Category: Philosophy

Last Tuesday Bloomfield College held its yearly convocation, a salute to the beginning of a new school year…which happens around Midterm Week each year for some indiscernible reason.  Or speaker was Dr. William Librera, Presidential Research Professor of Education at Rutgers University, and the title of his presentation was Inside the Horizon.

As these things go, it was a pretty good lecture, both fairly entertaining and containing some nuggets.  There was the obligatory PowerPoint, of course, which we were told was available online, but I can’t find it.  If I could have, I would know the last part of the woman with the hyphenated last name which began with Roth-.  That would have proved helpful, since one of the major things I can recollect from the event is her thought about people being divided into two kinds:  people who segment knowledge, and people who integrate it.

Do I know what the collective intelligence is thinking right now?

There are two kinds of people in the world, those who believe there are two kinds of people in the world and those who don’t.

–Robert Benchley

If the discussion is elevated to the level of the Algonquin Round Table, then I’m all for it.

It has been a strange week.  Of course, it has been a strange lifetime, so maybe this past week’s strangeness may just be relative.

There is the economic bullshit, of course.  No matter what happens with that, I’m just assuming it is going to suck big green weenies.  That last time some economic policy crap actually benefited the people was when?  Does anyone have any recollection?

But maybe there are some good things to take away from that.  In hard times we sometimes need some of that.

The trouble is that even if we can find a smidgen of good being a comrade with the bad, there always seems to be more bad as a fellow traveler.

And then there is the fence turtle’s story.

I train dogs for a living and am a positive trainer.

We rely on reward and repetition and allow the dogs to make the decision.

Most people don't believe me when I tell them that leaving the decision up to the dog works better than making it for them. It just doesn't make any sense that we leave decisions up to the dogs – it goes against everything they know about training dogs.”How can they do something if I don't tell them what to do?”

Learning is a Journey

Telling a dog what to do too early short circuits the learning process.

Giving the answer to the test:

“The answer is 'C'… shut up kid, I said the answer is 'C'!”

might help the kid pass this test, but it's not learning. Change the test and failure is all but guaranteed.

Learning is a journey, it's not a destination. It happens in the preperation for the test, it's not just getting the right answer.

The reading, the research, the mistakes made in homework – that's where learning takes place. If a student makes that journey, they can pass any test.

Our clients often try to direct their dogs to do things that short circuit the learning process. They try to take short cuts to pass the 'test' (get the behavior).

This is a problem because we, as teachers, don't really care as much about this particular behavior at this particular time. We are more concerned with the learning process.

We want to give the dogs the opportunity to learn the underlying concepts so they can perform this behavior any time any where and be wildly successful, at which point we drop the cue on it. (grossly simplified, but you get the idea…) This also allows the dog to learn variations of this behavior and other similar behaviors very quickly.

If we drop the cue on it, or even worse, give a command (do this or else) too early, we get limited understanding, confusion and a high percentage of failure. Sure we might get to the answer faster, but what if the test changes? The learning hasn't happened. If the learning hasn't happened the dog has a very limited understanding of that behavior.

Or: Why I am a Liberal, Part 4

We as Progressives/Liberals have an unspoken, almost unspeakable vision within us. We look around at the current world and want to change it. Some of us would be content with relatively minor changes. Others see the existing world, see what is wrong with it, and want to take the changes needed all the way to their logical end. To create a new and different world based on Progressive principles, to get ‘there.’

We have The Idea, even though we are not really able to articulate it cleanly and clearly right now. The Idea of a world far different from this one.  A world based on equality and justice, on freedom and on the worth and dignity of the individual. A planetary society based on and adhering to real, universally human, moral principles, but without the moral dogmatism and hypocrisy of our current, failed model. A world, to put in the current frame, where the economy (and everything else) is based on benefit of ALL the people, not for the very few. A world where “the greatest good of all concerned” is the driving paradigm. Where people are as, if not more, important than profit. A world where political, economic, and moral decisions are NOT arrived at solely because they benefit those making the decision. A world based on cooperating for the greater good, not competing against every other human for personal or ‘tribal’ advantage.

And above all, by necessity, a world that has ‘solved’ the Climate Crisis, with a healthy atmosphere fit for humans to breath and oceans that are not vast pits of acidic brew incapable of supporting life. A world we can leave to our grandchildren and the next Seven Generations with a clear conscious.  

That sort of thing. Something closer, at least, to a utopia not a dystopia. Creating this better world, or as much of it as we can get, is what is at the heart of Progressivism.

Or to put it strictly in terms of contrast, a world without the ideologies of Republicanism and its outdated worldviews and policies of separation and hate and conquering….everything and everybody. Again in the current context, a world without Class War, where the well being of the privileged Ruling Class is based on ensuring and continuing the suffering of the poor and middle class. A world, if it is possible, without a Ruling Class. An egalitarian world where hard work and intelligence is still rewarded, but not at the expense of the ‘average guy.’ And especially not at the expense of the poor and the weakest members of society, since society, ideally, exists to protect the weak and less fortunate from the strong and powerful.

Civilization and the Rule of Law, not the Rule of the Jungle…..which somehow the privileged and strong always seem to try to create.

As one Progressive put it: “Some people look at the world as it is and say why, I look at the world as it could be and say …why not?

Here I was, all prepared to watch Barack Obama debate an empty chair this evening.  But now news emerges that John McCain will indeed show up for the debate.

Not that the chair will seem to be significantly less empty to me, mind you.

