CrypticLife

The Girl Without a Face

2009-05-12T18:11:00.000-07:00

I'd found a posting on joelcomm (http://www.joelcomm.com/girl_born_without_a_face.html) after watching a show on the science channel with my kids. I found the story of Juliana Wetmore touching, and some of the negative comments on joelcomm revolting. It inspired me to write this comment, and to reopen this blog. Indeed, it will even cause me to consider once again my position on abortion, though I believe I will remain pro-choice. It's not as well written, and is more emotional than I would usually prefer.

Were one of my sons to grow up and in fifteen or twenty years come home and announce they wanted to marry a girl like Juliana, I would weep -- I would sob tears of joy that I'd raised a child who could be so compassionate and wise, who could look beyond the shallow surface of a person's body, and was so willing to go through what would surely be hardship for a woman he loved. If any of you who have children can say differently, that you would rebuke your children for such a decision, that your emotional reaction would be revulsion, you are horrific monsters.

A couple of weeks ago, I saw a show on Juliana on the Discovery channel, along with my wife and two sons, 8 and 6 years old. It gave us a wonderful opportunity to stress to them how they should not judge others on appearance, and the hour-long show gave them a chance to be both interested in her plight and get used to the idea of seeing her as a person. My older son wants to be a doctor, and so is interested in all medical shows. It's not the first time we've seen a severe facial deformity on tv, and won't be the last.

The parents face some incredibly difficult decisions. I don't think it's fair to criticize their choice of whether to go through with the surgeries or not. The program did mention how the parents were struggling with whether they should continue with further surgeries that might not be possible for her later in life, or just let her be a kid now. They want what all parents want for their children -- for her to have a fulfilled life, where she can contribute to society and feel love, if not sex (and frankly, who knows -- there are likely some who can look past her facial issues). I've worked with the mentally handicapped for several years, including many with Down's syndrome and far more profound difficulties. Rarely did I find their happiness in life to be in any way related to their mental problems.
The one I felt the most pity for was not the most disabled -- he was the one who had started life normally, and was hit by a car at age 12 and suffered permanent brain damage. He was excrutiatingly aware of what he had lost.

One of the striking things I find about this thread is that it's one of the few places on the internet I've seen where Christians are saying the things that they should be saying. Often, I see them saying things that seem like complete and utter rejections of the philosophy they purport to believe, and I feel like I'm the most "Christian" of them.

Which is a bit disconcerting, since I'm an atheist. I don't believe any god exists, nor that there is some divine purpose to Juliana's existence. I write here using the pseudonym I usually use on "militant" atheist boards such as PZ Myer's Pharyngula. I'd encourage other atheists to think about purpose for a moment. If you follow the new atheist rationale, you will assert that there is no divine purpose -- there is only the purpose that we create for ourselves. Are you seriously willing to assert
that it is impossible for Juliana to create a purpose for herself? Are you really just the dull materialists, so tied to outward appearance, as the theists would claim you are? Or do you really believe that people can make their own purpose, that people can overcome their own situations, and that people can learn tolerance -- as I suspect the triad of Dennett, Dawkins, and (yes, even) Hitchens believe?

It's not chance

2008-02-29T17:44:00.000-08:00

What is below is unusual, even in Japan, but high levels of dedication are not unusual. There seem to be more people like this in Japan than in the US. Is it the schools? The parents? The culture?

Probably it has to be put down to all three. Let's just be glad there are great things about America in all of these regards as well.

And if any piano teachers out there need to inspire your students.... she's 10, and says she learned this in six dedicated months.

Gender discrimination in schools

2007-11-28T15:52:00.000-08:00

The California Education Committee has filed a complaint calling for declaratory judgment over California's planned change of language in their school antidiscrimination code. In particular, the rephrased statute replaces "sex" with "gender", and include "sexual orientation" to the list of topics against which teachers cannot discriminate. Gender is not only the physical sex of the person, but also how the person self-identifies and behaves.

Many of the arguments raised in the complaint are fairly poor. The complaint makes a lot of the teachers having to "have foreknowledge of the private mental impressions, thoughts, and disabilities of each person withwhom the educational institution comes into contact." The claim here is that one might unknowingly discriminate.

This line of reasoning falls apart in the face of the other, unchallenged categories for which it is unlawful to discriminate -- ethnic group identification, race, national origin, and religion among them -- which are invisible but which educators routinely refrain from discriminating against.

The practical argument has to do with restrooms and lockers. The plaintiffs are convinced the change in wording will allow all the boys to go into the girls' restrooms just by claiming transgendered status, and that this will constitute a violation of privacy and safety under California's constitution. I don't know that this is necessarily what the change in language intended, but the transgendered community makes their feelings well enough known that it seems it should have been contemplated as a possibility.

Somehow, it seems somewhat dubious that there would be a huge rush of typical juvenile boys identifying themselves as transgendered just to get these privileges. The social stigma is pretty high just for a chance to sit on the same toilet seat as a girl, or even the potential of changing in the same locker room as a girl (and thereby what? Maybe seeing a girl change briefly? In my high school, we never removed our underwear in the locker rooms). Though a lot of blogs fret over the possibility, I suspect nearly all of those who self-identify as transgendered do indeed have gender identity issues.

The plaintiffs cite the California constitution's promise of safety and privacy to support their claim that the change in wording is unconstitional. I have very little doubt the privacy clause in the California constitution was intended to limit government agents from invading privacy, not to place a duty on the government to keep residents from invading each other's privacy and/or safety. After all, if a transgendered person could invade someone's privacy, why couldn't a person of the same gender identity? If safety and privacy are that much of an issue, why aren't they pushing for everyone to have individually lockable private bathrooms?

The plaintiffs are probably right that requiring allowing transgendered individuals into the bathroom they identify with is a break from tradition, and therefore cultural expectations. However, it is a legislative change of culture, not a judicial one. The legislature is permitted, indeed intended, to make such changes. When the courts do it they are frequently criticized for judicial activism, even though many lauded freedoms were won only through the court's interpretations.

The Advocates of Faith and Freedom don't put their real reasoning into the complaint at all, but it is available on their website.

Senate Bill 777 and Assembly Bill 14 are radical threats to religious liberty. They attempt to eliminate your right to exercise your faith in everyday life by telling you that all forms of discrimination are illegal.

Yes, what they really want to argue is that discrimination based on gender identity or orientation is a religious right. Never mind that the bills apply specifically to educators in performing their government duties, something some of the religious refuse to wrap their heads around. This complaint isn't about privacy at all: it's about preserving the right to vilify homosexuals or prevent the status of being homosexual from being "normalized". The religious have been fighting -- and losing -- this battle for years.

Teachers v. Parents: a comparison

2007-11-08T16:20:00.000-08:00

Teachers have a lot of gripes about parents. A recent article in Time magazine even goes through a litany of teacher woes concerning problem parents -- mostly those who hover too closely to their children or advocate too aggressively for them. Teachers fill sites with other complaints, as well -- parents who insult or undermine the teachers, who pull their children out of school, or who make unreasonable demands.

The message of the teachers is clear: parents often don't treat them fairly.

There's some substance to some of these complaints, of course. Any parent knows other parents who engage in questionable parenting practices. There's no mandatory certification or training process for being a parent. Teachers are all college graduates -- statistically, a high percentage of parents will not be.

In defense of these unreasonable parents, they don't generally have a lot of options. If it were an outright war, the weaponry available would look something like:

Parents (against teachers):

Abusive language
Ability to pull child from school
False accusations

Teachers (against parents or children)

Abusive language
False accusations
Ability to set policies
Summary imposition of punishment
Teaching inappropriately
Formal legal protection

There's clearly a substantial difference in the number and quality of techniques at the teacher's command. The teacher is largely unfettered by due process when imposing punishments, but protected by it when threatened. A teacher's accusation against a student leads to immediate punishment, whereas a complaint against a teacher is met with a long, drawn-out process that may lead to a reprimand, but is unlikely to result in removal.

