"Lizard" by Pedro Arizpe

When I saw this incredible graphic story by Pedro Arizpe of Portsherry, I flashed on my own childhood. I was born in New York state and went to school there through second grade. The curriculum at that time in New York valued reading and writing skills over math, which was planned to come later. But when we moved to Florida, the state approached math skills first, and I was totally lost. Having no foundation, teachers would just explain the same thing to me over and over, sometimes raising their voices as though yelling at someone who speaks a foreign language. No one bothered to assess why I could not grasp what they were trying to drill into my head. There was no foundational learning for me, I just had to jump in and pretend that, yes, of course, the answer is lizard, when what I was really screaming in my head was "How did you get LIZARD?" When you are a child, you don't know what you don't know. As an adult looking back on this, I see it clearly and I would love to go back in time and tell the entire school administration, "What the eff are you thinking? You call this is teaching? This is just creating trauma and a crisis of self-confidence."

What was most galling was that my New York-taught reading comprehension and writing skills were a few grade levels ahead of where they were in Florida and the other students in my class were embarrassingly bad at reading or writing, but no one seemed to care about that. To me, the students were bad, but for the teachers, they were where they should have been given the curriculum. Teachers saw I scored consistently high in English, but they weren't looking to those metrics for any measure of my general intelligence or understanding. As far as they were concerned, I was a sorry, slow, and maybe even special-needs learner, which of course was not the case at all. But I was treated like I was. So math class--and any extra "tutoring" I got--always ended up looking exactly like the story below...

Pedro, thank you so much for showing this so explicitly and giving it a name: INSTITUTIONAL NEGLIGENCE.

https://portsherry.com/comic/lizard/

Tips To Learning A New Language Quickly

The 75 most common words make up 40% of occurrences

The 200 most common words make up 50% of occurrences

The 524 most common words make up 60% of occurrences

The 1257 most common words make up 70% of occurrences

The 2925 most common words make up 80% of occurrences

The 7444 most common words make up 90% of occurrences

The 13374 most common words make up 95% of occurrences

The 25508 most common words make up 99% of occurrences

EXPRESSIONS OF POLITENESS (about 50 expressions)

--‘Yes’ and 'no’: yes, no, absolutely, no way, exactly.
--Question words: when? where? how? how much? how many? why? what? who? which? whose?
--Apologizing: excuse me, sorry to interrupt, well now, I’m afraid so, I’m afraid not.
--Meeting and parting: good morning, good afternoon, good evening, hello, goodbye, cheers, see you later, pleased to meet you, nice to have met.
--Interjections: please, thank you, don’t mention it, sorry, it’ll be done, I agree, congratulations, thank heavens, nonsense.

NOUNS (about 120 words)
--Time: morning, afternoon, evening, night; Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday; spring, summer, autumn, winter; time, occasion, minute, half-hour, hour, day, week, month, year.
--People: family, relative, mother, father, son, daughter, sister, brother, husband, wife; colleague, friend, boyfriend, girlfriend; people, person, human being, man, woman, lady, gentleman, boy, girl, child.
--Objects: address, bag, book, car, clothes, key, letter (=to post), light (=lamp), money, name, newspaper, pen, pencil, picture, suitcase, thing, ticket.
--Places: place, world, country, town, street, road, school, shop, house, apartment, room, ground; Britain, name of the foreign country, British town-names, foreign town-names.
--Abstract: accident, beginning, change, color, damage, fun, half, help, joke, journey, language, English, name of the foreign language, letter (of alphabet), life, love, mistake, news, page, pain, part, question, reason, sort, surprise, way (=method), weather, work.
--Other: hand, foot, head, eye, mouth, voice; the left, the right; the top, the bottom, the side; air, water, sun, bread, food, paper, noise.

PREPOSITIONS (about 40 words)
--General: of, to, at, for, from, in, on.
--Logical: about, according-to, except, like, against, with, without, by, despite, instead of.
--Space: into, out of, outside, towards, away from, behind, in front of, beside, next to, between, above, on top of, below, under, underneath, near to, a long way from, through.
--Time: after, ago, before, during, since, until.

DETERMINERS (about 80 words)
--Articles and numbers: a, the; nos. 0–20; nos. 30–100; nos. 200–1000; last, next, 1st–12th.
--Demonstrative: this, that.
--Possessive: my, your, his, her, its, our, their.
--Quantifiers: all, some, no, any, many, much, more, less, a few, several, whole, a little, a lot of.
--Comparators: both, neither, each, every, other, another, same, different, such.

ADJECTIVES (about 80 words)
--Color: black, blue, green, red, white, yellow.
--Evaluative: bad, good, terrible; important, urgent, necessary; possible, impossible; right, wrong, true.
--General: big, little, small, heavy; high, low; hot, cold, warm; easy, difficult; cheap, expensive; clean, dirty; beautiful, funny (=comical), funny (=odd), usual, common (=shared), nice, pretty, wonderful; boring, interesting, dangerous, safe; short, tall, long; new, old; calm, clear, dry; fast, slow; finished, free, full, light (=not dark), open, quiet, ready, strong.
--Personal: afraid, alone, angry, certain, cheerful, dead, famous, glad, happy, ill, kind, married, pleased, sorry, stupid, surprised, tired, well, worried, young.

