Trying to teach art at a dysfunctional public grade school

“If I didn’t care about my kids, I’d have an easier time.”

“No real-life problem is ever actually solved, it seems.”

For three years, Geri Anderson has worked as a grade school art teacher. She wakes up every day, willing to try her hardest to make a difference in the lives of the students who attend Walnut Elementary School.  “Geri” and “Walnut” are not real names; Geri and I decided to use these pseudonyms to allow Geri to speak freely. Everything else in this article is based on my recent interview of Geri. 

Geri is a soft-spoken woman in her mid-twenties.  Before being hired for her current job, Geri often substitute taught at expensive private grade schools.  She took her first permanent job at Walnut to make a difference. 

Geri teaches art to each of the 200 students who attend Walnut.  They range in age from preschoolers to sixth-graders. The average class includes about twenty children, although some of the classes have almost 30 children.  Not all of the teacher positions are filled at Walnut; for many months, the school has sought the help of adults from the community to fill in for the non-existent science teacher, for example. 

Walnut is located in the urban center of a large U.S. city.  98% of the children attending Walnut Elementary are African-American.  More than 90% of these students receive free or reduced price lunches.  Based upon Geri’s observations, the great majority of the students live in single-parent homes.  Classroom behavior issues, including …

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Should we teach philosophy to little kids?

One of Diane Rehm’s recent shows featured Marietta McCarty, who advocates teaching philosophy to children to develop critical thinking skills and to deepen their sense of empathy for others.  Here’s the interview.  McCarty, who has taught at both the elementary school and community college level, has written a book titled Little Big Minds.

According to her website, McCarty is:

Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Piedmont Virginia Community College in Charlottesville, Virginia. She has brought philosophy to children in rural, suburban, and city schools in the central Virginia area for over fifteen years, as well as schools around the U.S. “Her Philosophy in the Third Grade” program is nationally acclaimed and she lectures and gives demonstrations around the country on this one-of-a-kind program. While focusing on third graders, she philosophizes in kindergarten through eighth grade classrooms.

McCarty starts with the premise that children are natural philosophers.  They are “the best philosophers.”  Children have a natural curiosity and an innate sense of wonder.  Even young children are capable of studying philosophy.

Philosophy, according to McCarty, is the art of clear thinking.  Philosophers are people who “hold many ideas in their mind at once.” Philosophers “empty their minds of clutter and confusion.”  She stresses that children need to exercise their minds just like they need to exercise their bodies.  Philosophy can help children “gain clarity about ideas.”  Underlying McCarty’s strategy is her belief that ideas have consequences.  “What we think motivates all of our actions and all of our decisions.  If we don’t …

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To the Power of N

This is not about math. I just had a pre-somnolent image of a cluster of words that I just have to let out. In less pretentious language: I thought of this as I dozed off last night.

“A mnemonic pneumonic gnu’s knees.”

Nglish is a weird language. Note that of the 4 words that are all pronounced as though they start with en, none actually start with en. They also came from four different root languages to English (Latin, Greek, Khoikhoi, and German).

We are taught spelling in school as a sort of faith: This is how it is because it is. The root of spelling (in non-pictographic languages) is to produce a stream of characters (letters) to represent the series of sounds (phonemes) that make up each word. So why do we use three different letters for the same hard-K sound? Four if you count eks. Let’s knot forget the mental knife we use to silence kay itself in several common words. Why have we lost the letters for hard and soft ch? Greeks still use chi (χ is not x). Can you spontaneously spout the 5 pronunciations of “ough”?

Basically, why are so many words pronounced differently than they are spelled? The simple answer is, teenagers.

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Astrophysicist Ashes: Sort of a Rambling Eulogy

Today is the first anniversary of my dad’s death. Yesterday I came home from the crematorium “with me dad took’d under me arm,” to badly paraphrase the children’s song about Ann Boleyn. Death doesn’t frighten me in an abstract way. I grew up with Tom Lehrer music, Charles Addams cartoons, Hitchcock short story books, and other foils to the timid mortal. This package of charred and calcined particles I carry in the crook of my arm is merely a transient monument to the man in whom they once dwelled.

Although my father died a year ago, his ashes just now returned from the medical school circuit. He was first and foremost an educator, and this seems a fitting final use for his corporeal remains. It was also was his expressed wish.

“Ashes to ashes” is a lame phrase to someone whose head was usually far beyond the clouds. I grew up perfectly aware that my body was made up of ashes from the remains of a supernova, as is the rest of our solar system. The even my cell nuclei are literally composed of decayed nuclear waste!

Not all of the mass of these coarse ashes was actually part of his body during his life. Cremation binds oxygen to any atom that will have it, increasing the total mass from the proteins being torn apart and vaporized by the process. Sort of like how 6 lbs (a gallon) of gasoline produces 30 lbs of greenhouse C02

It doesn’t …

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The effect of media images of sexed-up girls and women posing as adolescents

According to a recent report by the American Psychological Association,

Inescapable media images of sexed-up girls and women posing as adolescents can cause psychological and even physical harm to adolescents and young women.
According to this APA report, the pressure of this "sexualization" can lead to depression, eating disorders, and poor academic performance. See, also, Yahoo's article on this report. What are the sources of these images? The report points to these examples:
Advertisements (e.g., the Skechers “naughty and nice” ad that featured Christina Aguilera dressed as a schoolgirl in pigtails, with her shirt unbuttoned, licking a lollipop), dolls (e.g., Bratz dolls dressed in sexualized clothing such as miniskirts, fishnet stockings, and feather boas), clothing (thongs sized for 7– to 10-year-olds, some printed with slogans such as “wink wink”), and television programs (e.g., a televised fashion show in which adult models in lingerie were presented as young girls).
It is difficult to not notice this modern smearing of the boundaries between female childhood and adulthood. Our media is obsessed with presenting images of women acting like little girls and little girls forced to act "sexualized." What's the difference between "sexualization" and healthy sexuality? According to the APA report, "sexualization" occurs when
a person’s value comes only from his or her sexual appeal or behavior, to the exclusion of other characteristics; a person is held to a standard that equates physical attractiveness (narrowly defined) with being sexy;

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