Add to this that the school is essentially a teacher's turf. There are a bewildering number of acronyms and terminology for procedures, policies, and measures. The teacher often has years of experience inside a system that parents see only from the outside. Teacher contact and communication is entirely centralized.

One might hope that teachers would hold themselves to some standards of behavior, and likely most of them do. Nonetheless, they're still human, and still open to human weaknesses. One internet thread relays stories of teachers using racist language, criticizing family religious practices, denigrating students for being poor or having divorced parents, and other transgressions. It seems unlikely any of these would result in significant punishment for a teacher, and most states seem to report extraordinarily low numbers for tenured teachers being dismissed (on the order of less than ten per 50,000 per year) for either incompetence or cause.

One teacher cited in Time, Roxsana Jaber-Ansari, even proudly relates her defiance of parent desires:

Jaber-Ansari was challenged for hanging Bible quotes on her classroom walls. But she had studied her legal standing, and when she was confronted, "the principal supported me 100%," she says.

Perhaps Jaber-Ansari was on legally firm ground, and perhaps not (I'd hardly take the principal's word as definitive on the subject). But clearly she's running right over the concerns of some parents with no more than a cheerful thought of spreading her own values.

There is also a difference in the effect. A poor, abusive, or unreasonable teacher can affect a student for years, or their entire life. An unreasonable parent slewing invective against a teacher causes nothing more than an evening of crying. Small wonder, then, that a parent might become unreasonable on seeing that they have virtually no real power over their child's education sans a prohibitive investment of time or money.

Some teachers will disagree with this; they'll claim that the Board of Education or the Superintendent will bend over backwards (or, perhaps, forwards) for complaining parents. I've never seen these situations, and the ones I've heard about have mostly been regarding getting a student out of punishment. For myself, the only time I've had to influence the board I had to send them a notice citing statutory law and inform them their position was illegal before they'd bend a little. They didn't even say they'd conform to the law, but just softened their position somewhat.

Time is a polemic periodical: it has no obligation, legal or moral, to report from a balanced perspective. For this article, it's pretty clear where the bias lies.

Paddling Pedagogy

2007-10-24T17:18:00.000-07:00

A lot of the time, the edu-blogging verse (at least, what I see of it, which is admittedly a small portion) focuses on grand policy or curriculum changes, or whether the parents or children are to blame for children failing, or the detrimental effects of NCLB.

When it does get into the basics of how a classroom should be run, the views are often rather sophisticated. Ken DeRosa over at D-Ed Reckoning recently had guest blogger palisadesk do a four-part series on effectively managing a classroom. Ken has often discussed curriculum, and how the lack of proper presentation on the part of the teacher affects learning.

However, I recently found something which suggests more fundamental issues. While trolling through the forum discussion boards at a teacher's site, I found a post full of cautious optimism that teachers were no longer allowed to smack children on the derriere with a wood board. The original poster notes that while she's happy about the new policy, other teachers are "in an uproar" and convinced "all hell is going to break out".

Oh, and one thing I should note: the policy was changed so the teachers could no longer paddle. They now have to send the students to an assistant principal to get paddled. Ah, such social progress!

Sadly, the teachers probably will see a worsening of behavior. Punishment is a behavioral technique, but, as I've mentioned before, it's implementation is quite difficult. One of its effects is resentment. So now they'll have a bunch of resentful students who are itching to get back at any teachers who've had liberal foreswing. Now they know the teachers can only levy the punishment when they're able to send the student to an assistant principal. If the student knows it will be difficult or impossible to send them, they'll freely act out. The operational costs of sending the child to the assistant principal means a greater variety of escape behaviors will be available. The children will soon be testing them thoroughly.

It's also worthwhile noting that punishment on a variable schedule doesn't work well at all -- to actually prevent the behavior punishment should be meted out every time the behavior occurs. The operational costs of the policy decision will work against them here as well, as punishment becomes more erratically administered.

There is further the issue of the temporality of the punishment. With their new policy, the punishment will be delayed; not much, perhaps, but still enough to make it a less effective practice.

One poster recalls how it was legal in her state when she was a child: "Thankfully, I never had to go to the principal (apparently the teacher also could do it before my time) but my husband did. He said it didn't hurt. " I would dare say if it was known that the paddling didn't hurt, it wouldn't be a very effective punishment unless there was something else about it that was aversive (shame, perhaps).

The discussion above might sound like I'm advocating the district to let the teachers' arms swing freely. I am not. Using punishment is an erratic way to control behavior that can occasionally work, but which is largely incompatible with actually imparting subject matter content. A school system that allows corporeal punishment is essentially one that allows physical abuse.*

Further commenters to the post indicated that school-sanctioned beating is allowable in nearly half the states, and that it actually occurs in at least three. To their credit, the teachers posting almost unanimously decried the practice, which gives some comfort that it may not occur in many states where it is technically legal.

The original poster eventually follows up with

On one challanging day I didn't say a word, but took it [the paddle] out of the drawer and put it on the chalkboard ledge. I could hear the kids suck in their breath and they did get still and very much on task. I have to admit I liked the effect, but at the same time I knew they were only behaving out of fear... and I knew it was just a bluff on my part....What I've learned about the paddle is it puts fear into the souls of the children who don't need it and the ones who do seem to need it, don't really need a paddle to solve their problems. It may alter their behavior for the moment but not change it in the long run.

(emphasis added)

I find this to be a fairly wise statement for someone who's not familiar with the academic research on punishment (one might hope ALL teachers would be familiar with the research, and particularly those teachers where physical punishment is expected practice). I take it along with the realization that fear was the driving factor, she also realized she couldn't afford to repeat the performance often without carrying through. Punishment generally does not have a long-term effect of reducing the target behavior. This doesn't exactly mean it doesn't change their behavior in the long run, it just may not be a desirable change.

*Of course, a neat counter to this is that nearly all school districts allow mental abuse, which is likely worse. At least paddling is fairly consistent, compared with the uncontrolled use of humiliation and verbal insults currently allowed (I know -- most teachers try to avoid turning their kids into sobbing basket cases, but I don't know of anything actually stopping them).

Is Christianity the Problem?

2007-10-23T15:44:00.000-07:00

I attended the debate last night between Christopher Hitchens and Dinesh D'Souza at Kings College. The topic of the debate was "Is Christianity the Problem?" This is a bit sketchy as an impression

I didn't previously have a particularly good impression of D'Souza; the only time I had heard of him he was using the VT massacre in a particularly morbid critique of atheism. He acquitted himself far better here.

Hitchens has a somewhat rambling and expansive style of debate, trailing into myriad topics with an answer. It contrasted sharply with D'Souza's more succinct approach. It also caused some friction as D'Souza accused Hitchens of using excess time at one point, exclaiming, "See, that's what atheists do! They hog the public square!" I take it the irony of saying this at Kings College, a Christian school where religious statuary adorned the walls, did not occur to him.

A lot of the debate was rather predictable for anyone with a passing familiarity with the arguments -- most of the points were tried and true, and they didn't have time to get long beyond the first salvos. During parts of the debate it felt as though they were going through a secretly collusive dance for the benefit of the audience. But perhaps that was just me.

Hitchens main point, at least the main point that focused on the titular topic of the debate, was the immorality of the methods of Christianity. Essentially, framing ethics in a hypothetical original sin relieved only by a "blood sacrifice", where the alternatives are heaven or hell, based on acceptance of this framework, is per se immoral. Pasquale's wager, whether posed by humans (as Hitchens believes) or God (as D'Souza believes) is an extortive attempt to control behavior. He backed up his statements with the evils that only someone bound by religion would conceive. In some Islamic countries, he related, a virgin cannot be executed. Apparently, these nations, in holding closely to their religious traditions, do not execute virgins: they rape them first.

