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Education, Observations, Prediction, Technology, words words words

What Cooking Taught Me About Online Education

August 5, 2020 pollywannamath

I aspire to be a moderately successful home cook. I have a few specialties and can cobble together a decent meal each night, but I clearly lack fundamental skills. My vegetables, rice and pasta look rustic at best. I dedicated the last weekend to improving all three. My goal was to create one batch of sticky rice and one plate of pasta that passed muster.

Did I do it? You should know that if a blog describes cooking, you’ll have to endure a novel before you are permitted to see the results.

I’ve read a number of cookbooks, watched Masterclasses, and YouTube videos to improve my technique. I found some to be incredibly helpful, Jacque Pepin’s knife skills are a perfect primer. Joshua Weissman offers a good series on how to cook at home. But after a weekend of practice, I learned as much about remote education as I did about cooking.

Students have a number of learning styles. Schools attempt to incorporate a multitude of learning styles in their instruction. The VARK model is a widely-used schema for cataloging learning preference that educators use to vary instruction. In the VARK model, there are four types of learners:

Visual–learners that best internalize and synthesize graphic information such as charts, diagrams, hierarchies.
Auditory–learners who succeed when they have the opportunity to listen and wrestle with concepts verbally.
Reading–These are good students (I kid). Reading/writing learners are best when given the opportunity to read and write about their subject matter.
Kinesthetic–For these students, learning is a physically active endeavor.

One can argue how well the public school system caters to each style, if the VARK model is an appropriate way to classify learning styles, or if learning styles exist. However, when I was attempting to better my cooking this weekend, it was clear that all of the learning styles referenced above were available to me. I listened to and watched videos (Visual/Auditory). I rolled dough, and rolled dough, and rolled some more (kinesthetic). I read recipes and descriptions (Visual). I’ve considered myself a visual-spatial learner, and had no problem learning through the combination of media available to me. On-line education upheld its promise.

Yet, something was missing in my culinary lessons. I wasn’t always improving batch-to-batch. Learning models frequently focus on how to plan lessons and engage students, but rarely outline the best way to curb bad outcomes or patterns. I intuitively know that I wouldn’t benefit as much from a golf lesson over Zoom, as I would in person. My swing needs physical correction and don’t have the spatial awareness necessary to correct from words alone. Similarly, I wouldn’t want to take a music lesson without an instructor present to help correct breathing, posture and adjust my movements in real-time.

I need a lot of lessons…

After a weekend, I made incremental improvement in my ability to roll pasta and cut noodles, make sushi rice, and consistently cut a range of vegetables. I would have improved faster if I received real-time physical corrections. Practice does not make perfect, practice makes permanent. Without immediate correction, I’ve further entrenched bad habits that I hope to learn enough to correct later. When learning to cook online, I learned my personal limit with the available media.

Not perfect, but an improvement over past attempts.

Many students will return to academia online this coming semester. Invariably, these students will miss out on a number of intangible benefits of traditional education. In addition, I worry that these students will miss out on having their bad outcomes or patterns corrected. Will it be as easy to foster challenging intellectual conversation over the Web? Will educators be able to help students course correct in any academic discipline in video lessons?

Remote pedagogy might be the best course of action for many this autumn. That is not a topic I want to engage. However, I predict that remote learning will benefit the students of math, technology, and the sciences. I won’t be surprised when it results in poor outcomes in philosophy, history, language and elective courses. I won’t be surprised when remote learning constraints are further used to reduce funding of the Arts. Remote learning is probably not suited for disciplines of nuance that require gentle but constant and immediate corrections from an engaged educator.

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2020 Reading Roundup pt.1

July 11, 2020 pollywannamath

The year is a little more than half over and it’s time to review my reading habits from the first half of the year. As a whole, I did not read as much as I would have liked and the reading I did was too dense. I will try to correct both in the second half of the year.

Here is my, non-exhaustive list, of what I read this year with a one or two sentence review:

People’s History of the Supreme Court–Too much time spent on the first 25 years after the Revolution. Does not stray much from what Howard Zinn would write. (Dense)
God Bless you, Dr. Kevorkian (reread)–Short, easy, and Vonnegut.
A History of the World in 6 Glasses–More entertaining than interesting. I’d recommend to anyone that wants to get into history reading.
Going After Cacciato–Tim O’Brien deserves the acclaim he deserves. Mostly male cast, he is best when writing for 30-50 year-old-men.
Lust, Violence, Sin Magic: Sixty Years of Esquire Fiction (Excerpts)–Some good, some bad.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (reread)–Brilliant. Hard to imagine that it was only text, I remember it as a movie. No, not Blade Runner.
JOB: A Comedy of Justice–I’d recommend other Heinlein first, but good in general.
Mariel of Redwall (reread)– The writing in this series holds up considerably better than the writing of other popular books for the same demographic (except for A Series of Unfortunate Events).
Lessons in Excellence from Charlie Trotter–Strikingly out of touch.
The New History and the Old–A dense and angry review of changes facing the teaching of history.
The Greek Myths–Interesting, but the most dense thing I’ve read this year.
Shogun–Highly recommend to all. Lends itself incredibly well to a miniseries with current political overtones. Suited well for a strong, diverse cast.

