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, because it showed that the areas of the squares of the two legs in a right triangle equal the area of the square of the hypotenuse. Which is correct for the particular triangle on the sheet of paper she handed out. There was no discussion of how the procedure could be generalized for right triangles for any size, nor why the teacher drew the lines within the two smaller squares where she did.

I asked her later if she offered any other proofs of the theorem. “No,” she said. “We don't spend much time on the Pythagorean Theorem in the Honors class simply because they've learned it before.”

edspresso search: Dewey letters

John Dewey at edspresso, part 1
John Dewey at edspresso, part 2
John Dewey at edspresso, part 3
John Dewey has the stomach flu
John Dewey at edspresso Letter #5

John Dewey at ktm
John Dewey at ktm part 2
John Dewey experiences stomach flu
John Dewey writes again

johndewey


-- CatherineJohnson - 11 Jul 2006

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WorldCupWinPart3 11 Jul 2006 - 21:19 CatherineJohnson



It seems that Zidane will tell us on Thursday what the other player said. I look forward to it.

Christian said, "I'd go with the N-word."

I said the N-word wouldn't work, and Martine, or maybe Christopher, again raised the question of whether the other guy had insulted Zidane's mother.^* "If somebody insulted my mother, I'd be head-butting them 'til the end of the game," Christian said.

"No you wouldn't," I said. "You wait 'til after the game is over, then you head-butt them."

Ed agreed. First win the game, then head-butt the other guy off school property.

Victory first, revenge second. A core family value.

Ed reported that one of the French newspapers, Le Figaro I think, had published a round-up of international commentary on Zidane and his head-butting. All of it was negative, except for the French press, which was sympathetic.

As if on cue, Bernard Henri-Levy popped up in the Wall Street Journal this morning:

PARIS--Here is one of the greatest players of all time, a legend, a myth for the entire planet, and universally acclaimed. Here is a champion who, in front of two billion people, was putting the final touches on one of the most extraordinary sagas in soccer's history.

Here is a man of providence, a savior, who was sought out, like Achilles in his tent of grudge and rage, because he was believed to be the only one who could avert his countrymen's fated decline. Better yet, he's a super-Achilles who--unlike Homer's--did not wait for an Agamemnon (in the guise of coach Raymond Domenech) to come begging him to re-enlist; rather, he decided himself, spontaneously, after having "heard" a voice calling him, to come back from his Spanish exile and--putting his luminous armor back on, and flanked by his faithful Myrmidons (Makelele, Vieira, Thuram)--reverse the new Achaeans' ill fortune and allow them to successfully pull together.

And then this valiant knight who is a hair's breadth from victory and just minutes from the end of a historic match (and of a career that will carry him into the Pantheon of stadium-gods after Pelé, Platini and Maradona); this giant who, like the Titans of the ancient world, has known Glory, then Exile, then Return and Redemption; this redeemer, this blue angel dressed in white, who had only the very last steps to scale to enter Olympus for good, commits a crazy incomprehensible act that amounts to disqualification from the soccer ritual--the final image of him that will go down in history and, in lieu of apotheosis, will cast him into hell.

and so on and so forth until —

The man's insurrection against the saint. A refusal of the halo that had been put on his head and that he then, quite logically, pulverized with a head-butt, as though saying: I am a living being not a fetish; a man of flesh and blood and passion, not this idiotic empty hologram, this guru, this universal psychoanalyst, natural child of Abbé Pierre and Sister Emanuelle, which soccer-mania was trying to turn me into.

It was as though he were repeating, in parody, the title of one of the very great books of the last century, before the triumph of this liturgy of the body, performance and commodity: Ecce Homo, This is a Man. Yes, a man, a true man, not one of these absurd monsters or synthetic stars who are made by the money of brand names in combination with the sighs of the globalized crowd.

Achilles had his heel. Zidane will have had his--this magnificent and rebellious head that brought him, suddenly, back into the ranks of his human brothers.

Henri-Levy does not let the Italians off scot-free (I wonder what the origin of 'scot-free' could be?) —

The only plausible explanation for so bizarrely scuttling everything--which, remember, let a lot of time go by (the 20 long seconds following the Italian Machiavelli's undoubtedly calculated outrage)

This is the difference between Bernard Henri-Levy and me.

If Bernard Henri-Levy wants to say the Italians cheated, he brings up Machiavelli.

In my household nobody's talking about Machiavelli. No. In my household it's "the Italians cheated," "Italy is the country of the Mafia," and "the ref is from Brazil."

I'm sure The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy will fix that.






Je Suis un Superstar: Bernard Henri Levy
BOMB Bernard Henri-Levy with Frederic Tuten
International Woman of Mystery: Arielle Dombasle
Arielle Dombasle website

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

html authoring in French

^* or Materazzi could have just called him a son of Harkis. It's going to be a long war.


-- CatherineJohnson - 11 Jul 2006

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LightningLiterature 12 Jul 2006 - 01:06 CatherineJohnson



Does anyone know anything about the Lightening Literature series?

I joined the Core Knowledge Homeschooling list serve, because I need more email to not read, and one of the parents had just gotten the books and teacher's manual & thought they looked great.






I am planning to get a post up about our summer activities around here, but until I do the 3 new books we're using are:

• Six-Way Paragraphs by Walter Pauk

• Realms of Gold, Volume 1 (Core Knowledge)
  (pdf file of TOC linked on page)

• Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (Core Classic Plus)

-- CatherineJohnson - 12 Jul 2006

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HelpDeskNegativeTimesNegative 12 Jul 2006 - 18:29 CatherineJohnson



I've just found achieve.org's standards for math K-8. They look good to me, but I trust everyone else's judgment better than my own.

Skimming through, I stumbled over the explanation for why a negative times a negative must be a positive on page 7 of 25 in MAP Algebra Expectations: (pdf file)


6.11 Understand that the system of negative and positive numbers obeys and extends the laws governing positive numbers.

6.11a Understand why the product of two negative numbers must be positive. Since a negative number -a is defined by the equation -a + a = 0, the distributive law forces the product of two negative numbers to be positive.


The 6 in 6.11 refers to 6th grade, btw. I wonder how many kids in Ms. K's Phase 4 class "understand why the product of two negative numbers must be positive"?

I haven't spent too much time on this, but so far I can't follow achieve's demonstration of why the distributive property means a negative times a negative must be a positive.

I do follow Dr. Math's explanation. In fact, this has long been one of my favorite Dr. Math pages, so I'm glad I found the URL again today.

[I just noticed Dr. Math includes a proof as well as an explanation. I'll take a look at that.]

Any thoughts on these two pages?



What Does It Mean To Be Prepared for College?
(or for Jobs in the High-Growth, High-Performance Workplace)

American Educator summarizes the Achieve report here. The article is terrifically useful, a page to bookmark and commit to memory.

By achieve's standards, I didn't go to high school.

Or to college, either.

The good news is that I'm just about there in math.

I'm fine on language and communication.

I just have to find time to read all the "18th- and 19th-century foundational works of American literature" nobody ever mentioned to me in my 20 years of formal education.

Also, I have GOT to finally learn how to do freaking MIXTURE PROBLEMS.



I do feel confident, skimming these standards, that Christopher will have this knowledge by the time he graduates high school. We'll keep hacking away at the math; the school will do a good job teaching literature; his reading, vocabulary, grammar, spelling, and punctuation are really coming along thanks to efforts on both fronts. Writing is still a question mark, but I'm thinking we'll be able to do useful reactive teaching with his writing assignments next year. We'll see.

whatyouneedtoknowforcollege
achievereport
distributiveproperty
negativetimesanegative



-- CatherineJohnson - 12 Jul 2006

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MiddleSchoolBrainsAtWork 12 Jul 2006 - 20:41 CatherineJohnson

[Abigail] Baird and her research colleagues, for instance, wanted to take a look at how adolescent brains deal with “counterfactual idea generation,” which involves imagining what might have been, given different circumstances or actions. They suspected the task would result in measurable functional differences between teens and adults because counterfactual idea generation is neurologically complex, challenging the brain’s capacity to analyze and anticipate consequences—not the strong suit of teenagers. For comparison purposes, a second type of thinking task was added to the experiment, calling for “simple idea generation,” at which adolescents and adults were expected to perform similarly.

Baird recruited two sets of test subjects, adults and 14-year-olds. The 14-year-olds, accompanied by their parents, came from two Hanover-area middle schools where Baird teaches on a volunteer basis in the science curriculum. Adult subjects were recruited from Dartmouth’s medical and business schools, as well as surrounding communities.

The simple and counterfactual tasks were presented in the form of scenarios, displayed on a computer screen inside the fMRI tube. As the subjects considered problems posed by each scenario, the machine tracked blood flow to identify the brain areas being used to generate solutions. Baird and her team also collected the solutions in order to evaluate the quality of each group’s problem-solving skills.

Here’s one of the scenarios calling for simple idea generation: Daniel is a candidate for student council president. He is well known to students involved in sports, but not to students involved with other extracurricular activities. Come up with a list of things Daniel could do to improve his chances of winning the election.

In their responses, adult and teen subjects listed similar strategies, including putting up campaign posters, making speeches and generally glad-handing around the school. There was no remarkable difference in their responses, according to Baird.

Here’s one of the scenarios calling for counterfactual idea generation: Jason is babysitting his little brother, Rex. Jason decides he wants to have an adventure and climb on the garage roof. Rex insists on coming along, and even though Jason knows it is not safe, he gives in. Rex falls off the roof and breaks his arm. What could Jason have done differently?

As expected, the adults and 14-year-olds responded differently. They also had notably different brain function, according to Baird. All of the subjects came up with alternatives they thought would keep Rex from harm. But the adults’ answers showed better judgment, a frontal lobe function. This was backed up by the fMRI scans. “There’s activity you don’t see in the kids going on in the adults’ frontal lobes,” says Baird. The as-yet-unpublished data suggest that while generating ideas, the adults simultaneously evaluated them, picking and choosing among various options to hone in on the best course of action.

Besides having less activity in their frontal lobes, the 14-year-olds also took longer to solve the problem. “It’s almost as if they get stuck on what they have been presented with and do a lot of ‘I dunno’ type answers,” Baird says. “Then they come up with less practical solutions.

That’s putting it mildly.

One young test subject said the boys should have donned parachutes. Another suggested dragging mattresses outside to place them around the house so falls would be less likely to result in broken bones. A third suggested putting a rope around Rex.

As for the adults, they crisply nixed the roof, then moved on to strategies Jason could use to distract Rex or deal with his disappointment in being denied the adventure. Baird says adult brains seem able to instantaneously picture consequences, then seamlessly switch to analysis of alternatives. By contrast, the teens in her experiment seemed to blow by the key decision point of the scenario—whether or not to go on the roof—because they were transfixed by the scenario’s most dramatic moment, Rex’s falls.

source:
Mind Matters
By Irene M. Wielawski
March/April 2006
Dartmouth Alumni Magazine

Of course, I would have nixed the whole thing.

No Rex-on-the-roof, no Jason-on-the-roof.

Problem solved.



also see:
When do we grow up?
Brain changes significantly after 18, says Dartmouth research

Abigail Baird and Craig Bennett (Photo by Joseph Mehling '69)

-- CatherineJohnson - 12 Jul 2006

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KidsAndTheirFrontalLobes 13 Jul 2006 - 02:30 CarolynJohnston

Catherine's post, middle school brains at work, brought to mind an interaction I've had with Ben recently. He is attending a summer biking camp, and wanted very much to be allowed to ride his bike from his camp to my work after camp every day (he is at that age when he likes to pretend he doesn't know us when in public). Boulder is a pretty good (okay, great) place to be a biker; the whole town is crisscrossed with nice bike paths that pass under most of the major streets, and there are only two places Ben would need to cross the street. But still, I was uneasy.

I'm a big believer in letting kids take on challenges they're ready for. But lately, some things that have happened have brought home the message to me, loud and clear, that Ben looks more ready for challenges than he is -- both episodes involved biking. The most recent one involved Ben taking a left turn in front of a car -- and getting pulled over by a panicked cop! (That's the sort of thing you're really glad, as a parent, to have heard about after it happened).

So, after some soul-searching, I made the decision to go ahead and let Ben ride to work after camp. Before he comes, he is expected to give us a call so we know he is on his way. He's done it several days in a row now, and so far so good. But I know how this thing works; things go smoothly for a while, you let your guard down, and that's when something happens.

Last night I asked Ben what he would do if he were on the bike path and he got a flat tire. "Ask someone for help," he said.

"No," I said.

"Patch the tire myself", he said.

"If you can," I replied. "But if you can't, here's what I want you to do; lock the bike to a tree, and then walk to work and get me or Daddy."

"WALK?" he said.

"Yes, walk. Those are the options. Fix the bike if you think you can; lock it and walk to me, if you can't."

Of course, with kids on the autism spectrum, you have to wiggle the parameters a little. What if he has a fall and wrecks his bike and hurts himself? Then it gets tricky. If he's hurt badly, he needs to be able to accept help on the spot. Where do I tell him to draw the line? Bernie once said that teaching Ben things is rather like programming a computer. With more severely affected autistic people, you can teach them very routine self-care and independence skills, such as taking the bus to work. But if any flexibility is required -- if the person gets on the wrong bus somehow -- your plans can unravel very quickly. In addition to teaching skills, you have to try to teach flexibility -- and the only way to do that is to program in a lot of 'if' statements. IF your bike breaks down, come to me and don't talk to strangers. But IF you have a wreck and you are hurt, ONLY THEN can you ask a stranger to call me on their cellphone so I can come and get you.

So -- Catherine's post pointed out that the middle school brain doesn't foresee the unanticipated event. For kids on the autism spectrum, this is true in spades. And yet, you want them to be as independent as possible -- you want to teach flexibility if you can, in hopes that someday (like the 14-year-old babysitter's) their frontal lobes will eventually kick in. So I'm letting him take his bike ride, and discussing contingencies every night.

Next -- he wants to start taking the bus to camp, and then to school. It's just getting scarier and scarier.

-- CarolynJohnston - 13 Jul 2006

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CoupDeBoule 13 Jul 2006 - 20:47 CatherineJohnson



here



chorus:

Zidane, il l’a tapé.
Zidane, il l’a tapé.
Zidane, il l’a tapé.
Zidane, il l’a tapé.



It's a huge hit in France.









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

html authoring in French



-- CatherineJohnson - 13 Jul 2006

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HelicopterParentsAtWikipedia 13 Jul 2006 - 23:25 CatherineJohnson



I have just staged my first intervention at Wikipedia.

Guess which section I wrote.

-- CatherineJohnson - 13 Jul 2006

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ExpertPerformanceWhileBeingFemale 13 Jul 2006 - 23:45 CatherineJohnson



Today's Wall Street Journal has a life-altering column from Sharon Begley:

Ben Barres had just finished giving a seminar at the prestigious Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research 10 years ago, describing to scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard and other top institutions his discoveries about nerve cells called glia. As the applause died down, a friend later told him, one scientist turned to another and remarked what a great seminar it had been, adding, "Ben Barres's work is much better than his sister's."

There was only one problem. Prof. Barres, then as now a professor of neurobiology at Stanford University, doesn't have a sister in science. The Barbara Barres the man remembered was Ben. Prof. Barres is transgendered, having completed the treatments that made him fully male 10 years ago. The Whitehead talk was his first as a man, so the research he was presenting was done as Barbara.

Being first a female scientist and then a male scientist has given Prof. Barres a unique perspective on the debate over why women are so rare at the highest levels of academic science and math: He has experienced personally how each is treated by colleagues, mentors and rivals.

Based on those experiences, as well as research on gender differences, Prof. Barres begs to differ with what he calls "the Larry Summers Hypothesis," named for the former Harvard president who attributed the paucity of top women scientists to lack of "intrinsic aptitude." In a commentary in today's issue of the journal Nature, he writes that "the reason women are not advancing [in science] is discrimination" and the "Summers Hypothesis amounts to nothing more than blaming the victim."

[snip]

The top science and math student in her New Jersey high school, she was advised by her guidance counselor to go to a local college rather than apply to MIT. She applied anyway and was admitted. As an MIT undergraduate, Barbara was one of the only women in a large math class, and the only student to solve a particularly tough problem. The professor "told me my boyfriend must have solved it for me," recalls Prof. Barres, 51 years old, in an interview. "If boys were raised to feel that they can't be good at mathematics, there would be very few who were."

Although Barbara Barres was a top student at MIT, "nearly every lab head I asked refused to let me do my thesis research" with him, Prof. Barres says. "Most of my male friends had their first choice of labs. And I am still disappointed about the prestigious fellowship I lost to a male student when I was a Ph.D. student," even though the rival had published one prominent paper and she had six.

As a neuroscientist, Prof. Barres is also skeptical of the claim that differences between male and female brains might explain the preponderance of men in math and science. For one thing, he says, the studies don't adequately address whether those differences are innate and thus present from birth, or reflect the different experiences that men and women have. Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker, who defends the Summers Hypothesis, acknowledges that the existence of gender differences in values, preferences and aptitudes "does not mean that they are innate."

The biggest recent revolution in neuroscience has been the discovery of the brain's "plasticity," or ability to change structure and function in response to experiences. "It's not hard to believe that differences between the brains of male and female adults have nothing to do with genes or the Y chromosome but may be the biological expression of different social settings," says biologist Joan Roughgarden of Stanford, who completed her own transgender transition in 1998.

Jonathan Roughgarden's colleagues and rivals took his intelligence for granted, Joan says. But Joan has had "to establish competence to an extent that men never have to. They're assumed to be competent until proven otherwise, whereas a woman is assumed to be incompetent until she proves otherwise. I remember going on a drive with a man. He assumed I couldn't read a map." Actually, Ben Barres says there may be something to the stereotype that men are better map readers. The testosterone he received to become male improved his spatial abilities, he writes in Nature, though "I still get lost every time I drive."

Still, there is little evidence that lack of testosterone or anything unique to male biology is the main factor keeping women from the top ranks of science and math, says Prof. Barres, a view that is widely held among scientists who study the issue.

This column turned up on the same day my copy of The Cambridge Handbook of Expert Performance arrived. I'm taking this to be a hint from God or the universe, take your pick.

Ericsson's research on expert performance shows that the brain changes when it becomes capable of expert performance in the expert's domain. That's why you can't predict elite performance from early ability. Mozart's brain when he became "Mozart" was different from Mozart's brain when he was 2. This is true of all experts, as I understand it, not just of the Mozarts amongst us. The London cabbie who can remember every street, major building, and open space within a 10-km radius undergoes the same change (again, this is as I understand the research at this point).

Elite performance happens after 10 years of sustained deliberate practice — "deliberate practice" meaning the kind of practice you can do when you've got the best coach or teacher in the world telling you how to practice.

Without that coach, your chance of rising to elite performance appears to be slim.

