other friend the shift was more gradual. She's a very strong parent. She sets firm rules & lots of them, she enforces her rules, and she expects her kids to do as they're told at home and at school. I sometimes tell Christopher that if he doesn't shape up he's going to go live with my friend for a while. She's that kind of mom.

She was pretty hostile to my blame-the-school philosophy at first.

I wore her down.

That's a joke, though there's some truth to it, I think. I'm perfectly happy to use the words "I blame the school." What I mean, though, is that I hold the school accountable — and after I've said this a few dozen times parents realize that they agree.

None of us is paying the school to teach responsibility.

We are paying the school to teach reading, writing, and math.

Over time, I think, my friend simply stopped believing the school narrative.



all your children are belong to us

Middle schools slam the gates shut. Childhood is over; parents stay out.

That's the message. I've heard this from parents everywhere.

A mom who pulled her child out of the school reminded me that last year, at the 5th grade graduation ceremony, the middle school principal told parents, "Your children are mine now."

This fall, at back to school night, he told us, "This is the year your child will stop talking to you. So come to us. Your children talk to us, and we'll know more about your child than you do."

That's pretty close to a direct quote.

If your middle school principal or teachers make sounds like this, it's time to set limits.

You don't need to be in open conflict with the school. But you do need to make clear to your child that you are still the parent. You are still the parent, you are still in charge, and you, not the school, will decide what he needs to do to be considered a responsible human being.

The school's job is to teach content.

And that's it.





Karen on college teaching

Karen's statement is beautiful.

Most Americans idealize teachers, and this is why:

I am both a parent and a college professor. My teaching philosophy is that the teacher sets the tone. I am also always mindful that as a teacher, I am modeling behavior.

Do I want them to take responsibility? Yes, I do, and I model that at every opportunity. For example, I broke my ankle last semester and was not allowed to put weight bearing pressure on it for six weeks. Just getting through the day became a challenge. However, I missed only one class and that was to have the cast put on; that appointment was dictated by the orthopedic surgeon. I also took great pains to connect the dots for my freshmen students to make sure they understood that while it was a challenge for me to be there, I was still there. I turned my misfortune into a teaching moment.

I am also mindful that while I am the teacher, I am also a student. My goal is to always be learning--in every way possible. That means I have to see the world through my students' eyes and it also means that I have to take responsibility for my own actions as well. Translated into action for me, that means that I am actively engaged in the process of learning.

For example, I can rant and rave and tell students that if they don't proofread their papers, there will be consequences. However, what I have learned from getting in the trenches with students is that sometimes it's a lack of knowing how to proofread effectively (it's a skill that can be taught), and sometimes it truly is carelessness. However, sometimes the students just don't know the rules of grammar, which is an entirely different problem. If you don't know how to use a comma properly in the first place, then proofreading isn't going to help all that much.

I also understand full well the importance of paying attention to detail. Without that skill, the students will have a hard time passing their introductory accounting class. So, in the freshmen class that I teach, my goal is to purposely and mindfully structure my assignments in such a way that I am helping the students grow that skill. Put simply, if I want my students to develop a skill or habit, then I need to teach it, and then provide opportunities for them to practice it--to reinforce the skill.

I also have the philosophy that if what I'm doing isn't achieving the objective I wish to achieve, I need to examine and understand why that is. Did I explain (teach) the concept in a way that the students understood it? Were my expectations clearly stated, or did I unintentionally surprise them? Is it them, or is it me or is there a design flaw with the system? In short, I suppose I approach such matters as possible problems to be solved. That is, I use critical thinking and problem solving skills.

Don't misunderstand me--I am both confident and competent. It's just that I am always striving for perfection--to do the best job that I can at teaching and at reaching the maximum number of students possible. I want all of my students to succeed and I want to help them do so, if they are motivated to do so. And I want them to understand that they are accountable for their actions and that there are consequences for their actions.

I don't know what grade or subject you teach, or whether your students are motivated or not, but I am curious about your method for handing out homework papers. Why is it that the students don't seem to able to pick up the papers on the way out the door? If they are typical kids, the minute that class is over, they may be focused on talking to their friends. Or, perhaps they are trying to get to their next class on time. Or, maybe they just don't care. That's a different and more difficult issue and one that would require a bit more reflection and analysis. But, assuming that they do care and are motivated to succeed, why not hand the papers out during class?

I also want my students to understand that they are accountable for their actions and that there are consequences for their actions, both positive and negative. However, I am also mindful of what I call the human motivation factor. I always want a student to believe that they can succeed if they are willing to put in the time and effort that is needed to do so. That is not the same as a harsh and punitive approach to grading.

For example, the infamous deduction of 20 points for failing to label the graph. In the first place, that seems pretty harsh for 6th graders. Did the teacher just assume that this procedure had been taught to automaticity in the earlier grades? Or, did she teach it herself? Did she provide a rubric with the consequences spelled out? Don't misunderstand me--I think that it's appropriate that this is automatic. My question is--did she teach it, or know full well that someone else had? Also, what was her objective with deducting 20 points--was it "teach a lesson?" If so, what lesson was she trying to teach? And perhaps what I'm also getting it (and what the parents are getting at) is: What is her teaching philosophy? Why is she doing what she is doing? What is she trying to accomplish, and are the methods she is using the best way to achieve this?