Hitchens has something of a point here. Plenty of Christians over countless generations have played the threatening aspect of Christianity. The mere fact that Pasquale's wager exists suggests as much. The "fire and brimstone" preacher and ramrod nun are perhaps stereotypes, but not entirely imaginary ones. His unfortunate problem here is his own hyperbole: when an audience member asked him to justify his quote "Religion poisons everything", Hitchens reply was lacking in force.

D'Souza's point (the one that actually focused on the topic of the debate) was that Christianity has done a lot of good for the world, from inspiring scientists to developing values. He defended against the "religious wars" argument by noting the small numbers of people killed in the Salem witch trials and the Inquisition. D'Souza also tried to cut the Greeks mostly out of the ethical picture by noting some of the reprehensible practices of their day: leaving infants on mountaintops and slavery, without protest by important philosophers of the day.

The audience skewed more towards D'Souza than one might expect for New York City, with some young audience members giving fist-pumps to his statements. This was likely an effect of holding the debate at a Christian college. Both debaters received applause at their strongest points and laughs at the sharpest of their witty jabs, but most of the audience questions were directed towards Professor Hitchens.

Much of the debate, however, was pulled into a direct discussion of theism v. atheism. Hitchens had no particular motive to stick very close to the topic of debate, and while D'Souza remained somewhat closer, he also wandered a great deal from the alleged topic. Topics like whether miracles are possible or not is pretty much irrelevant to whether Christianity is a problem.
Frankly, I would rather have seen an actual debate on the topic of whether Christianity is a problem than a rushed rehash of atheist-theist arguments that you can troll through on a thousand internet fora. As an atheist myself, I'm not at all sure that Christianity is a problem, and it is an interesting idea to explore (though I believe theism to be false, it's not obvious that an idea is destructive purely because it's false).

Whether Christianity is a problem or not shouldn't really have to do with whether it killed people in the past, or did good in the past, but should be based on where it will go -- or avoid going -- in the future. There are likely arguments of some depth on each side here, but as yet they're largely unaddressed. Christians don't want to address them because they get into internal debates about topics like whether Christianity can accept homosexuality. Atheists don't particularly spend much energy addressing them either because atheism is not a value system at all (and most would argue that it should not try to be one).

Celebrity Welfare Schools

2007-10-11T15:38:00.000-07:00

I'm not really a big fan of Andrea Peyser, but occasionally her editorials are informative. In particular, her recent note about private schooling certainly interested me. The Churchill school in Manhattan is an elite private school catering to "bright kids, grades kindergarten through 12, who've been declared learning disabled". The kids there are usually wealthy and upper class -- examples include the offspring of Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick, fashion designer Dana Buchman, and filmmaker Julian Schnabel (also winner of 2007 Cannes best director award -- congratulations, Julian).

So, nothing wrong with the wealthy sending their kids to a top private school, right? After all, what good is money if you can't use it to help your children?

Except that the parents who send their children here get reimbursed for their $34,000 a year tuition from city tax rolls. The city paid out $57 million last year. Apparently, the right to a free and appropriate education has been taken a left turn somewhere.

Tom Freston, a former head of Viacom who received $60 million in severance, is fighting legally to assert his right to be reimbursed despite never attempting to send his son to another such elite school, "on principle". Oh, how generous of him to defend our rights that way.

Certainly, the disabled have a right to schooling tailored to their needs. And a lawyer, Neal Rosenberg, who gains clients entrance into the school for a living says he's never seen a parent present a disability just to get the Board of Education to foot their bill. I'm willing to believe him. However, what does it say about the system if these wealthy parents, who are fortunate enough that they could fairly easily send their children to school from their own pocket, are instead shifting out some of that money to a lawyer who enables them to get an expensive education at the expense of the general taxpayer, thereby reducing the money the public school system can spend on its own improvements?

Do other districts have these problems?

"In God we Trust"

2007-08-13T20:29:00.000-07:00

Most of the time, for most atheists, the motto "In God We Trust" is more an annoyance than anything else: a reminder that a large portion of the country thinks of us as outsiders in some fundamental manner, doubting whether we share the same values of fairness and humanity. Most atheists dismiss the lawsuits to remove the phrase from currency, however, as simply being bad for the image of atheists. Similarly, "under God" in the Pledge is something that nags in the back of our minds more than it really bothers any but the most puritanical.

Most atheists do think it's wrong to put a religious slogan onto currency, but simply do not feel it's an issue worth fighting over. The slogan was added to paper currency decades ago, along with the addition to the Pledge of Allegiance. The slogan was minted on coins more than a hundred years ago, and changing it would do little to improve our lives. The Michael Newdows of the world disagree, and I give them a certain respect for standing up for what they believe, despite the meager hope of eliminating it in the foreseeable future. These circumstances make the argument over the motto something of a play battleground, the deistic side largely playing defense to an aggressive but doomed minority offense.

That may change. In God We Trust ~ America is an organization that lobbies to include the motto in town halls across America. So far, the founder Jacquie Sullivan lists 25 cities, largely in California, that have gone along with this agenda. The lobbying packet offered on the website is impressive: it toes the line of case law quite carefully, something that casual theists rarely accomplish. It is supported with legal opinion, an offer of free legal support to any community challenged on the motto, and points off support while avoiding any direct mention of the religious intent behind the motto. The reason most theists don't follow the law with their reasoning is because the reasoning of the law is opposed to their aims, and contrary to common sense. The Supreme Court has ruled that phrases such as "In God We Trust" and the "Under God" in the Pledge are Constitutional because they are essentially secular in nature and imply nothing about the religiosity of America beyond a historical reference.

The argument is strained at best. Many bona fide religions do not feature a deity, or have multiple deities. Claiming that a phrase specifically endorsing a trust in a deity is secular in nature pushes the limits of credulity on its face. Proponents of the phrase usually use it to argue for the religious nature of America rather than an example of ceremonial deism. Nevertheless, given that it's the current state of the law laid down by the Supreme Court, it's usable as precedent, provided one is careful to follow the prescribed reasoning for including it in whatever official function desired.

Some atheists have resorted to defacing currency, crossing out the "God" on the face of bills and in some extreme cases, abrading it from the surface of coins. Some have put in alternate mottos such as "In Reason We Trust" or (somewhat ironically) "E Pluribus Unum". These kinds of actions are also unlikely to be legally challenged, but it remains to be seen whether they are to become widespread. It's effort to ink out words on every piece of paper that crosses your palm, and personally my patience for doing that would be rather thin. For some, it isn't. And they'll be the ones out on the battleground, fighting for civil rights many of us aren't aware we actually need.

[picture is of my wife's town in Japan, where my children just spent six weeks. They went to school there through the third week of July, after finishing up American public school in June.]

Extreme Teen Reform

2007-06-06T07:30:00.000-07:00

A lot of teachers and parents complain that some children are completely incorrigible and intractable to all efforts to change behavior, that no reward or punishment techniques work at all. "You just have to see these kids," they'll say, "Nothing I do could ever change them."

From their perspective, they're right. Of course, in reality, they're almost certainly wrong as an absolute proposition on behavior modification. If someone were literally unresponsive to all rewards and punishments they wouldn't likely survive very long. It would only be a matter of time before they stopped eating and drinking, put their hands into fire or a meat grinder. Not because they wanted to , but simply because nothing would stop them from doing so. All of these are "natural" reinforcers (for purposes of this post, I'll use reinforcers to refer to both reinforcers and punishers), but there's nothing special about them in quality over artificial reinforcers. Their advantages over artificial reinforcers are primarily in their consistency and the limitations of some dangers of resentment at punishment (though note that theists frequently invent a devil-figure to resent for natural punishers). This consistency tends to make them enormously powerful. Indeed, horror stories such as Steven King's Thinner work off of toying with these basic assumptions.