You have to work with the best.

(caveat: I'm just wading into this material. I don't know whether Ericsson and his colleagues have looked at auto-didacts, or how much material they've been able to collect on figures like Mozart and the teachers with whom they worked.)



This material may imply that the "dumb boy" environment of public schools isn't as lethal to boys as the "dumb girl" environment may have been to girls — at least not when it comes to elite performers like Barres.

For elite performers the teachers and trainers who count are probably the people at the top of the profession, not school teachers in K-12.

At least, that makes sense to me.


more synchronicity

This weekend I finally cleared out one of the boxes of papers we have stashed in the garage awaiting my attention. Andrew had dumped it out on the floor, so I decided just to sort through it then and there.

Inside the pile I found a story I saved to read 6 years ago, in 2000. It's the Scientific American profile of Lynn Conway, who began life as a computer scientist and then had to start all over again when he became a woman. (This is an excerpt; I haven't found the whole article posted online. The LA Times profile of Lynn Conway is available on her webpage.)

Apparently God or the universe wants me to have plenty of ammunition when Ed and I tackle Irvington Middle School's cherished gatekeeping mission later on this summer. More on that anon.

more on brain change and expert performance, too






She went to Dartmouth!



He, Once a She, Offers Own View On Science Spat
By SHARON BEGLEY
July 13, 2006; Page B1

Transgender scientist defends women scientists


-- CatherineJohnson - 13 Jul 2006

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ReadMyLips 14 Jul 2006 - 14:59 CatherineJohnson



from the Wall Street Journal:

PARIS -- The World Cup is over and Italy won. But the most gripping global sporting drama of the moment rumbled on in Paris last night:

A Frenchman known to his fans as "God" [ed.: this makes BHL sound slightly less demented] went on television to explain why he rammed his shaved head into the chest of an Italian nicknamed "the animal." "

Watched by spellbound fans across France and then flashed around the world, the television appearance of Zinédine Zidane was the latest episode in a fiercely fought international competition: trying to figure out why France's star soccer player blew his top during Sunday's World Cup final.

The contest has featured lip readers, sociologists, philosophers and novelists ....

Mr. Zidane, appearing on France's Canal Plus pay-TV, said his quarrel with Italian defender Marco Materazzi began when the Italian tugged his shirt 10 minutes from the end of the 30-minute overtime. Mr. Materazzi, according to Mr. Zidane, then insulted his mother and sister.

"These were words that touched the deepest part of me," said the 34-year-old Frenchman, seeking to explain why he had head-butted the Italian and got himself thrown out of the game, the last of his long and brilliant career. "I would rather have taken a punch in the jaw than have heard that."

[snip]

"I reacted badly, and I would like to apologize for it," added Mr. Zidane, who has occasionally erupted in the past. But he said he didn't regret the head butt. "The guilty one is the one who provokes," he said.

Mr. Zidane's explanation is unlikely to quiet a frenzy of speculation that France's l'Equipe newspaper yesterday called "L'Enquête Planétaire," or "The Planetary Inquest." Parisian café goers watching the interview on TV last night groaned at Mr. Zidane's lack of specifics. He later also spoke to French channel TF1.

What exactly happened on the field of Berlin's Olympic Stadium Sunday has become a global obsession. Outside Italy, where fans have savored their triumph, Mr. Zidane's now world-famous head butt has attracted more media attention than Italy's success. Even Italian papers have put it on the front page.

Lip Readers Get the Call

Eager to work out what prompted Mr. Zidane's fury, media from Britain to Brazil have turned to lip readers to scrutinize video footage of the game and decipher what was said by Mr. Materazzi, a notoriously aggressive defender. The lip readers all agreed that insults were traded but have given very different versions of what was said.

The Times of London's lip reader said the Italian called Mr. Zidane, whose parents came to France from North Africa, a "son of a terrorist whore." According to the BBC's expert, Mr. Materazzi said, "I hope your family all die ugly deaths." Experts enlisted by a Brazilian TV show said the Italian called Mr. Zidane's sister a prostitute. The men are believed to have spoken in Italian, which Mr. Zidane speaks because he played in Italy for many years.

Mr. Materazzi, in various media interviews, has denied calling the Frenchman a "terrorist" or insulting his mother, saying "the mother is sacred."

"I didn't say anything to him about racism, religion or politics," Mr. Materazzi told Italian sports newspaper Gazzetta dello Sport in an interview, excerpts of which were released last night shortly before Mr. Zidane's TV appearance. "I didn't talk about his mother, either. I lost my mother when I was 15 and even now I still get emotional talking about her."

Though widely condemned for unsportsmanlike conduct after Sunday's head butt, Mr. Zidane has, if anything, become an even bigger star than before. Instead of slipping into retirement, the intensely private player has remained in the spotlight.

[snip]

An announcement yesterday by Canal Plus that Mr. Zidane would be speaking in the evening was treated as a major piece of breaking news. His comments were the top item on France's evening news broadcasts.

To try to capitalize on this, a French record label has released a reggae-style song titled "Coup de Boule," French slang for head butt. Its chorus: "Zidane has hit [him]." The song plays on the words of a pre-World Cup song with the chorus "Zidane has scored."

While most French fans say Mr. Zidane's action probably lost France the game, nearly two-thirds say they've forgiven him, according to an opinion poll in Le Parisien newspaper. President Jacques Chirac, at a meeting with the team Monday at the Elysée Palace, embraced Mr. Zidane and told him: "You are a virtuoso....You are also a man of heart, commitment and conviction. That's why France admires and loves you."

Court Action

A member of parliament for France's ruling party has demanded that Mr. Zidane be given a Legion d'honneur, France's highest decoration. A French lawyer announced yesterday that he will go to court to try to get the World Cup final invalidated on the grounds that Mr. Zidane's expulsion was illegal. He wants the match with Italy replayed.

[snip]

Writers and philosophers have read great moral drama into Mr. Zidane's tantrum. "The God of football has become a literary hero," declared Zoé Valdes, an exiled Cuban writer in an article published in Spain. Bernard Henri-Lévy, a French philosopher writing in this newspaper, termed it the suicide of a "planetary icon."

Others see simpler lessons. "What a fabulous head butt," said Al Breach, head of research at UBS in Moscow and devoted fan of the French national team. "The Italian deserved something -- a bad dude -- and so, a good oak loses his cool and socks him one. Wonderful!"

source:
World Cup Mystery: What Did 'Animal' Say to Anger 'God'? ($)
By ANDREW HIGGINS and MARIE VALLA
July 13, 2006 5:38 a.m.; Page A1

         


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

html authoring in French

-- CatherineJohnson - 14 Jul 2006

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CollegeBoardOnHelicopterParents 14 Jul 2006 - 16:39 CatherineJohnson



Is it possible to murder a meme?

This is my question.

I've just emailed the College Board, and I hope you will, too:

I would like to request that you remove your advice to "helicopter parents" from the website.

The expression "helicopter parent" is a pejorative term for parents created by school personnel and popularized by the media. It is a stereotype.

In my own experience with K-12 education, the term is typically used to ward off parent demands for accountability.

I find the term offensive, as does every parent I know. Moreover, parents are now coopting the term by identifying themselves as helicopter parents, wearing helicopter parent t-shirts, and so on.

I assume the college board doesn't use negative stereotypes to characterize students, professors, or college personnel.

It's time to recognize the hostile intent behind the creation of "helicopter parent" and remove it from your webpage.

Thank you.

Send a Message to the College Board

helicopter parents at Wikipedia
official Wikipedia policies
article deletion nominations at Wikipedia

-- CatherineJohnson - 14 Jul 2006

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EarlyAdopter 14 Jul 2006 - 19:37 CatherineJohnson



7-14-2006 Friday I've started Jimmy, Christopher & me on the Shangri-La Diet.

It's amazing for me thus far. I've eaten, today:

• one bowl of shredded wheat
• one banana
• two Tbsp extra light olive oil

I'm not hungry. Just now I was going to force myself to eat an apple. Then I realized that eating an apple now doesn't jibe with the fact that I have to be on a train to the city at 4:20, so I took my second tablespoon of ELOO (Roberts' acronym for extra light olive oil) now & will eat my apple on the train.

Amazing.

The big question is Jimmy & Christopher.

Christopher drank a tablespoon yesterday, but it didn't seem to have much effect on his appetite. (The diet works, if it works, via appetite suppression.)

Jimmy, otoh, didn't do his 10 pm binge, and isn't eating anything now, either. He's taking Depakote these days, which produces lots of eating and lots of weight gain. He's finally off the Risperdal, which got him into the overweight condition he's in, but the Depakote has taken up where the Risperdal left off. He's at high risk for diabetes — family history, very early weight gain, and Depakote probably increases the risk (not sure - Risperdal does) — and it's not as if his weight is stable. Taking Depakote he could carry on gaining weight year in, year out.

We've got to get his weight down.


update 7-15-2006 Finished out the day with calories somewhere in the 1500 range. Very low for me. I lose weight on 1800/day, and that's without the 4-mile hike to and from camp every morning.

Hungry this morning, though.

Jimmy's nighttime bingeing seems to have vanished. No visible effect on Christopher, so it may be back to Trim Kids for him. (Fantastic book - wonderful. Every pediatrician should have a copy.)

ELOO coming up at 10:15 am.



I don't understand Roberts' theory particularly well, and I found the brief chapter at the end of the book describing the animal experiments confusing. Haven't finished the book; perhaps all will be clear when I do. (update 7-27-06: yup. Final chapter makes more sense when read after preceding chapters.) Roberts has posted excerpts here and there's a goldmine of peer-reviewed papers here. The paper to read is probably Roberts' unpublished What Makes Food Fattening? A Pavlovian Theory of Weight Control (pdf file)

The theory seems to boil down to this:

• Humans have a set point, a weight our bodies strive to maintain. For many of us that set point is higher than we'd like.

• The set point is flexible. It can be moved. If we lived in a state of nature, our set points would move in reaction to periods of high versus low food availability. When food is plentiful your set point rises, your appetite increases, and you eat more to reach your new set point and thus store fat for the day you'll need it. When food is scarce, your set point lowers, your appetite decreases, and you burn the fat you've stored.

• Today food is always plentiful, so our set points are always high (and probably moving higher; at least I think that's the implication of his theory). Roberts believes that the invention of processed & fast food produced a mass rise in set points. There are at least two studies identifying processed and fast food as the source of our "obesity epidemic."

• This point is key: Our bodies learn what the food environment is through the association of taste with calories. If food tastes good, our bodies assume food is plentiful and raise our set points.

• And: what tastes good is food with calories. For example, probably no one, with the possible exception of autistic people, is born liking the taste of lemon. But once you eat lemon meringue pie a few times, you start thinking lemon tastes good. That's how we acquire tastes in food. I'm sure this aspect of the theory is true, because all animals aren't born knowing what to eat. They have to learn what is food and what isn't from other animals. Our two dogs, Surfer and Abby, for instance, have no idea that any of the small animals they manage to kill around here are meat.

• The learned part of set point creation explains why standard reduced-calorie diets don't have the same effect as reduced food availability in the wild. Apparently eating fewer fruits and berries is completely different from eating fewer Big Macs. Any time you eat great-tasting food your body thinks, "Food is plentiful, I must eat more and store fat."

• It's possible to game the system.

• It's possible to game the system by consuming 1 of 2 things: a) calories that have no taste or b) sugar on its own — separated from the consumption of real food by one hour before you consume taste-free calories or sugar and one hour after.

• The result of consuming tasteless calories and/or sugar water is that your body concludes food is scarce, your set point is reduced, your appetite drops, and you begin burning body fat, i.e. losing weight.
  

I'm inclined to think both that Roberts' diet works, and that his theory of why it works is correct, because of an experience I had a couple of years ago.

I persuaded our family psychiatrist to give me a trial of Aricept, a medication for Alzheimer’s patients, to see whether it would improve normal middle-aged memory loss. I wanted to go back to being the kind of person who remembers where she left her car keys and never forgets Robert Loggia's name. (My neighbor says she forgot Norman Rockwell's name the other day. Just now, when I decided to reveal to the universe that my neighbor forgot Norman Rockwell's name, I couldn't remember Norman Rockwell's name, either.^* Hence, Aricept.)

Within two weeks of starting Aricept I had a severe alteration in taste perception. All food tasted terrible. Water, too.

I stopped the drug, but the side effect persisted for 6 months.

During the first weeks I barely ate at all. I may have been consuming as few as 200 calories a day, 200 to 500 max. I drank only tiny amounts of water.

Here’s the part that’s consistent with Roberts' theory: I felt no hunger whatsoever. Eating 500 calories a day, I felt full.

The instant I lost my normal sense of taste, I also lost my normal sense of hunger. I lost my normal sense of thirst as well (which doesn’t seem consistent with his theory).

At the time we all were puzzled by this. Why wasn’t I ravenously hungry? It’s probably accurate to say that I was starving; I was dropping pounds by the day. I began to wonder whether people who are starving due to lack of available food also feel no hunger.

I was extremely thin — too thin — for 6 months. I felt fine, and I never, ever felt hungry. I missed food. I missed the taste of food and I missed being able to enjoy food. But I wasn’t hungry.

Roberts' diet is based on a connection between hunger and the taste of food. So I'm thinking the diet just might work. (And see The Monkey Chow Diaries. Apparently this guy was plenty hungry. Caught on tape.)



Unanswered question: would the diet work for "stress eating," "emotional eating," and eating disorders?

Roberts doesn't know.

I did see one positive post by a person with an eating disorder. And many, many people say they've stopped thinking about food all day.

I'm a stress eater myself, although I don't do enough stress eating to become overweight, and there was no possible way I could engage in any stress eating at all when food tasted bad. But that doesn't tell me anything about Roberts' diet, or about people who do enough stress eating to gain lots of weight.




native population of Shangri-La

These seem to be the early adopter - slash - leaders of the Shangri-La folk:

• Seth Roberts website lots of forums, which he's following & commenting on

• Seth Roberts forum boards

• people for whom the diet isn't working (at Seth Roberts' forum)

• success stories ("ethesis" is there)

• "ethesis" - lost 62 pounds

• CalorieLab initially skeptical, seems to be warming to the idea

• CalorieLab interview with Roberts, conducted by "ethesis"

• Annie's blog - very early adopter, quoted in Roberts' book

• Annie's archive of comments (there may be other archives on her blog as well)

• Seth Roberts' final blog at freakonomics

• Vlorbik left this link to Aaron Swartz's "A Future without Fat."
  

update: I just read Swartz.

His "future without fat" reminds me of my sister-in-law's reaction to the possibility of a terrorist attack via smallpox.

For survivors, apparently, smallpox is a hideously disfiguring disease.

My sister-in-law said, "Well, the good news is we'll all be as good-looking as Cindy Crawford."

My sister-in-law is a nurse-practitioner.






^* full disclosure: I'm not 100% positive Norman Rockwell is the name she forgot


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

shangrila


-- CatherineJohnson - 14 Jul 2006

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DanielCaseWikiEnforcer 15 Jul 2006 - 11:21 CatherineJohnson



This person appears to be a parent.

Also a deletionist.

-- CatherineJohnson - 15 Jul 2006

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JohnSaxonPrefaceAlgebra2 15 Jul 2006 - 15:23 CatherineJohnson



Preface to Saxon Algebra 2

This is the second edition of the second book in an integrated three-book series designed to prepare students for calculus. In this book we continue the study of topics from algebra and geometry and begin our study of trigonometry. Mathematics is an abstract study of the behavior and interrelationships of numbers. In Algebra 1, we found that algebra is not difficult—it is just different. Concepts that were confusing when first encountered became familiar concepts after they had been practiced for a period of weeks or months—until finally they were understood. Then further study of the same concepts caused additional understanding as totally unexpected ramifications appeared. And, as we mastered these new abstractions, our understanding of seemingly unrelated concepts became clearer.

Thus mathematics does not consist of unconnected topics that can be filed in separate compartments, studied once, mastered, and then neglected. Mathematics is like a big ball made of pieces of string that have been tied together. Many pieces touch directly, but the other pieces are all an integral part of the ball, and all must be rolled along together if understanding is to be achieved.

A total assimilation of the fundamentals of mathematics is the key that will unlock the doors of higher mathematics and the doors to chemistry, physics, engineering, and other mathematically based disciplines. In addition, it will also unlock the doors to the understanding of psychology, sociology, and other nonmathematical disciplines in which research depends heavily on mathematical statistics. Thus, we see that mathematical ability is necessary in almost any field of endeavor.

Thus, in this book we go back to the beginning –to signed numbers—and then quickly review all of the topics of Algebra 1 and practice these topics as we weave in more advanced concepts. We will also practice the skills that are necessary to apply the concepts. The applicability of some of these skills, such as completing the square, deriving the quadratic formula, simplification of radicals, and complex numbers, might not be apparent at this time, but the benefits of having mastered these skills will become evident as our education continues.

We will continue our study of geometry in this book. Lessons on geometry appear at regular intervals, and one or two geometry problems appear in every homework problem set. We begin our study of trigonometry in Lesson 43 when we introduce the fundamental trigonometric ratios—the sine, cosine, and tangent. We will practice the use of these ratios in every problem set for the rest of the book. The long-term practice of the fundamental concepts of algebra, geometry, and trigonometry will make these concepts familiar concepts and will enable an in-depth understanding of their use in the next book in the series, a pre-calculus book entitled Advanced Mathematics.

Problems have been selected in various skill areas, and these problems will be practiced again and again in the problem sets. It is wise to strive for speed and accuracy when working these review problems. If you feel that you have mastered a type of problem, don’t skip it when it appears again. If you have really mastered the concept, the problem should not be troublesome; you should be able to do the problem quickly and accurately. If you have not mastered the concept, you need the practice that working the problem will provide. You must work every problem in every problem set to get the full benefit of the structure of this book. Master musicians practice fundamental musical skills every day. All experts practice fundamentals as often as possible. To attain and maintain proficiency in mathematics, it is necessary to practice fundamental mathematical skills constantly as new concepts are being investigated. And, as in the last book, you are encouraged to be diligent and to work at developing defense mechanisms whose use will protect you against every humans’ seemingly uncanny ability to invent ways to make mistakes.

One last word. There is no requirement that you like mathematics. I am not especially fond of mathematics—and I wrote the book—but I do love the ability to pass through doors that knowledge of mathematics has unlocked for me. I did not know what was behind the doors when I began. Some things I found there were not appealing while others were fascinating. For example, I enjoyed being an Air Force test pilot. A degree in engineering was a requirement to be admitted to test pilot school. My knowledge of mathematics enabled me to obtain this degree. At the time I began my study of mathematics, I had no idea that I would want to be a test pilot or would ever need to use mathematics in any way.

