What Ever Happened to Conversation?

I just had a disturbing experience about an hour ago. I was stopped in the hallway by a co-worker with whom I have recently had a disagreement (the underlying situation isn't important for this topic). I listened calmly and quietly as she expressed a series of views from her perspective of our situation. I responded first with a statement that verified my reception and comprehension of what she had said, and then with statements that presented views from my perspective of the situation. After one repetition of this process, when it was my second turn to express thoughts and perspective, she began interrupting me with her own perspective. After two attempts to complete my thought, I said "While I have listened to what you had to say, your interruptions have made it apparent that you are not interested in hearing what I have to say. This conversation is over, and I must admit that this really disturbs me." and I walked away.

I don't understand what has happened to conversation. Dictionary definitions of conversation may vary in wording, but all contain one particular word or its equivalent: EXCHANGE (as in "an exchange of verbal communication"). Well, an exchange means that elements are given from both sides... and I am increasingly concerned that this element of the modern conversation is an endangered species. My frustrating experience with my co-worker is a scenario I have witnessed between students, between colleagues, between strangers... the "conversation" becomes abandoned when at least one party (and sometimes both) cease to act as a recipient of communication, and insist on acting only as a contributor. This makes it stop being a conversation, and largely stop being an exercise of any value whatsoever.

How often do we fail to solve problems and disagreements because conversation is not actually occurring? I really feel it is probably astoundingly common - likely a majority of problems that are never resolved because of this. Sometimes, there is likely a solution that can be identified and enacted, if only both contributors are also acting as open recipients. Sometimes there may be no solution - but I am convinced that these problems are exacerbated and promogated to cause pain and stress much longer than they need be because of a conversation deficit... when one party feels that they are unheard, it becomes more difficult to let the situation go, while just knowing that you have been heard can be enough to bring closure, even when a "solution" isn't available.

It is all the more disturbing because it sometimes isn't in anger. I can almost understand when this happens because of rising emotions... but there are people who fail to act as recipients even when completely calm. Could this be some sort of a disability? Or is it something they have somehow never learned?

Personally, I end up feeling very guilty in situations such as these. See, I'm a rather sizeable man, and I have been told in the past that I can seem very intimidating for that reason, even when completely calm and personable - so I imagine that I can seem extremely intimidating when agitated, and so I work hard to maintain my temper and to avoid circumstances in which I anticipate potentially experiencing inputs that can agitate me. I don't apologize for who I am, but I try to be very considerate of others, and make certain that those who experience me in an agitated state only do so because there has genuinely been a legitimate and severe reason substantiating it. SO... when I realize I am in a conversation where I have been acting as both recipient and contributor but the other person has shifted into solely contributor mode, I respond by quickly ending the conversation, for caution's sake. Indeed, it contributes to the conversation deficit... but in these cases, the conversation (in particularly, the exchange element that qualifies it as a conversation) has already long since passed away.

Out of the Frying Pan: a Meteorological Rant

I'm fairly stubborn and opinionated, so it is a pretty notable and unusual event to come across an opinion topic for which I don't know my own best answer. Increasingly of late, one such question is "what is your favorite season?" I've gone through quite a change over time, with my opinion going through at least three shifts. In my youngest years, the answer was the summer, due solely to my dislike for school (I was socially... um... "awkward"... and enjoyed the option of isolation that summer offered)... by high school, it had shifted to the fall, by virtue of the field music seasons placing my favorite hobbies there (drum corps and marching bands)... after high school, my opinion really finally shifts to the weather I like best, the winter (I love the cold and absolutely can't abide heat)... for a time at the beginning of my teaching career, I came full circle to enjoying the summer again, by virtue of the vacation time.

Today, though, I'm somewhat torn - I still excitedly anticipate the summer and the large body of free time it brings, but my tolerance for heat continues to become even less and less, making it difficult to enjoy the free time. I'm not sure why that tolerance has continued to decrease so. If I had to guess, I'd say it's partly due to becoming "spoiled" by my own technology (finally owning a home these past few years has, at last, allowed me greater control over the climate of my living surroundings) and perhaps partly due to diabetes II (I noted a few seemingly consistent and permanent little changes after initial onset a year ago, one of which was an even greater sensitivity to the heat). Whatever the reason, though, I just can't hack the heat.