The real problem for the typical teacher or parent, then, isn't that the child is completely unresponsive, it's that they cannot identify or apply the reinforcer that results in the behavior desired.

The techniques and places where this can be done do exist, however. Places like Tranquility Bay, a "specialty boarding school" in Jamaica with a strict behavioral program. Looking at the overall program, to my eye it does appear designed to produce results. Apparently the kids are put on a stepped hierarchy, with each step indicating greater privileges. Those on step 1 are not allowed to stand up, sit down, move, or talk without permission. At step 3 they gain the right to a supervised phone call home. At higher levels they gain the right and responsibility to enforce rules on lower-levelled students.

There are other interventions as well. The "Observation Position" (or OP, as they term it) is lying, restrained, face-down until one admits their contrition. Once an hour the student gets a 10-minute break, and at night they sleep in the hall. An article describes this as potentially lasting months. Former students indicate it's "degrading, painful experience".

Clearly, even if one agrees with the necessity of the methods, opportunities are rife for mistakes and abuse. OP sounds as though it's not intended to be positive punishment (that is, it's not supposed to be painful except in the removal of all other privileges), but students' descriptions of it include being wrestled to the ground and having one's limbs twisted. I have a hard time believing the staff are trained sufficiently (turnover numbers would be telling) to be aware of the appropriate limits.

Humiliative punishment and tightly controlled rewards can be used in one setting: when one is trying to brainwash the subject. It involves breaking down all sense of self and self-worth and re-forming it, only allowing the subject to derive worth from the administrator. And that's exactly what these places are attempting. Parents who put their children in these expensive schools are putting them through brainwashing techniques worthy of cults and para-military establishments.

It still might be worth it, if a parent is convinced the child is headed on a course towards complete self-destruction. The Observer article suggests that for many of the kids, this isn't the case. Some of the drug and alcohol problems cited seem relatively minor, and one girl is noted as having been headed for Harvard, a straight-A high school graduate, before she made an "inappropriate choice of boyfriend." Family pressures keep her in even at 19, when she could legally leave without her parent's consent.

So yes, behavioral techniques can work, even for the hardened cases. A more difficult question to answer may be to what lengths we're willing to go to get them to work.

Shoddy Parenting

2007-06-04T14:54:00.000-07:00

A coworker of mine has criticized me for not providing enough enrichment to my children. My offense? I don't have cable, and haven't bought 7-year old SuperBoy a Nintendo DS. Supposedly, this is going to lead him to being uninformed, unpopular with the other kids, and ignorant of technology. Also, I didn't take my kids to see Shrek 3.

I must admit I'm mystified by the attitudes of some parents. I've known parents who allowed their infants and toddlers to watch hours and hours of consecutive television purely because it kept them quiet. I've also known children, from toddlers to teens, who didn't eat vegetables. The parent's excuse would be something like "They just don't like them." Some of these children take years to learn to speak properly, don't develop physically, or have other problems.

My wife spent months before our first son's birth reading as many books on parenting as possible, and we spend a considerable amount of time talking about how we should raise our children. Granted, some of them gave somewhat "fluff" answers for various topics and tended to be skewed towards a certain cultural perspective, but none of them gave advice that would be considered irresponsible. It's also not very hard to find parenting advice. It can only lead me to believe that either these parents never read these books, or never cared to implement any real structure.

Further, it's not as if these people are uneducated. Most are college graduates in professional fields. Somehow, they came to the conclusion that kids should not only be given leisure time, but also significant financial resources and a direction set by marketers. Many of them set some kind of limits, but a significant minority, particularly in households with two working parents, do not.

I know there are kids who are relatively intractable, and I'm the last person to blame parents for everything (at least, after school starts, I'm the last person to blame parents for everything). However, simply because parents aren't always to blame isn't reason to blame them when they are irresponsible. And after having some of the kids in my house for an afternoon, it's clear where fault lies. Not because they behave badly, but because after a little "testing", they often behave quite well.

Incidentally, SuperBoy did get his first significant electronic gadget recently: his grandmother gave him a digital camera. Her motives are partially selfish, as she wants more pictures and is a professional photographer herself (and would like having someone else with a strong interest in photography in the family). He loves it, and figured out almost all the settings the first evening he got it without opening the manual.

Bible in Schools

2007-05-17T08:19:00.000-07:00

Many reasonable people who point out that religion has had a significant effect on society and is therefore worthwhile of study, even in public schools. Generally, because of the impact Christianty has had in American culture, they suggest Bible courses.

I don't have qualms with the argument itself -- the Supreme Court has recognized that while teaching religion is unconstitutional, teaching about religion is acceptable. Knowing about the world includes knowing about religion and how it affects us. There is even aesthetic value, as many authors and artists reference religious beliefs or scripture. There are serious reasons to worry considerably about the implementation of courses, however.

The ACLU recently filed Moreno v. Ector County School Board, a complaint by eight parents against a Texas district which initiated a 10th-grade Bible study elective course. In their complaint, the plaintiffs claim the curriculum of the course teaches a particular theological point of view. It should be noted that none are necessarily atheists, and at least one is specifically a Presbyterian minister. Generally, one might think suing on a viewpoint taught might be difficult from an evidentiary perspective. One recent New Jersey case would have gone uncorroborated if the student had not been plucky enough to audiotape the lectures (for which, incidentally, the school chastised him).

As all complaints, a statement of facts is included. These only tell the plaintiff's side, and have not yet been supported by evidence. However, certain assertions are almost certainly true, simply because verification would be simple:

The King James version (which the complaint says is a Protestant version) is used in the course.
Roman Catholic beliefs on communion are described in course text as "warped" and brought on by "mysticism"
Scriptures are memorized and at least one assignment asks students to discuss their significance to their own lives
A supplementary video uses many unconfirmed quotations of the founding fathers to argue a religious foundation for the government, without presenting contradictory quotations

A true-false exam presents a list of questions. The answers to all of the below, quoted verbatim, are "true":

Jesus was resurrected on a Sunday
During his prayer, Jesus sweated drops of blood
Judas was paid to show the Jewish officials where Jesus was
When Jesus dies, the sun goes black
Jesus ascended to heaven on the Mount of Olives

Perhaps those who are better educated about the Bible can tell me whether those represent specific religious viewpoints, but I would be quite surprised if all the Biblical faiths (including varieties of Christianity, Judaism, and Catholicism) all subscribed to these.

Many other claims and examples in the complaint will probably be disputed by the school district, including a claim that the selection of the particular curriculum was rigged in favor of a less objective curriculum. The claims, however, are believable. The complaint suggests that while two curricula were evaluated, only one was eventually presented to the Board. That the other may have been more objective is implied in an email from the Director of Curriculum and Instruction, Shannon Baker, in which she writes: "YES, WE ARE USING NCBCPS :) :) :)! HA! Take that you dang heathens!"

What does this tell us about religion classes in schools, and curriculum selection in general? Well, it may be fraught with corruption and personal interests. Baker's email suggests she's not only not trying to remain objective, but that she feels her religion requires her to advance a certain religious viewpoint. It's difficult to teach a Bible class objectively even when the materials and instructor both genuinely share that purpose. Given that people and processes are rarely so pure, Bible classes are dangerous enough that the decision of most schools to simply not offer them is a wise one.