I thank Tom Brodsky for his help in selecting geometry problems for the problem sets. I thank Joan Coleman and David Pond for supervising the preparation of the manuscript. I thank Margaret Heisserer, Scott Kirby, John Chitwood, Julie Webster, Smith Richardson, Tony Carl, Gary Skidmore, Tim Maltz, Jonathan Maltz, and Kevin McKeown for creating the artwork, typesetting, and proofreading.

I again thank Frank Wang for his valuable help in getting the first edition of this book finalized and publisher Bob Wroth for his help in getting the first edition published.

John Saxon
Norman, Oklahoma



Beautiful.

The third editions of the Saxon books seem to have done away with John Saxon's prefaces; at least, that's the case with the 3rd edition of Algebra 1/2.

Thanks to our ktm Book Fairy, I have a copy of the 2nd edition of Algebra 1/2, so I'll post that preface, too.

The books themselves don't seem to have been changed in other bad direction. If you're interested in buying the 2nd edition, though, Rainbow Resource seems still to have them. So does Seton Books. I'm sure other homeschooling stores do as well.



Wilfried Schmid on procedures and understanding

''I'm a professional mathematician, and I myself very often use mathematical methods that I understand only imprecisely,'' he said. ''It is while I use them that I begin to understand. After a while, the use and the understanding are mutually supporting.''

source:
The New, Flexible Math Meets Parental Rebellion (scroll down)
By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS (NYT) 2403 words
Published: April 27, 2000

Carolyn on procedures and understanding

Carolyn has said more than once that she believes in teaching procedures first. Conceptual understanding follows. (I can't find any of her posts on this, so if I've misremembered I'll delete this.)

I was always a little skeptical of this, although my working assumption is that where Carolyn and I disagree, Carolyn is right.

I've now spent enough time working my way through Saxon to see what Saxon, Schmid, and Carolyn are talking about. When you practice a procedure you don't understand over and over and over again, at some point it "naturalizes." It seems right and inevitable. And it makes sense.

John Saxon stresses this idea in book after book. Math isn't hard; it's different. It's unfamiliar.

When you've done so much math that it no longer seems strange, it starts to seem easy — or at least not harder than other subjects.

Of course, the irony is that this naturalizing process leaves me unable to explain procedures to someone for whom math is still strange. It does, however, make me understand why "math brains" tend to say things like, "It just is" when I ask for an explanation!

I'll add that Saxon (and probably Carolyn & Schmid, too) rarely teaches a concept stripped of all meaning or explanation — though he does do so far more often in Algebra 1 than in the earlier books. A student using Algebra 1 must take a lot on faith.

If nothing else, meaning helps memory; it's easier to remember a procedure you understand. (I have references for this observation, but don't want to spend the time to dig them up just now.) I'd be willing to bet that meaning increases student motivation, too. I recall Steve H saying that students always want an explanation if they can get one. (Steve - am I remembering that correctly?) Every one of Saxon's explanations in 6-5 through 7-6 has been pure pleasure to read, and has made me want to learn more math. In contrast, my motivation sometimes flags as I work with Saxon's highly abstract Algebra 1, my motivation sometimes flags.

In short, I think it's probably always good to try to teach some conceptual understanding along with procedure. I also think, after living through Ms. K's Phase 4 math class, that it's essential to include mini word problems — although Saxon does not do so in Algebra 1. But John Saxon can get away with it, because he's a genius math textbook writer. If you're not a genius math text writer, or a genius math teacher, you can't.

Nevertheless, these caveats aside, math is first and foremost something people do. Barry says that constructivist math ends up teaching math appreciation, not math, and I agree.

Teach procedures supported by meaning where possible, and, where not possible, teach the procedure and practice it to mastery. Understanding will follow as "totally unexpected ramifications appear."







John Saxon & John von Neumann on math
preface to Saxon Algebra 2



-- CatherineJohnson - 15 Jul 2006

comments...

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ShortStoryByVernWilliams 15 Jul 2006 - 19:21 CatherineJohnson



One night I walked into the 43/8 dimension and actually believed the following:

• We should write about math but never do math.
• Correcting students' papers using red ink is a threat to children's self esteem and that red pens should be banned from all public schools.
• Howard Gardner was right about his multiple intelligence theory (I think that he claims about nine at the moment) and that schools should value bodily-kinesthetic ability and the intelligence of self as much as mathematical and linguistic ability.
• The war on intellectual excellence is a great thing. It will make us all equal.
• Teachers Unions are actually concerned about students.
• Advanced courses and gifted programs should be banned because they are elitist and unfair. Since everyone is gifted in their own way (see Howard Gardner), why have special gifted programs?
• There are no bored students in US public schools.
• We can teach thinking even when there is no content to think about.
• We should treat members of politically protected minority groups as victims.
• We should never view our students as individuals but as members of racial and ethnic groups.
• We should buy into the latest educational fad even if it's based on political correctness and has nothing to do with learning or common sense.
• There is no money wasted on administration, specialists, and useless programs. In fact, we should have more of each.
• I should join the NCTM.
• I should join the NEA.
• I should feel guilty because I teach smart kids.
• I should feel really guilty because I enjoy teaching smart kids.

cont'd





National Mathematics Advisory Panel
(nationalmathematicsadvisorypanel)

-- CatherineJohnson - 15 Jul 2006

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SaxonPlacementGuide 16 Jul 2006 - 21:01 CatherineJohnson





source:
Saxon Publishers placement test for Algebra 1 (pdf file)




I came across a ktm post from September 30 2005 reporting that I was starting the final chapter in Russian Math and had flunked the Algebra 1 placement test for Saxon Math.

Here's today's progress report, 9-30-05 — 7-16-2006:

• final chapter of Russian Math

• all of Saxon Math 8/7

• 81 lessons of Saxon Algebra 1 (120 lessons in all - geometry is integrated into the algebra texts)

• UPDATE 10-14-2006: Review lessons A, B, C & 1st 22 lessons Saxon Algebra 2

Now that Christopher has replaced his daily KUMON worksheets with daily Saxon Algebra 1/2, I'm reading through 1/2 as well, partly to make sure I didn't skip anything I need to practice, and partly for the pleasure of encountering John Saxon's take on topics I already know. The familiar made strange. UPDATE 10-14-2006: Christopher is making his way very slowly through Algebra 1/2. Maybe 20 lessons thus far.

Algebra 1 integrates algebra and geometry, though without proofs. I'll start Saxon Algebra 2 3rd edition in September.

Seeing as how I acidentally paid for a month of ALEKS when we did our assessments, I think I'll check out their statistics course.

-- CatherineJohnson - 16 Jul 2006

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ThePriceOfFoodInShangriLa 17 Jul 2006 - 18:27 CatherineJohnson



We’ve gotten into a counting-your-chickens-before-they’re-hatched mode around here. I wish we wouldn't do that, but we have.

Yesterday was Day Three on the Shangri-La diet, and nobody was eating anything.

Today is even more dramatic. For “lunch” I had a stalk of celery. Now I’m choking down a can of tuna fish because I feel like I ought to have some protein. It tastes like paper, and I feel like I’ve eaten a horse. Part of a horse, anyway.



I’ve developed my own way of understanding the diet, which I think probably meshes with Roberts’ ideas.

Here’s Roberts:

It’s no great puzzle why our weight-regulation system works this way. It is a system designed to stock up on energy (calories)—that is, make us fatter—when food is plentiful and to reduce the amount of energy stored—make us thinner—when food is scarce. This is the way any sensible commodity storage system works. I stock up on paper towels when they are cheap and use what I have when they are expensive. Grain elevators store grain when it is cheap. The stored grain is sold when it is more expensive.

source:
The Shangri-La Diet by Seth Roberts
page 48

That image works pretty well, but I think he should have explained it in terms of the cost to an animal (or a person) of finding food when food is scarce:

Scientific interest in the evolution of human nutritional requirements has a long history. But relevant investigations started gaining momentum after 1985, when S. Boyd Eaton and Melvin J. Konner of Emory University published a seminal paper in the New England Journal of Medicine entitled “Paleolithic Nutrition.” They argued that the prevalence in modern societies of many chronic diseases—obesity, hypertension, coronary heart disease and diabetes, among them—is the consequence of a mismatch between modern dietary patterns and the type of diet that our species evolved to eat as prehistoric hunter-gatherers. Since then, however, understanding of the evolution of human nutritional needs has advanced considerably—thanks in large part to new comparative analyses of traditionally living human populations and other primates— and a more nuanced picture has emerged. We now know that humans have evolved not to subsist on a single, Paleolithic diet but to be flexible eaters, an insight that has important implications for the current debate over what people today should eat in order to be healthy.

source:
Food for Thought (pdf file)
by William R. Leonard
Scientific American December 2002

Please note: all the Paleolithic diet stuff is wrong. According to William Leonard.

To appreciate the role of diet in human evolution, we must remember that the search for food, its consumption and, ultimately, how it is used for biological processes are all critical aspects of an organism’s ecology. The energy dynamic between organisms and their environments— that is, energy expended in relation to energy acquired—has important adaptive consequences for survival and reproduction. These two components of Darwinian fitness are reflected in the way we divide up an animal’s energy budget. Maintenance energy is what keeps an animal alive on a day-to-day basis. Productive energy, on the other hand, is associated with producing and raising offspring for the next generation. For mammals like ourselves, this must cover the increased costs that mothers incur during pregnancy and lactation.

The type of environment a creature inhabits will influence the distribution of energy between these components, with harsher conditions creating higher maintenance demands. Nevertheless, the goal of all organisms is the same: to devote sufficient funds to reproduction to ensure the long-term success of the species. Thus, by looking at the way animals go about obtaining and then allocating food energy, we can better discern how natural selection produces evolutionary change.

The point: animals don't just eat to live.

They also eat to reproduce. All animals must take in enough calories, efficiently enough, to keep themselves and the species alive.


Leonard's argument has to do with the evolution of the human brain, a highly expensive organ to operate:

NO SOONER HAD humans perfected their stride than the next pivotal event in human evolution—the dramatic enlargement of the brain—began. According to the fossil record, the australopithecines never became much brainier than living apes, showing only a modest increase in brain size, from around 400 cubic centimeters four million years ago to 500 cubic centimeters two million years later. Homo brain sizes, in contrast, ballooned from 600 cubic centimeters in H. habilis some two million years ago up to 900 cubic centimeters in early H. erectus just 300,000 years later. The H. erectus brain did not attain modern human proportions (1,350 cubic centimeters on average), but it exceeded that of living nonhuman primates.

From a nutritional perspective, what is extraordinary about our large brain is how much energy it consumes—roughly 16 times as much as muscle tissue per unit weight. Yet although humans have much bigger brains relative to body weight than do other primates (three times larger than expected), the total resting energy requirements of the human body are no greater than those of any other mammal of the same size. We therefore use a much greater share of our daily energy budget to feed our voracious brains. In fact, at rest brain metabolism accounts for a whopping 20 to 25 percent of an adult human’s energy needs—far more than the 8 to 10 percent observed in nonhuman primates, and more still than the 3 to 5 percent allotted to the brain by other mammals.

Here is the section that jibes with Roberts' ideas:

[B]rain expansion almost certainly could not have occurred until hominids adopted a diet sufficiently rich in calories and nutrients to meet the associated costs.

Comparative studies of living animals support that assertion. Across all primates, species with bigger brains dine on richer foods, and humans are the extreme example of this correlation, boasting the largest relative brain size and the choicest diet [see “Diet and Primate Evolution,” by Katharine Milton; SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, August 1993]. According to recent analyses by Loren Cordain of Colorado State University, contemporary hunter-gatherers derive, on average, 40 to 60 percent of their dietary energy from animal foods (meat, milk and other products). Modern chimps, in comparison, obtain only 5 to 7 percent of their calories from these comestibles. Animal foods are far denser in calories and nutrients than most plant foods. For example, 3.5 ounces of meat provides upward of 200 kilocalories. But the same amount of fruit provides only 50 to 100 kilocalories. And a comparable serving of foliage yields just 10 to 20 kilocalories. It stands to reason, then, that for early Homo, acquiring more gray matter meant seeking out more of the energy-dense fare.

Fossils, too, indicate that improvements to dietary quality accompanied evolutionary brain growth. All australopithecines had skeletal and dental features built for processing tough, low-quality plant foods. The later, robust australopithecines— a dead-end branch of the human family tree that lived alongside members of our own genus—had especially pronounced adaptations for grinding up fibrous plant foods, including massive, dish-shaped faces; heavily built mandibles; ridges, or sagittal crests, atop the skull for the attachment of powerful chewing muscles; and huge, thickly enameled molar teeth. (This is not to say that australopithecines never ate meat. They almost certainly did on occasion, just as chimps do today.) In contrast, early members of the genus Homo, which descended from the gracile australopithecines, had much smaller faces, more delicate jaws, smaller molars and no sagittal crests—despite being far larger in terms of overall body size than their predecessors. Together these features suggest that early Homo was consuming less plant material and more animal foods.

As to what prompted Homo’s initial shift toward the higher-quality diet necessary for brain growth, environmental change appears to have once more set the stage for evolutionary change. The continued desiccation of the African landscape limited the amount and variety of edible plant foods available to hominids. Those on the line leading to the robust australopithecines coped with this problem morphologically, evolving anatomical specializations that enabled them to subsist on more widely available, difficultto- chew foods. Homo took a different path. As it turns out, the spread of grasslands also led to an increase in the relative abundance of grazing mammals such as antelope and gazelle, creating opportunities for hominids capable of exploiting them. H. erectus did just that, developing the first hunting-and-gathering economy in which game animals became a significant part of the diet and resources were shared among members of the foraging groups. Signs of this behavioral revolution are visible in the archaeological record, which shows an increase in animal bones at hominid sites during this period, along with evidence that the beasts were butchered using stone tools.

Big people with big brains need to eat:

[N]ew discoveries indicate that H. erectus hit the ground running, so to speak. Rutgers University geochronologist Carl Swisher III and his colleagues have shown that the earliest H. erectus sites outside of Africa, which are in Indonesia and the Republic of Georgia, date to between 1.8 million and 1.7 million years ago. It seems that the first appearance of H. erectus and its initial spread from Africa were almost simultaneous. The impetus behind this newfound wanderlust again appears to be food. What an animal eats dictates to a large extent how much territory it needs to survive. Carnivorous animals generally require far bigger home ranges than do herbivores of comparable size because they have fewer total calories available to them per unit area.

Large-bodied and increasingly dependent on animal foods, H. erectus most likely needed much more turf than the smaller, more vegetarian australopithecines did. Using data on contemporary primates and human hunter-gatherers as a guide, Robertson, Susan C. Antón of Rutgers University and I have estimated that the larger body size of H. erectus, combined with a moderate increase in meat consumption, would have necessitated an eightfold to 10-fold increase in home range size compared with that of the late australopithecines—enough, in fact, to account for the abrupt expansion of the species out of Africa.

Big people with big brains need to eat a huge amount of food if they're living up north:

As humans moved into more northern latitudes, they encountered new dietary challenges. The Neandertals, who lived during the last ice ages of Europe, were among the first humans to inhabit arctic environments, and they almost certainly would have needed ample calories to endure under those circumstances. Hints at what their energy requirements might have been come from data on traditional human populations that live in northern settings today. The Siberian reindeer-herding populations known as the Evenki, which I have studied with Peter Katzmarzyk of Queen’s University in Ontario and Victoria A. Galloway of the University of Toronto, and the Inuit (Eskimo) populations of the Canadian Arctic have resting metabolic rates that are about 15 percent higher than those of people of similar size living in temperate environments. The energetically expensive activities associated with living in a northern climate ratchet their caloric cost of living up further still. Indeed, whereas a 160-pound American male with a typical urban way of life requires about 2,600 kilocalories a day, a diminutive, 125-pound Evenki man needs more than 3,000 kilocalories a day to sustain himself. Using these modern northern populations as benchmarks, Mark Sorensen of Northwestern University and I have estimated that Neandertals most likely would have required as many as 4,000 kilocalories a day to survive.

That's a lot of food, especially when you have to forage, hunt, kill, and cook it all yourself.

The prime directive:

With the advent of agriculture, humans began to manipulate marginal plant species to increase their productivity, digestibility and nutritional content— essentially making plants more like animal foods. This kind of tinkering continues today, with genetic modification of crop species to make “better” fruits, vegetables and grains. Similarly, the development of liquid nutritional supplements and meal replacement bars is a continuation of the trend that our ancient ancestors started: gaining as much nutritional return from our food in as little volume and with as little physical effort as possible.

In short, we evolved to:

a) recognize that a Big Mac is an incredibly efficient source of energy

and

b) prefer the richest, most calorie dense foods available in the environment to, say, a celery stalk:

Too often modern health problems are portrayed as the result of eating “bad” foods that are departures from the natural human diet—an oversimplification embodied by the current debate over the relative merits of a high-protein, high-fat Atkins type diet or a low-fat one that emphasizes complex carbohydrates. This is a fundamentally flawed approach to assessing human nutritional needs. Our species was not designed to subsist on a single, optimal diet. What is remarkable about human beings is the extraordinary variety of what we eat. We have been able to thrive in almost every ecosystem on the earth, consuming diets ranging from almost all animal foods among populations of the Arctic to primarily tubers and cereal grains among populations in the high Andes. Indeed, the hallmarks of human evolution have been the diversity of strategies that we have developed to create diets that meet our distinctive metabolic requirements and the ever increasing efficiency with which we extract energy and nutrients from the environment. The challenge our modern societies now face is balancing the calories we consume with the calories we burn.

back to Shangri-La

Leonard's overview of his research:

The characteristics that most distinguish humans from other primates are largely the results of natural selection acting to improve the quality of the human diet and the efficiency with which our ancestors obtained food.

I read Leonard's article a couple of years ago, and was riveted.

Big brains are expensive!

We evolved to dream up a thing like McDonald's in the first place and then binge on fries 'til we explode once we did — that's what we're supposed to do!

Rereading it in light of Shangri-La, I'm riveted all over again.

For the moment — until the diet flops & we all go back to counting calories and/or feeling guilty that we're not counting calories — the way I see hunger, appetite, & weight gain is this:

• our bodies evolved a subtle and automatic means of meeting huge energy requirements

• part of our evolutionarily designed strategy is to prefer high-energy-dense foods (McDonald's) to medium- or low-energy dense foods (celery)

• our body's mechanism for telling us which is which is a learned association between flavor and calories - the more calories a food has, the better it tastes — or comes to taste

• evolution also gave us a means to store food, in the form of fat, for a rainy day
  

AND — this is what I take from Roberts —

• evolution also created a means by which our bodies could decide when to pursue food and when to stop pursuing food and consume body fat instead

• the mechanism by which our bodies communicate with our brains & conscious minds is the set point, which we don't experience consciously, and hunger, which we do

• when our bodies want us to find more food — to lay in a supply of body fat — we feel hunger, and hunger drives the behavior of finding, hunting, killing, preparing, and eating food

• when our bodies want us to stop finding food, because finding food is now burning more energy than it's worth, hunger vanishes and we stop eating

• Roberts' hypothesis: flavorless calories tell the brain that food is now "expensive" - time to stop eating & start burning fat

I've bypassed skepticism on Shangri-La because of what I think (or hope) is converging lines of evidence. Roberts' observations fit with what I know about animals (it's hard to make an animal overweight on purpose - farmers have struggled with this for years); with autistic eating disorders (more on that later); and with my own experience of losing appetite after losing a normal sense of taste.

