The Gift of Failure

Ah, spring!  Flowers, green grass, trees in bud, undergraduates in an uproar over their grades --probably because they now realize that they will have to reconcile accounts with whomever has been paying for their college experience and have to put that picture of them doing beer-bongs they posted on Facebook into proper context with the D's and F's that litter their transcript like shattered beer bottles on the frat-house floor.  Ah yes, spring!

Let me share with you the contents of my e-mail's in-box:

Student:  hey, why the f?  i no i did not do will in class, but i went so why an f?

Me: I think you have answered your own question.  You got got an F because you "did not do will [sic] in class."

Your grade is calculated by adding test, quiz and research paper scores together.  Your grade is not dependant on how nice you are, nor how hard you work.  I question your sincerity, because if you knew you were failing, why did I not once see you for extra help during office hours?  This is your education: a fully interactive, actual reality environment, wholly dependent on your performance.  There are no participation awards in college.

In the future, I advise you to take some initiative and fully understand the material before you are tested on it.  You will probably realize better grades if you do this.

I have given you a valuable gift: the gift of failure.  What you do with this gift will define your future character.  You might choose anger and resentment, forever after alienating yourself from the academic process; you might choose despair and depression, turning  harmful thoughts and feelings in on yourself, damaging your character; or, you might choose thoughtful reflection, identifying the reasons for your failure, and making an action plan to prevent future such failures.  I advise you choose the third alternative.

Well yeah, Adjunct Proff-o-rama, but why the F?

In my opinion, the F is not given nearly as much as it needs to be.  In my middle school years back in the late Pleistocene period (we called it "Junior High" back then), I got an F in Algebra.  I couldn't have been more delighted, because that now meant that I could stop taking these uber-difficult math classes that my parents had been pushing me to take, and instead take the ordinary ones, along with Jerome Gallagher who still brought his lunch to school in a Scooby Doo lunchbox, and Chris Neville who had a prominent, protruding brow line, only one eyebrow, and regularly beat the snot out of Jerome Gallagher (to be fair to Chris, he also regularly beat the snot out of anyone else he suspected of being a homo-sapiens).  In high school, I was able to load up on social studies, music and history, which I eventually went into as a career (the history part only.  My music career was limited to playing trombone in a union swing-band that gigged at a  local ballroom for the benefit of the post-punk jitterbuggers that frequented it, and one paid gig as lead vocalist for a Commodores/Earth, Wind and Fire all-caucasian tribute band that disbanded after we learned the real meaning behind the lyrics of [She's a] Brick House).

The song wasn't about a girl with
big tits and a big booty.

Administrators cringe whenever I bring this subject up.  I once worked under a high school principal whom I'll call "George," who once suggested to me that I give my students extra points on their term grade if they "brought a pen or a pencil to class."  "George" took issue with my gradebook because "it had too many F's in it and not enough A's."  Believing that "George" was more of a hands-on guy than he ultimately turned out to be, I started shipping him the collected homework and uncorrected tests from that class so that he could grade them more to his liking.  I also discovered that "George" was a bit deficient in the humor department  when he threatened to bring me up on charges of being a total smart-ass in front of the Superintendent.  So, we just agreed to disagree.  George kept on "socially promoting" students who had in reality flunked, and I kept on flunking them.

But wait, you who are parents of struggling students now cry, flunking students will damage their self-esteem.  Besides, grades are essentially meaningless.  Einstein once flunked a math course; Teddy Kennedy flunked Spanish at Harvard; George W. Bush's grades were, well, self-esteem damagingly low, and look at how successful they all turned out to be.  Ok then, let's get rid of grades.  How about we just establish a minimum number of classroom hours as a basis for awarding undergraduate degrees?  That way, the student can take any number of classes on every subject in the university course catalog, just as long as they spend enough time at it.  Under this system, faculty can dispense with the time-consuming exercise of writing quizzes, tests and exams, and instead concentrate on their own research projects and creating content-rich, stimulating materials for class.  Valedictorian status can be determined by the student who has logged the most class time in 4 years.

"Accountability?  Rigor?  Up your nose with a rubber hose!"

I'm sure that some small college tried to do just that sometime in the 1960's; I am also sure that school no longer exists and that its real estate is currently tasteful, sub-divided homes or condos placed around a central golf course.  You see, that model of education --as good as it sounds --lacks two key elements: accountability and rigor.  And as counterintuitive as it sounds, grades help to ensure both rigor and accountability.  They also provide some students with motivation and positive reinforcement (or negative reinforcement in the case of a poor grade).  So love them or hate them, grades and tests are pretty much here to stay.

One spring after classes were over, the college sponsored several classes for the teaching staff covering a bunch of interesting topics.  I picked one on educational technology, being the gadget-geek that I am.  It turned out to be a class on how to use this software that your students can access with their smartphones or laptops during class in order to complete small quizzes, ask questions, get more information about a topic covered in class and get their homework assignments.  I was mildly impressed, until I realized something: why don't the students just raise their hands?  So I raised my hand and asked the presenter that same question.