Raising Bicultural Children: Undokai

2007-05-13T01:54:00.000-07:00

Undokai (OON-DOH-KYE) is the Japanese version of field or sports day. Kids all get together and participate in various track-and-field activities. This weekend, my two older sons had undokai on Saturday and Sunday.

Unlike American field day, which from what I recall of my childhood was pretty much just an in-school event, Japanese undokai is usually held on a weekend, and parents and other family members attend to watch. It is extremely popular: my wife tells me that in Japan, families will sometimes arrive at 6 am to ensure getting the best seat. Calling the events "track-and-field" is something of an exaggeration, as many of them do not resemble standard sports.

Four-year old CharmerBoy's undokai was 40 minutes away. My wife and I woke up at 6 Saturday morning and started drowsily making lunch of onigiri, tamagoyaki, and edamame (rice balls, small sliced omelettes, and soybeans). We packed up the car, dropped Superboy off at his Saturday school, and managed to arrive at the event just before 9.

There were perhaps 300 people at the field, and perhaps about 5 were American (3 husbands and 2 wives). People set out their blankets and umbrellas, got their cameras ready, and chatted before the activities got underway. The atmosphere was pretty relaxed and friendly, and the opening event -- a 50 meter race -- was done with much fanfare but virtually no competitiveness. This set the tone for most of the events, where the winner was more of a footnote than anything else. Indeed, it was often difficult to even tell who (or which side, since most events were group competitions) had won.

One aspect of undokai that's very different from American field day is the expectation of parental participation. This is especially true at the preschool level, where the parents probably did more than the children. My wife had circled every event on the "parental participation" sheet the day before, indicating we'd do pretty much anything they asked. Some of the events involved races, games, or dances with the kids, and some were parent-only events that the kids would enjoy watching.

"Love love couple", for example, was a race which started with the wife blindfolded. The husband would clap to lead her to a table, where she could remove the blindfold. Then the couple would run to a marker while holding hands, circle it, and race back to the starting point. This event, and actually pretty much every race, was done as a relay. Personally, I found the father's "triathlon" -- situps, jump rope, and spinning ten times in a race around the track --
the most challenging, falling heavily after spinning and then trying to run at top speed around a curve.

The undokai lasted until about noon, when everyone stopped for lunch. There was then a brief closing ceremony where the kids all got medals, and after some more chatting everyone went home. My wife was impressed mostly by CharmerBoy's popularity. Other children were continually coming over to pull him away to play or run around whenever there was a break in the action.

Superboy's undokai on Sunday was a larger affair, and more competitive, but still retained some of the elements of family participation, the midday lunch, and a fondness for relay races. It also involved more preparation: this time, my wife and I woke up at 5:30 am to make a more impressive lunch, make a zabuton (small seat) for Superboy from a newspaper in a taped plastic bag, and sew his blue nametags onto the front and back of a white shirt. Once again we arrived just prior to 9 am to find an already-substantial crowd (in the picture) camped out on the field, with a growing crowd in the stands. Huge banners had been painted at the top of the stands, and there were shade tents for the hundreds of participants from various grades. About twenty parents had set up tripods along the race track in preparation for capturing the perfect shot.

The children had previously been divided into red and white teams, and events throughout the day were scored and a running tally kept. The division into teams seemed to increase the competitive spirit considerably, and there was a lot of rhythmic cheering, flag-waving, and victory celebrations. There were track races (relay, mostly) scattered throughout the day, interspersed with other events such as tug-of-war and tamaire (teams have three minutes to throw as many bean bags into a raised basket as possible -- sort of a group basketball).

A lot of the events involved unusual rules. Tug-of-war, for instance, was done with many ropes of differing lengths laid out on the field, and the contestants would run from opposing starting lines to get as many ropes as possible (which naturally leads into tug-of-war). Another interesting event involved the few hundred members of each team lining up on each side of the field and then trying to surround as many members of the other team as they could with a linked human chain. Unlike American field days, there were also several dance performances.

Families were again more than spectators. Superboy and I managed to win our heat's parent-child three-legged race mostly through diving at the very end. There was a race for younger children which involved running up to one of the older children with a pokemon hat and playing a short game of janken (rock-paper-scissors) for a piece of candy before running to the finish line. All the children somehow managed to win the candy, and were far less concerned with being the first to finish than with having the candy. I sat out of the parent dodgeball variant and another race which involved the kids finding a parent with some random quality (so there were kids running around with signs asking for "A father who likes soccer" or "A mother who enjoys going to the hot springs"), who would then have to run back to the finish line with the kids.

The day ended at about 3:30 with the white team finishing 200 points ahead and each kid receiving a bubble pen as a prize. Chatting continued for some time while everyone filtered off the field making afternoon and dinner plans (mostly eating out or the husbands making food -- it was Mother's Day, after all).

The downplay of competition, incidentally, is apparently somewhat recent, as my wife indicates that there were a lot of medals and trophies given out when she was in school. Still, even then there were apparently many group events and relay races designed to limit individual culpability for wins and losses. It's hard to make any clear statement as to whether the Japanese undokai is something which shapes Japanese culture or is an expression of it. Certainly some of the activities and the way events were run would play easily into many stereotyped opinions of the Japanese, both good and bad. Undokai are a lot of fun, though, and most Americans would find them fascinating.

On Waldorf

2007-05-10T02:45:00.000-07:00

On another blog (unnamed, as the comment was deleted), Richard Rawlings recently ranted on his issues with Waldorf education, claiming it was religious and racist and rapidly reaching into the arena of public education.

Curious, I read Rawling's "expose´", the websites of the American Waldorf Schools, several individual school websites, and a forum generally critical of Waldorf education. Waldorf schools appear to be oriented towards producing very artists and humanitarians, with a lot of focus on drawing, crafts, and kinesthetics. I would have to guess they are somewhat weaker on science and mathematics, though not uniformly so: its graduates do include scientists and physicians as well as actors and artists.

Most of Rawlings' claims appear to be based on his personal experience as a student and the writings of the founder of Waldorf schooling.

Rudolf Steiner, a philosopher in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was the founder of Waldorf education. He died in 1925, and promptly stopped writing books about education. Some of his writings do seem pretty flaky -- they reference esp, unseen forces, and the like. To the extent this survives in the Waldorf educational system, it would be in the field of anthroposophy, a sort of spiritual/mystical belief system with some rationalistic properties. Rawlings claims it's a "religion", but it seems to lack a lot of the features of a true religion and would more appropriately be called a "quasi-mystic philosophy". Steiner had tried, and failed, to have it accepted as a science, but it has been applied in fields such as medicine, architecture, and agriculture.

Rawlings has difficulty actually citing the religious bent in the schooling itself, as anthroposophy is not an official subject of the curriculum. He notes that there were no scriptures studied or learned dogma, but notes that a "strange aura" hung over the school. He suggests the students' "otherworldly" water-color paintings suggest the link to "talismanic representations of the spirit realm". Other than that, he notes that glimpses of the spiritualist nature were "hidden". Some of the evidence for the spiritual nature of the curriculum was in the literature studied: the Odyssey, The Divine Comedy, and Paradise Lost.

Rawlings also mentions Steiner's alleged racism in his diatribe. While arguably Steiner's writings contained evidence of racism, and some Waldorf schools may have some racist teachers, he admits he does not know the current state of Waldorf schools, which may have changed from when he attended. Viewing some of the websites shows a relatively broad racial mix of students and teachers. Which brings us to when he attended -- he graduated more than 40 years ago, in 1964. I thus find it difficult to treat his experience with any relevance.

This is not how an educational system should be judged. One does not do research on a system as it was 40 to 50 years ago, or on the founder's ideas almost a century ago, to determine how well it works today. One does not do research in the form of one person's testimony (or even the several who post on the Waldorf critic forum). A system must be judged on what it produces. It should be measured, either in test scores or through some other measure. It can then be compared and judgments rendered.