And I don't know that I'm all that alone. Already only in early June my students are all freely grousing as loud as I about the rising temperatures, and I often hear colleagues and peers saying the same. So why, then, does the media - the television and the radio - insist on taunting me so?!? What do I hear every morning on the radio? Some bouncy fool jauntily quipping, "Mmmmm! It's gonna be one nice day out there today, with a high in the lower 90s... just beautiful!" Yeah, bozo, just beautiful for YOU, because you get to sit all day in an air conditioned booth getting paid to listen to music and heckle the rest of us that have to actually walk around outside in that disgusting atmospheric soup!

Okay, okay, fine... different strokes for different folks. Well, I put up with your icky weather, and then that's not enough - you need to spoil my favorite weather types by lamenting them and belaboring you bellyaching!

I see a day with beautiful, clear blue skies dotted with puffy wisps of bleach white clouds floating lazily on a gentle but firm breeze that sweeps across the skin and whistles softly through the foliage, and cools you down enouch to enjoy the embrace of the sun like a warm hug amidst the flowing coolness.

... but the fool on the radio assures us, "Hang in there! W.U.S.S. meteorologist Harry Moldblossom says we can expect the weather to improve steadily all this week, to cut through the chill in the upper 70s and set up a beautiful 90 degree weekend."

I see a cool, refreshing shower relieving the parched, cracked earth, hissing a soft, relaxing lull of falling water, laying down the audial baseline over which the skies occasionally punctuate the show with a dynamic flash, the natural fireworks presenting the awesome power of nature in a demonstration for our entertainment.

... but the fool on the radio singlemindedly laments, "unfortunately, we can expect the continued showers to remain for much of the weekend, with only the occasional break in the clouds to provide any relief. Oh, well, I guess our plants need the moisture." Gee, thanks for that little concession.

One of my very favorite memories from early youth is sitting in front of the large living room window (a large one, covering more than half that wall) with the air conditioner on in mid-summer, enjoying the carefully regulated temperature inside and rocking in a chair with my mother eating half a canteloupe, watching outside as the rain poured down on the yard and street beyond, and the sky lit up with flashes of lightning.

Or lying outside my high school on a patch of grass in the back long after everyone else has left, waiting for a late ride but not minding the wait, looking up to the edge of the sky where the tops of the trees wave and flow in the currents on the blue backdrop of the sky beyond, feeling the mild coolness of the gentle breeze relieving the surface of my skin from the heat of the sun.

Both of those, to say nothing of the scores of memories of the electric buzz within the crisp chill of an October night as the scent of hot dogs wafts through a football stadium, or the soft, almost imperceptible crackle of snow drifting weightlessly to the ground and accumulating in the still frozen landscape of an early frost in December.

Sure, I have happy memories in the heat too... many related to special vacations with treasured family and friends... but in most cases, they hare happy memories *in spite of* the weather. Ah, well... different strokes for different folks... but please, do leave me my moments too!

Has Grade Inflation Prompted a Grade Recession?

In the education industry, one common topic of angst amongst some teachers is a phenomenon that has come to be known as "grade inflation." Like so many difficult to define social phenomenon problems, it is expressed in metaphorical terms to help the layperson quickly understand it.

What is Grade Inflation?

Not too terribly long ago, grading based on a 100 point scale, often considered percentile grading, was universally aligned so that tasks students complete to earn those points produce percentiles based on student achievement that would accurately indicate student performance based on the following continuum:

90 - 100: Performance close to perfect, exceptionally proficient, a small number of students best at the craft

80 - 90: Performance at or just above average performance, a large number of students comfortably proficient at the craft

70 - 80: Performance at or just below average performance, a large number of students performing adequately at the craft but who should benefit from continued strengthening to reach at least a comfort level

60 - 70: Borderline performance demonstrating some real question to whether the student understands and can apply successfully to the craft, about half of whom could be assumed to barely pass minimal ability but should definitely warrant further growth

50 - 60: Students demonstrating enough craft familiarity to beat the "random odds" of someone purely guessing, but not at all grasping the craft well enough to be considered a practitioner and pass.

50 and below: Students who make an attempt at their craft, even an honest and complete attempt, but who fail to grasp enough familiarity with its features to beat the "random odds" of someone purely guessing.