His answer said a lot about what is wrong with kids these days (ok ok, I know how that sounds and I don't care.  I turn 50 tomorrow, which officially makes me that that guy with the potbelly gut, standing in the doorway in a wife-beater t-shirt screaming, "Hey!  You kids!  Get outta my yard!")  He said (the presenter, not the guy in the 'beater') "Kids today are more comfortable interfacing with the world through their electronica.  This gives them the chance to interact virtually without exposing them to actual reality."

The really sad thing is that they are texting each other.

 I was stunned, but then it all made sense: that blank look on a former girlfriend's children's faces when I suggested that they go outside and play; the anxiety and panic on the face of the student who was told by his parents in a disciplinary meeting that he was forbidden the use of his cell phone and computer for a week; the proliferation of on-line courses, colleges and degrees.

Look, when I was a kid, I played outside with tons of other kids in all kinds of weather.  We rode bikes all over town (sans helmets), played a politically incorrect game called Russian Muck that consisted of kicking a football in the air and then piling onto the kid who caught it.  We ate penny candy, drank sodas, stole apples and cherries from the orchard trees, pelted each other with snowballs, and yes, we got into fist-fights.  And we were human because we did these things.  When we were cruel to each other, we saw them cry, felt shitty about what we did, apologised and tried not to do it again, because it was much better to have a lot of friends than to be thought of as a meanie.  When we were bullied, we didn't have counselling sessions or adult intervention.  We either stood up to the bully or continued to get pounded by them or both.  And our only "electronica" consisted of cartoons and Three Stooges re-runs on the TV, and the occasional crank-call on the telephone that was bolted to the wall.

When we went to school, we were instructed by an adult, but we often taught each other.  I remember a "reading-round" group in 6th grade where we read passages of the text out loud to our group, who were encouraged to correct word order mistakes, pronunciation goofs and help us to sound-out unfamiliar words. In high school study hall, we would always sit next to kids in our classes so that we could study for tests together and help each other with our homework.  And yes, we raised our hands in class.

Dad, this is totally awkward.  I know where babies
come from.  Hell, I AM a baby!

We didn't have as much information back then as kids have today for the simple reason that our information had to be excavated from the dictionary and the encyclopedia.  And we didn't have as much porn in our lives (we were pretty much limited to mold-encrusted Playboy magazines stashed in our treehouses).  And our parents didn't feed us microwaved food or take-out.  And if we did crummy in school, we dropped out to get a job or went to vocational training schools and became rich plumbers and contractors.  But whatever we did, we actually did it --not virtually.

So please forgive me for sending this tirade out via blog and not by first class U.S. Postal Service.  And don't  pass up your next opportunity to actually do something with a person who is actually standing in your vicinity.  And don't whine to me about your grade --I'll just stick your whiny little complaint in my next end-of-term blog.

Starry, Starry Night

the View from the Podium

Starry, Starry Night

Today's View from the Podium turns its gaze heavenward and contemplates the stars, the planets, comets, that bird about to smack into my windshield, and other random bits of Universe that course through our fair skies here on planet Earth.  In case you haven't heard, astronomers have discovered yet another exo-planet, that is, a planet revolving around a star not our sun.  So before those brainy little telescope-twerps discover a superior race of aliens who invade the Earth and turn it into a tacky rest area on some intergalactic freeway, I feel compelled to document for what could be the last time, just how we figured out there was lots of Universe out there, and not so much Earth as we had originally thought.

I totally hope those blue dudes from "Avatar" live here!

Back to the beginning: in the beginning, there was a formless void.  The universe was the size of a Tylenol Cold Capsule and rode on the back of Jebby, the Cosmic Anteater of Creation...  ok, not THAT far back.  As a species, we had lots of time during our stint as hunter-gatherers to lounge around the remains of the woolly mammoth barbecue and stare up at the night sky.  It wasn't long before someone started playing "connect-the-dots" with the bright stars, and the constellations were born (hey, this was before Must-See-TV, so constellation-making was high entertainment!).  Then, some sharp-knife-in-the-drawer guy or gal (it probably wasn't a Neanderthal) noticed that some stars wandered all around the sky, sometimes wandering right through entire constellations and spoiling the picture.  The Greeks called these wanderers "planets," which is Greek for "wanderer."  The Greeks were very sensible back then.

This is the best position for dudes because we don't have vaginas

Pretty soon, the Greeks were making up all kinds of stories about these planets.  They figured that because the planets could basically go wherever the hell they wanted, they must be gods and goddesses, and boy, what mischief they got up to!  I'd tell you the one about how Zeus turned himself into a swan so he could bang the lovely Leda on the down-low (his wife just didn't approve of him banging mortal-trailer-park-trash), but that would ruin the plot of Rachel Roxxx's next film for you (yes, some of those movies do have plots).  The Romans borrowed Greece's gods, goddesses, and the entire country of Greece from the Greeks (they weren't using it at the time), but gave the planets Roman names, like Jupiter, Venus, Mars, Saturn, and Mercury.