I would guess that the KTM readers and the IMS teachers want the same thing. We want our kids to have solid, fundamental skills, we want them to love learning, and to be respectful of others. We want them to pay attention to detail, to be careful readers, and to learn to take responsibility for their actions. In short, we want our children to have all the tools they need to be able to survive and thrive in the world as productive citizens. However, what we may not agree on is the most effective method to get there. And that, I think, is the source of frustration for many parents.

I'm going to send this to all my friends.

And I'm going to re-read it often.



-- CatherineJohnson - 03 Jul 2006

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LevittAndDubnerBookList 04 Jul 2006 - 12:06 CatherineJohnson



I just came across this list of recommended books from Levitt & Dubner.

I've already forgotten which blog put me onto this...possibly Marginal Revolution, but it could have been Gene Expression, which has an interview with Steven Pinker.


-- CatherineJohnson - 04 Jul 2006

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HappyJulyFourth2006 04 Jul 2006 - 12:20 CatherineJohnson







-- CatherineJohnson - 04 Jul 2006

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UlyssesGrant 05 Jul 2006 - 12:18 CatherineJohnson



Terrific book review ($) in today's Sun:

"I have carefully searched the military records of both ancient and modern history, and have never found Grant's superior as a general," wrote Robert E. Lee. This statement is, in essence, the argument of John Mosier's "Grant: A Biography" (Palgrave Macmillan, 224 pages,. $21.95), an outstanding contribution to General Wesley Clark's Great Generals Series. Indeed, Mr. Mosier's brief for Grant might be called a thesis biography, one that counters other biographies ranking Grant lower as a general, using criteria Mr. Mosier deems suspect.

[snip]

What distinguished the 40-year-old Grant, Mr. Mosier emphasizes, was his aptitude for the job of generaling and his rugged determination to forge ahead no matter the obstacles. Grant shared with Napoleon an affinity for mathematics, an ability to "compute precisely all the quantitative data required to make correct decisions on the battlefield." This was not a matter of formal education. In fact, Grant taught himself algebra, an indication, Mr. Mosier suggests, of a highly developed "capacity for abstract thought." Grant's predecessor, George McClellan, had more distinguished academic credentials, but McClellan consistently overestimated the Confederate army's strength and lacked Grant's will to engage the enemy in battle.

Just as important, Grant had a talent for drawing and painting. Both were required skills at West Point at a time when soldiers were not issued contour maps and were expected to make their own. Wherever Grant fought, Mr. Mosier observes, he had in his mind a visual sense of the terrain. Although Mr. Mosier does not make the comparison, again it is Napoleon, a superb map reader, who comes to mind.

Finally, as a third example of what made Grant great, Mr. Mosier mentions his subject's voracious reading of history and fiction. Grant favored novels that gave him insight into human nature and helped him - like Admiral Nelson, I would suggest - identify closely with the men he sent into conflict. At a time when most armies were filled with the dregs of society driven by an arrogant officer class, Grant treated his citizen-soldiers with respect.

But there is more to Grant's reading of literature and history that sets him apart from, say, Henry Halleck, Grant's commanding officer for much of the early part of the Civil War. The bumptious Halleck considered himself a military theorist and openly scoffed at what he thought of as the overly aggressive Grant's ignorance of the latest premises of modern warfare. Grant stupidly went right at his enemy, taking huge casualties, rather than concentrating on gaining ground and occupying population centers. The trouble with Halleck's approach - as with McClellan's - was that the South concluded that the Yankees did not want to fight, a belief that reinforced Lee's reputation for invincibility, heartened the Confederacy, and demoralized Northern armies and public opinion.

Grant proceeded not by theory but by examining the conditions in which he had to fight, the concrete particulars of history, not abstract models of how war should be fought. [ed.: Grant was a fox, Halleck a hedgehog.] Just as crucial was his ability to translate his vision to his fellow officers. Grant's lucid and engaging memoirs have brought him acclaim, and Mr. Mosier suggests that that same clarity is evident in Grant's orders to trusted colleagues such as Sherman on his way to the siege of Vicksburg:

You will proceed, with as little delay as possible, to Memphis, Tennessee, taking with you one division of your present command. On your arrival at Memphis, you will assume command of all troops there. ... As soon as possible, move with them down the river to the vicinity of Vicksburg, and with the co operation of the gunboat fleet under the command of Flag-officer Porter proceed to the reduction of that place in such manner as circumstances, and your own judgment, may dictate.

"Your own judgment" - a key phrase in Grant's lexicon. Once, when he was not as certain of an officer as he was of Sherman, Grant actually accompanied an attacking force a few miles to steel his subordinate's will.

Mr. Mosier has little patience with Grant's critics. Speculation about the general's drunkenness, press criticism that he recklessly risked lives in battle, and just about every other fault attributed to Grant are dismissed. If Grant ever failed, it was because he relied on certain of his associates too much. Such misplaced trust is what got him into trouble as president, Mr. Mosier suggests.