This was a good way to do things, because it meant that the numerical score a student is achieving can be interpreted by any outside observer to gain insight into their level of proficiency in the desired craft. However, in recent decades, a phenomenon has occurred in which grades have gradually increased and increased, and student expectations of the grade their work has garnered has likewise increased in concert; today, students link their grades too often to effort rather than skill proficiency, and expect a grade in the 90s (or at least upper 80s) when completing an assignment, regardless of quality, just because they completed it.

This is largely the fault by educators, who promogate this problem by awarding grades under that bizarre philosophy. Don't be too angry with us, though - there are reasons for this. One of the largest relates to the simple quantity of work submitted... I know from personal experience in the past and from my colleagues that, in the settings of some classes, it is not unusual for large portions of a class to not even complete an assignment, meaning that a teacher is automatically "failing" a third of the class before grading one assignment, and then feels the need to reward students who try with high grades. Within the grading scales of a great many educators these days are portions of grade credit given for attendance or basic participation in manners that do not demonstrate any skill or achievement.

So, What is a Grade Recession?

Following the metaphor, one can compare the effect of devalued grades to the effect of devalued currency. In both cases, output drops off and opportunities stagnate. In grade inflation, the end result "recession" is that grades no longer reflect who is proficient, who is very good, and who is outstanding, leaving no way to differentiate. Of course, a second result is that some inexperienced educators, I believe, allow expectations overall for their students to drop and drop and drop until they meet student performance, rather than demanding that student performance rise and rise and rise until it meets expectations.

Last year, one Ivy League college tried to combat grade inflation (to very limited success) by enacting a strange quota measure in which teachers were to make sure that their grades fit, within a certain limited for deviation, within a desired range and proportion - they expected a certain percentage of As, Bs, Cs, Ds, and Fs. While I disagree that this is a reasonable approach (nobody's class is "average," and it puts undue pressure on teachers who turn out to have a great class one year to unethically mis-serve them by artificially devaluing the grades of some), I appreciate the underlying frustration, and I am glad that it prompted, for a time, open discussion of this phenomenon and problem.

The Only Fix: A Steel Will

Sadly, it is my opinion that there is only one way to correct this problem, and the measure is both difficult (because it will be painful for educators) and impractical (because it requires committed unity amongst educators). The measure: agree, as a profession, to re-committ our grading scale to something more stringent, which awards the average majority of proficiency only a 75 - 85, and reserves the higher grades for the exceptional few.

There are plenty of challenges that make this so difficult. First, it requires the cooperation of your colleagues, who can be (at times) stubborn in their ways). Why the cooperation need? Because if your average students are working equally proficiently in your class and in others, but their grades show 90s in their other classes and an 80 in yours, it is you whom will receive the wrath and backlash. A large part of the equation are parents, who need to understand and change their reactions to grades accordingly as well - this reform would yet never work if all else happens but parents are visiting undue stress on their children for achieving an 83 (in the case of average students, of course).

On a limited basis, the microchosm of a single school community, given complete cooperation and buy-in by staff, students, and parents, could make the transition of this type of reform... but then find their students mis-served through injustices beyond their own school, as colleges compare their hard earned 85 to the "soft" 90 of inferiorily skilled peers at other schools, and choose the other candidate.

The school in which I currently work has some classes which are allowing this reform by virtue of another, almost unrelated development. Now running the International Baccalaureate program, our school "weights" the grades given in those classes. This is intended to free educators to hold high expectations of their students without worrying that those high expectations will unduely hurt their grade in comparison to others; the effect is that educators teaching one of these classes are also now freed, to a certain extent, to change the grading philosophy with their students, at least on a limited basis, so that their students know to expect only an average grade for average skill proficiency. It isn't easy, though - as a teacher of one such course, I have to constantly remind myself to maintain high expectations despite lower student grades, reminding myself that I am not "hurting" my students by doing so, but rather helping them to get a more accurate and honest assessment of their skills.

A Puzzle I Can't Solve

Honestly, though, I'm perplexed. I don't know, in a realistic sense, just what can be done. How can we make high grades mean something again (other than a pulse and a willingness to put in effort)? Is it even important enough to change? Who knows. All I do know is that, at this rate, following the metaphor, I can't help but imagine that if grades did work just like currency, te maximum grade would have been increased to 135 by now.

End of the Free Lunch (Is Television Doomed?)

