Last class done. Finals week ahead. I’m also chairing a search committee for a new Lab coordinator, and that will be picking up in the coming weeks. Then travel, travel. Nearly a month in Colorado. Symposium in Urbana. Vacation in NY. All wedged around various summer teaching duties.

Reflections on the semester: things stabilized. This is both necessary for and a danger to progress. You have to get comfortable before you can push the envelope; but you just might be tempted not too. Well, the fact that I’m here says I’m no fan of comfort. How would I rate my effort this semester? I’ve again sagged in the last few weeks. I spent so much energy before spring break preparing for a conference it might have been inevitable; but this may also be a pattern. I regressed into “lecture” mode a bit, but I have found some things which seem to work, and will have to keep experimenting. I have to push past both my and my student’s comfort zones to achieve anything, but this must be done carefully.

More tales from the front in the war against incuriosity. While an enjoyable read, I find it disturbing that this systemic condition is not a taken for granted fact. Anyone surprised by the lack of motivation among students is not a very good student themselves. Even the majority of highly motivated students, those swarming Ivy league schools and carry around business cards, are motivated for the wrong reasons, and reduce scholarship to a numbers game: the GPA and standardized test scores that will get them into Med School. Only a small fraction of a fraction of students somehow survive their education with inquisitiveness intact; those doomed to be future professors.

So: let’s take intellectual sloth as given. What do we do? I see far too many commentaries that imply this leads only to despair. Misery is the distance between who we are and what we wish to be; despair is the consequence of fantastic expectations. Suppose we are dumb or desperate enough to knowingly face this force of apathy?

We’ve got to try and undo some of the damage, ever so gently, they don’t even notice. This has to start by cultivating the environment of a leaner-centered classroom, to use trite professional talk. This is what JD does so well at Clarkson: as he puts it, to distribute authority in the classroom. I haven’t forgetten how he made me feel like a peer; like someone whose ideas mattered. Most students will not willingly accept this power, this responsibility. You’ve got to let it sneak up on them.

My gut reaction is to say Joe has it easy teaching literature. It’s easier to disperse authority in a postmodern world (though I know JD is no strict postmodernist, surely in science there is a much higher proportion of just plain right and just plain wrong answers). However I think this is a cop-out on my part. In the end, nothing is more mysterious or beautiful than the truth, and this is the domain of science.

So, blame shifts to the curriculum. Newton’s laws are just not that exciting; but if you can’t get the basic conservation laws, how can you fathom the quantum atom? I survived freshman physics in part because I knew it was only the preface to the real stuff. However, I’m mostly stuck there, too. Practically, my present problems are: (1) How to distract attention from the grades (thereby shifting it to the material) without creating a disaster of accountability? I have to accept most students are damaged beyond my present ability to repair. (2) How to promote creative thinking and intellectual risk-taking in a subject environment with cut and dry, correct answers? I’ve tried to include some topics of contemporary controversy (nuclear power, education vs. voting rights, etc.) but I see no way to embed the entire course material like this, 95% of it is 300 years old. I usually try to embed it in the narrative of discovery, which I will continue to do, but it seems too remote to really engage; and beyond that still doesn’t empower students to think. This is still a largely teacher-centered strategy. Perhaps now that I’ve recognized that, I can find something else to take the place.

This afternoon, just before proceeding to aikido, I found a gigantic, bloated winter tick lumbering along the wood floor in my home office. This does not please me.

Later, Niko informs me of a ritual tick squashing performed yesterday in the bathroom. Ticks are not supposed to be found indoors. This does not please me, at all.