As to this last.....I'm not the only person I know who's lost weight after losing her sense of taste. A couple of years ago one of the moms at Jimmy's autism school was struck by a car, leaving her with head injuries. (Life does pile it on. Four kids, autism, and now a head injury.)

I haven't talked to her since the accident, but a friend of hers told me that she'd made a tremendous recovery; everyone was incredibly relieved.

The one area of lasting damage appeared to be her sense of taste, which had basically been destroyed. She couldn't taste food.

Here's the interesting part in terms of Roberts: she had lost huge amounts of weight as a result. Before the accident she was a normal weight; now she was slim.

Like me, she told people that she missed food. She longed to eat a hamburger and have it taste like a hamburger.

But she wasn't hungry enough to eat a hamburger that didn't taste like a hamburger.


Well, I may be back here in a couple of weeks crossing everything out...... we'll probably eat celery and tuna for 3 days, then binge on Carvel.

I hope not.

UPDATE 7-27-06: nope, no bingeing on Carvel, & no desire to, either. So far, so good.





The Human Biology of Pastoral Populations
edited by William R. Leonard



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

huntgrunt

shangrila

-- CatherineJohnson - 17 Jul 2006

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MarginalRevolutionOnShangriLa 17 Jul 2006 - 20:46 CatherineJohnson



This is fabulous —

[T]he Shangri-La Diet isn't really a diet, it's a method of suppressing appetite. Roberts argues that the body follows a simple heuristic - when calories are tasty they must be plentiful so turn up the appetite and stock up when the fruit is on the tree. But if calories taste like cardboard then times must be bad (why else would you be eating cardboard?) so turn the appetite down and use up those fat stores.

I wish I'd written that.



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

shangrila

-- CatherineJohnson - 17 Jul 2006

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NettersAtlasOfHumanNeuroscience 18 Jul 2006 - 21:30 CatherineJohnson



I have spent my entire day trying to track down a decent introductory atlas of the brain.

This took hours, and I still don't know whether I ordered the right books.

Just in case I did order the right books, and any of you happens [grammar alert! any of you happens, or any of you happen??] to be in the market for an introductory atlas of the brain, here they are:

• Netter's Atlas of Human Neuroscience
  
  One of our doctors told me that Dr. Frank Netter's drawings are the classic medical illustrations with which most of us are familiar. That's cool; you learn something every day. Of course, what I had hoped to learn today was, once and for all, what is the striatum, where is it, and what does it do? But if I'm not going to conquer the striatum today, then finding out about the life and work of Frank H. Netter, M.D. will do as a consolation prize.
  
  

• Human Brain Coloring Workbook
  
  I ordered this because the Human Brain Coloring Book I already own, by Marian Diamond, is way too complex, in spite of the fact that the intended audience includes, "basic science, psychology, and health science students [and also] public health workers, sociologists, lawyers, nurses, optometrists, physical therapists, pharmacists, dentists, and pysicians and surgeons of all kinds, [and] physicists, molecular geneticists, and those involved with artificial intelligence." I could probably find myself somewhere in that list. Diamond wrote it with her husband Arnold Scheibel, who teaches at UCLA. I've interviewed Scheibel (probably Dr. Diamond as well - can't remember), and heard them lecture; they're great. But the book is too complex. Or maybe it's just too page-splattery. In any case, I've ordered the Human Brain Coloring Workbook on grounds that I'll be able to look at its pages and actually see what's on them.
  

• Concise Guide to Neuropsychiatry and Behavioral Neurology by Jeffrey L. Cummings & Michael R. Trimble
  
  Jeffrey Cummings is famous for his work on Tourette's, and may have been the first person to speculate about genetic links amongst Tourette's, autism, and, iirc, ADHD. A very creative guy; John (Ratey) loved his stuff. I spent a good 10 years of my life sitting in psychiatrists' offices staring at the spine of an enormous book written by Cummings, the title of which escapes me. Now I'll have a Cummings book of my very own.
  
  What I really need are two of Cummings' other books: Frontal-Subcortical Circuits in Psychiatric and Neurological Disorders and The Human Frontal Lobes: Functions and Disorders. However, both books cost an arm and a leg, and I'm not up to plowing through the prose at the moment.
  
  I need a coloring book.
  

• Clinical Neuroanatomy Made Ridiculously Simple by Stephen Goldberg "This now-classic text (over 300,000 copies sold) presents the most relevant points in clinical neuroanatomy with mnemonics, humor and case presentations." I could do without the humor, but I am in dire need of neuroanatomy mnemonics. Let's hope they work, since the accompanying CD isn't going to be Mac-worthy I predict.
  
  

• I also own, and may finally read, both of Rita Carter's books: Mapping the Mind and Exploring Consciousness.

This is the kind of illustration I need:



Figure 1. The Human Hippocampus.

The hippocampus is a C-shaped structure that curls from the temporal lobe in towards the center of the brain. It is one part of the limbic system, a group of brain structures that are associated with emotion, learning, and memory.

brainconnection

Too bad they haven't got anything to say about the striatum.




Dr. Netter





Netter's Atlas of Human Neuroscience
Elsevier
Table of Contents





Frontal-Subcortical Circuits in Psychiatric and Neurological Disorders
Guilford







-- CatherineJohnson - 18 Jul 2006

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PicturesOfNumbers 18 Jul 2006 - 22:33 CatherineJohnson



This blog looks fantastic.


good grief

More synchronicity. This is becoming a daily occurrence.

I just pulled up my two-year old Excel chart for Jimmy's weight, and today I find a blog with a post called Fixing Excel's Charts.

I'm going to pretend this didn't happen.

-- CatherineJohnson - 18 Jul 2006

comments...

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JohnTierneyOnPublicVsPrivate 19 Jul 2006 - 14:38 CatherineJohnson



I love John Tierney ($):

Thanks to a new federal report comparing public and private schools, there’s no doubt that public schools have one huge advantage: the leaders of their unions are unrivaled masters of spin.

They didn’t merely celebrate the report’s release on Friday, they complained that the Bush administration tried to bury it by releasing it for the weekend. They spun so well that the report was treated as a public-school triumph that “casts doubt on the value of voucher programs,” as The Wall Street Journal described it.

But if anything, the report from the Education Department did just the opposite. It concluded, after compensating for socioeconomic differences and other factors, that public-school students score slightly better on tests in fourth grade, while private-school students score slightly better in eighth grade. Given a choice, would you rather be ahead in the fourth inning or later in the game?

But even if you ignore that trend, even if you focus on the overall similarity of the scores in both types of school, that’s still bad news for public schools. Their students ought to be scoring higher if you believe in the unions’ favorite prescription for improving education: more money.

Most private schools are not places like Exeter or Dalton. They’re Catholic parochial schools and others on lean budgets. According to federal surveys, the typical private school’s tuition is only about half what a public school spends per pupil.

The public schools are spending more even if you exclude their expenses for special education, buses, lunch programs and central administration, as William Howell and Paul Peterson found in a study of New York elementary schools. The political scientists calculated that the public schools were still spending twice as much per pupil as were the Catholic schools in New York.

General Motors would not celebrate the news that its $40,000 Cadillac performed almost as well as a $20,000 Honda. It would not have its dealers put up signs reading: “Why Pay Less? Our Cars Are Nearly As Good.”

My best friend's husband used to say their family motto was, "Why pay less?"

Their two kids, may I add, were superbly educated in Catholic schools in Los Angeles. Their son is going to Occidental, I think; their daughter will enter Yale come fall. The top tuition they paid - and this is for Catholic schools in Los Angeles, where costs aren't low, may finally have hit $12,000 or perhaps even $14,000 in the last two years of their daughter's high school education. This was the most elite Catholic girls' high school in the city - the equivalent of Exeter or Andover. Their daughter blew away the SAT on her first try with no tutoring; this year she's doing the same thing with her AP calculus course, again with no tutoring and no help from home. She's a very bright girl - both her parents are super-smart (dad writes sci fi!). But she has been superbly educated for far less money than kids here in my town, where per-pupil spending at the high school level rises to $21,000.

Their son took college calculus last year - again, this is with no tutoring or "help with homework" at home. My friend said he found it difficult, but he did fine. Both of their kids learned all the math they needed to learn at school.


Eduwonk's take is here. He also makes this observation, which is something we've talked about at ktm:

One thought: Keep an eye on math scores more than reading scores when trying to see what effect schools are having on learning. That's because reading today is more linked with social capital than math is. In other words, kids learn about reading in a variety of ways but mostly get math in school.

He cites Hirsch's new book The Knowledge Deficit as his source. (I'm ordering it today.)

Eduwonk also links to Kevin Drum, who sees the statistics as more damning to public schools than others:

PUBLIC vs. PRIVATE....The Department of Education has released a new report on the quality of education offered by public schools vs. private schools. The release was timed for Friday and, according to the New York Times, "was made with without a news conference or comment from Education Secretary Margaret Spellings."

If this suggests to you that public schools came out OK in this new study, you'd be right. Basically, it was a review of NAEP scores in math and reading that was controlled for things like gender, race, English proficiency, poverty level, etc. Here are the average scores for public schools compared to private schools:

4th grade reading: +1.1 points.

4th grade math: +4.1 points.

8th grade reading: -5.7 points.

8th grade math: +0.6 points.

This obviously suggests that private schools haven't discovered a magic bullet for educational reform, despite what their supporters might sometimes claim. Still, I don't think this report is exactly cause for breaking out champagne among public school champions.

First, there's that 8th grade reading score, which is a whopping 5.7 points (about half a grade level) below that of private schools. That's a big difference.

Second, these scores confirm a widely-reported and disturbing trend: public schools seem to do OK at the elementary level, but student scores start to drop significantly in secondary school. In this study, the delta between public and private schools dropped 6.8 points in reading and 3.5 points in math between 4th and 8th grades. If the study had been extended to 11th grade, I suspect that decline would have continued.

Unfortunately, Drum then goes on to conclude that the reading & math wars are beside the point:

I don't have any answers here except for a guess: namely that the pedagogy wars don't really matter much. Phonics vs. whole word? New math vs. old? Open classrooms vs. strict discipline? Without disparaging the people who work hard trying to figure this stuff out, it seems as if practically any of these approaches can succeed or fail depending on how well they're implemented.

Sorry, Kevin Drum, that is disparaging. Disparagement is disparagement.

Reading scores are more predictive of success in college than math scores^* (and see Michele Hernandez). Drum's perception is that private schools are doing significantly better at teaching reading.

Private schools, I think, are far more likely to teach to mastery - and far more likely to teach actual content, as opposed to process ("learning to learn") and character. (Question: do we have data on pedagogy & "core knowledge" in private versus public schools?)

So Drum's reading of the data would seem to tell us the reading and math wars are precisely what matters.



Another take on private versus public school spending:

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, per pupil spending in religious and independent schools averages $4,600, versus $6,857 in public schools. The real difference is actually higher (for reasons I’ll explain) but even this conservative $2,257 figure, multiplied by the number of American public school students (47.6 million), implies that there may be more than $100 billion in unnecessary spending for public schools. Reduce that, and the state and local budget deficits evaporate. There would be no [town and city] budget crisis were public schools operating with the same efficiency as private schools.

source:
Magic Bullet by Lewis Andrews

update 8/2/06

oops

Bad data, bad study. (pdf file)

The Harvard study released yesterday called the earlier report's analysis "flawed" and said that its findings were unreliable because it underreported the number of disadvantaged students in private schools.

The government report — which fanned the flames of the school voucher debate when it was released last month — compared the scores of fourth- and eighth-grade students from nearly 7,000 public schools and 530 private schools on the National Assessment of Educational Progress test. When factors such as race and wealth were taken into account, students in public schools scored the same or better than students at private schools, the government report said.

The study was conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics, a research arm of the U.S. Department of Education, using scores from 2003 tests.

"This new study does a good job of showing the defects of the U.S. Department of Education study," a Manhattan Institute scholar, Jay Greene, a professor at the University of Arkansas, said.

[snip]

Just days after the report was published, a government professor at Harvard, Paul Peterson, who is also the editor of "Education Next," a journal on education policy, raised questions about the methodology of the report.

While the earlier report counted the number of poor students based in part on how many received free lunch and other subsidized federal programs, Mr. Peterson, who wrote the study released yesterday, said that it was an inaccurate measure of poverty in part because it is more difficult for private school students to apply to those programs.

"You have an undercount of disadvantaged students in the private schools," Mr. Peterson said about the federal study.

[snip]

Mr. Greene said that to accurately compare students at public and private schools researchers must randomly place students at those schools so that the backgrounds of the two groups are the same. He said that eight studies conducted over the past decade using similar random methods have all found that private school students perform better.

source:
Report Ranking Public School Students Above Private School Students Said ‘Flawed' ($)
By DEBORAH KOLBEN - Staff Reporter of the Sun
August 2, 2006

And, from the Sun's editorial ($):

Mr. Peterson has concluded that the earlier report used a faulty method for sorting out these other factors. For example, when measuring family poverty, which tends to have a significant impact on educational results, the Department of Education relied on statistics on participation in Title I, a federal program for disadvantaged students. However, Title I money is more widely available to public schools. If at least 40% of a public school's students qualify for free or reduced school lunch, the entire school can get Title I money. Even the regular students in such a school were counted as "disadvantaged" in the earlier study, effectively giving such a public school a pass if it failed to educate its better-off students.

Private schools, meantime, face more hurdles to receiving Title I aid and many don't, or receive much less than the public schools.

[snip]

Despite its grand name, even what sounds like a comprehensive study of education turns out to be open to conflicting interpretations. Mr. Peterson makes a case that the earlier study got it wrong, but we doubt his latest report will be the last word on the debate. That debate won't do a thing to help those low-income parents who can see, plain as day, that their local public schools are not teaching their children to read. Whatever conclusions one draws from Mr. Peterson's report, he has performed a valuable service in reminding everyone that statisticians will never agree on the meaning of test scores. Only vouchers can free individual children from the tyranny of dueling data.

I'm very tired of dueling data.

In education as in every other realm parents should be the deciders. Not the schools, not the pundits, not the NGOs.

The concept of "doctor's orders" disappeared years ago. These days parents consult physicians. We seek their expertise; we respect their knowledge and competence. Most of the time we take their advice.

But it's up to us. We are legally and morally responsible for our children, and the final decision about medical treatment rests with us.

It's time for educators to stop giving orders and start giving expert counsel. Whether or not our children will be taught using century-old progressive techniques should be our call, not Lucy Calkins'.

^* I don't know who this author is, apart from the fact that he appears to be a constructivist (scroll to bottom of screen), or whether we can trust his statistics. That caveat aside, Elert writes that, "Ford and Campos found average predictive accuracies of 16% for SAT-Verbal, 12% for SAT-Math, and 25% for high school record. But when Slack and Porter redid the arithmetic they found actual values of 14%, 10%, and 27% respectively." refs: Ford, Susan F. & Campos, Sandy. Summary of Validity Data from the Admissions Testing Program Validity Study Service. New York: College Entrance Examination Board, 1977 & lack, Warner V. & Porter, Douglas. "The Scholastic Aptitude Test: A Critical Appraisal." Harvard Educational Review 50 (1980): 154-75.

Public Schools Perform Near Private Ones in Study by Diana Jean Schemo July 15, 2006
Comparing Private Schools and Public Schools Using Hierarchical Linear Modeling (pdf file)

-- CatherineJohnson - 19 Jul 2006

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JayeGreenOnSchoolFundingIncrease 19 Jul 2006 - 17:09 CatherineJohnson

Few people are aware that our education spending per pupil has been growing steadily for 50 years. At the end of World War II, public schools in the United States spent a total of $1,214 per student in inflation-adjusted 2002 dollars. By the middle of the 1950s that figure had roughly doubled to $2,345. By 1972 it had almost doubled again, reaching $4,479. And since then, it has doubled a third time, climbing to $8,745 in 2002.

Since the early 1970s, when the federal government launched a standardized exam called the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), it has been possible to measure student outcomes in a reliable, objective way. Over that period, inflation-adjusted spending per pupil doubled. So if more money produces better results in schools, we would expect to see significant improvements in test scores during this period. That didn't happen. For twelfth-grade students, who represent the end product of the education system, NAEP scores in math, science, and reading have all remained flat over the past 30 years. And the high school graduation rate hasn't budged. Increased spending did not yield more learning.

This big-picture evidence is strongly confirmed by academic research. Though you'd never know it from the tenor of most education debates, the vast majority of studies have found no sustained positive relationship between spending and classroom results. Economist Eric Hanushek of Stanford University examined every solid study on spending and outcomes--a total of 163 research papers--and concluded that extra resources are more likely to be squandered than to have a productive effect.

Still, countless people assume that our schools are underfunded. One explanation is that people don't want to believe that large amounts of public money have been used without producing significant results. There's plenty of room for debate on how best to reform our school system, but the sooner Americans realize that lack of resources is not the real problem in our schools the sooner we can have a meaningful debate on how to make education more productive.

source:
Education Myths
by Jaye Greene

in a nutshell

• end of World War II: $1,214 per student in inflation-adjusted 2002 dollars

• mid 1950s: $2,345

• 1972: $4,479

• 2002: $8,745

• results: Increased spending did not yield more learning.
  

update: here's Mark Roulo —

I have seen these statistics before, and this is not the correct way to view things.

Let us imagine for a moment that today we were spending WW-II (inflation adjusted) numbers to educate students. Let us further imagine that we had 30 students per classroom.

So ... $1,200x30 = $36,000 per classroom. Subtract out maybe $3,000 per year for textbooks and supplies, so we've got $33,000 left. Then subtract out for electricity, heat, janitorial services, cost of running the bus, a small fraction of a librarian, books for the library ...

Maybe we have left $20K-$15K to pay the teacher both salary and benefits. Health care is about $5K per year, so we will be offering average salaries of $10K to $15K per year to the teachers. Starting salaries will be lower.

I think it is pretty obvious that while this was enough salary to compete for talent in 1945, it isn't enough today.

This illustrates the problem with numbers like those quoted. Part of what the money spent on schools is doing is trying to be competitive with salaries offered by other jobs that the people we want to be teachers might take. Inflation adjusted numbers don't take this into account because everyone makes more in inflation adjusted terms since 1945 (that is part of why we are wealthier as a country).