Unlike Napoleon or Wellington, Grant had to superintend far-flung battlefields; his illustrious predecessors remained with a single attacking force. Grant often fought on the kind of difficult terrain (think of his titanic struggle with Lee in the Battle of the Wilderness) that European armies avoided. Grant is greater, in Mr. Mosier's book, because he surmounted more difficult obstacles than his competitors took on.

I've felt for awhile now that math & drawing go together.

Actually, I wouldn't be surprised to discover that "profound understanding of fundamental anything" and drawing go together, especially after reading David Mulroy's brilliant defense of sentence diagramming in The War Against Grammar.

This summer Christopher and I are doing Singapore bar models for math and sentence diagrams for grammar.










-- CatherineJohnson - 05 Jul 2006

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DougFractionTilesRevisited 05 Jul 2006 - 23:07 CatherineJohnson



Here's a cool lesson to do with Doug's fraction manipulatives (pdf file):





source:
Primary Mathematics 2B US Edition





Doug's fraction tiles & number lines (pdf files)

blank number lines

symmetric number lines

positive number lines

negative number lines

fraction manipulatives

Doug's fraction tiles w/equiv decimal & percent

fraction tiles with equiv decimal & percent b&w



-- CatherineJohnson - 05 Jul 2006

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TextSavvy 06 Jul 2006 - 00:58 CatherineJohnson




right here



-- CatherineJohnson - 06 Jul 2006

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SingaporePlacementTest 06 Jul 2006 - 16:43 CatherineJohnson



So this morning I took half of what is supposed to be a 30-minute placement test given to a student who has finished New Elementary Mathematics Textbook D.

I think it took me 2 hours.

To do half.

I was thinking that was OK, because New Elementary Mathematics Textbook D is a 9th grade text.

It's not.

It's a 7th grade text.

In Singapore, I'm still in 7th grade.

I'm halfway through Saxon Algebra 1, I scored 80% correct on the ALEKS algebra 1 assessment, and I thought the placement test (pdf file) for Thomas Jefferson High School of Science and Technology, reportedly the best math and science high school in the country, was a breeze.

That translates to 7th grade in Singapore.




juku city

Thomas Jefferson, you may recall, is the public school that's so competitive and respected that colleges all over the country are recruiting its graduates and giving them 4-year scholarships. Parents move to Fairfax County so they're in the district, then send their kids to Kaplan & KUMON to prepare them for the test. People call the area "Juku City."

I passed that test.

Easily.

Not the logic part. I passed the mathematics part. Questions 1-120, p 36-56. I may not have missed a single answer, and all the items were easy.

Then it takes me two hours to do 11 questions on an 8th grade placement test in Singapore. And those were just the algebra problems; I didn't even bother with the 9 items on geometry. (I didn't understand some of the terms, which may be different in the U.S., and I haven't practiced geometry enough to remember various other terms I knew a couple of months ago.)

arrgh




I need a personal organizer

So I'm looking at these 11 items, asking myself why exactly they should consume 2 hours of my life.

They're not hard.

I conclude that I'm having a major problem organizing my work.

I write things down, then lose track of what they refer to, then go back to the beginning and try to figure out what part of the problem I was doing, then I run out of paper so I'm flipping back and forth trying to find the figures I wrote on the preceding page.....it's pathetic. If I had to take Ms. K's math class, the school would have to institute corporal punishment to deal with my level of math-paper chaos. Twenty points off wouldn't even begin to cover it.

The other problem is that I don't have enough insight into these problems yet to take shortcuts & trust that my shortcuts will work, so I'm writing out every step and then some, which makes everything worse.

I don't know what happened to me on item 9:

A man bought 450 books for $1,350. He sold half of them at a profit of 20%, 150 of them at a profit of 10%, and the rest at a loss of 4%. What was his gain percent, to the nearest percent?

I just could not do this problem.

I came up with one wrong answer after another, and the answer I finally settled on was wrong.

It's not a hard problem.

When I checked the answer key, and found out my answer was wrong, it took me about 5 minutes to do it right.

Looking at the problem now, I think my difficulties may have had almost nothing to do with actual math.

I think the obstacle was working memory, organization, and eyesight. Can't remember if I've mentioned this: I can't wear my glasses to do close work any more. My glasses are bifocals, so in theory I'm wearing reading glasses, but....I can't wear them. They strain my eyes. (My optometrist, Mel Kaplan, says it's not the glasses, it's me. He also says that progressive lenses are horribly stressful.)

I don't need glasses to read, but, otoh, I do need strong light to see by, and dark ink on the page. High contrast. Otherwise everything starts to look kind of gray. So naturally I opted to take the test in dim light using a pencil with soft, thick lead. That's because I have no common sense-y.




I've decided not to panic

I don't think this is quite as bad as I thought.

Saxon Algebra 1, which is algebra integrated with geometry, is supposed to be a 9th grade book, but I'm going to have Christopher using the book at the beginning of 8th. Singapore puts me midway through 7th grade; Saxon puts me midway through 8th.

I'm further behind when you take geometry into account, but not by much.