This year I experienced a bookstore that might suppliant the Frugal Muse as my new favorite. Powell’s in Portland, OR. Although the staff did not warmly greet readers and the bookstore was too large to foster relationships between patrons, the selection is immense and the recommendations excellent.

Over the next six months, I plan to re-read more books directed toward adolescents, finish a culinary book, read two or three light novels, and work through a French or coding book. At the end of the year, I’ll write part 2.

Observations, words words words

Political Speech is Missing Sax Appeal

July 7, 2020July 15, 2020 pollywannamath

When cataloging moments of great presidential rhetoric, a few speeches immediately come to mind:

I have two books that deal with Presidential rhetoric (Speaking with the People’s Voice [recommended] and America Out Loud), neither reference a single Clinton speech or interview. America Out Loud reduces the Clinton years to a single sentence, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.” I think that is a mistake.

In retrospect, it is easy to reduce Clinton’s appearance on Arsenio to a single gif of him playing heartbreak hotel.

Sax man, Bill Clinton

However, his interview as the democratic candidate for president with Arsenio Hall is one of the best uses of political speech I’ve heard and deserves to be on the list above. In 1992, candidate Clinton appeared for a 30 minute interview with late night tv host, Arsenio Hall. Hall’s show was hip and Clinton needed to attract a younger audience to beat Ross Perot (and his pointer) and George H.W. Bush.

The interview started with Clinton’s infamous sax performance, but quickly ran into substantive issues. Clinton was grilled on his views about race in the aftermath of the Rodney King riots. Hall continues to be a staunch activist for civil rights and social equality and it was clear in the interview that he was not looking for political answers from the candidate, he wanted to know how Clinton was different.

Whether or not Clinton was different is irrelevant. The interview is like nothing I’ve ever seen from a candidate. Clinton appears vulnerable. He doesn’t try to play the role of invulnerable politician, he doesn’t promise he will fix every problem in the US. He tells an embarrassing story about his first experience with marijuana, he jokes that Hall will need to pay more taxes, he openly lets viewers know that he needs to narrow his scope if he hopes to get anything done.

The interview was in 1992. There are moments that come across as insensitive, and he discusses race and gang affiliation in ways that should make Americans a little uncomfortable. But, language gaffs and poor examples aside, his views and policy decisions on minority groups remain salient today. If you told me that his interview took place in 2020, I’d tell you that I was excited we had a young moderate in the race.

Why is this interview not considered a moment of great political rhetoric? Maybe because it was an interview, not a speech. Maybe we remember only the saxophone. Maybe Arsenio wasn’t considered “serious” enough. I never experienced this interview in its time.

I wish I had. I hope in the next decade we will have a number of politicians that revere this interview. I’d love to see a series of presidential hopefuls baring their soul to Ira Glass, Malcolm Gladwell, Joe Rogan, Conan, or the next generation of great interviewers. Interviews that leave the audience with the impression that they understand the person, not just the platform, that is trying to win their vote.

Watch the full interview here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9PurEsH7iM

Clinton on Hall

Observations, words words words

Words About Immaturity

January 12, 2020May 26, 2020 pollywannamath

I generally dislike the word immature. Not when used in a scientific sense or to describe a stage of development. But in normal conversation, I find few words more grating.

The problem is that the word immature has a number of definitions and connotations that come with each. Oxford identifies two definitions:

Not fully developed. (neutral connotation)
Having or showing an emotional or intellectual development appropriate to someone younger. (negative connotation)

Mariam-Webster rephrases the second definition as:

exhibiting less than an expected degree of maturity

This definition begins to embody the issue I generally have with the word. Circular definitions are definitionally terrible, but what is meant by the word maturity in the Mariam-Webster definition? Fully developed, or a desired end state?

Generally when I hear that someone is “immature,” I take it to mean that they don’t handle responsibility well, lack judgement, or love sophomoric humor. At worst, I may think the person being described, is just not a good person.

Bojack Horseman continually hurts those around him with narcissistic actions of self-loathing; is he immature? When a 70-year-old man makes an inappropriate joke is it a sign of immaturity? In both examples the person obviously completed maturation through adulthood. It is exceedingly unlikely that additional development as a part of the aging process will lead to positive character development.

Using the word immature to describe bad behavior leads to two harms:

It removes agency from bad actors. “Oh, he’s just immature”–No, he is probably a jerk and time won’t change that.
It imparts a negative connotation to a helpful descriptor, especially for children through young adults.

Immaturity is not necessary bad. A 70 year old with an adaptable mind that tries to learn new schools of thought might be immature. A 13 year old that is struggling to keep up with classmates physically and emotionally is immature.

Similarly the word “mature” has been bastardized with a positive connotation when describing people. I won’t spend time reviewing this, because the harms aren’t as bad. But, I feel bad for children that are trying to be “mature” because adults tell them it is something to strive for.

For my part, I hope to mature at a normal rate until I am middle aged and spend my latter years in immaturity.