Teaching Tolerance is Not Enough for Many Activist Teachers

I'm full-in for teaching students to be tolerant of each other. As I see it, the most important lessons are A) not to bully anyone, especially because they are seen as different and B) not to judge others because of how they look.

This is not enough for many teachers based on information Abigail Shrier has gathered. With regard to information relating to sexual relationships many middle school teachers are being encouraged to send one message to students, yet send another message to parents. Even more worrisome, many "lessons" about sexual relationships are turning into unauthorized therapy imposed on children without the knowledge of their parents. It is not surprising that many parents are outraged upon learning of these strategies. See here here and here.

Here's a dichotomy that works for me: Public schools should teach students how to think, not what to think. That boundary is not being respected in many schools, according to Shrier's recent article: "How Activist Teachers Recruit Kids: Leaked Documents and Audio from the California Teachers Association Conference Reveal Efforts to Subvert Parents on Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation." Here's an excerpt:

Incensed parents now make news almost daily, objecting to radical material taught in their children’s public schools. But little insight has been provided into the mindset and tactics of activist teachers themselves. That may now be changing, thanks to leaked audio from a meeting of California’s largest teacher’s union.

Last month, the California Teachers Association (CTA) held a conference advising teachers on best practices for subverting parents, conservative communities and school principals on issues of gender identity and sexual orientation. Speakers went so far as to tout their surveillance of students’ Google searches, internet activity, and hallway conversations in order to target sixth graders for personal invitations to LGBTQ clubs, while actively concealing these clubs’ membership rolls from participants’ parents.

Continue ReadingTeaching Tolerance is Not Enough for Many Activist Teachers

Jonathan Haidt and Jonathan Rauch Discuss “The Constitution of Knowledge”

From Heterodox Academy, a discussion of Jonathan Rauch's excellent new book, The Constitution of Knowledge. Here's the HxA landing page for this video.

The production of knowledge thrives when universities value open inquiry, but recent trends in conformist thinking pose new threats to research, writing, and teaching. How do we combat conformist culture in our classrooms and research, while encouraging inquiry into unorthodox ideas? How can our epistemic institutions continue to seek and know truth? We were joined by HxA co-founder and Board Chair Jonathan Haidt for an in-depth discussion with Jonathan Rauch, author of The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth.

As Rauch states in the teaser, the system doesn't work by magic. It requires all of us to participate in good faith:

Continue ReadingJonathan Haidt and Jonathan Rauch Discuss “The Constitution of Knowledge”

About Compounding

Shane Parrish of Farnham Street pointed out that “Compounding,” is a really useful concept, especially when applied to things outside of finance, where the term refers to earning interest on interest.

Then along comes an article by Daniel F. Chambliss, "The Mundanity of Excellence," reminding us that great talent can happen only when we stand on the shoulders of numerous sub-talents:

Excellence is mundane. Excellence is mundane. Superlative performance is really a confluence of dozens of small skills or activities, each one learned or stumbled upon, which have been carefully drilled into habit and then are fitted together in a synthesized whole. There is nothing extraordinary or superhuman in any one of those actions; only the fact that they are done consistently and correctly, and all to- gether, produce excellence. When a swimmer learns a proper flip turn in the freestyle races, she will swim the race a bit faster; then a streamlined push off from the wall, with the arms squeezed together over the head, and a little faster; then how to place the hands in the water so no air is cupped in them; then how to lift them over the water; then how to lift weights to properly build strength, and how to eat the right foods, and to wear the best suits for racing, and on and on. Each of those tasks seems small in itself, but each allows the athlete to swim a bit faster. And having learned and consistently practiced all of them to- gether, and many more besides, the swimmer may compete in the Olympic Games. The win- ning of a gold medal is nothing more than the synthesis of a countless number of such little things—even if some of them are done unwit- tingly or by others, and thus called “luck.”.

One final thought: It has increasingly appeared to me that anything good that has happened (and many bad things) are the result of work I’ve done (or failed to do) over many years or decades. Compounding is behind my biggest successes and failures. One of the biggest ways this show up in in your reputation. As the saying goes, a good reputation is hard to earn and easy to lose. When you've spent your entire life trying to be trustworthy, truthful and kind, that opens doors for you, over and over. But you might forget that this superpower was something you assembled over decades.

Continue ReadingAbout Compounding

How to Avoid Getting in our own Way

I'm a longtime fan of Eric Barker's blog, "Barking up the Wrong Tree." He opens a recent blog post with this incredible story:

George was late again.

It was 1939 and math PhD student George Dantzig arrived to find he had already missed much of the lecture. The two homework problems were already up on the chalkboard. He scribbled them down.

But this day only got worse. When he got to work on the problems that night, he realized they were hard. Really hard. George was a super smart guy but these problems were insanely difficult. They took him days to complete. So now he was going to be late again, this time turning in his homework. Yeesh.

He delivered them to his professor, Jerzy Neyman, apologizing profusely. Neyman’s eyes went wide. George worried he was going to be in a lot of trouble. But that’s not why Neyman was reacting so strangely…

The two problems on the board hadn’t been homework at all — they were two issues in statistical theory that had been deemed “unsolvable” by the best mathematicians in the world. Far from being angry, Neyman was blown away.

Yeah, George was a genius. And, no, the lesson here is not “show up late.”

Point is, if George had known what he was up against, he never would have even tried. His amazing potential might never have been recognized.

Barker springs off this anecdote to offer five tips for getting more done. The title of his article: "How To Stop Being Lazy And Get More Done – 5 Expert Tips."

Continue ReadingHow to Avoid Getting in our own Way

Proposed New National Holiday: “I Don’t Know Day”

Let's create a new national holiday to facilitate communication. It should be called "I Don't Know Day." Two purposes: To encourage people to say they don't know something when they don't know it, and B) Remind them that they look smarter when they admit that they don't know something that they don't know. We could also create a separate holiday called "Don't Make Shit Up Day."

Continue ReadingProposed New National Holiday: “I Don’t Know Day”