I’ve been reading a lot of Alfie Kohn’s writings on education lately. He delivered a talk a few weeks ago I attended, and made a lot of sense, though most of his ideas are better aimed at secondary education. I agree with his analysis of standardized testing whole-heartedly. There is hardly a greater evil. It systematically destroys intellectual discourse and exploration. The NCLB fits perfectly with the republican agenda: (1) prevent citizens from becoming independent thinkers and life-long learners, (2) make them instead entirely dependent on extrinsic motivators (test scores, money, power) and thus easily controlled, and (3) destroy the public school system in favor of privatized test-prep factories. This is “traditional American values” in action. The same values that made us a country of slaves, sweat-shop workers & robber barons. I’ve always preferred the ideals. The republican agenda is no less than repealing the entire twentieth century. Goals (1) and (2) above prevents anyone from noticing.

But, I started this post to record some of my thinking about grading policies. I noted in a comment on Reading & Writing that for my Astrophysics class I intend on allowing the students to pick their own grades. This is to remove the extrinsic motivator, and focus entirely on the course material instead. I will likely soften this a bit, and say the grade will be “negotiated” at the end of the class. I also intend on having them keep a portfolio of completed work. Nothing receives a numeric grade.

I still have a few GE courses, 101 and Astronomy. How to apply this philosophy to these classes is a total mystery to me. These kids have been too badly damaged by the educational system. I already have a significant part of the grade based mostly on un-graded participation, which is working well. For these classes, I need to stick to baby steps.

I’m sitting on the back porch with my laptop, mesmerized with the variety of bird calls and contemplating the future of this journal. Just a short while ago I finished removing the large stump back here- it was way too distracting, in the foreground, when I’d rather be appreciating the forest foliage. I’m not happy with the quality of writing here for a while- but I think that’s somewhat unfair, as most by blogging effort has been on the Kant page. But, at this point, I can’t think of pulling the plug. it’s getting habitual. I need to get back to using this more as a reading journal. I still can’t bring myself to forward-link this from my university web page… that, I fear, would force me to constrain my content a bit. On the other hand, that might be a good thing. That’s kind of the point of making this public (if unadvertised) in the first place- it forces me to pay some attention to quality, and writing without quality would be useless.

Perhaps this summer I’ll re-work things here entirely. I’d like to keep this archive, though a few of the more damning entries would have to be removed.

Woodward also reports that the battle plan was unfurled for Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the U.S.: On its top it was stamped “TOP SECRET–NOFORN”–”No Foreign,” not to be seen by anyone but Americans with the highest security clearance. Instructed by the president, Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld briefed Bandar, who responded by promising to lower oil prices just before the election. “Mum is the word,” said Bandar. As we can now see, prices have skyrocketed, giving oil producers windfall profits upfront, and ultimately exaggerating the political effect of any subsequent drop in prices. (Salon)

It will be interesting to see if this story ever surfaces again should the price drop occur on cue.

I ended up not getting Mach�s masterwork, but, among a few other books, Kragh�s Quantum Generations, a history of physics in the twentieth century. A fine, fine book this is. I�ve always been attracted to historical narratives in the architecture of knowledge, probably for the same reason I�m so attracted to linguistics and cognitive science. If you don�t know how you know what you know, you don�t know squat. I rather enjoyed the traditional historical approach to quantum / atomic / nuclear physics I had as an undergraduate, but in this approach, you never get much of a glimpse of the failed theories. Ack- I�m getting dragged away to watch Kill Bill. I guess it�s just got to be done� more on this later.

Another heavy gardening day. Set up a whisky barrel planter of basil & parsley, and finally put in what will be the centerpiece tree of the boring flat front yard: Acer Griseum, the paperbark maple. It sits directly in front of the largest window in the house, so the bark should make an interesting view in the winter. It’s fantastic in the spring & fall here. The winter is butt-ugly, as there’s no foliage to hide the decaying city. The summer should be nice foliage-wise, but hotter than tandori roasted batshit.

I’ve always been more interested in foliage than flowers, but I have to say, this is pretty cool.

The entire forest floor out back it lit up with bluebells, far as you can see. And there’s a healthy scattering of violets in the yard.

Brego acquired kennel cough at the HS; it’s starting to pick up. I hope Smilla’s innoculation is effective.