I do have a question about problem solving and word problems in Saxon. In 70 lessons, I've done almost no word problems. Algebra 1/2 focuses on word problems, and I skipped that book. If the next 50 lessons don't contain a lot of word problems, I'll do the problems in my other books: Dolciani (Dolciani Teacher Edition), Jacobs (Jacobs Teacher's Edition), Johnson.




maybe I'll panic just a little

So....what does this tell us about our best versus their best?

The kids who compete to get into Thomas Jefferson are our top math students.

Our top kids have to go to cram school & Kaplan to pass the entrance exam for Thomas Jefferson in 8th grade.

I'm thinking that in Singapore an average graduate of 6th grade wouldn't have any trouble with it.

That gives me an idea.

Why don't I take the 6th grade test?

Why don't I take the 6th grade test with the reading lamp TURNED ON this time?

Bonne idee.


[pause]


Well, I can't say the 6th grade test was a lot easier, though I did pass (89% correct), and I did all the geometry problems but one.

There's no way the kids in Ms. K's class could pass this test. The 2 to 4 mathematically gifted kids in her two classes might pass, though I wouldn't bet on it. Nobody else.

If I were placing myself in a Singapore Math text, I think I'd start at the beginning of New Elementary Mathematics Textbook 1. Grade 7. [update: maybe not. Following KUMON's & Engelmann's injunction to start before your level, I should place myself in 6A. sigh. Sometimes it seems like I'll never make it to calculus.]

Which I just so happen to have sitting here on my bookshelf. My neighbor bought it a year ago, then never used it. I'm going to take a look.

I'm thinking I should probably also skim through Primary Mathematics 6A & 6B and see if there are Units I ought to do.




Table of Contents

Singapore Math placement tests
ALEKS assessment



-- CatherineJohnson - 06 Jul 2006

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SingaporeCalculus 06 Jul 2006 - 22:29 CatherineJohnson



There isn't any.


That makes sense to me.

I've been dipping into the literature on what skills people actually need to earn a "middle class wage."

Calculus isn't one of them.

Entry-level algebra is.

IIRC, high school in Singapore ends earlier than high school here. When students graduate they've done a huge amount of work in algebra & geometry; they also seem to take a year of trigonometry.

No calculus.

No proofs, either, I don't think. (cursory impression)



search words: jobskills
Anthony Carnevale
How Computers Are Creating the Next Job Market



-- CatherineJohnson - 06 Jul 2006

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ACanadianMoment 06 Jul 2006 - 23:49 CatherineJohnson



here




Meanwhile we are experiencing many French moments here at home. We watched the French news tonight at dinner. The whole thing was about sports, except for two minutes devoted to Israel/Gaza (the captured soldier is French — holds dual citizenship — so the country is in an uproar) & another 3 or 4 on the anniversary of the London bombings.

Then it was back to sports. (Announcer: "....sadly there were four fatalities during the celebrations....")

Martine called her friend in Reims at 11 last night, and her friend held the receiver out the window. Martine could hear thousands of people screaming & shouting. Her friend said it was going to go on like that until 1 in the morning. The games are being broadcast in huge stadiums, so nobody's sitting around at home watching; they're out in force, in the stadiums, in the streets, flags everywhere.

I'm threatening to root for Italy, but Ed says if I do I can't watch with them.

French World Cup shirts sold out 'til September.



Ed is pulling Christopher out of Spanish & switching him to French. He wanted him to take French in the first place, but I said Spanish is our second language now; nobody speaks French. It was a bone of contention.

So Christopher took Spanish & learned perhaps 50 words of Spanish vocabulary, which was the lion's share of the curriculum as far as I could tell. No sign of verbs, grammar, or pronunciation. Then he got a C for the course. My friend's kid got a U. I don't even know what a U stands for, and neither does she. Is it an F or an Incomplete? I need to spend more time hovering.

I asked Christopher, How did this happen?

He doesn't know.

We blame the teacher.

heh

                        2006 FIFA World Cup Store

a Canadian moment
World Cup win
World Cup win part 2
BHL weighs in
coupdeboule
read my lips

html authoring in French



-- CatherineJohnson - 06 Jul 2006

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DogOfHelicopterMom 07 Jul 2006 - 00:31 CatherineJohnson



t-shirt of helicopter mom

Helicopter Mom

dog of helicopter mom







His name is Surfer.

We got him when he was a puppy at the North Shore Animal League. He'd been brought in from a shelter in Tennessee, and the lady at the pet supply shop next door to North Shore told us he was part shepherd and part coon hound. She turned out to be wrong, though. Once Surfer was grown up, people who know dog breeds said he's part Rottweiler, part pit bull.

Surfer won "Scariest Pet" in the Picture Pet Contest at Main Street School, 2005.

Any questions?



-- CatherineJohnson - 07 Jul 2006

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AlanTuringAndAutism 08 Jul 2006 - 00:42 CatherineJohnson

ADVANCED mathematics is a hard sell, but David Leavitt's biography of Alan Turing, which was published in America last December and is just coming out in Britain, will give even the most innumerate reader an idea of the beautiful and fascinating world he is missing.