My guess is that Waldorf education is guilty mostly of being "famously fruitcake" (in the words of one commentator). Looking over the curriculum of its' schools reveals they all have "eurythmy", a sort of dance and body awareness, a lot of comparative religious study focusing mainly on Hebraic religions and then Greek and Norse mythology, a focus on crafts and music, and a resistance to teaching reading before second grade. German and French are learned from a relatively early age, and I would imagine most students achieve at least a usable proficiency. Much of the education appears to be very "hands-on", similar in some respects to Montessori schooling. Artistic endeavors are prominent among its graduates, and many appear to be attending college late in life. The colleges they attend range from mediocre to competitive. The teachers appear to have suitable degrees in the fields they teach from well-known institutions.

Rawlings has utterly failed to convince me. Suggestively, the lawsuit Rawlings' references against a charter and a magnet school in California was dismissed for lack of evidence. I'm not inclined towards education that leans towards a "spirit realm", and vigorously argue against any sort of compulsion in religion, even to the point where I disagree with the two well-known words in the Pledge of Allegiance and the four words on currency referencing a deity. I would not likely choose a Waldorf education for my children. Where school choice exists, however, I feel it's important to have as many forms of education as possible. In a free market of education, I think Waldorf would represent one viable alternative.

Constructivism, Holism, and teaching

2007-05-03T08:51:00.000-07:00

For some people, thinking in linear logical sequences is natural. They can traipse unerringly along a trail of reason, easily dissociating irrational or extraneous cues on their path to a goal. These people may also be blessed with terrific abstract spatial or mechanical abilities, be able to wield abstract concepts effectively, and have great memory for details. We might say these people are reductionistic thinkers. Superboy is like this.

CharmerBoy, my second son, is not blessed with any of these abilities (sleeping on the beach in the pic; kids often seem orthogonally opposed, don't they?). For a long time, my wife thought he was "kind of stupid". At four, he still only really speaks one language, and barely knows the 56-character Japanese alphabet. It's often difficult for him to follow sequential instructions, even though he is quiet earnest in attempting to do so. Math is beyond him. However, he understands people and emotions. I've seen him cheerfully lead children in playground activities and reduce children to sobbing in arguments while knowing virtually no English, understanding them without understanding their words. He can nearly instantly separate similar and dissimilar images without focusing on details. Somehow he seems to intuitively discern certain relationships far more quickly than Superboy, like the connection between the tv remote and the tv. He loves the rain, putting his face in the snow, and pretending to be different types of animals. CharmerBoy is a holistic thinker.

Swimming is a holistic activity, particularly when compared to the land-based analog, walking. Swimming depends on harmony between the body and the water. Walking is a reductionistic, largely nonintegrated activity -- when walking, one can twist their upper body, twirl their arms, or even engage in complex tasks such as writing or playing a musical instrument with virtually no effect on walking. These activities done while swimming would greatly alter the ability to swim, potentially dangerously. Even how deeply or evenly one breathes has an effect on buoyancy and the ability to swim. Walking is done along two-dimensional planes, while swimming is in three-dimensional space. Swimming leaves trails of ripples emanating outwards, while walking often leaves no sign of passage. Further, many people enjoy swimming as a leisure activity and find it improves their bodies.

The constructivist argument regarding whole language is that because language is a holistic activity, it should be taught contextually and holistically, with the focus on the learner constructing their own meaning. They argue that this produces the best learning.

A child's constructivist swimming lesson would be easy enough to devise. First, you would give a demonstration, either swimming yourself or showing videos of swimming. This would probably include various strokes with clear visual features, such as the butterfly stroke, the crawl, or the backstroke. You could then put the children into the deep end of the pool -- oh, wait, it should be an authentic environment, like a lake or the ocean -- and call out tips to them for staying afloat. Of course, you wouldn't necessarily anticipate all the children would be successful right away, so you'd continue to do this day after day. During this, you would try to stress how much fun it is being in the water.

Teaching them skills separately in a reductionistic fashion would be antithetical to this approach. You would not engage in the "drill-and-kill" of first teaching them to kick by holding onto the dock in a calm environment and having them just kick their feet, making sure they did that correctly. You wouldn't have them move their arms and hands in a swimming manner while standing in the water, correcting their hand position or stroke and making sure their fingers were together rather than splayed. That wouldn't be allowing them to construct their own method of swimming. You would call this method "inhumane" and "dehumanizing" when compared to the first method, regardless of efficacy.

I need not point out how most swimming instruction is actually done today, though it is worth noting that people have in the past advocated the first method. You'll sometimes hear people speak about it as a badge of honor that their parents taught them to swim by just throwing them into the lake. I don't recall anyone mentioning how enjoyable it was to learn that way, however, nor how dehumanized they felt with a direct instruction method. For that matter, I haven't heard advocates of instant immersion touting their spectacular teaching skills, and haven't heard anyone complain of the direct instructors following a rote script and not "teaching". The fact is, whether the type of activity is a highly compartmentalized, reductionistic one or a very interconnected, holistic one has little bearing on the proper way to teach. One may be able to think holistically, but teaching holistically has not been shown to work.

A few weeks ago, we walked into the bathroom, where CharmerBoy was staring contemplatively up at the ceiling, floating effortlessly on his back in the tub with a slight smile playing on his lips, completely at peace with his surroundings.

Parenting is a lot of fun.

Museums and Educational Style

2007-04-29T01:12:00.000-07:00

So, last week my family and I took a day trip to Washington DC to visit monuments and museums. The weather was beautiful, and we visited the Lincoln Memorial, the Air and Space Museum, and stopped briefly at the Washington Monument and the White House.

Superboy's always liked museums, particularly ones that show how things work. He tends to charm museum guides by walking up to an exhibit and asking them about a dozen questions in a row, varying from the general to the specific, from the concrete to the propositional. His ability to remember and draw on these details later, and to make connections to other systems, is quite remarkable.

These qualities, unfortunately, have led to only mediocre success in his first-grade classroom. His teacher, who describes herself as "strict", has noted to me on several occasions his "behavioral problems" of not immediately following along with the group, or taking too long on tasks. In the first two weeks of school, she told my wife (with my son present) that he may have to be held back or transferred to a learning-disabled class. She's also mentioned that he's talked out of turn sometimes, and that he sometimes gets upset about inconsequential things.

We understand her struggles all too well. Superboy does tend to go from topic to topic as it interests him, and if he's interested in something other than whatever an adult is saying he may not listen. He will sometimes spend a long time doing something silly -- for example, being given a task to color in a row of boxes (a fairly typical first-grade task, apparently) he may choose to use a different color for each, and to carefully color the entire box. This sort of creativity will spill over into all sorts of activities (I've been told he's been scolded for not walking correctly). He also tends to get upset if something isn't exactly perfect -- he'll crumple papers if he gets a single question wrong.

Unfortunately, understanding her struggles and doing something about them are two different things. During the time Superboy's in school, we as parents have no power -- I cannot reinforce behavior that occurs in school directly, just as teachers cannot directly reinforce homework. I cannot punish his silly behaviors in school either. We could make obedience a more generally stressed value in our home, which might help, but to be honest I'm not sure I want to raise a child who's generally obedient. If I want a child to be obedient only in particular situations, such as school, he needs to be reinforced for obedience in those situations. Otherwise, he becomes discomfitingly well-suited to the US Army. So, she complains to me, and I listen somewhat sympathetically, but I figure she wouldn't be receptive to "change your entire approach to teaching and disciplining."