A more relevant number would be something like %GDP-spent-per-pupil (it would be a very small number!) over time. That would (probably) take into account increases in wealth and income across the board.

Now ... I've made a big assumption in the above analysis.

The assumption is that teaching can't get any more efficient (in the economic sense). If I had to guess, I'd guess that engineers get paid maybe 4x today what they did in 1945. Today's engineers, however, can do things that were simply impossible in 1945. In a very real sense, today's engineers are at least 4x as productive as their 1945 counterparts. A huge reason for this is that the tools have gotten better.

Teaching hasn't changed much since 1945. One teacher, one class (15-30 students ... the class size has dropped), chalkboard/whiteboard or maybe overhead-projector or powerpoint. Lecture and books and tests.

Teachers could be paid much better if we could find a way for them to teach more effectively. Unfortunately, while in engineering a lot of money gets spent on building new tools and purchasing new tools that prove to be effective (because the firms that do this correctly make more money), the incentive to do this in education seems to be non-existant.

So, to summarize:

As stated, the inflation numbers don't mean anything in terms of productivity because education must compete for employees in an economy that is gradually becoming wealthier.

         Terrific book.


Illinois Loop page on school funding



-- CatherineJohnson - 19 Jul 2006

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LetterToTheEditorPart2 20 Jul 2006 - 12:23 CatherineJohnson



Excerpt from a letter in today's Wall Street Journal ($)

First, Let's Define What Education Really Is?
July 20, 2006; Page A13

I won't argue with Clint Bolick regarding something being amiss with schools ("Remedial Education," editorial page, July 12). Neither can his contention be disputed that simply throwing more money at schools with hopes of improvement will provide measurable satisfaction. I will, however, argue that pointing all the blame at schools because students aren't measuring up in math, reading, science, writing, etc., misses the primary target for such failures -- the home. Mr. Bolick's personal reference to receiving enough skills in 1971 from Newark's Hillside High School while growing up in a one-parent, working-class family says loads about one parent's influence on him to "get an education."

How does Mr. Bolick deduce that schools have become the way they are? Does he or any other reasonable critic assume teachers said in unison, "We're expecting too much from the kids and teaching too much, so we'd better back off"? Was it teachers who said, "We'd better mainstream all students"? Was it teachers who said, "We can't set preparation expectations for students signing up for trigonometry, chemistry, and calculus"? Was it teachers who originated Title IX? Parents need to look in their mirrors to discover the sources for these problems.

If nothing else, this letter tells me why schools teach social studies instead of history.

If this letter writer knew the history of education, he would know that the answer to all of these questions is "yes." Teachers - or ed schools, rather - did, in fact, decide to stop teaching content in favor of process skills such as "critical thinking skills," "problem solving," "learning to learn" and so on, and to start producing equal outcomes by reducing expectations across the board.

The first development is a matter of historial record; the second is a matter of sound historical judgment.

update: After further reading last night, I realize that the "decision" to downgrade standards is more conscious than I thought. There's quite a large body of government and school documents produced by administrators grappling with the issue of how to comply with affirmative action regulations when test scores show very large gaps. There are two formal, conscious schools of thought: "double standards" (allow lower scores for certain classes of students) and "no standards" (drop the tests altogether).

It will be interesting to learn whether NCLB, which appears to have produced a "race to the bottom," will also yield treasure troves of government memos on how best to reduce standards.



the downgrading of analytical/verbal intelligence

Robert Sternberg, of Yale, is (as I understand it) the originator of the notion of "successful intelligence," a concept that has been embraced by educators along with Howard Gardner's multiple intelligences. Our assistant superintendent in charge of curriculum distributed one of Sternberg's articles, What Is an "Expert Student? (pdf file) to the curriculum committee. In this passage Sternberg directly tells his reader that we can achieve greater equality in test scores by changing the tests:

Children were selected for a summer college level program in psychology at Yale if they fell into one of five ability groupings: high analytical, high creative, high practical, high balanced (high in all three abilities), or low balanced (low in all three abilities).

[snip]

[S]tudents in the high-creative and high-practical groups at Yale were much more racially, ethnically, socioeconomically, and educationally diverse than students in the high-analytical group, suggesting that correlations of measured intelligence with status variables may be reduced by using a broader conception of intelligence. Thus, just by expanding the range of abilities measured, the investigators discovered intellectual strengths that might not have been apparent through a conventional test.

There you have it. "Racially and ethnically" diverse students don't score as well as non-diverse students on IQ tests, so let's test them on "practical" and "creative" intelligence instead.

What happens when you do this?

Sternberg reports the results:

Students ...were divided into four instructional groups. Students in all groups used the same introductory psychology textbook and listened to the same psychology lectures. What differed was the type of afternoon discussion section to which they were assigned. They were assigned to an instructional condition that emphasized either memory, analytical, creative, or practical instruction. For example, in the memory condition, they might be asked to describe the main tenets of a major theory of depression. In the analytical condition, they might be asked to compare and contrast two theories of depression. In the creative condition, they might be asked to formulate their own theory of depression. In the practical condition, they might be asked how they could use what they had learned about depression to help a friend who was depressed.

[snip]

Students in all conditions were similarly evaluated in terms of their performance on homework, a midterm exam, a final exam, and an independent project. Each was evaluated for memory, analytical, creative, and practical quality.

[snip]

....the investigators found that the ability tests—analytical, creative, and practical—predicted course performance. When multiple-regression analysis was used, at least two of these ability measures contributed significantly to the prediction of each of the achievement measures. Perhaps as a reflection of the difficulty of de-emphasizing the analytical way of teaching, one of the significant predictors was always the analytical score.

Sternberg also found that students assigned to classes that matched their inclinations - creative students in the creative classes, practical students in the practical classes - did better than students who were mismatched. Whether this finding can be replicated remains to be seen:

Children with creative and practical abilities, who are almost never taught or assessed in a way that matches their pattern of abilities, may be at a disadvantage in course after course, year after year. Of course, aptitude-treatment interactions have proven to be very tricky to replicate (Cronbach & Snow, 1977). So this one would have to be replicated before any firm conclusions could be drawn.

The long and the short of it is that parents didn't ask teachers to stop teaching content and start teaching 21st century skills.

If I'm remembering my polling data correctly, parents do believe that all children can learn to read, write, and do arithmetic to proficiency.

This view is demonstrably correct. It is schools, not parents, that have opted to produce the false equality of altered tests and dumbed-down course content.



The lead-in to Sternberg's article tells you everything you need to know about what the educational world has said "in unison":

This article suggests that conventional methods of teaching may, at best, create pseudo-experts—students whose expertise, to the extent they have it, does not mirror the expertise needed for realworld thinking inside or outside of the academic disciplines schools normally teach. It is suggested that teaching for “successful intelligence” may help in the creation of future experts. It is further suggested that we may wish to start teaching students to think wisely, not just well.

And Sternberg concludes with these observations:

...students can become content experts who nevertheless do not use their expertise in the search for a common good. Any number of nations seems to have managed to create coteries of experts intent on using their expertise for ill. Thus, an augmented conception of expertise takes into account wise and intelligent use of knowledge. The future of the world perhaps hinges on having experts who are wise as well as intelligent and knowledgeable.

So there you have it. The future of the world hinges upon my district's curriculum committee reading articles about the danger of schools creating coteries of experts intent on using their expertise for ill.

Not only has no parent ever demanded such an undertaking, few parents have any idea this is what schools do.

We parents do not look at our children and see potential future coteries of experts intent on using their expertise for ill.

We see kids who need to learn to read, write, spell, and do math.

We take it for granted that's what the school sees, too.


-- CatherineJohnson - 20 Jul 2006

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TeacherPayPodgurskyAndHoxby 20 Jul 2006 - 18:26 CatherineJohnson



Two more researchers weigh in on the subject of teacher pay.

source:
Is there a qualified teacher shortage?
by Michael Podgursky
















source:
Wage Distortion
(pdf file: full text)
Wage Distortion
(abridge; not pdf)
by Caroline Hoxby



Hoxby's and Leigh's argument:

The factors contributing to the reduced likelihood that women of high aptitude will enter the teaching profession appear to come from both within and outside the teaching profession. We focus on two that can be expected to be of critical significance.

First, within the teaching profession, the pay scale of public school teachers has become increasingly compressed since the 1960s. The salary distribution has narrowed so that those with the highest aptitude earn no more than those with the lowest. This may have pushed able women out of the field of education.

Second, outside of teaching, college-educated women have achieved greater parity in their pay vis-à-vis male workers, luring more able women to alternative professions. High-aptitude women may have pulled away from education in order to take special advantage of the new opportunities.

While there could be other explanations outside our investigation, conventional wisdom has long pointed to new opportunities for college-educated women as the primary explanation for the change in teacher quality that many have sensed. We were inclined to accept the conventional wisdom when we began this project, but, after systematically comparing the relative importance of the two factors, we found, surprisingly enough, that pay compression within the teaching profession, induced by the introduction of collective bargaining, has had by far the greater effect.

On further reflection, we were not quite so surprised by the results. For one thing, the overall timing of the decline in teacher quality corresponds to the rise of collective bargaining within education. Teacher unions won collective bargaining rights in key cities and states during the 1960s. Over the next 20 years, collective bargaining spread from state to state across the country.

As a result of union action, the average salary for teachers increased modestly. But as the average was edging upward, the range of the scale narrowed sharply, so much so that able young women were bound to take notice. Moreover, collectively bargained contracts placed a premium on characteristics such as seniority and credentials rather than performance, further depressing the opportunities for the high-aptitude teacher.

[snip]

Although compression of pay within teaching and improved parity with pay for women in other occupations occurred simultaneously over the past 40 years, we were able to distinguish their independent effects, because the timing of their impact varied considerably from one state to the next. For example, parity of pay for women improved sooner in some states than in others. Since we had data, by state, on the earnings of men and women who graduated from college in the same year, we could estimate the independent impact of pay parity separately for each state by calculating the ratio of female-to-male earnings of nonteachers who graduated from similar colleges at the same time.

[snip]

Unionization and the introduction of collective bargaining can be expected to increase average pay for all teachers but reduce the difference between average pay and the pay received by those with both high and low aptitudes, thereby discouraging entry into teaching by women with higher aptitude while attracting those with lower aptitudes.

[snip]

The economic news for educators as a whole was fairly good over the approximately 40 years of the study. Our data indicate that, nationwide, the real (inflation-adjusted) earnings of the average new female teacher rose by 8 percent between 1963 and 2000. But this change was not evenly distributed across aptitude groups. The earnings of teachers in the lowest aptitude group (those from the bottom-tier colleges) rose dramatically relative to the average, so that teachers who in 1963 earned 73 percent of the average salary for teachers could expect to earn exactly the average by 2000. Meanwhile, the ratio of the earnings of teachers in the highest-aptitude group (from the highly selective colleges) to earnings of average teachers fell dramatically. In states where they began with an earnings ratio of 157 percent, they ended with a ratio of 98 percent. By 2000, most states had earnings ratios near 100 percent for all aptitude groups, indicating that graduates of the most highly selective colleges earned no more as teachers than did graduates from bottom-tier schools!

[snip]

While parity of pay for men and women and the base pay for males in other occupations changed similarly for all women regardless of aptitude, the change in union-induced compression of the pay spread for teachers was especially large.

As a result teaching became much more attractive to those with lower aptitudes—and much less attractive to the most talented. Pay compression increased the share of the lowest-aptitude female college graduates who became teachers by about 9 percentage points. Meanwhile, the share of the highest-aptitude graduates who became teachers shifted downward by about 12 percentage points.


Conclusion

We find that pay compression explains about 80 percent of the decline of teachers from highly selective colleges and about 25 percent of the increase in the share of teachers from the least selective colleges. Meanwhile, changes in pay parity in nonteaching occupations explains only 9 percent of the decline in the share of teachers coming from highly selective colleges—and only 6 percent of the increase in teachers from the bottom tier of colleges. The sheer increase in the proportion of all college graduates coming from these bottom-tier colleges accounts for much of the remaining increment in the percentage of low-aptitude teachers.

These results are striking: union-driven pay compression alone accounts for more than three-quarters of the decline in teacher quality. The finding is best understood by recognizing that pay parity increased only moderately and at a similar rate for college-educated women of all abilities....

Put another way, we cannot expect high-performing college graduates to continue to enter teaching if that is the one profession in which pay is decoupled from performance. Indeed, other professions have been raising the reward for performance over the past few decades. We suspect that this trend exacerbated the degree to which pay compression pushed high-aptitude people out of teaching. A push from one direction has more effect on someone who is being simultaneously pulled from the other direction.

Christian Science Monitor's take on the Hoxby - Leigh paper: How do the new teachers measure up? by Teresa Mendez:

"These teachers were never a big share, but they were a non-negligible share," says Caroline Hoxby, a professor of economics at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., whose research focuses on the economics of education. "People say they were important leaders. They weren't in every classroom but they were mentors."

CSM's graphic, drawn from Hoxby's & Leigh's data:





The Hoxby-Leigh article, which I read a year ago, was a revelation.

Like everyone else, I had assumed that greater opportunities for women in other realms made teaching a less attractive occupation across the board.

It hadn't occurred to me that a factor like wage compression, while making teaching less attractive to some women, would make the field more attractive to others.



-- CatherineJohnson - 20 Jul 2006

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AnneDwyerMathBoosterGaps 20 Jul 2006 - 20:10 CatherineJohnson



Here's a gap story from my summer Math Booster Camp.

As a way of introduction, I have to say that this has been my favorite set of classes for Math Boosters. I am teaching a 6-11 year old group and a middle school group.

My middle school group is great. They are all math brains and they are all there because they want to be. They range from 4th grade to 7th grade.

Here's what happened today and it illustrates just what is wrong with Everyday Math:

Today I reviewed multiplication and division of fractions. I gave them a problem set that included Exercise 305 from Russian Math. Note that these are meant to be done out loud with no paper but they look like this: 5(1+1/5). The students were having trouble with them, so I put them on the board and said that they could add the fractions inside the parenthesis and multiply by 5 or they could use the distributive property.

They gave me a totally blank look. I asked them if they had ever heard of the distributive property. They said they hadn't.

So I demonstrated the distributive property. I expected them to say something like, oh, I've seen that but I didn't know what it was called.

But not one of them did. Here is a class of seven math brains, all of whom have been trained with Everyday Math, who have never been taught the distributive property.

My new math equation: Spiralling curriculum + no content = big gaps

-- CatherineJohnson - 20 Jul 2006

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AndrewFirstSentences 21 Jul 2006 - 00:43 CatherineJohnson



I think Andrew may have just written his first sentences.

We were sitting on the couch, and Andrew was frustrated and mad. He'd written his usual obsessive string of unspaced Barney-words on the AlphaSmart:

barneyscolorsandshapesyellowbarneybluecharactersbarney

We have no idea what he wants when he does this. Towards the end of the school year his teacher showed him a video on her computer and he's been obsessed ever since. He thinks we can play Barney videos on our computer monitors at will. At least, that's what we think he thinks. He'll write a long string of unspaced Barney words on the AphaSmart and then drag us to the computer and shriek at us & grab our hands and fling them at the keyboard.

So he'd written his string of Barney words, but I couldn't go to the computer with him, because Travis, from Guest House (employs Christian) was here for a visit. We had to stay put.

Andrew was going nuts, so I tried to divert him by writing sentences about the conversation Travis & Christian & I were having, which had to do with the fact that Andrew will not sit still for a dental exam.

I typed, "Andrew has to go to the dentist."

Andrew erased it.

Then I typed, "Andrew has to be good at the dentist's office."

Andrew erased it.

He erased everything I wrote. It was a standoff.

Finally it occurred to me to write some sentences about Barney.

"Barney drives the car," I wrote.

Andrew stared intently at the words as I typed, then tapped the screen briskly with his finger, a sign that he approves.

"Barney plays soccer," I wrote.

He tapped the screen again.

"Barney likes Baby Bop."

Tap.

"Barney sings 'I love you.'"

Tap.

I wrote a few more sentences and stopped.

Then Andrew took the AlphaSmart away from me and wrote this:

barney friends bj
barney bj love you
barney pictures cap house
love you barney bj


I think those are sentences. I showed him how to space the words, but he hit the return at the end of each line himself. He doesn't do that when he's writting his Barney word strings.

I think Andrew wrote a story about Barney.



Andrew first sentences
Andrew writes plane
AlphaSmart

-- CatherineJohnson - 21 Jul 2006

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JohnVonNeumann 21 Jul 2006 - 18:01 CatherineJohnson



Vlorbik left an incredible line from John von Neumann in the comments thread of a post about John Saxon's, Wilfried Schmid's, and Carolyn's thoughts on the conceptual understanding of math:

In mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them.

I first encountered this idea in John Saxon's books. Here it is in Saxon Homeschool 6/5 Third edition:

John Saxon often said, "Mathematics is not difficult. Mathematics is just different, and time is the elixir that turns things different into things familiar."

I wish John Saxon hadn't died before I knew who he was.





John Saxon & John von Neumann on math
preface to Saxon Algebra 2



-- CatherineJohnson - 21 Jul 2006

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LibraryThing 21 Jul 2006 - 18:26 CatherineJohnson



Speaking of Vlorbik, his site put me onto an extremely cool new site called LibraryThing.

Great minds think alike! V. seems to have listed one Stephen King novel, Desperation.

I've read perhaps 3 Stephen King novels, Desperation being one.

Desperation was my favorite.

I think Insomnia was one of my 3, too.

-- CatherineJohnson - 21 Jul 2006

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TheFutureWillBeDifferent 21 Jul 2006 - 18:55 CatherineJohnson



I am gravely disappointed in Tom Friedman.

What will higher education look like in 50 years? If you weren't in Honolulu a couple of weeks ago, you might not know....But a glance at the panels of a conference convened there -- called "The Campus of the Future" -- offers a clue: College in the coming decades will have even less to do with learning than it does now.

Of the conference's almost 200 offerings -- e.g., "Responding to Climate Change," "Branding Your Identity" and "Takin' It to the Streets" -- none seemed to have even a tangential relation to the idea that, in college, teachers are supposed to impart knowledge to students.


[snip]


[Tom] Friedman "urged educators to focus less on concrete outcomes like grades and test scores and more on teaching students how to learn, instilling passion and curiosity in them and developing their intuitive skills" ...

[Mr. Friedman] suggested to his audience of 4,000 that preparing students for an uncertain future was akin to "training for the Olympics without knowing which sport you will compete in."

source:
The Future Will Be Different! Why Study?
By NAOMI SCHAEFER RILEY
July 21, 2006; Page W11

I don't get it.

Tom Friedman has not, to my knowledge, attended ed school.

So where is he getting this stuff?

Did he come up with "the future will be different" on his own?

Or do these people call each other up at night?



The Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education (1918)
From Here to There: The Road to Reform of American High Schools (6-page history from DOE)
John Gatto Taylor on The Cardinal Principles

Tom Friedman
Tom Friedman piles on
Tom Friedman, Tom Friedman



-- CatherineJohnson - 21 Jul 2006

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HowMuchReadingADay 21 Jul 2006 - 22:27 CatherineJohnson



The best readers in 5th grade spend an hour a day reading books —





By the time a child reaches the middle grades he or she must read in order to develop his vocabulary —




I particularly like the finding that college graduates use a spoken vocabulary only slightly more sophisticated than that found in books written for preschoolers.

I believe it.

source:
Reading Can Make You Smarter
by Anne Cunningham and Keith Stanovich
PRINCIPAL volume 83 number 2, November/December 2003 » page(s) 34-39



Examples of words that do not appear in two large
corpora of oral language (Berger, 1977; Brown, 1984) but
that have appreciable frequencies in written texts
(Carroll, Davies & Richman, 1971;
Francis & Kucera, 1982):

display            literal
dominance       legitimate
dominant         luxury
exposure         maneuver
equate            participation
equation          portray
gravity            provoke
hormone         relinquish
infinite            reluctantly
invariably      


WHAT READING DOES FOR THE MIND
BY ANNE E.CUNNINGHAM AND KEITH E. STANOVICH
AMERICAN EDUCATOR/AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS
SPRING/SUMMER 1998

E.D. Hirsch has been quoting Keith Stanovich's & Ann Cunningham's research:

Early reading acquisition and its relation to reading experience and ability 10 years later.
Cunningham AE, Stanovich KE.

A group of 1st-graders who were administered a battery of reading tasks in a previous study were followed up as 11th graders. Ten years later, they were administered measures of exposure to print, reading comprehension, vocabulary, and general knowledge. First-grade reading ability was a strong predictor of all of the 11th-grade outcomes and remained so even when measures of cognitive ability were partialed out. First-grade reading ability (as well as 3rd- and 5th-grade ability) was reliably linked to exposure to print, as assessed in the 11th grade, even after 11th-grade reading comprehension ability was partialed out, indicating that the rapid acquisition of reading ability might well help develop the lifetime habit of reading, irrespective of the ultimate level of reading comprehension ability that the individual attains. Finally, individual differences in exposure to print were found to predict differences in the growth in reading comprehension ability throughout the elementary grades and thereafter.

Early reading acquisition and its relation to reading experience and ability 10 years later.
Cunningham AE, Stanovich KE.
Dev Psychol. 1997 Nov;33(6):934-45.

from Cunningham's & Stanovich's American Educator article (pdf file):

In several studies, we have attempted to link children’s reading volume to specific cognitive outcomes after controlling for relevant general abilities such as IQ. In a study of fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade children, we examined whether reading volume accounts for differences in vocabulary development once controls for both general intelligence and specific verbal abilities were invoked (Cunningham & Stanovich, 1991).

[snip]

[W]e found that even after accounting for general intelligence and decoding ability, reading volume contributed significantly and independently to vocabulary knowledge in fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade children.

[snip]

In a study we conducted involving college students, we employed an even more stringent test of whether reading volume is a unique predictor of verbal skill (Stanovich & Cunningham, 1992). In this study we examined many of the same variables as in our study of fourth- to sixth-grade students. However, we decided to stack the deck against reading volume by first removing any contribution of reading ability and general intelligence.

[snip]

We found that reading volume made a significant contribution to multiple measures of vocabulary, general knowledge, spelling, and verbal fluency even after reading comprehension ability and nonverbal ability had been partialed out.

the Practical Knowledge Test

[I]n the Practical Knowledge Test, we made an effort to devise questions that were directly relevant to daily living in a technological society in the late twentieth century; for example, What does the carburetor tor in an automobile do? If a substance is carcinogenic, it means that it is __? After the Federal Reserve Board raises the prime lending rate, the interest that you will be asked to pay on a car loan will generally increase/ decrease/stay the same? What vitamin is highly concentrated in citrus fruits? When a stock exchange is in a “bear market,”what is happening? and so forth. The results indicated that the more avid readers in our study—regardless of their general abilities—knew more about how a carburetor worked, were more likely to know who their United States senators were, more likely to know how many teaspoons are equivalent to one tablespoon,were more likely to know what a stroke was, and what a closed shop in a factory was, etc. One would be hard pressed to deny that at least some of this knowledge is relevant to living in the United States in the late 20th century.

This reminds me of a story a friend of mine told me.

His wife was and is a severe dyslexic, and sometime after they married he realized that she knew almost nothing about the random dumb stuff the rest of us waste time shmoozing about at parties.

For instance, she had no idea who Kato Kaelin was.

This was back when Kaeto Kaelin was new.

I asked him, "Doesn't she watch TV?"

She did.

She was a smart, educated person who basically couldn't read and who watched TV.

Apparently the amount of information you can get from TV is pretty limited.



TV and the "cognitive autonomy" of misinformation

In other questions asked of these same students,we attempted to probe areas that we thought might be characterized by misinformation. We then attempted to trace the “cognitive anatomy” of this misinformation.

69.3 percent of our sample thought that there were more Jewish people in the world than Moslems. This level of inaccuracy is startling given that approximately 40 percent of our sample of 268 students were attending one of the most selective public institutions of higher education in the United States (the University of California, Berkeley).

[Correct] scores among the group high in reading volume and low in television exposure were highest, and the lowest scores were achieved by those high in television exposure and low in reading volume.

The cognitive anatomy of misinformation appears to be one of too little exposure to print (or reading) and over-reliance on television for information about the world. Although television viewing can have positive associations with knowledge when the viewing is confined to public television, news, and/or documentary material (Hall, Chiarello, & Edmondson, 1996;West & Stanovich, 1991;West et al., 1993), familiarity with the primetime television material that defines mass viewing in North America is most often negatively associated with knowledge acquisition.

reading makes everyone smarter

[W]e observed that firstgrade intelligence measures do not uniquely predict eleventh-grade reading volume in the same way. Thus, this study showed us that an early start in reading is important in predicting a lifetime of literacy experience— and this is true regardless of the level of reading comprehension ability that the individual eventually attains.

This is a stunning finding because it means that students who get off to a fast start in reading are more likely to read more over the years, and, furthermore, this very act of reading can help children compensate for modest levels of cognitive ability by building their vocabularly and general knowledge. In other words, ability is not the only variable that counts in the development of intellectual functioning. Those who read a lot will enhance their verbal intelligence; that is, reading will make them smarter.

I think this may answer a question I asked years ago: are early readers better readers?

I became interested in this when the principal of our grade school in Studio City told parents that it didn't matter if their children were slow learning to read. Everyone learns to read eventually, she said; the timing doesn't matter.

That struck me as unlikely given what I knew about tennis prodigies and musical prodigies and the like, who start young. Also, I'd taught myself to read earlier than the kids in my town learned to read. I think I must have learned to read the summer before first grade, which isn't especially young for a lot of ktm commenters, I realize, but was young for my school where reading instruction started in first grade. I entered first grade able to read proficiently all of the books we would use for the next 9 months. I was a year ahead, and this gap never went away. I read earlier than my peers, and 11 years later I was a better reader than my peers. I think Stanovich's research would probably predict that outcome; early reading leads to better reading. I think. I've just read a couple of his abstracts thus far, so I don't know.

In any event, Stanovich's & Cunninghams' research does show that reading early and reading a lot matter.



perfect SATs

From 1600 Perfect Score: The 7 Secrets of Acing the SAT by Tom Fischgrund, who inteviewed 160 of the 541 "perfect 1600" SAT scorers in the year 2000:

[S]tudents who ace the SAT read an average of fourteen hours a week. Average score students, on the other hand, read only eight hours a week—an immense drop-off. The biggest difference, however, was found in the amount of time students spent reading for school. Average score students spent four hours a week reading literature, textbooks, and other assigned reading for school. Perfect score students put in nine hours a week for school-assigned reading, more than double the amount of time.

[snip]

What do 1600 students read for fun?...The book most frequently mentioned—by a total of 6 percent of perfect score students—was Catch-22 by Joseph Heller.

Fischgrund on divorce and SAT scores
how much reading each day?
Vocabulary Workshop
robust vocabulary instruction (400 words a year)
15 new words a day
Engelmann says it's 3 new words a day



-- CatherineJohnson - 21 Jul 2006

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FindX 22 Jul 2006 - 16:13 CatherineJohnson



here




source:
Omni Brain

-- CatherineJohnson - 22 Jul 2006

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BarryOnTheFutureWillBeDifferent 22 Jul 2006 - 18:47 CatherineJohnson


Barry Garelick:

The fallacy in the reasoning about "life changes, therefore why bother with facts?" is that by definition facts don't change. Theories may, but facts do not. The building blocks by which we learn to read or do math problems are invariant. One of the beautiful things about math is that as theories change, the supporting facts remain the same.

But the ed school view is that the goal posts are constantly being moved. This theme, in a slightly different context (posted somewhere on KTM regarding my objection to a test item on a sample reading exam for future teachers in California) was addressed by SteveH rather wryly when he asked "Has anyone checked what 8 x 7 is lately?" Thanks to SteveH for that; I use that witticism almost on a daily basis.

-- CatherineJohnson - 22 Jul 2006

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JudithKleinfeldOnHomeschooledBoys 22 Jul 2006 - 18:58 CatherineJohnson



Yet-to-be-published research by Judith Kleinfeld:

In separate research that Kleinfeld is also preparing for publication, she has possibly gotten to the root of the problem.

"Here's a fascinating fact," she said. "There is no literacy gap in home-schooled boys and girls."

"Why? In school, teachers emphasize reading literature and talking about character and feelings," she said. "This way of teaching reading does not turn boys on. Boys prefer reading nonfiction, such as history and adventure books. When they are taught at home, parents are more likely to let them follow their interests."

Why Johnny Can't Read: Schools Favor Girls
By Robert Roy Britt
LiveScience

I'm guessing most parents of boys also don't spend huge quantities of time celebrating Women's History Month or holding assemblies devoted to the Columbine killers and how not to become one yourself.

Moreover, your basic homeschooling mom is not concerned that if her boys learn too much academic content they'll grow up to form coteries of experts intent on using their expertise for ill.

Nor is your basic homeschooling mom on a mission from God to prevent the next Holocaust by requiring her children to engage in self-reflection on questions about identity, group membership, and obligations to others.

I could go on.

-- CatherineJohnson - 22 Jul 2006

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AndrewWritesPlane 22 Jul 2006 - 23:40 CatherineJohnson



Andrew is so frustrated and fed up he's decided to write.





For awhile now, Andrew has been giving Ed the chalk, or putting Ed's fingers on his keyboard, because he thinks Ed knows what's inside his head — at least that's what Ed thinks he thinks. Ed says, "He's got a really interesting theory of mind."

Andrew's theory of mind is: other people know my thoughts, and think what I think.

So Andrew wants Ed to write down what he wants.

We think.

Perhaps because Ed has thus far failed to write down anything Andrew thinks, Andrew has today taken matters into his own hands.

This is his 2nd written word. He once wrote his name on the board. Andy. Today he wrote "plane."

"Plane" or possibly "Diane."

Both words mean the same thing. Both words mean, "I want to fly on the airplane to Illinois." Diane is my sister-in-law; we'll see her in Springfield. Then we'll see my mom, Pat, in Evanston. Andrew wrote "plane" or "Diane," then did his brisk approving tap on the photo of Jimmy in Pat's living room that we have up on the refrigerator. After that he got Ed's travel backpack and the portable DVD player we take on trips. His meaning is clear.

Just now he wrote some more words....."bed," "Pdat" (we think that's his spelling of "Pat"), and we think he may have tried to write "Dave," who's my brother, married to Diane.

Andrew likes to travel.


Ed just said, "With this level of will, he's going to break through."



Andrew first sentences
Andrew writes plane
AlphaSmart

Mindblindness: An Essay on Autism and Theory of Mind by Simon Baron-Cohen
The Theory of Mind and the Triad Perspective of Autism and Asperger Syndrome by Olga Bogdashina
Why Language Matters for Theory of Mind by Janet Wilde Astington
Theories of Theories of Mind by Peter Carruthers
The Child's Theory of Mind by Henry J. Wellman

-- CatherineJohnson - 22 Jul 2006

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TheDailyPlate 23 Jul 2006 - 13:35 CatherineJohnson



Shangri-La
start date: Friday 7-14-2006
today: Sunday 7-23-2006



A ktm guest left a link to a fantastically useful diet site: The Daily Plate.

The site is free, and is vastly superior not to mention easier to use than the fee-based Weight Watchers site I used 3 years ago when I wanted to lose some weight.

Its best feature thus far is a weight-tracking chart (this one's not from The Daily Plate, obviously). About 10 years ago I read all the research on weight loss and discovered that the sole weight-loss technique validated by peer-reviewed research was the behavioral technique of writing down everything you eat each day and totting up the calories.

When we moved here the director of Jimmy's school, a superb behaviorist, told me that just writing stuff down doesn't work; you have to chart it. In other words, for data to become motivating, you must see a visual representation of progress. She'd helped a fellow graduate student become un-blocked on his dissertation by getting him to chart his progress towards completion.

The Daily Plate makes it easy to chart your weight loss.

Fantastic!



progress report

I finally worked up the nerve to weigh everyone a couple of days ago.

The news was bad.

We have lots of weight to lose around here. At least, the kids have lots of weight to lose. In theory I don't need to lose weight, but assuming that thinner-is-better for once and future diabetics like me, I'd like to lose 7 lbs, which would take me back to college weight or thereabouts.

Jimmy has a huge amount of weight to lose, at least 40 lbs; 60 lbs if you listen to Walter Willett.

Christopher has quite a bit to drop, too.

Yesterday I was feeling glum about the whole Shangri-La thing, because we were in that fun part of a diet where you're eating nothing and gaining weight. People complain about "plateaus." Well, forget plateaus. The part I hate is the I-just-gained-a-pound-eating-lettuce early morning weigh-in. Jimmy and I both gained a pound each after a couple of days of wildly reduced intake.

Today is much better. I have now officially lost a pound; Christopher has lost a pound and a half in two days!

I'm going to have to be careful with him, because a child should never lose weight that fast. Nor should an adult, but I'm more concerned about a growing child.

Have yet to weigh Jimmy this morning, and am dreading it, because I didn't get myself sufficiently organized yesterday to give him any olive oil at all. I kept setting the timer for an hour — you can't drink the olive oil within an hour of eating — and somewhere in there he'd get to the kitchen and start stuffing his face.

UPDATE: Jimmy's weight hasn't budged. otoh, as one of our psychiatrists pointed out, when you've got a situation of ongoing weight gain, not gaining is significant. If he keeps eating as little as he has this week, he'll lose. Meanwhile I've got to get the rest of the household on board. Friday night Christian was exclaiming over how slowly Jimmy was eating his pizza. Normally he's starving and he eats fast. This was a clear sign, to me, that the diet was working.....but then, when Jimmy had finally finished the one slice and my attention had wandered, Martine handed him a second slice even though he hadn't asked. "I always give him two slices," she said.

no common sense-y

Today he has to go to his program at the Y, which means I won't be able to give him any oil there....I'm thinking about giving him a walloping big dose in lieu of breakfast today. (Like all teenagers, he sleeps late.)

For the time being, I'm sold on Shangri-La. Two tablespoons of tasteless disgusting ELOO a day kills appetite.

So we'll see.




Roberts has posted weight loss charts from people on his forum:





Looks good to me.

Seth Roberts website
The Shangri-La Diet at Amazon
freakonomics blog posts on Roberts
Calorie Lab review
ethesis (lost 62 lbs) "best practices" huntgrunt

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

shangrila

-- CatherineJohnson - 23 Jul 2006

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HowToCheat 23 Jul 2006 - 19:02 CatherineJohnson




in 8 easy steps

via Newmark's door



This reminds me of a student I had in a freshman rhetoric class at Iowa. She handed in a paper that was copied word for word from an essay in our class reader.

When I confronted her, she denied copying the essay.

I pulled out the reader and showed her the passage.

She looked at me and said, "I remembered it."

Of course, now that I know the Helen Keller plagiarism story, it strikes me as entirely possible my student could have had a brain wonky enough to remember an essay word for word, while at the same time not remembering that she was the reader of the essay, not the writer.

Keller actually did, as a girl, remember something she'd read without remembering she'd read it, and, iirc, was subjected to some awful kangaroo trial (haven't tracked down mention of a trial, so take this with a grain of salt). I think the story is told in Roger Shattuck's book. Mark Twain wrote Helen a letter about the incident.

[pause]

Now I'm remembering the time a student told me she hadn't done her paper because her grandmother had died. At Iowa everyone's grandmother was dying all the time; grandparents were dropping like flies.

I didn't believe her, either. Then it turned out that not only had her grandmother died for real, but the grandmother had been living with the family, practically raising the kids, and the whole household was in a state of mourning and traumatic collapse.

Yes, those early days of teaching with zero training and zero experience always go well!


-- CatherineJohnson - 23 Jul 2006

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YourOwnLyingEyes 23 Jul 2006 - 20:38 CatherineJohnson



I mentioned in one of the Shangri-La posts that measures of BMI, for all their faults, are a more accurate measure for me than looking in the mirror — or looking at my kids.

Turns out there's a study on this subject:

Americans believe their fellow Americans have gotten fat. They consider this a serious national problem.

But when they think about weight, they appear to use different scales for different people. Nine-in-ten American adults say most of their fellow Americans are overweight. But just seven-in-ten say this about "the people they know." And just under four-in-ten (39%) say they themselves are overweight.

I'm hopeless when it comes to accurate perceptions of whether my kids are or are not overweight.

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

shangrila

-- CatherineJohnson - 23 Jul 2006

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DeborahGieringerDrawings 24 Jul 2006 - 18:54 CatherineJohnson



I'd been out of touch with my friend Debbie for awhile (I think people call her "Deb" now). When we emailed this week, I learned that she's posted some of her drawings on a website. They're incredible.

She also said she has no idea how to rename her website....so if anyone out there knows how to deal with Mac sites, let me know. I'm pretty sure I put one together a year ago, and it was bizarrely non-user friendly. I have no idea where it is now.

Debbie's drawings are causing me to ask myself why I'm learning math here in middle age, instead of learning to draw and paint, something I've always wanted to do.

My neighbor, the statistician, has always wanted to learn to paint, and she's doing it. For the past couple of months she's been working her way through Betty Edwards' book on color. Last week she picked colors for the upstairs bedrooms and now her second floor looks like something out of Martha Stewart (and I say that as praise, setting aside MS's wackadoo qualities. There's nothing wackadoo about her color sense. I have yet to see a Martha Stewart photo spread where the colors weren't perfect.)