They didn't name Uranus Uranus because they never found
Uranus.  The Greeks did.  See previous picture.

Here's where the Catholic Church stepped in and confused things a teensey bit. They figured that because God created the Earth, and Mankind, God's best creation (yes, even better than Uranus) lived on Earth, then it followed that the Earth must be the center of the Universe and that everything revolves around it.  And it makes observational and intuitive sense.  The Earth is pretty solid and doesn't move (except for the occasional earthquake.  And when you're drunk).  AND, if you look at the sun, moon, stars and planets, they all seem to be moving in relation to the Earth, where you and I are standing and, no matter what Carole King sings, just is NOT moving under our feet.

I was drunk when I wrote that song

The only problem with the Catholic Church's view of the cosmos is that it is TOTALLY  MADE-UP  and is TOTALLY  WRONG (surprised?), or so the savvy Polish mathematician, Copernicus suggested in his book, De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (translation: The Catholic Church Made All this Shit Up!), which placed the sun --not planet Earth --at the center of the Universe.  Which isn't exactly right either, but you've got to start somewhere.  Copernicus knew he'd piss-off the Church with his book, so he dedicated it to the then-current Pope and had the thing published after he, Copernicus, died, so the Church couldn't hassle him about it.  Just because he was Polish didn't mean he wasn't wicked-smart.

Has anybody seen my pants?

You see, Copernicus thought the sun was the center of the  entire universe, not just the solar system.  AND he thought that the planets revolved around the sun in perfect circles (they don't).  AND he thought that kissing-up to the Pope in his book's dedication would keep it off of the list of books the Church wanted to burn and execute anyone who ever read it (it didn't).

Soooo, a Reformation of sorts was needed.  Martin Luther (no relation to Martin Luther King jr --that would be just silly!) accomplished the religious part, and Johannes Kepler and his pal, Tycho Brahe accomplished the astronomical part.  Kepler was a gifted mathematician and former teacher who formulated the Three Laws of Planetary Motion.  Brahe was an off-da-hook party-animal who had a gold prosthetic nose, had a pet stag, kept a dwarf named Jepp in his court as its official tiny-guy, and had the most accurate astronomical observations in the whole world before astronomers started using telescopes to view the heavens.  Their partnership fixed the planetary orbit shapes mistake (an ellipse  with the sun at one end of the focus).  But still, the sun remained at the center of the Universe.

That's just dumb.  I'm the center of the Universe, you bea-atch-ez.

Humanity had to wait for the creation of the United States of America and the birth of Edwin Hubble to finally be able to have a correct idea of the true size of the Universe and the position of the sun-planets system.  Hubble (the astronomer, not the character who played opposite Barbra Streisand in The Way We Were) trained his big-ass telescope on these so-called spiral nebulae, figured out that they were way-more huge and wicked-further away than previously thought, and then called them "Galaxies."  He then turned said big-ass telescope on our own Milky Way and discovered that --wait for it --that IT was also a Galaxy, had always been a Galaxy, and had been hiding right in front of us throughout all of human history.  When he did the math, he figured out that the solar system was itself revolving around some central point in the middle of the Milky Way.  Way to go, Edwin Hubble!

My telescope is bigger than yours.
And yes, size does matter.

Since Hubble made his breakthrough, more fascinating details have emerged: that the galaxies are flying away from each other at ever increasing speeds; that there's something called "dark matter" that is invisible but really powerful; that there are Black Holes, Pulsars, Quasars and Neutron Stars; that the Universe itself used to be squeezed into a wicked-hot, wicked-dense state called a "Singularity" (and not riding on the back of Jebby, the Cosmic Anteater, as previously posited in this blog), and that an event called either the Big Bang, Great Bang, Awesome Gang-Bang, or other pithy turn of phrase created everything in the Universe almost instantaneously.  Everything.  Even time, space, matter, anti-matter, subatomic particles, quarks, strings, and maybe even what the Catholic Church called Heaven, Hell and God.  The Church agrees with a lot of this stuff these days, except for the God-stuff.  For some reason, they cling to their ignorant, Medieval notions that they, and they alone, get to tell you stuff about God.  I wonder what God thinks about that attitude?

Smite them!  Better yet, just let them keep smiting themselves.

In a way, I kind of liked the Church's view of everything.  I mean, everything seems so big now and I feel so tiny.  Then again, being the center of the Universe was a lot of pressure --I mean, what if we humans screwed up and, I don't know, didn't live according to God's commandments.  What if we didn't really love our neighbors as we love ourselves (and not in a creepy sexual way, you weirdos!)  What might the world look like if that were the case?

Oh!  Good point!