I mean, what’s the deal?  Why is it that Republicans have made a habit of insulting my intelligence with the candidates they have nominated since…since…oh, wow….that’s a toughie.

I mean, they actually selected someone who did worse in college^* than W this time?  How can that be?  And this guy picks a box-of-rocks for his vice-presidential running mate?

[*Granted Annapolis has an honor system, which probably means that unlike W, McCain had to do his own papers, but still…]

John McCain is my definition of an empty suit of the worst kind, someone devoid of humanitarian principles or a conscience.

Well, by showing up, he’s screwing me over again

I’ve decided to suspend paying my bills…

…until this fiscal crisis is resolved.  I’ve also decided to suspend taking John McCain seriously.  I mean, I thought the present Commander-in-Thief was as much of a dork as I could imagine, but McCain has the usefulness as a bent paper straw and all the attraction of of a cup of coffee with a cigarette floating in it.

So now I’m going to have to pay those bills, it appears.

It’s been a tough week with so much financial disaster going on.  At least I suppose it is disaster for some.  Having lived five dozen years, I sort of accept this sort of thing as the periodic consequences of “business as usual.”

The cliche that comes to mind is, “The more things change, the more things stay the same.”  Which is, of course, not really true, except in a truthiness sort of way.  When things change, there is change.  The question is how we, as a society, respond to that change.  Mostly what I have observed is “kicking and screaming.”  There has certainly not been a calm and rational acceptance of change in our society, any more than most people accept substantive change in their own personal view of the world.

But sometimes we have to accept monumental change, or at least the possibility of it, in order to progress as a species.  That there have generally been some negative side-effects to accompany such change is regrettable.  I tend to thing that those negatives often result from those who cannot adjust to the change in a rational, pro-Earth (and all the beings that inhabit this planet) manner.  But the world has never really seemed interested in what I think, it seems, so maybe that’s not all that worthy a subject to pursue.

But I wonder.  I have always wondered.  There is plenty to wonder about.  “What if?”  Isn’t that what separates us from those who are not of our species?  Aren’t we just the beings whom have never been able to stop asking, “What if?”

I wandered the desert of my imagination and the jungle of my confusion this morning, peering into the nooks, looking for some hooks upon which to hang a few garlands of words, an awkward paragraph or twenty, sentences woven together, hopefully into some semblance of meaning.  And with any luck displaying the thoughts forming within, struggling to be given birth.

Being Blogiversary Day I eventually searched some of the olden times.  I discovered 51 essays tagged Friday Philosophy.  But one of them, NpK‘s Riffing off of Robyn, was rather an edition of Friday at 8.  Fifty.  I missed two weeks on the edge of the Mojave.  But the first Friday Philosophy was published before we officially opened, so maybe this is Numero Cinquenta.

Maybe not.  Counting things is an obsession, but it doesn’t rule my life any more.  That first piece after we opened to the public, as well as the first one with the graphic (which is called Occlusion, for anyone who has wondered) was The Closet.

Publishing A Transition through Poetry at Muse in the Morning has a tendency to drag me back through the sixteen years since I began my transition.  How could it not, especially since I have assigned myself the task of providing a little commentary to add flourish and some music in an attempt to evoke a mood?  

It is a time of reflection.

My brain seemed barely capable of stirring together a topic for this evening.  But that was this morning.

Time to make stone soup?  Maybe.

I had some set-ups, like buhdy’s piece about why he is a liberal, like the wholesale denigration of community activists I’ve heard about, or like even Governator Palin, but to be honest, I avoided the RNC broadcasts as much as possible.  Their message never changes.

The WeaveMothers were one and several.  The several part was not without its danger.  Getting lost in the a reality of a happentrack was an ever-present  possibility.  When that happened, sight of the larger tapestry was usually lost.

And when that happened, there was danger of the tapestry unravelling.  There was even the danger that what had already going to be happening could be forgotten, so that it would never actually ever reach the state of having happened.

They came back together determined to repair the snapped thread.  Raveling was kept to a minimum.  A dropped stitch or four would have to be picked up.  But only a few realities had ceased to exist.  The WeaveMothers mourned the consciousnesses that were still.  The Greataway would be poorer for them never having existed.

Another semester begins, to yet one more time drain the life out of multitudes of college teachers and their students.  This year begins with the periodic political campaign speech which, if it addresses education at all, displays no knowledge of life from the perspective of a college teacher.

One of the problems with being a college professor is that one is likely to be swamped with many ideas at once from time to time, which causes them not only to divide one’s time in an often futile attempt to resolve the different issues but also to consider how those issues might overlap…and why they happen to come up now, at this point in the life of a person or the history of the world.

So I’m going to carefully unwrap the twines of my reaction to the acceptance speech vis-a-vis education from another event that occurred yesterday.  More time and more thought need to go into any tirade about students who would be better served not going to college and the rest of us remodeling society so that such people could have their own form of a better life through a different vehicle than attending school not because they want to do so but because they are told to do so.  And about the amount of destruction done to educational realms when people think that the point of an education is to get a better job instead of, you know, learning something.

More time and more thought also need to go into anything written about the effects of that destruction and the destruction caused by No Child Left Behind…which has been every bit the storm Katrina was and is ongoing…on any effort to create an army of new teachers who actually have the skills and passion to teach.  The infrastructure of our education system has been neglected just as much as the infrastructure of our highways and byways…and surely for just as long, if not longer.