Mr Leavitt does not use the word, but in today's parlance Turing, a brilliant misfit who laid the foundations of modern computing and cryptography, would probably have been called autistic. He took things very literally, was almost incapable of lying, cared little for his outward appearance, and was rather bad at understanding what other people felt or meant. None of that helped him live a happy life.

source:
A man who counted
THE ECONOMIST
Jul 6th 2006

autism quotient
Alan Turing & autism

The Geek Syndrome

-- CatherineJohnson - 08 Jul 2006

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AutismQuotient 08 Jul 2006 - 14:03 CatherineJohnson



I'm not sure I've ever taken this test.

I probably don't want to know.



oh wow

I'm way not autistic.

That's what I always thought, but I figured I must be lying to myself given the two autistic kids and all.







Simon Baron-Cohen



Alan Turing & autism
autism quotient

The Geek Syndrome



-- CatherineJohnson - 08 Jul 2006

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IndoorPlantsBlog 08 Jul 2006 - 18:39 CatherineJohnson



Indoor Plants looks fantastic. Finding this blog today is another synchronicity event, since he's got a terrific post on hydroculture which relates directly to the fact that, yesterday, Ed told me someone lost half of the indoor water reservoir pot I ordered a couple of months ago so he planted the big spiky plant Jimmy brought home from school without it.

Now here's Indoor Plants telling me that was a big mistake.



update: water reservoir located in garage






EarthBox investigation with Christopher
adjustable reservoir for indoor plants
EarthBox reminder
self-watering pots and planters from Denmark
hydroculture
sub-irrigation



-- CatherineJohnson - 08 Jul 2006

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SubIrrigation 08 Jul 2006 - 20:35 CatherineJohnson



I think these things are ingenious.

I'm envious, because a year ago I was trying to figure out some way to create my own sub-irrigation system for indoor plants, and the wicking idea never crossed my mind.

Especially not wicking with shoelaces.

I think Ed is game for buying two of these for the living room —

source:
wrapables

It's called "sub-irrigation" because you're irrigating the subsoil, not the topsoil. The very thought of not throwing my houseplants into shock every other week when I remember to water them is enough to make me smile. My farmer background is finally revealing itself....apparently I actively dislike the whole notion of damp topsoil.

Who knew?

-- CatherineJohnson - 08 Jul 2006

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ListMania 09 Jul 2006 - 13:55 CatherineJohnson



I'm not a collector (at least, I don't think I am) but I do have a collection of Listmanias sitting in an Entourage Note. I found a short one I especially like today: Reviews by Joy Steadman. Actually, it's not a listmania. It's an Amazon reviewer "profile."

I found it because Dr. Steadman posted a review of Ericsson's book The Road to Excellence: The Acquisition of Expert Performance in the Arts and Sciences, Sports, and Games....which I'm just now noticing costs a mere $82.97.

hmmm

So I may have to pass on the book, but the 1957 Auburn University National Champions Orange T-Shirt is calling to me, even though I don't like the color orange, and it's good to have the reference to Eric Nestler's Molecular Basis of Neuropharmacology: A Foundation for Clinical Neuroscience. I'm sure I'll revive my interest in drugs and neuropharmacology at some point, and when I do Nestler's book will be my first purchase.



Back to expert performance. Yesterday I read the discussion section of K. Anders Ericsson, Ralf Th. Krampe, and Clemens Tesch-Romer, The Role of deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance (pages 393-400).^*

Incredible.

question:
can you predict future expertise from early demonstrated ability?
(can you spot a math brain when he or she is 2?)

answer:
no

For once, the answer really does appear to be a simple no, as opposed to a complicated, nuanced, depends-on-the-circumstances kind of no.

More on this later.

In the meantime, the good news is that the Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance is now out. That probably has to be a purchase, in spite of the $65 price tag.





TOC & excerpt




^* You can Google the full text, which I found on the Freaknomics site, or just take the spaces out of this link: http: //www. freakonomics.com/pdf/DeliberatePractice(PsychologicalReview).pdf. For some reason I can't get the link to display correctly on ktm.



The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance
Psychological Review
1993, Vol. 100. No. 3, 363-406
K. Anders Ericsson, Ralf Th. Krampe, and Clemens Tesch-Romer
http: //www. freakonomics.com/pdf/DeliberatePractice(PsychologicalReview).pdf
freaknomics post on Ericsson's work, with links
do what you love



-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Jul 2006

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YouGottaBeAHelicopterParent 09 Jul 2006 - 18:36 CarolynJohnston

I have a neighbor, Jen, who is British, a former audiologist and then bobby in the UK, who moved here with her husband a few years ago, and who is now waiting for permission from our government to work here, so that she can work as a policewoman. The trouble with Jen's green card is a whole other story about which I won't wax bitter... suffice it to say that she would be a huge asset to policing in our area, and I wish to heck they would get out of the way and let her work.

In our neighborhood, our kids are getting older; they are entering their teens, and a few of them have encountered what I would call serious trouble lately, with misbehavior and substances. These are kids we know well, whose parents we know well, whose parents are what anyone would call good people. Our own kids hang out with these kids; we know them and talk to them; we were somewhat counting on the tight-knittedness and watchfulness of our neighborhood to get the kids through, but for some of the kids, it hasn't been enough.