And, she is making mistakes. Some of her punishments involve aspects of humiliation (probably the aspect that's most bothered me, I'd rather she hit him), and she's probably fighting the wrong battles. Her marks of his behavior have gotten steadily worse over the course of the year; I'm not sure if these represent actual worsening behavior or her increasing frustration, but it could be both. Humiliation has never been a good tactic with Superboy, as he'll tend to resent it.

So, my son's practically a poster-child for the sort of loose education that most "fluff" (i.e., constructivist math/whole language) teachers advocate. I know he'd do fine in such a classroom, if run by the right teacher. In spite of this, I don't think that's the right way for most students, I don't think much of the actual curriculum of those philosophies, and I don't think it's structure in general which is the problem, but rather the specific structure of the standard classroom.

Skilled Teachers

2007-04-24T08:38:00.000-07:00

Many teachers object to Direct Instruction, though few verbalize what I think is the core reason as well as Marilyn Wilson of MSU. It's rather neatly summed up in a quote here:

Teachers no longer need to plan their reading curriculum or consider the variability of their learners; the script must be followed. "Scripted curriculum" says Linda Rice, "has the effect of deskilling teachers who become simple deliverers of content and skill processes rather than those who intricately synthesize content, skills, and concepts to create sophisticated curriculum designed to meet the needs of their particular students."

The "deskilling" is the perception teachers have of following a script. They want to feel that they themselves are determining the children's needs and responding to them. Following a script will, in their minds, make their role more menial, rote, and less "professional", and turns themselves and the children into "robots".

On the schools matter blog Jim Horn points to some Direct Instruction videos, claiming that they show a "neo-eugenics system of cognitive decapitation" (neo-eugenics? I tend to wonder why Horn sees fit to bring up suggestions of racism, which has nothing to do with either side of the debate. Perhaps for dramatic effect?). I'd encourage anyone to watch them. He doesn't mention the videos are of the Baltimore City Springs school, which had been one of the worst performing schools in Baltimore. It was an urban school, with all that implies: poverty, behavioral problems, etc. Within a few years, they were within the top quarter of schools in the city. Given this, does he really see a problem with a teacher bringing the children through a reading curriculum in which both the teacher and students interact, where the teacher gives praise in an appropriate manner, and the students are learning the fundamental skills exceptionally well?

What teachers would often prefer to do is what they have been doing: creating a lesson plan, day-by-day (or, using the lesson plan they've built over past years), and including a lot of fun activities, such as reading aloud to children. They don't tend to keep good data on results, and the normal human tendency is to think one's doing a reasonably good job. So, they think taking their hands out of the curriculum is "devaluing" them.

I feel their perception is unjustified. Many people find following the DI "script" difficult, and it takes quite a bit of skill and initial training to do well. The science of behavior is not as advanced physics or chemistry, perhaps, but it is nevertheless rigorous and precise. Despite this precision, students do not respond to behavioristic techniques as if they're being "mechanized"; they respond as if they're involved in learning. Moreover, many professions follow scripts as a matter of course: police officers are rigorously taught how to behave with suspects and victims, doctors follow scripts both in performing procedures and in giving medical advice, and pilots follow scripts for everything from routine takeoffs and landings to emergency procedures. No one allows these people to learn the practice of their professions solely through on-the-job experience.

A DI teacher needs to be on top of their game constantly, and following a DI curriculum is far more difficult than reading to kids (which any parent could do). The skillset of a professional teacher is not, and should not be, in picking textbooks that reflect their ideology or inventing a curriculum. It should be in teaching -- actually conveying information and skills. A teacher who can do that, rather than being deskilled, is highly skilled, and deserves to be termed a professional.

Faithless Recovery and Where the Atheists Are

2007-04-20T10:15:00.000-07:00

An anonymous commenter inspired me to write this post. Their comment was:

If you have no faith - how do you cope at such a time of loss.. And if you have faith what a test it must be to hold on to it and find reason and forgiveness...I'm from NY and no matter how many years go by,or how tight I close my eyes, 9/11 never goes away- my daughter and my life has forever changed since that day..the forgiving is slow and complicated and we will never forget.

Apparently, Dinesh D'Souza criticized atheists for not appearing at the memorial for the Virginia Tech students. D'Souza takes this as an indication that god exists (?), and that atheists globally are heartless.

Obviously, this is false.

Atheists experience the grief of loss of life quite as intensely as anyone else. Some may argue that atheists have a more final sense of loss, as many do not believe in an afterlife for the same reasons they do not believe in gods. And, unlike the contention of theists, most atheists attach value to people, valuing the lives we currently have over hypothetical future lives. Chances are, atheists are right with the others grieving, they're simply being courteous enough not to be outright insulting by gainsaying their beliefs at the time. I know well what that's like.

On September 11th, 2001, I was at my desk working at a respected, close-knit firm on one of the upper floors of the World Trade Center, Tower 2. That was at 8:43 am. A short time later, I'd lost over a third of my colleagues and friends.

The company sponsored a memorial service for the victims at a large church shortly afterward, which I attended both out of respect and the desire to see my remaining colleagues. Many were not immediately coming back to work, some never came back, and the company had found scattered workspots for each department so that even those who were working often saw no one outside of their close co-workers.

The memorial service was religious in nature. Listening to the eulogy was like being punched in the stomach over and over and over, to the point where I felt sick and numb at the same time. Those trying to be comforting extended the punishment.

"They're in a better place now"

"God decided it was their time"

"You should thank God you're safe"

The service and reception afterward was tortuous and traumatic. I'd never wanted to push my beliefs on others, and was thus a fairly quiet atheist. It simply wasn't a time I could bring it up with my coworkers; it would only have made them feel the same deep chasm that I felt between us. Possibly, they would recoil with revulsion at the idea that I could not imagine the victims with their dead relatives or continuing to watch over their living relatives as ghosts. I felt deeply alone and isolated from my coworkers.

Initially I simply worked to help the company recover. Remarkably, it did. Comfort came slowly, in dribs and drabs, mostly as I read less religious eulogies printed in newspapers and online. These simply celebrated the lives of the people -- describing, in pleasant terms, their personalities and idiosyncracies. In comments to the posts, I could see the outpouring of fond remembrances and the impact these people, even though many were young, had made in their lives. One could see what that impact had done, and the continuing impact it would have in the future both in their effects on others and in their children. It helped, and little by little the pain subsided. Passage of time itself helps, whether one's an atheist or theist.

Forgiveness is slightly more complex. After all, forgiving the 19 terrorists of that day, or Osama bin Laden, it largely irrelevant for them. It's not like forgiving your wife for cheating on you, or your best friend for crashing your car. I will not be in the position to have the terrorists answer to me. The only reason "forgiveness" is necessary is to keep me from personally obsessing over it. It's rather easy for an atheist not to obsess over 19 dead people who he never cared about in the first place. They're gone. It's only a slightly greater stretch not to obsess about OBL, who may be dead or alive, but either way I'm unlikely to ever meet him.

Political rhetoric on VT

2007-04-19T08:41:00.000-07:00

Of course, gun control was only the first political motive to be advanced by the VT shootings. Yes, despite being only about five years old, some are suggesting the shootings show we should repeal NCLB.

From the "Whole Language" archives at http://listserv.arizona.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0704c&L=tawl&T=0&P=7667 (cleaned up a bit

Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2007 22:37:10 -0400
Reply-To: Teachers Applying Whole Language
Sender: Teachers Applying Whole Language
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: The Slaughter of Our Children by Our Children

I've been thinking about the other end of this for awhile -- the NCLB end. It's tragic what is being done to children in the name of meeting AYP! We have a lot of angry kids out there because the school culture is changing into one of "have to's" for both teachers and children. With all of the pressure to conform to standardized ways of being, teaching and learning, kids are giving up -- all ages. We are going to have thousands of 16 year olds turned loose on society because they have only made it to the 8th grade. Then what'll they do . . . Prisons aren't being built fast enough.Ruby

The WL proponents are not scientists -- they care a lot about children, but not much for logic and reasoning based on careful analysis. They're likely not aware that using this event politically, without any reference to anything other than their feeling of what's happening, is invalid. So my venom for them is muted, but simply put, they're being unreasonable. NCLB is not creating psychotics.