My neighbor learned how to choose colors & put them together the same way I'm learning how to divide a polynomial by a monomial, by choosing books written by the John Saxon of drawing and teaching herself.

I would like to have the colors in my house look like a professional picked them out Instead I'm sitting in a cluttered house with dull white paint and too many books. (My neighbor has too many books, too, but she's making it work.)

Maybe one day.

In the meantime, at least my door is red.
























(this is a drawing of Debbie's son)



-- CatherineJohnson - 24 Jul 2006

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ShangriLaPart3 24 Jul 2006 - 20:12 CatherineJohnson



Shangri-La
start date: Friday 7-14-2006
today: Monday 7-24-2006



Jimmy down to 216.5 this morning. From 219.

Excellent.

56.5 lbs left to go.

UPDATE 7-26-06: 222 yesterday morning; 221 today. 7-29-06: he's been at 218 for a couple of days now.

UPDATE 8-7-06: 216 this morning, and his weight curve has been heading downward for a few days. It's easier to deny him food after dinner when he has a rebound eating effect due to his stimulant medication wearing off. So we'll see.



hmm....

Cruising the Shangri La forums I find this from an interview with Roberts:

On the other side of the ledger, the diet doesn't seem to be much help to people who are thin and who exercise a lot. Some of these people have tried the diet because they feel hungry and think about food too much. If the diet helps them, its effects are subtle and take several weeks to become clear.

That would be me.

Thin & exercise a lot.

In the book Roberts says that if you have a BMI of 22 you're not going to lose much.

I have a BMI of 22.

Seth Roberts website
The Shangri-La Diet at Amazon
freakonomics blog posts on Roberts
Calorie Lab review
ethesis (lost 62 lbs) "best practices" huntgrunt

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

shangrila

-- CatherineJohnson - 24 Jul 2006

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NewYorkCharterSchoolStudy 24 Jul 2006 - 23:09 CatherineJohnson



This is good news.

July 20, 2006 -- Charter schools in the city are vastly outperforming public schools in their neighborhoods, according to a bombshell state report obtained by The Post. The just-released study by state Education Department found students in 11 of 16 city charter schools outscored kids in nearby public schools on the state's fourth-grade English and math exams in 2005.

The academic gap widens in the upper grades, the report said, with kids in five of six upper-grade charter schools faring better on eighth-grade English and math exams.

The bad news is that the school using Core Knowledge and Saxon Math bombed.

I'm assuming that's due either to the fact that the school opened in 2003 or to the fact that the study seems not to have measured value-added (i.e. the amount of progress students made in one year). Hess & Leal's study of National Heritage Academies using a pre-test post-test design and is very positive:

This report analyzes the achievement gains posted by National Heritage Academies (NHA) students on the 2002-03, 2001-02, and 2000-01 Metropolitan Achievement Test (MAT). The analysis examines academic gain scores from pre-test and post-test results. This approach measures school performance more usefully and reliably than does one that relies upon measures of attainment. MAT gain scores are both a useful metric to judge relative performance and a valuable tool for internal benchmarking because they assess whether students are demonstrating improvement that is faster or slower than the national norm.

[snip]

The findings suggest that NHA students posted gains that dramatically exceeded the national norms in 2002-03 and 2001-02. The students gain scores exceeded, by smaller amounts, nationally normed gains for 2000-2001. We, the researchers, conclude that a broad range of NHA students have dramatically exceeded normal national gains during 2001-02 and 2002-03. The evidence shows that NHA students are making significant gains in the critical areas of reading, math, and language. The evidence further suggests that NHA is benefiting students regardless of their ethnicity, gender, economic status, or length of enrollment in NHA.

The other charter school that did very badly has a pretty challenging population.


table of scores (pdf file)

-- CatherineJohnson - 24 Jul 2006

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MatchlockGun 25 Jul 2006 - 12:32 CatherineJohnson



The Comments thread on how much reading reminded me that I'd been meaning to write a post about The Matchlock Gun.

The Matchlock Gun is my favorite children's novel. I discovered it only as an adult, when I read it out loud to Christopher two years ago.

I think the book can serve as a litmus test for a school's level of boy-friendliness. The fact that no school I've seen provides the book to children is all the evidence I need that the public school ban on positive images of boys is universally in place.



The Matchlock Gun tells you what's wrong with a gender war on boys, or with a gender war on girls for that matter. (Could we stop having gender wars? Now? Just asking.)

In The Matchlock Gun the boy is a hero. He's steadfast and brave, and to tell you more I'd have to give away the ending.

He's steadfast and brave, but he's ten years old. The reason he can be the hero of the story is that he listens to his mother and does what she tells him to do, even though what she tells him to do is terrifying. He is a heroic boy because he is the son of a heroic mother.

As for the mother, she is ferociously brave. She is able to think in the face of mortal danger and she is willing to die for her children. The little sister, though too young to fight, is not too young to hold herself still as the enemy approaches. Only six, she faces danger alone. She will go on to do her mother's work before she is ready, and it is she who will carry the family's story with her into the future. (I haven't given away the ending in saying this.)

The book captures most of what is good and bad about human beings. It captures the no common sense-y part, too. It's made plain to the adult reader that the young mother loathes her mother-in-law, who lives in the big brick house on the property while her son and his family live in a vulnerable little cabin. The sensible thing to do, when you and your children are about to be attacked by Indians, would be to evacuate to the big brick house where there are (male) slaves, strong walls, guns, and a good chance of staying alive. But no. That's not what they do. Evacuating to the big brick house would make too much sense. The young mother in The Matchlock Gun will fight for her children. She'll die for her children if she must. But she won't spend the day with her mother-in-law.

After finishing the story I told my neighbor that one of the things I liked best was the image of roaring family dysfunction even in the face of almost certain death. If our schools want us to read stories about family dysfunction — and it appears that they do — Matchlock Gun has got it.

It's a wonderful book.

I think the entire text may be here.

One last thing: the book is so suspenseful that my heart was pounding at the end. It is gripping.







Newberry Book recommendations from Kitchen Table Math commenters
NEH favorite summer reading K - 12
We the People reading list on "Courage"
We the People reading list on "Freedom"
We the People reading list on "Becoming an American"
We the people
We the people NEH
Newbery Medal & Honor Books, 1922 - Present

The Lexile Framework for Reading

-- CatherineJohnson - 25 Jul 2006

comments...

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VocabularyWorkshopLevelsAndGrades 25 Jul 2006 - 23:45 CatherineJohnson



This summer Christopher has been doing 2 or 3 pages a week from Sadlier Oxford's Vocabulary Workshop, which teaches words in 5 exercises:

• definitions — dictionary definition with sample sentences; student writes the word in the blank

• complete the sentence

• synonyms

• antonyms

• choosing the right word (student chooses which of two words on the vocabulary list "satisfactorily completes" a sentence)

• vocabulary in context — prose passage
  

There are 15 units in the book, with a review very three units. 20 words per list; 185 pages in the book.

Vocabulary Workshop spans grades 2 - 12+ , starting with a series for grades 2 - 5:

Level Purple Grade 2

Level Green Grade 3

Level Orange Grade 4

Level Blue Grade 5


After Level Blue the middle & upper grades series starts in Grade 6 with Level A:

Level A grade 6

Level B grade 7

Level C grade 8

Level D grade 9

Level E grade 10

Level F grade 11

Level G grade 12

Level H (advanced? gifted? SAT prep? not sure, but I'm ordering it)


Levels A - H Teacher's Guide (you don't need this)


online flash cards, Level Blue

online flash cards for several other levels, too

Vocabulary Workshop online high school tests

Vocabulary Workshop online



Wordly Wise series from EPS

word lists & sample lessons from all books in Wordly Wise series



English from the Roots Up (2 volumes)



Vocabulary from Classical Roots
Strategic Vocabulary Instruction through Greek and Latin Roots
by Norma Fifer, Nancy Flowers
Grades 5–11



Carolyn on Vocabulary Workshop
update on Vocabulary Workshop; English from roots up
Vocabulary Workshop levels & grades
afterschooling w/Vocabulary Workshop
vocabulary pre-test
SAT scores for students using Vocabulary Workshop
vocabulary at the dinner table
robust vocabulary instruction (400 words a year)
how much reading a day?
15 new words a day
Engelmann says it's 3 new words a day
Fischgrund on divorce and SAT scores

vocabularyworkshop
greekandlatinroots

-- CatherineJohnson - 25 Jul 2006

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MaAndPaKettleDoMath 26 Jul 2006 - 03:11 CarolynJohnston

This video is a hoot.

Thanks to Bosco Keown for the link!

-- CarolynJohnston - 26 Jul 2006

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RobustVocabularyInstruction 26 Jul 2006 - 16:02 CatherineJohnson



from the Introduction to Chapter 4 Comprehension of the National Reading Panel report:

The importance of vocabulary in reading achievement has been recognized for more than half a century. As early as 1925, in the National Society for Studies in Education (NSSE) Yearbook, this quotation appears:

Growth in reading power means, therefore, continuous enriching and enlarging of the reading vocabulary and increasing clarity of discrimination in appreciation of word values (Whipple, 1925, p. 76).

Even today, evidence of the importance of vocabulary is usually attributed to Davis (1942), who presented evidence that comprehension comprised two “skills”: word knowledge or vocabulary and reasoning in reading. The Panel reflects this position with the inclusion of the current analysis of research on vocabulary instruction with the other comprehension research analyses. Since Davis’ work, there have been questions regarding the “skills” perspective, but the finding that vocabulary is strongly related to comprehension seems unchallenged.

From Bringing Words to Life: Robust Vocabulary Instruction by Isabel L. Beck, Margaret G. McKeown, and Linda Kucan:

• First-grade children from higher-SES groups knew about twice as many words as lower SES children (Graves, Brunetti, & Slater, 1982; Graves & Slater, 1987).

• High school seniors near the top of their class knew about four times as many words as their lower-performing classmates (Smith, 1941).

• High-knowledge third graders had vocabularies about equal to lowest-performing 12th graders (Smith, 1941).

do children learn vocabulary from context?

The answer is Yes, but —

Conventional wisdom suggests that the major means for developing students' vocabulary should focus on learning words in context. This position is based on three assumptions: First, words are learned from context. Second, school-age youngsters are successfully adding words to their vocabularies. And, third, instruction must focus on learning vocabulary from context because there are just too many words to teach to get the job done through direct instruction.

[snip]


Most of the words children customarily encounter in oral language beyond their earliest years, both at home and in school, are words that they already know. Thus, the source of later vocabulary learning shifts to written contexts—what children read. The problem is that it is not so easy to learn from written context. Written context lacks many of the features of oral language that support learning new word meanings, such as intonation, body language, and shared physical surroundings.

[snip]

Studies estimate that of 100 unfamiliar words met in reading, between 5 and 15 of them will be learned (Nagy, Herman, & Anderson, 1985; Swanborn & de Glopper, 1999).

[snip]

Specific estimates of vocabulary growth vary widely, from 3 (Joos, 1964) to 20 new words a day (Miller, 1978). A figure of 7 words per day is probably the most commonly cited....Although it may be the case that some students are learning as many as 7 new words a day, many others may be learning only 1 or 2, or indeed not any at all.

are there too many words to teach vocabulary directly?

Bringing Words to Life answers this question by pointing out that a mature reader's vocabulary falls into 3 tiers:

• Tier 1: basic words like clock, baby, happy, walk that don't need to be taught

• Tier 2: "words that are of high frequently for mature language users and are found across a variety of domains....coincidence, absurd, industrious, fortunate

• Tier 3: low frequency words that are "often limited to specific domains" e.g.: isotope, lathe, peninsula, refinery
  

Obviously, Tier 2 words are the target of vocabulary instruction:

Nagy and Anderson estimate that good readers [in grades 3 through 9] read approximately 1 million words of text per year. They organized these words into word families, or groups of related words such as introduce, introduction, reintroduce, and introducing, and further estimate that half of the 88,500 word families they calculate to exist in printed school English are so rare that even avid readers may encounter them only once in their lifetime of reading. Using these figures, it seems reasonable to consider word families that would be encountered at least once every 10 years, which Nagy and Anderson calculate to number about 15,000 as comprising Tiers One and Two. These are words that occur once or more in 10 million running words of text. Our best estimate of Tier One, the most familiar words that need no instruction, is 8,000 words families...That leaves about 7,000 word families for Tier Two.

[snip]

Seven thousand words may still seem like quite a large number for instruction to undertake over the course of, say kindergarten through ninth grade. That would amount to an average of 700 words per year.

[snip]

[W]e assert that attention to a substantial portion of those words, say, an average of 400 per year, would make a significant congtribution to an individual's verbal functioning. Aiming for this number of words would allow the depth of instruction needed to affect students' text comprehension ability. We believe this to be the case because about 400 words per year conforms to the rate at which we taught words in our previous research, which resulted in improvements in word knowledge and in comprehension of texts containing the instructed words. (Beck et al., 1982).

quick notes

• The Vocabulary Workshop series teaches 300 words per book.

• I wonder whether teaching Latin & Greek roots increases the number of words students can pick up from context, as Eugene Schwartz and others argue. I'm guessing it probably does, but I don't know.

• Beck's, McKeown's, & Kucan's figures make sense of my own life and times. Kris and I were talking about vocabulary & SAT scores yesterday, and I said, "How did I get a [recentered] 790 coming from the farm?" Kris said, "If you'd lived in an affluent suburb you could have picked up that extra 10 points." It seems obvious to me now that the way I did it was by learning huge numbers of words from context, which I could do because I was a compulsive reader from day one, which meant that I was exposed to zillions of words & then re-exposed to the same zillions of words often enough to learn a lot of them. (One of the words I learned, apparently, was "zillions.") On family vacations I used to walk along reading my book; as I recall, I missed most of Manhattan the one time we visited because I was reading Agatha Christie. Another data point: The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance, in an article on professional writers, says that professional writers universally describe themselves as "compulsve readers." Converging lines of evidence, that!
  
  
  

Vocabulary Workshop grades & levels
Fischgrund on divorce and SAT scores
how much reading a day?
robust vocabulary instruction (400 words a year)
15 new words a day
Engelmann says it's 3 new words a day

National Reading Panel
NICHD publications on reading
summary of NRP report
International Reading Association on NRP report

vocabularyworkshop robustvocabularyinstruction

-- CatherineJohnson - 26 Jul 2006

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MindHackingJavaAndFood 26 Jul 2006 - 19:07 CatherineJohnson



Funny post from a blog devoted to mind hacking:

You have a legacy brain. We've talked about that a lot on this blog, and in my presentations. Your brain thinks you're still living in a cave. Although your mind knows you're in the 21st centry, your brain never got the memo.

A big part of the learning theory we use in the Head First books is figuring out how to "trick" your brain into thinking that learning Java is as important as watching for tigers. We pay a great deal of attention to what your brain cares about, especially when the concerns (tigers-but-not-java) are in direct conflict with what your mind cares about (java-but-not-tigers).

Besides caring about tigers-and-not-java--and the problems that creates when we're trying to pay attention, learn, and remember--our legacy brain does something else we all struggle with--it thinks you won't get much to eat all winter, so it better store it up while it can.

Your brain thinks that food is scarce for you, so it better hang on to it. In other words, for almost all adults (especially in the US), our brain wants us to be weigh more than our conscious mind wants. The brain never got the memo about how you probably aren't going to starve this winter.

Given how interested we are here into hacking and creating workarounds for the legacy brain issues, a new diet book that claims to take this approach got my attention. The claims are outrageous, the "plan" is absurd and counter-intuitive, but when the publisher sent me a copy of the book I figured it wouldn't hurt to try it. I say "wouldn't hurt" because it is ridiculously easy to try. And since the Freakonomics guys were recommending it, I figured there had to be something interesting. Plus... I loved the name: the Shangri-La Diet.

It's been two weeks since I started and oh-my-god.

She means oh-my-god in a good way.




trouble in paradise

"Mind hacking" is a great phrase. I wish John (Ratey) or I had come up with it. Mind hacking is practically John's whole concept in a nutshell: work with your brain, not against it.

Never rely on brute force of will if you can enlist automatic processes. Use what you've got

Kathy Sierra's post makes me laugh, because of course I've done with math exactly what she's trying to do with Java: I've lit up my limbic system. Thanks to the non-math teaching in our school district, I am in a state of math emergency. I must learn math right this minute or else! Because my child's life is at stake!

I have Mind Hacks the book, but haven't read it. My friend Debbie says it's good.




trouble in paradise (really)

After 13 days on the Shangri-La diet, Jimmy has maybe lost one pound, Christopher has lost one pound for sure, and I've officially lost and regained and then lost and regained again the same .5 lbs.

oops - Christian is here.

We have to go to Westchester Community College to get him signed up for classes. We went last week, but the office was closed even though it said on the website said the office would be open. The office wasn't open. It was closed.

So we're trying again today.

Naturally we've missed the deadline for financial aid; we're pushing up against the deadline for registering at all even without financial aid. I've forgotten what that deadline was, and I refuse to look at the website one more time. We're just going to saddle up and ride out there and see what happens.

It's a good thing I have OK cognitive skills, because if I had to rely on my noncognitive skills to get through life I'd be in trouble.^*


[pause]


ohmygod....I am going back to the website, because Christian needs another application printed out. This will be the third. Or perhaps the fourth, fifth, or sixth, I've lost count.

Martine is ragging on him now. Good.

Just what I was needing. A fourth son with lousy frontal lobe myelination.

I obviously enjoyed reading Little Men way too much as a girl. Someone up there was watching.




back from WCC

OK, mission accomplished. We have financial aid forms, we have a corrected social security number in Christian's file, we have an appointment to see an academic counselor on August 10. I've collected every conceivable form of explanatory literature printed by WCC, and I have scanned a copy of the pink campus map onto my hard drive. I know where the administration building, the student center, and Parking Lot 8 are to be found.

Later on tonight Christian and I are going to look at the sample questions for the WCC placement test.

back to Shangri-La

The diet will work for Christopher. I slimmed him down 3 years ago using exercise alone, so it's doable. This summer I'm walking him a mile and a half to camp every morning. Then he spends the next 6 hours playing sports. This time around exercise alone hasn't been working and the ELOO appetite reduction is the extra oomph he needs.

Plus he's growing, which is a huge advantage. Our Los Angeles pediatrician told us that normal weight gain in a year is 4 to 8 pounds. Somehow I figured out from this figure that every inch a child grows without gaining weight is the equivalent of a 5 to 8-lb weight loss in an adult.

The other factor is that the ELOO regimen itself is strongly organizing. The problem with a normal reducing diet is that it's not really an action. Instead of doing something, you stop doing something; you stop eating as much as you were eating. A reducing diet makes no limbic sense, as I'm sure the mind hack folks would tell us. I suppose a reducing diet makes "frontal sense" in a way, the frontal lobes being the brakes of the brain. But to lose anything at all you have to ride those brakes morning, noon, and night until eventually you get tired or stressed and your supply of iron will gives out. Then you're chugging through the Haagen Dazs and your lizard brain is saying Yes! Good! This is the right thing to do!