So I was out on a walk with Jen, and I asked her what the heck was going on with the kids; what is it, really, that we might be doing wrong as parents? And she told me that there is one factor that, more than anything, determines whether a kid will run into trouble or not, and that is: Whether they are supervised. It's not whether they are getting attention: it's a particular kind of attention, the nagging, watchful kind of attention.

"Kids who stay out of trouble have parents who always know where they are," Jen said. "If their kids are out for a night, then they want to know that there is a responsible adult wherever it is that they're going to be, and they want that adult to be available to speak with on the phone. If the kids run into a trouble situation, their parents come and get them no matter what time it is.

"Their parents tell them that drinking and drugging are unacceptable and will not be tolerated. It doesn't matter if the parents are being completely hypocritical, either," she said. "It's still important to say it, and mean it, and make it stick. The kids will hate it and fight it, but it will keep them out of trouble and on some level it's really what they want. It extends to homework, too. Kids need their parents to ride them to do their homework; they need to know that their parents care about that. The parents need to be involved in their kid's eduation, too, to the point of being involved and working with the teachers to ensure their kids are learning."

So there you have it; the word of an English bobby (who, furthermore, is now clerking as a volunteer in the Sheriff's office in our county in order to be able to hit the ground running once she is able). Helicopter parenting is good. And when it comes to schools, we helicopter parents just want to know that there is a responsible adult wherever our kids are going to be.

-- CarolynJohnston - 09 Jul 2006

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DeliberatePracticeAndExpertPerformance 09 Jul 2006 - 23:03 CatherineJohnson

I think this article is so important to the pro-content side of the math wars that I'm including the URL here, in a separate post. For some reason, ktm doesn't display it correctly, so I've inserted spaces:


The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance
Psychological Review
1993, Vol. 100. No. 3, 363-406
K. Anders Ericsson, Ralf Th. Krampe, and Clemens Tesch-Romer
http: //www. freakonomics.com/pdf/DeliberatePractice(PsychologicalReview).pdf


[pause]


wow

EconoLog says that both Gregory Minkew and Tyler Cowen "recommend" the freakonomics column on Ericsson's research. They've asked their commenters how to use the findings to improve economics education. Looks like the lawyers have already beaten them to it: The Rigorous Application of Deliberate Practice Methods in Skills Courses by Larry C. Farmer & Gerald R. Williams (pdf file)

do what you love
freaknomics post on Ericsson's work, with links
Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Jul 2006

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WorldCupWin 09 Jul 2006 - 23:19 CatherineJohnson





Ben Radford/Getty Images
Fabio Grosso's teammates had to chase him halfway across the
pitch to celebrate after his shootout goal clinched the championship.
NY TIMES


We have woe here at home, but this is a great photo so I'm posting it.

Christopher said, "Martine is going to be angry tomorrow."

Ed said, "She's not going to be angry. Maybe sad or depressed."

I'm going with angry.



a Canadian moment
World Cup win
World Cup win part 2
BHL weighs in
coupdeboule
read my lips

html authoring in French

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Jul 2006

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NewsFromSingaporePart2 10 Jul 2006 - 14:03 CatherineJohnson



via Inside Plants Live, who turns out to be the E.D. Hirsch of indoor plants (or maybe the Steven Jobs or Bill Gates):

SINGAPORE - It was the innocuous little notice on the bulletin board in the stairwell of my apartment building that reminded me that an invasion was underway: "Mr. Chan in 50A discovered a monkey in his kitchen Tuesday night," the notice said.

"If you see this monkey, please notify the management right away."

[snip]

To the newcomer, Singapore may seem like a thoroughly modern metropolis, with busy highways, skyscrapers and malls, blissfully absent from the perils of life on the frontier. Indeed, it is common to hear Singapore criticised as lifeless and sterile.

But this is an illusion, as any macaque can attest. Urbanites who chance to relocate here should be forewarned that Singapore is not far removed from the steamy tropical jungle it was hacked out of less than 200 years ago. Occasionally the jungle hacks back.

[snip]

Singapore was once covered - and small parts of it still are - by primary rain forest. As recently as the 1860s, the jungles of central Singapore supported a resident population of tigers.

The tigers celebrated the arrival of Chinese immigrants by eating them - up to 200 a year until the British sent Indian convicts into the jungles to cull the "gentlemen in stripes."

[snip]

Some animals are recent arrivals from neighbouring Malaysia, where development of palm plantations along the coast drives some to paddle across the Straits of Johor to Singapore. In 1990, elephants swam from Malaysia to one of Singapore's outlying islands, where they were captured and repatriated.

More recently wild pigs (Sus scrofa) have crossed to Singapore itself, with one wild boar imposing himself as an unwelcome volunteer greens keeper at a local golf course.

Other animals long believed extinct in Singapore have also been spotted, sometimes only as roadkill, among them the leopard cat (felis bengalensis tingia) the palm civet (paradoxurus hermaphroditus), the Sunda pangolin (Manis javanica) and the Oriental pied hornbill (Anthracoceros albirostris).

But the most common interlopers leave no footprints at all. Two to three times a week, Singapore police receive a call from a resident reporting a visit by one of Singapore's many snakes.