As someone who, for both hobby and career, follows closely matters of importance in the entertainment industry, I have been alarmed for some time about the future of television programming. What I've got to say, I've been told, sounds very much like chicken little warning us all that "the sky is falling!" and yet, I remain convinced that there is real reason for significant concern.

First, a little bit of important background, history, and economics:

The early television programming was delivered to consumers purely over the airwaves, and could be received free of direct charge by anyone with a television antenna. We all know that, in a society driven by a free market, the providers of goods and services only do so in exchange for a profit of some sort, and those who make television programs are no different. Since they could not realistically charge consumers for watching their show (everyone could receive their product automatically on the airwaves), their profit had to be derived from some source, and so sponsorships were initiated. Building on the models established in the radio industry, advertisers were solicited to pay the production costs plus a profit margin for a show, and in exchange, they were given careful and conspicuous mention before and after the program to the "captive audience" of program consumers, as well as (in some cases) placement within the content of the show itself.

What began in 1948 as an attempt to bring local Philadelphia station broadcasts to consumers whose signal was blocked by nearby mountains became the next major transition in the industry: cable television. The ability to bring out-of-market stations thereby allowing a greater selection of programming was the first creative application of that technology, and it wasn't long before it was realized that a provider of these signals through CATV could include channels not available by airwave broadcast and charge a price for the service. This developed into the two additional relationships programming might have with consumers: first, stations that charge a miniscule, nominal fee to cover the cost of the cable transmission technology, but which earn their production costs and profit margin like broadcast (using advertising); second, premium stations that charge a significant fee covering transmission costs, production costs, and the profit margin, allowing sponsor and advertising-free programming. The latter have slowly grown in popularity and breadth of programming, but still only provide some alternatives, and never truly threaten the "free", advertising based system; in recent years, "on demand" programming over digital cable lines has been another advance in this arena, but continues to not truly threaten the mainstream.

So how is the sky falling?

A more recent advance in only the past decades, satellite television, developed technology that has become more and more common with the development in recent years of digital cable, allowing selected programming to be recorded onto a hard drive for playback at a later date. Hand in hand with this technology are the natural controls over that playback, allowing pause, rewind, and fast-forward. The result, as I have seen evidenced in the changing habits within my household and most of those around me who also have digital cable, is that programs are seldom viewed at the time of broadcast, since the patience to wait until after the program is recorded rewards the consumer with the ability to fast-forward through the advertising.

This will eventually be a BIG problem. A problem that may change the entire complexion of the economics of this industry. Consider: a television network derives funding for production costs and the profit margin fron one place only: advertising. If the "fast-forwarding" practice eventually becomes so pervasive that a majority of consumers are bypassing the advertising, the value of that advertising will drop, eventually to almost nothing. This robs networks of their only income, and therefore makes it impossible to produce and deliver programming. Do not be fooled into thinking that the situation is any less dire for non-broadcast cable networks - they too derive their only income from advertising (your "cable bill" pays only for the technology and power to deliver their product to you, the "shipping and handling", so to speak). Indeed, only one construct exists in the current television industry that can survive this apocolypse: the premium program (such as a pay station like HBO or a pay-per-viewing service like InDemand).

So, imagine this: as income from advertising plummets to nothing, the cable television networks each become a premium network one by one... Comedy Central... The SciFi Channel... The Discovery Channel... followed, eventually, by even the national broadcast networks, which all either collapse and fold or convert into premium networks... ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, WB, even PAX... all gone. The world now looks like this: those who can afford $5/month can subscribe to a station... those who can afford $500/month can still afford their 100 channel basic cable, while all the rest must choose what FOUR channels their $20/month will now afford... if you can afford none of this premium programming, all is not lost, you can still pick up a channel on your antenna: PBS, funded through charity grants, fund drives, and government assistance. Hope you like PBS.

Can you see the sky falling now?

Some hope to cling to...