Cho Sueng-Hui

2007-04-19T06:55:00.000-07:00

There's a lot of worry about backlash over the Virginia Tech shootings. Immigrants and Asian-Americans generally, and Koreans specifically, fear a wave of prejudice and potential violence against them.

That wave will never come. Too many in the media have already noted and warned against it. Asian-Americans are generally quite well regarded for their hard work and social status. Immigrants are far too diverse a group and the act too random to be successfully associated with them.

There will, however, be a significant backlash against psychotics. It will be long, harsh, and uncontradicted by the media. In fact, the media supports this backlash: headlines such as "Stare into the face of Evil!" juxtaposed against "Rantings of a Lunatic" ensure the connection will be made. Lunatics are evil and dangerous. The media will offer the video and records of Cho's writings as proof.

I'm no bleeding-heart liberal, and despise the restrictions of language that political correctness often irrationally imposes. "Lunatic" is a fine word, and pretty accurately describes Cho's rantings. However, even though we readily agree that Cho was crazy, he is defined as "evil" in the public eye and many of the religious wish for him to burn in hell. Our society vilifies Cho even more than a hit man with a "rational" reason for murder, despite the lack of self-control that lunacy suggests.

People will point out that most Asian-Americans are not child-killing monsters, or would if there were any real danger of them being stereotyped (cf., Muslims). They will not point out that most of the insane are also not dangerous. Psychologists in institutions will be much more careful about certifying that someone is well enough to be allowed into society, and there is already a bias towards keeping people in. A state psychologist won't be criticized for the number of patients they decide aren't ready to be in public. However, if one leaves on their permission and goes on a murder spree, the psychologist's professional life is forfeit.

Unfortunately, that means my brother will likely be spending more time in the institution currently holding him. He's been between locked down mental hospitals solidly for the past seven years. Having shared a room with him for over ten years, I know the ravings of a diseased mind quite well. I know the futility of non-drug therapies. I know both the moments of complete insanity and the stretches of relative lucidity. I've met other psychotics as well, in college personally and while studying psychology as a major. And I've learned that most of the time, psychotics are afraid. They constantly imagine things around them which don't exist and connections that make no sense.

Imagine being compelled to invent and alter your own complex religion, ritual, and symbology on the spot, and have it unaffected by reality. It can be confusing talking to such a person, but rarely frightening unless you have a very low tolerance for the unexpected. The conversation would far more likely be frightening for them.

And this means that Cho's rantings are worse than useless to all but an academic. People will wonder about the details of "Ismael Ax" and his reference to Jesus Christ and postulate that religion may have had something to do with it. They're wrong. I don't like religion, but it has nothing to do with this. The videos are worthless to the general public. Publishing his rantings does nothing more than give future lunatics another person to cite in their own ravings, with no more relevance than Cho's reference to Harris and Klebold. Showing them on tv was simply sensationalism. No one should expect any reason that appears remotely valid to a sane mind.

There will also be backlash against Cho's family. There are scattered articles about the horror "just beginning" for them (obvious news flash: the family's horrors began some time ago, it just wasn't on the front pages then. And it's infinitely worse now). Cho's parents will almost certainly have difficulty in their community, as people wonder if it was somehow their fault. They'll receive no outpouring of sympathy from the larger community, and chances are good that an awkward few will attend the funeral. People will likely eye Cho's sister warily, suspecting that there lies a dark heart somewhere within her. And everyone around them, without fail, will know who they are related to but not address it with them. Cho's parents will remember with great pain the promise their son showed at one time. They'll cringe as they see the writings posted online, recalling far better work he'd written when clear-headed. They'll fear that no one will ever understand that their son was more than just a murderer, that no one will see him as more than a heartless killer now.

You might not find yourself capable of feeling grief for the 33rd person gunned down. But somewhere, in your hearts or minds, remember that the situation was no less tragic for him and his family than for the first 32 victims.

An Atheist and the Tooth Fairy

2007-04-16T08:42:00.000-07:00

I have a strange life in some ways. One co-worker had described me as "the most interesting person he's ever met" -- after initially telling me I wasn't the smartest person he'd ever met (this didn't bother me, as there are a lot of very smart people in the world. The odds are quite great that I'm not the smartest person you've ever met either). I wanted to start blogging, but if I used too much time giving background on who I am I'd never get to any "live" posts. In the future, I'll try to focus on the less typical aspects of my life and thoughts, and try to discuss topics that are somehow relevant to someone. So, here goes:

My first post comes from a problem I had to deal with this past weekend. I'm an atheist, and this particular issue comes from my oldest child. I'll call him "Superboy", for reasons that I'll make clear in a future post.

Contrary to the beliefs of many of those holding religious ideals, many atheists often face dilemnas of ethics and morality. For example, most American atheists hold that no god exists because of a "null hypothesis" form of reasoning. So, in raising children, there is often an ideal not to expose them to "magical thinking". At the same time, atheists often have an ideal not to force their beliefs on others, including indoctrination of their own children. Recognizing that children are quite malleable, the combination of these two proves to be a difficult undertaking. While preventing exposure to magical thinking, atheist parents who hold these ideals need to be very cautious in how they correct their children's thinking, or even how they have conversations with them.

Moreover, many childhood rituals involve magical thinking rather heavily.

So, the particular question that posed itself yesterday didn't actually involve gods at all. No -- it was the tooth fairy. My six-year old lost a tooth, and we were discussing what he might get on leaving the tooth under his pillow.

Now, a die-hard atheist would vilify me. I shouldn't really tell my kid a tooth fairy exists, and should set him straight right away, this person would claim. They might be right. It was actually an older cousin who brought up the fairy, but I didn't have the heart to tell my child the fairy didn't exist. Fortunately, Superboy has always had a strong ability to separate fantasy and reality.

I was somewhat gratified, therefore, when he turned to me and said:

"Of course, the tooth fairy doesn't really exist."

"Oh?", I said, interested in where this was going, "it doesn't?"

"No," he replied firmly, "because fairies don't exist."

I nodded, smiling slightly. "You're right," I said simply, feeling delving into the difficulties of proving negatives to be somewhat tangential, "But then, where does the money come from?" I was intentionally pushing him to see how much he'd considered.

"I wonder..." he said, looking at me from the corners of his eyes. This struck me as rather sophisticated for his age, suggesting he thought he knew where the coins came from without saying so explicitly.

"You're very clever," I said, "Who might have put it there? Who would have wanted a tooth?"

Though I'm convinced he's at the very least fairly certain how the money gets under the pillow, to this he simply said, "I don't know", and seemed unwilling to follow the train of logic further. So we hopped off that train, and ended up hypothesizing about the "tooth tarantulas" -- spiders that need teeth, and borrow them from children whose teeth have fallen out, replacing them with huge ungainly coins. The image of big toothy spiders running around was pretty funny, so we giggled about that for a while. In the end, it seems like even though he had a good idea of what the truth is, he preferred to remain where he is for now.

I do tend to wonder how the religious deal with this sort of thing. Clearly the tooth fairy would be a sort of occult figure, and yet I'm betting Christian parents barely give it a second thought. Of course, I do know some atheists subscribe to the idea of "family beliefs", and would happily teach their children the truth or falsehood of the tooth fairy without a second thought. For me, however, the question whether I should teach my children anything about the tooth fairy ranks right up with the question of whether I should teach them anything about gods.

Incidentally, the tooth spider left him a dollar.