VERBS (about 100 words)
arrive, ask, be, be able to, become, begin, believe, borrow, bring, buy, can, change, check, collect, come, continue, cry, do, drop, eat, fall, feel, find, finish, forget, give, going to, have, have to, hear, help, hold, hope, hurt (oneself), hurt (someone else), keep, know, laugh, learn, leave, lend, let (=allow), lie down, like, listen, live (=be alive), live (=reside), look (at), look for, lose, love, make, may (=permission), may (=possibility), mean, meet, must, need, obtain, open, ought to, pay, play, put, read, remember, say, see, sell, send, should, show, shut, sing, sleep, speak, stand, stay, stop, suggest, take, talk, teach, think, travel, try, understand, use, used to, wait for, walk, want, watch, will, work (=operate), work (=toil), worry, would, write.

PRONOUNS (about 40 words)
--Personal: I, you, he, she, it, we, they, one; myself, yourself, himself, herself, itself, ourselves, yourselves, themselves.
--Possessive: mine, yours, his, hers, its, ours, theirs.
--Demonstrative: this, that.
--Universal: everyone, everybody, everything, each, both, all, one, another.
--Indefinite: someone, somebody, something, some, a few, a little, more, less; anyone, anybody, anything, any, either, much, many.
--Negative: no-one, nobody, nothing, none, neither.

ADVERBS (about 60 words)
--Place: here, there, above, over, below, in front, behind, nearby, a long way away, inside, outside, to the right, to the left, somewhere, anywhere, everywhere, nowhere, home, upstairs, downstairs.
--Time: now, soon, immediately, quickly, finally, again, once, for a long time, today, generally, sometimes, always, often, before, after, early, late, never, not yet, still, already, then (=at that time), then (=next), yesterday, tomorrow, tonight.
--Quantifiers: a little, about (=approximately), almost, at least, completely, very, enough, exactly, just, not, too much, more, less.
--Manner: also, especially, gradually, of course, only, otherwise, perhaps, probably, quite, so, then (=therefore), too (=also), unfortunately, very much, well.

CONJUNCTIONS (about 30 words)
--Coordinating: and, but, or; as, than, like.
--Time & Place: when, while, before, after, since (=time), until; where.
--Manner & Logic: how, why, because, since (=because), although, if; what, who, whom, whose, which, that.

callingbull.org

Now that we are firmly living in a post-fact world where the monster in charge of the United States lives life according to "alternative facts" (otherwise known as LIES), it is more important than ever to be vigilant to bullsh*t, lest we truly devolve into an Orwellian version of society.

Two professors, Carl T. Bergstrom and Jevin West, from the University of Washington have created a course designed to educate people to think critically and to equip them with the skills necessary to see through the lies, half-truths, obfuscations, disinformation, and misrepresentations (whether deliberate or not) of our modern world.

Their website states their mission:

"The world is awash in bullsh*t. Politicians are unconstrained by facts. Science is conducted by press release. Higher education rewards bullsh*t over analytic thought. Startup culture elevates bullsh*t to high art. Advertisers wink conspiratorially and invite us to join them in seeing through all the bullsh*t — and take advantage of our lowered guard to bombard us with bullsh*t of the second order. The majority of administrative activity, whether in private business or the public sphere, seems to be little more than a sophisticated exercise in the combinatorial reassembly of bullsh*t.

We're sick of it. It's time to do something, and as educators, one constructive thing we know how to do is to teach people. So, the aim of this course is to help students navigate the bullsh*t-rich modern environment by identifying bullsh*t, seeing through it, and combating it with effective analysis and argument.

What do we mean, exactly, by the term bullsh*t? As a first approximation, bullsh*t is language, statistical figures, data graphics, and other forms of presentation intended to persuade by impressing and overwhelming a reader or listener, with a blatant disregard for truth and logical coherence.

While bullsh*t may reach its apogee in the political domain, this is not a course on political bullsh*t. Instead, we will focus on bullsh*t that comes clad in the trappings of scholarly discourse. Traditionally, such highbrow nonsense has come couched in big words and fancy rhetoric, but more and more we see it presented instead in the guise of big data and fancy algorithms — and these quantitative, statistical, and computational forms of bullsh*t are those that we will be addressing in the present course.

Of course an advertisement is trying to sell you something, but do you know whether the TED talk you watched last night is also bullsh*t — and if so, can you explain why? Can you see the problem with the latest New York Times or Washington Post article fawning over some startup's big data analytics? Can you tell when a clinical trial reported in the New England Journal or JAMA is trustworthy, and when it is just a veiled press release for some big pharma company?

Our aim in this course is to teach you how to think critically about the data and models that constitute evidence in the social and natural sciences."