Black spitting cobras (naja naja sputatrix) are endemic to Singapore, though fortunately rare.

Much more common is the reticulated python (python reticulatus).

While most animals that tour Singapore's human settlements do so via the island's extensive tree cover, the pythons have turned the island's vast sewer system, which is vital for preventing torrential tropical storms from flooding the city, into their own subway network.

When they tire of the usual forest fare of monkeys and birds, they venture downtown in search of rats, cats and dogs.

One day a few years ago, I happened by some excited construction workers on my street who were extracting a python from the sewer. The snake was at least four meters, or 13 feet, long.

[snip]

But the most dangerous creature you are likely to run into in Singapore is not the python, the spitting cobra or the crocodile, but rather the mosquito.

I suffered an abject demonstration of this recently when I contracted dengue fever, a very painful virus transmitted by the aedes mosquito (aedes aegypti).

[snip]

Fear not. Falling afoul of one of Singapore's resident creatures is about as likely as getting hit by lightning.

Of course, Singapore's frequent tropical thunderstorms also make it one of the world's lightning-strike capitals.

Earlier this year, a professional soccer player was struck dead on the pitch during a game. There are worse ways to go. On the coastlines, signs warn of another menace: falling coconuts.

source:
It can sometimes be a jungle
By Wayne Arnold, New York Times
Oct 1, 2004

I've been collecting essays for Christopher to read. This one's going in the pantheon.




bonus link

I love this post to 'scaper Talk. Temple has a zillion of these tales. (warning: 'scaper Talk doesn't have a filter, so the follow-up posts have pornographic headings.)

-- CatherineJohnson - 10 Jul 2006

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HelpDeskGrammarQuestion 10 Jul 2006 - 14:33 CatherineJohnson



from Indoor Plants:

Unfortunately, there is still a large number of technophobic interiorscapers slavishly addicted to weekly drench and drain top watering. They are reluctant to give up this wasteful practice but we believe energy costs and the green building movement will force them to modernize or exit the business. The market is always the ultimate boss.

"is" or "are"?

What's the rule?

-- CatherineJohnson - 10 Jul 2006

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SingaporeSchoolSystem 10 Jul 2006 - 15:37 CatherineJohnson



Mark Roulo found this terrific graphic of Singapore's school system.

source:
Ministry of Education Overview
Ministry of Education



-- CatherineJohnson - 10 Jul 2006

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ShangriLaPart2 10 Jul 2006 - 17:51 CatherineJohnson



Almost a year ago I read a freakonomics column about the Shangri La diet, decided to put Jimmy, Christopher & me on it, and then promptly forgot the whole thing. (Promptly forgot the whole thing after first making myself sick as a dog on the day of the U.S. Open, that is.)

Yesterday the diet popped back up on my radar screen, and I'm going for it!

This time will be different!

This time I will write myself Post-it notes!

ABSTRACT:

The theory described in this article assumes that the body-fat set point – how much body fat the brain tries to maintain – is controlled by flavor-calorie associations. Calorie-associated flavors raise the set point – the stronger the association, the greater the increase. In the absence of calorie-associated flavors, the set point declines. Given some plausible assumptions, the mechanism regulates body fat according to the availability of food, increasing body fat when food is abundant, decreasing body fat when food is scarce. The theory explains a wide range of human and animal data, including effects and correlations involving pre-exposure, pureeing, moistening food, bland food, glycemic index, supermarket food, junk food, fasting, intragastric feeding, and income. It also helped find a new way to lose weight.

source:
What Makes Food Fattening? A Pavlovian Theory of Weight Control by Seth Roberst (pdf file)


ABSTRACT:

Little is known about how to generate plausible new scientific ideas. So it is noteworthy that 12 years of self-experimentation led to the discovery of several surprising cause-effect relationships and suggested a new theory of weight control, an unusually high rate of new ideas. The cause-effect relationships were: (1) Seeing faces in the morning on television decreased mood in the evening (>10 hrs later) and improved mood the next day (>24 hrs later), yet had no detectable effect before that (0–10 hrs later). The effect was strongest if the faces were life-sized and at a conversational distance. Travel across time zones reduced the effect for a few weeks. (2) Standing 8 hours per day reduced early awakening and made sleep more restorative, even though more standing was associated with less sleep. (3) Morning light (1 hr/day) reduced early awakening and made sleep more restorative. (4) Breakfast increased early awakening. (5) Standing and morning light together eliminated colds (upper respiratory tract infections) for more than 5 years. (6) Drinking lots of water, eating low-glycemic-index foods, and eating sushi each caused a modest weight loss. (7) Drinking unflavored fructose water caused a large weight loss that has lasted more than 1 year. While losing weight, hunger was much less than usual. Unflavored sucrose water had a similar effect. The new theory of weight control, which helped discover this effect, assumes that flavors associated with calories raise the body-fat set point: The stronger the association, the greater the increase. Between meals the set point declines. Self-experimentation lasting months or years seems to be a good way to generate plausible new ideas.

Self-experimentation as a source of new ideas: Ten examples about sleep, mood, health, and weight
Seth Roberts, University of California, Berkeley
full text (pdf file)

Lots of good stuff.....