Okay, okay... even I don't think it will come to that. But we are fooling ourselves to think that things will stay the way they are now; as far as "free" programming goes like that on broadcast network or cable networks goes, the system will need to evolve to survive. Some of the possibilities I have heard about recently include the following:

• ...technological patches incorporated into the data of a program that forces display of the advertising in order to display the desired portion... unfortunately, because the technology that enforces such viewing is unlikely to be able to do so one topic at a time (advertising, then program, then advertising, as we're accustomed today) as it would require defeating simple vcr control functionality, the alternative is much more reminiscent of the internet approach, wherein banner advertisements are shown concurrent with the content on the same page simultaneously. Ick.
• ...more creative, direct incorporation of advertising directly within the content itself. Remember the scene in the movie Wayne's World with rampant product placement? Bingo. It might not be quite so bad as that, though - some fairly unintrusive product placement is already a common paid advertising practice today and we barely notice. But it always begs the question: will the art itself suffer significantly because plot and cinematography have to be written specially to cater to these sleazy but necessary motives?
• ...more creative, interesting advertising that people actually choose to watch. Ridiculous, right? Well, there exists some evidence already today to suggest that this isn't so far fetched. First, a great many people look forward to watching the commercials during the Super Bowl because of the very clear intent that advertisers show to make the ads entertaining. By lengthening ad time and adding engaging plot and/or humor of real quality (rather than the insultingly mindless gimmicky stuff most common today), a few prime examples have already proven it possible to gain an audience, such as the Jerry Seinfeld / Superman short films from American Express (downloaded in droves when released), or a recent bizarrely successful spoof of soft pornography actually advertising a seat cushion (actually ordered by the thousands by hotel patrons on their in-room movie system). Would it be so bad if commercials were generally that entertaining, and if they took up 15 minutes all at once before the beginning of a regular hour long program, then presented in its 45 minute entirety without interruption?
• ...pay-per-view on an immensely grand scale, at ultimately minimalized prices... would you pay to watch your favorite programs each week, commercial free, as many times as you want, for $0.25 per episode? The idea has been floated... but there is no question that this would greatly limit productions, since only the sure-fire programming would get produced. Oh, wonderful... a million different shows all staring the talentless trainwreck that is Paris Hilton.

If no movement happens the alternative is grim!

Whichever options the industry decides to pursue and experiment with, I desperately hope that they move quickly, because the default evolution right now is, perhaps, the worst option of all: more and more reality programing and pseudosport events. That's right, one of the reasons all those horrendous reality programs survive season after season without being cancelled while quality shows are tossed left and right is because of this conundrum. Not only do reality shows cost much less to produce (requiring much less advertising income to recoup those costs and turn a profit), but, put very simply, live "event" programming is the only kind of programming that transcends the DVR, because people want to watch it live. Nobody wants to have to hear at work about what deplorably unforgiveable thing enemy-to-humanity Simon said to the last American Idol contestant last night - they need to see it now. The same goes for any reality program, or sports as well (hence the expansion and invention of genre after genre of never-heard-of-before pseudosports), since we all want to see the big game live.

Please, television industry, I'm begging you. Before too much more of your programming is absorbed by the social cancer that is reality shows, look up, and see that the sky is falling - and work to see how we can save the henhouse.

Pranking Etiquette

Each year, as with many other schools, the seniors here at the high school at which I work devise and execute a senior prank. Unfortunately, pranks, as a breed, far too often tend to come at the expense of a victim's property, time, or dignity. As for this year, at 3:30 AM this morning, they came to the high school and set up a mock camp with tents and the like in the commons out front, then changed the sign on the board to read "Camp Seniors"; I've also heard that they also placed little yellow stickies on the principal's car, each coming personally from a senior, and bearing a memory for him from their years at the school.

Now, mind you, I don't condone any prank, and there is probably no perfect prank. As for today, I do know of several people mentioned having to find alternative parking spaces this morning (and as I type this, I'm listening to the administrative chatter on the walkie talkies, relating problems with students not coming in to class and blocking traffic now that the school day has begun), and no doubt the principal had to take a few minutes to remove the yellow stickies from his car. However, at least this prank was farther down the continuum toward the benign. I wish that pranks more often steered themselves farther toward these qualities. If the point of a prank is to do something unexpected that creates humor, doesn't it make sense that you want a prank that will make the most people possible laugh? Certainly, anyone who is hurt by a prank isn't laughing, and that suggests logically that the most successful prank is one that comes at *no one's* expense, since it leaves everyone available to laugh at it.

On a sidenote, I really hope that people will take something else away from this experience: an appreciation for the principal at this school. There are not many principals with the sense of humor, good sportsmanship, and genuninely pragmatic and caring approach of ours. His reaction and handling of this morning's circumstances are representative of the norm, and so many clearly benefitted from it. I truly hope that these seniors appreciate him (and how differently this morning could have played out under the vast majority of other high school principals).