By the way, the censor asterisks on their website header and in the text above are my own additions--lest some nervous, righteous complainer stumble upon this post and find an objectionable word. Exactly the kind of person who needs to take the course to really understand communication and intent.

For more information, please visit their website:
http://callingbull.org/

A Lifetime of Learning--Thoughts from Isaac Asimov

http://zenpencils.com/

Just watched...

Over this Thanksgiving break, in an effort to try to stay afloat on the ever-rising tide of the Netflix queue, I saw a double feature of documentaries.

First up: "Bill Cunningham New York."


I have seen Bill Cunningham’s entertaining column, "On The Street," in the New York Times for years now, but I had never really stopped to wonder about the person who creates it. Thankfully, filmmakers Richard Press and Philip Gefter followed the indefatigable, mercurial Cunningham as he pedaled around Manhattan snapping photos of street fashion, and came up with the charming documentary “Bill Cunningham New York.”

After a successful career as a milliner and a stint in the Army during World War II, Cunningham became a photographer somewhat by accident. He started his “On The Street” column by accident as well, after a chance run-in with, and then unobtrusively photographing the paranoid and reclusive Greta Garbo in 1978. And Cunningham has been chronicling what people wear—what people choose to clothe themselves in—on the streets of New York ever since.

We get to see the passion for fashion (sorry for the rhyme) that fuels his column. He is not dedicated to designers simply because they are famous, or to what the monied jet-setters (is that word even applicable anymore, in this age of such massive wealth inequality?) are seen in. He is not dedicated to fashion in the abstract. He is interested in the life of the clothing after it leaves the runway. How are people wearing these pieces in real life and what are they choosing to wear them with? He is interested in not what fashion magazines tell people to wear, but instead what people choose to wear despite the fashion industry, which includes vintage pieces and self-made clothing. Cunningham seems to respond the best to people who have a strong sense of individual style, like the New York style and fashion icon Iris Apfel, modern–day “Dandy” and fashion world figure Patrick McDonald, or club kid Kenny Kenny—he does not discriminate based on age, financial status, or social “standing.” He is genuinely fascinated with original style and often scorns things that come off the runways.

We get to probe a little deeper into the life of Cunningham, who lives alone in a small studio in the Carnegie Hall building. His tiny space is stuffed with file cabinets, with barely room for a small cot. We get to see Cunningham the ascetic… he is obsessed with saving money, with the concept of “waste” and with frugality, all qualities that most New Englanders tiresomely boast of and wear with pride. His New England roots are apparent in how he wears the same blue canvas street cleaner smock day after day, or how he repairs his rain poncho with black gaffe tape. But beyond that, he displays an almost fanatical aversion to food, particularly accepting food at events he covers. He adamantly maintains that by not taking even a glass of water from a charity event, a party, a caterer, a host, a designer, that by refusing this gift--or more accurately: symbol--he cannot be owned by them, cannot be bought. In this way, he feels free to live, speak, and do as he pleases. There might be something to this in a kind of "energtic" karmic sense, however extreme the execution.

We also get to see a gentle exchange between Bill and the filmmakers about Cunningham’s sexuality and love life. When asked about the topic, Bill laughs and rightly assumes that the real question is, “Are you gay?” He does not answer the question but says that he has never had a relationship in his life—all eighty-two years of it. This is immediately followed up with a question about his Catholic faith. A regular church-goer, Cunningham is visibly shaken by the proximity of these two topics. It takes him a while to compose himself and we are left with the indelible idea that the Catholic belief system has altered Bill’s personal life to a degree that even he cannot fathom.

With appearances by fashion luminaries like Vogue editor Anna Wintour (or Miranda Priestley) who confesses, “We all get dressed for Bill,” and designer Michael Kors, the film is fun, interesting, and satisfying.

Take a look at the New York Times video page here that features a slideshow version of Bill's recurring column, narrated by Bill himself.

Recommend? Yes. Especially if you have seen Bill’s column…
http://zeitgeistfilms.com/billcunninghamnewyork/


Next was "Waiting For Superman" by Davis Guggenheim.


“Waiting For Superman” is an indictment not only of the current educational system in the United States, but of the forces that are keeping it at a sub-standard level. The United States is consistently at the lower end of rankings when compared to school systems and student performance of other countries. The film does attack teacher’s unions as part of the problem, if not the major problem. Of course this view polarizes many who are part of the world of academia. Also touched upon is the funding inequality for inner-city schools vs. suburban schools—or put in a more understandable context, black vs. white schools. Without boring you with the details, I have seen this problem fist hand. I have lived it and I can tell you it is absolutely true.

Whatever the problem or solution may actually turn out to be, it is undeniable that US schools are suffering, students are suffering, and the future of the country is already suffering because of it. The film is actually quite gentle it its examination of the issues, and I like to think that it is the starting point of trying to understand the problem in order to fix it. But the issues of course are, disappointingly, tied to politics, “convention,” and a willingness to play with the education of children.

Recommend? Yes.

http://www.waitingforsuperman.com/action/