• Seth Roberts
  
• What Makes Food Fattening? A Pavlovian Theory of Weight Control by Seth Roberst (pdf file)
• brain food
  
• Seth Roberts' profile at Amazon
  
• CalorieLab interview with Roberts
  
• CalorieLab review of Shangri-La diet
  
• CalorieLab on Shangri-La
  
• The Monkey Chow Diaries
  

Apparently, people are sleeping better on the diet, which Roberts attributes to Omega 3 fatty acids.

This report led to an ah-hah moment.

I've been sleeping miserably for awhile now. Reading Roberts' blog, I realize that I started sleeping miserably when I stopped taking Omega 3s. (For some reason, Omega 3 pills are making me nauseous....)

I've hatched a plan to take fish oil tonight before bed.

If I remember.

UPDATE 7-23-06: progress report








The Shangri-La Diet at Amazon
Seth Roberts website

Shangri La diet in freakonomics
Shangri La diet part 2
early adopter
diet, evolution of the brain, & McDonalds
Marginal Revolution on Shangri La
your own lying eyes
progress report 7-23-06
Jimmy 7-24-06
mind hacks & Shangri-La 7-26-06
7-29-06 update
my life and welcome to it - 8-6-06 - success
compare and contrast photo op 8-12-06
9-12-06 update
9-17-06 Jimmy is melting
10-4-2006 Dr. Erika's olive oil diet works, too

Omega 3 fatty acid

shangrila

-- CatherineJohnson - 10 Jul 2006

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WorldCupWinPart2 10 Jul 2006 - 20:18 CatherineJohnson



Martine is taking it better than I expected.

"The Italians cheated," she said this morning when she came in. "And look what they did to Zidane."

I've just got back from picking Christopher up at camp, and have been greeted by the report that the other player called Zidane, who is half Algerian, a "terrorist." That's why Zidane head-butted him. "They planned it," Martine said. "They were working on it."

"Definitely," I said.

"Oh, well," Martine said. "Italy. That's the country of the Mafia."


I love nationalism.

Seriously. I do. Ed would shoot me if he heard me say that, so I'll add that I don't like nationalism when it leads to Nazis and world war. I like it fine at the World Cup.

Ed says this is a very good book:

update: Christian just got here. Mamaroneck is a mob scene of cars with Italian flags & drivers shouting out their windows. "I never got yelled at so much in my life," Christian said.

"I thought Mamaroneck was French," Christopher said. So did I. I don't know why. I think maybe we read an article about a great French cheese shop in Mamaroneck.

"No, it's Italian," Christian said. "Italian and Jewish."

Martine told Christian that the other guy either called Zidane a terrorist or said something about his mother.

"I'm sure he said something about his mother," I said.

Now we're talking about the Mafia again. The Mafia and knee-capping.

Have I mentioned I've ordered a copy of The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy?

Well, I have. And not a moment too soon.



Meanwhile the printer, which is networked to Ed's computer downstairs, keeps spitting out articles on Zidane from French newspapers.

This is a great mystery, Zidane.




a Canadian moment
World Cup win
World Cup win part 2
BHL weighs in
coupdeboule
read my lips

html authoring in French



-- CatherineJohnson - 10 Jul 2006

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JohnDeweyAtEdspressoPart2 11 Jul 2006 - 14:40 CatherineJohnson



he's back

In ed school parlance, when more than one answer exists for a question, the thinking used to come up with answers is called “divergent”. When only one answer exists, the thinking is called “convergent”.

In ed school, “divergence” is considered a good thing and “convergence” looked upon with disdain.

This reminds me of an extension course on film I once took in Cambridge after graduating from college.

The teacher opened the class by asking, "What is art?"

We offered our thoughts, and then the teacher told us the answer. The answer was that art is nonlinear.

A nonlinear movie is art.

A linear movie is not art.

See how easy that is?

Of course, by that definition anything directed by Godard is art, and nothing directed by Ford or Hitchcock is art, but never mind. It's been a long time, but I think the teacher had a scheme for making Hitchcock secretly nonlinear, and therefore art. Which may have been the point at which I decided not to return for the second class. I've mentioned a number of times that I have a Ph.D. in film studies. In actual film studies, as opposed to extension course film studies, no one ever says "art is nonlinear."



In case you're wondering, the correct answer is "the familiar made strange."

At least, that's the correct answer if you're a Russian constructivist.

I guess I can't say the constructivists never did anything good for me.



Your tax dollars at work:

I visited her class and saw how she “proved” the Pythagorean Theorem. (This is one theorem the textbook had not yet turned into a postulate.) She handed out sheets of paper on which were drawn a right triangle with three squares extending from each of its three sides. There is a famous proof in which the two smaller squares can be shown via congruence theorems to fit into the larger square of the hypotenuse. Her version, however, was to have the students cut out pieces of the two smaller squares by cutting along lines marked within them and assemble the resulting pieces, like a jigsaw, into the big square of the hypotenuse. This was how she proved the theorem. (Oh, excuse me. This is how she had the students prove the theorem.) “Does this prove the theorem?” she asked. The students said yes,