A reducing diet, I conclude, is not a mind hack. It's the opposite of a mind hack.

The ELOO regimen, on the other hand, is a mind hack in more ways than one. First of all, it really does reduce appetite. At least it does for the 3 of us.

But even if swilling ELOO twice a day didn't reduce appetite, it might still help you lose weight because it's a plan. Even better, it's a highly structured and easy plan. Two helpings of ELOO a day, taken in the center of a two-hour food-free window of time. You can organize your whole day around it.

Once you are organizing your whole day around it, not drinking Gatorade & not eating potato chips start to seem sensible. After all, you've just timed yourself not-eating-potato-chips for one hour before your ELOO, and then again for a second hour after your ELOO. By now it's time for lunch. At this point not-eating-potato-chips is practically a done deal.

With Shangri-La you are creating not-eating-potato-chips momentum!

Christopher has stopped drinking Gatorade thanks to Shangri-La. People still try to give it to him; Martine tried to get him to drink some Gatorade just yesterday and his camp is sloshing in the stuff. But he's not drinking it. He's drinking water. Part of the reason he's drinking water is that he knows he's on a regimen.

I'm benefiting from the same life-organizing, mind hacking effect. I'm not losing weight, but I'm also not eating junk. I'm not eating junk because I'm not hungry and I have a plan. I am on a mission from God to thin out two of my kids. That's a mind hack!

Christopher will be thinner by summer's end, and I'll be younger next year or whatever it is you turn into when you're not eating junk.



Jimmy's another story. This is really a struggle. We're fighting Depakote food cravings and rebound night eating when the Concerta wears off. Plus it's extremely difficult to get him to exercise. Thanks to the Depakote, he's sluggish. Indoors he's obsessive; he can't walk more than a couple of feet without stopping to do a bunch of ritual door jamb touching. Getting him dressed and out of the house in the morning is impossible. He's almost frozen inside multiple touchings of this, that, and the other.

So the plan now is.....what?

Not sure.

I think I'm going to add sugar water to his ELOO dose (two tablespoons of ELOO twice a day). Then see what happens. I've decided to see slimming Jimmy down as a challenge. Viewing things as a challenge is probably a mind hack for me, or let's hope so anyway. If I can get my helicopter mom juices flowing maybe I'll have a fighting chance.

Jimmy will have a fighting chance, I should say.



The New York Sun had a terrific quotation yesterday:

We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.

- Charles Swindoll

Mind Hacks, the blog
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

shangrila


^* Is a woman's weight a noncognitive skill? (scroll down)


-- CatherineJohnson - 26 Jul 2006

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AlwaysWorseThanYouThink 27 Jul 2006 - 00:30 CatherineJohnson

Body Weight and Women's Labor Market Outcomes
John Cawley

NBER Working Paper No. 7841
Issued in August 2000

Several studies have found that, all else equal, heavier women earn less. Previous research has been unable to determine whether high weight is the cause of low wages, the result of low wages, or whether unobserved factors cause both higher weight and lower wages. Applying the method of instrumental variables to data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, this paper attempts to generate consistent estimates of the effect of weight on labor market outcomes for women. Three labor market outcomes are studied: hourly wages, employment, and sector of occupation. This paper finds that weight lowers wages for white women; among this group, a difference in weight of two standard deviations (roughly sixty-five pounds) is associated with a difference in wages of 7%. In absolute value, this is equivalent to the wage effect of roughly one year of education, two years of job tenure, or three years of work experience. In contrast, this paper finds only weak evidence that weight lowers wages for hispanic women, and no evidence that weight lowers the wages of black women. This paper also concludes that there is no effect of weight on the probability of employment or sector of occupation.

You may purchase this paper on-line in .pdf format from SSRN.com ($5) for electronic delivery.

How about no.<sup>*



*</sup> Christopher made that up. At least, he thinks he thinks he did.


-- CatherineJohnson - 27 Jul 2006

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LarrySummersFallOut 27 Jul 2006 - 15:43 CatherineJohnson



$265 M

wow


I've ended up being somewhat "con" Larry Summers, mostly in light of Ericsson's research on expert performance, which I have yet to write a word about here.

I'd read somewhere that Summers told a gathering of professors that economists have the highest IQs, political scientists have the next highest IQs, and sociologists have the lowest IQs of the three. I thought he couldn't possibly have said such a thing in public, but it turns out he did. Ed's friend who teaches at Harvard, and who was pro-Summers I think, was there when he said it.

blech

And then there's Ben Barres.

The new blog Creating Passionate Users has a terrific post on expert performance that (almost) renders anything I would write superfluous. (She also has a follow-up on her own experience with the Shangri-La diet which I know all you ectomorph Math Brains eagerly await.)

UPDATE 7-29-06: Christopher has lost 2 lbs in 2 weeks & Jimmy has probably lost the same — lots of water retention ups-and-downs with him no doubt due to meds. His high was 222, his low 216.5, and for the past few days he's been steady at 218. I've lost nothing, but have eaten no junk fook in 3 weeks thanks to ELOO. Virtue will have to be its own reward in my case.)

UPDATE 8-7-06: Christopher has lost 5 lbs since July 20. That's 5 lbs in 19 days. It's still hard to tell with Jimmy, because his weight veers wildly, apparently due to huge swings in water weight. We think he may have lost 3 pounds. I seem to have lost 2 lbs. Everyone's appetite is down.

Here's her expert performance graph:








My feeling about this chart is that fuzzy math and bad teaching prevent students from leaping above the "suck threshold." When you never practice to mastery, because you understand a concept or because you "can always look it up" - where are you on the curve?

At the bottom.

With the drop-outs.

The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance TOC & excerpt
expert performance
Daniel Willingham on Ericsson's research

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

shangrila


-- CatherineJohnson - 27 Jul 2006

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WellesleyMagazine 28 Jul 2006 - 15:55 CatherineJohnson





James Wasserman

Facing Autism:
Wellesley Mothers & Their Children
by Louisa Kasdon '72
Wellesley Summer 2006

-- CatherineJohnson - 28 Jul 2006

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WhatDoTeachersDo 31 Jul 2006 - 18:10 CatherineJohnson


I caught the final half hour of The Miracle Worker in Newtown this weekend. When I was a child, my family watched The Miracle Worker every time it appeared on television, which was at least once a year, I think. I know the film almost by heart; I start crying as soon as Annie grabs Helen and hauls her to the door, telling Captain Keller she's going to make Helen fill the water pitcher.

Sitting there in my tidy Hampton Inn kitchenette-sitting room, tears dripping off my cheeks into my lap, I realized: this is what we - people my age, at any rate - think teachers are. We think they are miracle workers. We think they are unsinkable women (mostly women, yes) who cannot rest until they've figured out how to take the knowledge inside their heads and ours and get it inside the heads of our children.

The problem is that most of us don't realize there is no place for Annie Sullivan inside Columbia Teachers College. That is a handicap for parents when it comes to dealing with schools. Parents see their children not learning content or skills, and fail to understand that this is happening, or, rather, not happening, by design. Ed schools oppose the teaching of content. "Vanna White" facts, Howard Gardner calls it.

Having spent the past two years reading ed school position papers - and, this year, sparring with very young new teachers at our middle school - I've finally assimilated the fact that my idea of "teacher" is a parent idea, not an ed school idea.

Even so, I was shocked when I came across the entry for "teacher" in the U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Outlook Handbook:

Teachers act as facilitators or coaches, using interactive discussions and “hands-on” approaches to help students learn and apply concepts in subjects such as science, mathematics, or English. [ed.: "such as"?] They utilize “props” or “manipulatives” to help children understand abstract concepts, solve problems, and develop critical thought processes. For example, they teach the concepts of numbers or of addition and subtraction by playing board games. As the children get older, the teachers use more sophisticated materials, such as science apparatus, cameras, or computers.

To encourage collaboration in solving problems, students are increasingly working in groups to discuss and solve problems together. Preparing students for the future workforce is a major stimulus generating changes in education. To be prepared, students must be able to interact with others, adapt to new technology, and think through problems logically. Teachers provide the tools and the environment for their students to develop these skills.

Preschool, kindergarten, and elementary school teachers play a vital role in the development of children. What children learn and experience during their early years can shape their views of themselves and the world and can affect their later success or failure in school, work, and their personal lives. Preschool, kindergarten, and elementary school teachers introduce children to mathematics, language, science, and social studies. They use games, music, artwork, films, books, computers, and other tools to teach basic skills.

[snip]

Computers play an integral role in the education teachers provide. Resources such as educational software and the Internet expose students to a vast range of experiences and promote interactive learning. Through the Internet, students can communicate with other students anywhere in the world, allowing them to share experiences and differing viewpoints. Students also use the Internet for individual research projects and to gather information. Computers are used in other classroom activities as well, from solving math problems to learning English as a second language. Teachers also may use computers to record grades and perform other administrative and clerical duties. They must continually update their skills so that they can instruct and use the latest technology in the classroom.

An entire paragraph devoted to computers; one passing reference - the only one on the page - to books. From the Labor Department, not the DOE. (Has Labor stopped to ask itself whether teachers facilitating subjects "such as" science is a good thing for the the country's occupational outlook?)

I think every parent should read this entry in our government's Occupational Handbook. In fact, schools should be required to make copies and hand them out before every back-to-school night and parent conference, the same way they're required to provide blurry copies of the relevant statutes in IDEA before every IEP.

Get everyone on the same page.



question

If you asked parents to provide a synonym for teacher, how many would say "facilitator"?

And how much money would parents be willing to pay grade school facilitators, I wonder.

If parents knew that's what they were hiring, I mean.

-- CatherineJohnson - 31 Jul 2006

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HelpDeskAdultReading 31 Jul 2006 - 19:20 CatherineJohnson



I have a question.

A friend of mine thinks her reading is not what it should be.

I don't know if that's true, but that's the way she feels.

What should she do?

I was thinking she should try the book Christopher is using this summer, Walter Pauk's Six-Way Paragraphs. Pauk invented the Cornell notetaking system; he also wrote the classic book How to Study in College. I have How to Study, and I like Pauk, so I ordered Six-Way for Christopher.

Six-Way Paragraphs is a quick-and-dirty way to teach kids a version of Eugene Schwartz's reading skills.

The book has 100 short passages - one or two paragraphs - all pretty interesting (Christopher thinks so, too). For each passage the student follows this procedure:


six-way paragraphs
1. read title: think about it & form mental image
2. read the passage through quickly
3. answer (multiple choice) questions quickly using pencil
4. read passage again – slowly this time
5. mark final answers with check
6. check answers against answer key
6. enter your score in diagnostic chart (p. 209)
7. correct your answers (p 203-207)
8. find total comprehension score
9. graph your progress

take corrective action
10. read wrong answers
11. read passage one more time & figure out why your answer was wrong

read each passage 3 times in all
12. first read-through: fast
13. second read-through: slow
14. third read-through: read slowly enough to find the correct answer

So far Christopher has found the passages so easy he's done none of this; he gets the answers right the first time, after a quick reading.

The one question he does miss sometimes concerns the text's "clarifying devices," such as metaphors, repetition for effect, and so on. I love those questions; I'm glad he has to think about them.

I also like the first question on the central idea. Instead of asking the child to choose the correct central idea out of 3 choices, Six-Way Paragraphs has the child identify each possibility as "too broad," "too narrow," or "central idea." Every time Christopher reads one of Pauk's passages and answers the multiple choice questions, he sees again that a good piece of writing has a central idea that's neither too broad nor too narrow, supporting detail and evidence, and clarifying devices.

I like it.

I told my friend about it, and she wants to try it.

But then I started reading E.D. Hirsch, and discovered that Hirsch loathes this kind of instruction, which he calls formalism. Kids today are spending hours and hours and hours identifying central ideas and supporting detail; they even have little mnemonic devices that help them slog through the various comprehension steps. The whole thing sounds dreadful, as Hirsch says.

Here is 9-year-old Zulma Berrios's take on the school day: "In the morning we read. Then we go to Mrs. Witthaus and read. Then after lunch we read. Then we read some more."

[snip]

"Clarify," said Zulma, who began the year reading at the late first-grade level. "When I come to a word I don't know, I look for chunks I do. Reminded. Re-mine-ded."

"Clarify," said Zulma's classmate Erick Diaz, 9, who began the year reading at a second-grade level. "When I come to a word I don't know, I look for chunks I do. Hailstones. Hail-stone-s."

School Pushes Reading, Writing, Reform
By Linda Perlstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 31, 2004; Page A01

Here's Hirsch:

The theory about reading that dominates in the schools and in the reading programs ... is that the fast track to reading comprehension is through mastery of formal comprehension skills. These bulky, expensive programs are filled with uninformative stories that leap from one subject to another, in the service of practicing of “comprehension strategies” rather than systematically acquiring knowledge. The education reporter Linda Perlstein has spent many hours in the schools observing in detail what goes on day after day in these reading classes, and is working on a book about the depressing things she has found. I learned about her work some months ago from a Washington Post article in which she described the deadening activities that are being conducted under the idea that practicing comprehension strategies such as “finding the main idea,” “summarizing,” and “questioning the author” will provide a shortcut to greater expertise in reading.

The formalistic ideas about reading that sponsor these activities are fundamentally mistaken. As I point out in my forthcoming book, The Knowledge Deficit, to be released next month, there is very slender scientific support for this huge expenditure of time and effort during the many hours being devoted to reading to the neglect of coherent and substantial subject matter. We have known for some time that reading comprehension of a text is a skill that is not governed so much by formal strategies as by actual knowledge of the topics that the text is about.

What does he know of reading who only reading knows? The ability to read a wide variety of texts addressed to a general reader, the ability to learn a variety of new skills from the spoken or written word, these are ultimately abilities that depend on broad general knowledge — the very thing that is being driven out by a narrow, formalistic focus on reading. The answer to the reading problem is a language-arts program that focuses on knowledge and is part of a coherent education in history, science, general cultural knowledge, and the arts.

Until I sat down and read Hirsch, I hadn't thought about this.

I knew, vaguely, that Hirsch was 'pro-content' while ed schools were anti-fact and pro-process. I was pro-content. But God is in the details, and I had no idea how important content - "domain knowledge" - is at how many different levels. Carolyn started referring to herself as a "content freak" sometime after reading The Schools We Need, and now I see why. Content knowledge is even more important than we content freaks think.

So now of course I'm wondering whether Six-Way Paragraphs was a mistake. The answer is, I don't know. The book isn't content-free. It's satisfyingly factual in a Cliff Claven sort of way - excuse me, I mean a Vanna White sort of way.

Give Them a Hand

Right is right. Right? Of course. But is left wrong? Well, the ancient Romans thought so. As far as they were concerned, left-handed people were mistakes of nature. Latin, the language of the Romans, had many words that expressed this view. Some words we use today still have this meaning. The Latin word dexter means "right." The English word dexterous comes from this word. It means "handy." So, right is handy. But the Latin word for "left is sinistra. The English word sinister was derived from this word. Sinister means "evil." Is it fair to call righties handy and lefties evil? Well, fair or not, many languages have words that express similar beliefs. In Old English, the word for left means "weak." That isn't much of an improvement over "evil."

Not very long ago, southpaws were often forced to write with their right hands. Doctors have since found that this can be very harmful. You should use the hand you were born to use. [ed.: is this true? really?]

People who use their left hands are just starting to get better treatment. But why all the name calling in the first place? One reason may be that there are not as many left-handed people as there are right-handed people. People who are different are often thought to be wrong. But attitudes do seem to be changing. Fair-minded right-handed people are finally starting to give lefties a hand.

source:
Six-Way Paragraphs Middle Level
page 16, passage # 8
Reading Level: D
5 levels in book: D, E, F, G, H

Ok, that's corny, but I like it, and Christopher was intrigued, because his dad's a leftie.

The "Clarifying Devices" question for this passage was:

Clarifying Devices

"Fair-minded right-handed people are finally starting to give lefties a hand" means that they are

a. applauding them

b. teaching them how to use their right hands

c. starting to give them a chance and help them out

d. shaking hands with them


Christopher got that question right on the first try (thank heavens).

The main idea question is this:

Main Idea

1. Many languages have words that express the idea that left is bad. (correct answer: too narrow)

2. Minorities often get bad treatment. (correct answer: too broad)

3. Throughout history, left-handed people have been treated poorly. (correct answer: main idea)

The other four questions are on:

Subject Matter
Supporting Details
Conclusion
Vocabulary in Context (always a question about the underlined word - "southpaws" in this case)

Anyway, I have no idea whether Six-Way Paragraphs is or is not a) a good way to use our time, or, if it is a good way to use our time, whether it is b) the best way to use our time. On balance I'm figuring that Christopher's probably learning factoids, analytic reading skills, and a literary device or two. Since we've ended up doing no writing at all this summer, I'm guessing Six-Way Paragraphs is at least providing numerous models of short, to-the-point, and engaging prose.



So back to my friend who wants to improve her reading.

Midway into Hirsch, I realized that she doesn't have a liberal arts degree. (She has a college education, but not in liberal arts.)

That was something of a "bingo" moment - my friend is super-smart, has no apparent learning or perceptual problems, and is the kind of "lifelong learner" progressive ed supposedly wants to create....what's the problem?

She says she's a slow reader, and I assume she's right - but what's making her slow?

When I told her about Hirsch, she instantly sparked to the idea of cultural literacy; she'd had the experience of being fast to answer SAT-type questions on content she knew as opposed to content she didn't know.

So should she be focusing on speed or knowledge? Should she be using books like Pauk's or Edward Fry's Skimming & Scanning series (I bought one of Fry's books to try with either Christopher or me), or signing up for one of the new speed-reading courses being marketed to executives (possible $), or giving herself the liberal arts education she missed as a college student?

For what it's worth, Ed says she should either take a college course or put herself on a structured, daily reading program in literature, history, or biography.

He thinks the problem is missing content.

How Knowledge Brings More Knowledge by Daniel Willingham
American Educator Spring 2003: issue devoted to reading comprehension
Inflexible Knowledge: The First Step to Expertise by Daniel T. Willingham
Adult Intelligence by Phillip L. Ackerman
A Lost Eloquence by Carol Muske Dukes
The Early Catastrophe: The 30 Million Word Gap by Age 3 by Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley
Filling the Great Void: Why We Should Bring Nonfiction into the Early-Grade Classroom by Nell K. Duke, V. Susan Bennett-Armistead, and Ebony M. Roberts
Poor Children's Fourth-Grade Slump by Jeanne S. Chall and Vicki A. Jacobs

an approach to reading that works
an approach to reading that works, part 2

walterpauk sixwayparagraphs



-- CatherineJohnson - 31 Jul 2006

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