Last, I am currently sitting in my first block senior English class with the five students that attended today. While I personally take no exception by this (my students all have their final portfolio directions and know when it is due), the first two of these students to arrive had some very wise observations about their peers currently outside. They pointed out to each other that being a senior, at its core, is, of course, about graduating... and today, there is an in-class final exam in one of the classes a vast majority of seniors are taking, calling into real question whether remaining outside rather than attending class today might be making some of these seniors potentially no longer graduating. In fact, these students noted that several of the seniors that they saw outside today are most definitely not graduating any time soon, and yet they are partaking of festivities celebrating that which they have not achieved, as those festivities themselves are potentially setting them farther back away from that unachieved goal... I'm not certain, but that seems like at least a double irony.

>>> NOTE ADDED: Since posting the above, I've heard rumor that there were some who got carried away with elaboration, in such manners as windowpainting vehicles not their own, and filling a portion of the parking lot with sand. The window painting moves the whole situation back down the continuum away from the harmless and a few steps toward the wrong kind of prank, as it does come at an inconvenience to a "victim," and unless they also have the decency to wash it off, at the cost of money and time as well. The sand, meanwhile, could still go either way, and we must wait to see - it really depends all on how vigilant these creative pranksters are in considerately cleaning up after themselves this afternoon; I do honestly hope they clear the lot, as removal of all that sand would likely be a really time consuming and potentially costly headache to someone. Let's hope they keep this prank toward the "positive" end of the continuum by seeing it through all the way to clean-up.

Myth of the Bulletproof Vest

I am nearing the end of my fifth year as a teacher; I spent my first year at a suburban / rural middle school, and then the last four at an urban high school. When I made the transition, I heard the same reaction from so many friends and colleagues, almost always phrased with the same perceived humor, all thinking that they are the first ever to think of the jab:

"Hm... I suppose you'll be buying a bullet proof vest then, huh?"

I will freely admit it: This comment seemed an appropriate one and an applicable one to me at the time, before I began working here. As time has worn on and I have become experienced here in this setting, though, the same comment has come to mean something very different to me, a symbol of the frustrating prejudice and misinformation that my students deal with on a daily basis.

I truly love my school and my students. These young men and women are far more tolerant of those around them than their counterparts at the suburban setting at which I was previously. They are resilient, knowing that they will encounter frustrations and obstacles, and that they are best served moving past them at full force rather than perserverating upon them. The students that graduate are independent and self-reliant. As they relate to the educational process, these students are equally receptive and capable as their counterparts elsewhere.

My school is a safe, supportive place. Violence is not the norm, as the conventional wisdom seems to suggest. Certainly, there are incidents, offenders who get into a fight or are caught with a minor weapon; they are the vast, vast minority, however - the tiny, miniscule portion-of-a-percent of the population... and yet, sadly, they get the vast majority of the attention and press coverage. The result is that people see a school populated with young men and women from the city, they hear of a fight or a confiscated knife, and they allow their mind to extrapolate a "haven of scum and villainry" akin to Star Wars' Tatooine Cantina. Because the stories lack the enthralling excitement of conflict, they take no note of our students' achievements and victories. They do not share in what our students create, build, explore, and perform.

Indeed, we do have troubles. Certainly, as with any commonly held falsehood, there is a kernel or aspect of truth from which the lie has spawned. But that truth, in a way, is yet one more reason to praise our students. They come from backgrounds, areas, and circumstances that, far too often, are rife with obstacles, distractions, and hazards. Violence, gangs, drug use, and other elements are daily components of their life *outside* the school... many are fortunate to benefit from parents or family that struggle with them to keep those aspects from intruding on their lives, but a significant portion of the students are not so fortunate and must face these things alone.

A couple of years ago, I had a student whom needed to work from home for a short time at the end of her senior year, and therefore had her work brought to her by a homebound teacher. I would like to share with you what that homebound teacher shared with me. Each day, she would visit this student's home to drop off work and answer any questions, and while the student greeted her warmly and appreciatively, the mother was cold and unaccommodating. Day after day, she would work with an enthusiastic young woman, as her mother hovered angrily around. Only on one day did the routine temporarily break, when the mother was too stoned to be cold, and indeed made her only offer of hospitality to the teacher: a joint. She noted that the only food in the house was cold cereal, which the mother bought for many children and from which she expected them all to feed themselves all meals; the homebound teacher realized that hunger often proved a distration to the student, and one day brought a pizza, which the student very gratefully partook of, but only after taking a few moments to share a piece with each of her siblings and several neighbors. After a few weeks, as the year drew to a close (the student would need summer school yet to graduate), one of the last visits gave witness to a verbal fight, as the mother suddenly exploded at the daughter, saying "I can't believe you are wasting your time with all this! You're working on homework night after night when you should be out trying to get you a man. If you don't find yourself a man and get yourself pregnant, you won't have any way to be supported."

This, friends, is the world in which so many of our students daily operate. All this, and IN SPITE of it all, they are in school each day, trying. They come to school to leave all these elements behind... and then the outside world inflicts them intellectually upon them anyway.

This is why, when people hear I teach here, and they reply "do you wear a bulletproof vest?", I can't help but feel sad, both for my students and for the speaker. I feel bad for my students because they are being stereotyped, pigeonholed, and limited even after all they do to overcome the troubles around them. I feel bad for the speaker because I pesonally know hundreds of talented, fun, promising young men and women that they are likely never to have the honor or pleasure of meeting.

Hail to the Chief Buffoon

I really wonder sometimes whether journalists are looking for opportunities to mismatch pictures and the associated articles and then play dumb. Of course, there are so many of these opportunities in particular relation to President Bush because he is notably apt at making them through his own buffoonery and antics. This one, to his credit, is probably more of a out-of-context mismatch than genuine inappropriateness, but one still cannot resist laughing (click on the link to see it directly).

On Memorial Day, I opened my browser, which has excite.com set as its homepage, and was greeted by the following article appropriate to the solemn occasion:

Bush Lays Wreath at Tomb of the Unknowns

ARLINGTON, Va. (AP) - In a solemn ceremony, President Bush laid a large red, white and blue wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington National Cemetery. The Memorial Day tradition took place under bright sunshine,
just outside of Washington.
After placing the wreath, Bush bowed his head and paused before the tomb. A bugler then slowly played "Taps" and the president stood with his hand over his heart.

Then, accompanying this article, the following picture was comically mismated:

Choose your own insult here...

• Mmm. Yah, he sure does look solemn, doesn't he.
• "Ooo, look! A shiny thing! Ooo pretty shiny thing!"
• "Wow, man... I'm soooooo trippin'..."

Ladies and gentlemen, your commander in chief.

Attack of the Blog

Does everybody really have something important to say? Honestly, I think the question really does bear mentioning. Technology has made publishing easier and easier at a rate I have been "fortunate" to directly see in my own lifetime...

• The world of my early youth was one when people could still only hope to publish themselves at great expense in a book, or in terse, vastly limited formats in the back page of the local paper...
• While I was in elementary school, personal computers gave people the tools to set down their words in boxy, dot matrix fashion, but still limited the reach of their written voice to the hands in which they could plant a stack of those pages...
• When I moved on to middle school, desktop publishing and vastly improved printers made our thoughts look much more attractive, albiet yet still to the same small audience...
• In high school, I participated in the earlier days of the internet, as those of us not dumbed down by AOL's early travesties in user interface limitations flocked to simple dialup BBS systems and posted our thoughts in communities, suddenly with small but growing audiences reading and replying...
• By the time I moved on to college, web publishing was beginning to become accessible to the more motivated and technically savvy, exponentially increasing the audience base for our textual musings...
• And now, today, one cannot watch half an hour of news without seeing the direct impact of these blogs, web logs maintained by, seemingly everyone, as well as their alter egos and pets.

So, now, entire universes of human thought are being set to text and formatted to the web each moment. Many movers and shakers have weblogs, as do those that wish to have their voice heard in their favored controversies. Topical hobbyists spew expertise and factoids. Even my high school students, in alarming popularity, set down what used to be kept in a diary or journal within the pages of a web log for their friends to read and reply.

We all seem to think we have something important to say, right? Or else... why are we doing this? If not for the belief that what we write today will be read and prompt thought or action from someone else, whether in a few minutes or a few days or a few years, why bother?

I have a theory about these "blogs." What proportion of them actually do get a reading? Certainly, the top thinkers and writers have followings... but how many more of us are just writing for an unknown audience that may be much smaller than we imagine?

How many of us are writing for an audience of ourselves alone?

And does that make it not worthwhile?