FLAMING MOTH

RACIST

2012-02-13T18:33:00.000-08:00

Over two millionsoldiers fought for the Union in the Civil War. That is twice the number that fought for the south. Three hundred and sixty four thousand Unionsoldiers died and over two hundred and seventy five thousand were wounded. The Families of these men supported the warand emancipation of the slaves. TheChurches were almost universally against slavery and for the war.

So why is everywhite person in the United States suspect of being racist? The war would never have been fought if itwere not for committed white leaders and citizens who wanted to rectify aterrible wrong perpetuated by a minority of white.

But in today’spolitics all white men are assumed to be bigots and all white men are deemedresponsible for the slavery. In fact thereare those who expect all white Americans to recompense them for theirservitude. Of course, defining a whiteAmerican is as difficult, or even more so than defining a black man, or aJew.

Has a blackleader ever said “thank you” to the white America that sacrificed so much toend slavery? I have never heard of sucha thing. In fact, this post willprobably be labeled racist.

HOW HAVE WE SURVIVED?

2012-01-02T07:43:00.001-08:00

How in the worldhas humanity lasted as long as it has? Imean, without electricity, oil, or even organized governments how did wesurvive? I admit the existence may havebeen brutish. But I doubt it has alwaysbeen joyless. In fact, I suspect, withno way of proving it other than the fact of our continued existence, thatpeople laughed, played and took pride in their work and relationships from thebeginning, whenever that may have been.

But wait! They didn’t have school. How is that possible? The world cannot possibly progress withoutschool to educate the children. I meanwe depend on school to make sure that each generation is better than thelast. Why, without school, all of ourchildren could not be above average.

May I suggestthat there is not one bit of evidence that school adds value to a child’slife. I know that seems likeheresy. I do not claim that school isuseless. It serves many functions in our modern world, but educating childrenis not one it does particularly well.

School does freeboth members of a marriage to be able to work. In that way it contributes to our economic situation, although I am notconvinced that it contributes to our economic well-being. Do you understand the difference?

School is alsovery important, we are told, in social development of the child. People who take their children out of schoolare often asked, “What about their social development?” People who leave their children in school arenever asked, “What about their intellectual development?” Or even, “What about your family’s freedom?”

School doesregulate modern American life and social interactions by setting the times thatfamilies awake in the morning, when the children go to bed at night, whatfamilies do in the evenings and to some extent on weekends (it’s calledhomework and extracurricular activities), and regulates when families can go onvacation or work together on a project. Other than that, school is relatively unobtrusive.

School alsoprovides a stable, modest, and pleasant employment for millions of people. Cleaner and less strenuous than mines, lesscostly to establish than factories, more permanent and stable thanconstruction, and less subject to the vagaries of nature and less strenuousthan farming, school has become a career of choice for large numbers of peopleand a staple in our economy. Besides, itprovides an essential babysitting service so that parents can realize theirfull potential in their careers.

Consider thatour present lives and standard of living was built on the backs of previousgenerations. Modern America was built bymen and women from the 20^th century, many of whom did not attendmuch schooling, or at least considerably less than children today. It remains to be seen if the product ofpublic school, which has only been prominent for the last one hundred years,produces anything as impressive.

So for sixthousand years of recorded history there really was no guaranteed publiceducation for all. How have we survived?

THE "HAPPY WAY" OR THE "SAD WAY"?

2011-11-25T09:56:00.001-08:00

I always told my children that our home was a lot like a democracy, only instead of, “one man, one vote”; our slogan was “one pound, one vote”. This served us well for many years until the children learned about forming coalitions and sufficient math skills to calculate total mass. At that point, like any good politician, I changed the rules.

But we did try to run a democratic household in many ways. We always tried to give the children choices whenever we could. Once a year for their birthday they got to choose what the family had for dinner. (Not breakfast and lunch, mind you. Because they usually opted to sleep in for breakfast and everyone knows there is no free lunch.) They always had to make their beds in the morning, but they were free to get back in them anytime they wanted in the evening.

Okay, that isn’t true. If they hadn’t decided to go to bed by a certain hour, they had to, but they still got a choice. They could go to bed the “happy way” or the “sad way”. The important thing was they were free to choose. It’s the American way. Except when it comes to education.

The “happy way” and the “sad way” are about the only choices children get to make in the public schools. Sometime in history humans decided that everyone must learn the same things. This is patently undemocratic. (Adults routinely deny children the same rights and privileges the adults demand.) It is even worse than that, however. All children are expected to learn the same things, at the same time, in the same place, in the same way, and within the same period of time. (For examples, see no child left behind or the curriculum of the public schools, even through college.)

No adult would willingly submit to that kind of mind control mind for twelve years. It is not so important that this is undemocratic as it is impractical, horribly inefficient, and destroys student motivation.

Is there some way that we can allow students choices, not just in subject matter, but in what they learn within subjects? Is there a way we can allow students to use their already considerable abilities to do things THEY are interested in? Is there a way we can allow them to taste success and think that perhaps they can do something useful in this world?I think there is.

Go read the introduction to the first “Foxfire” book and see what high school students were able to do.

LEORNIAN

2011-11-16T12:33:00.001-08:00

Imagine a narrow beach with high ragged cliffs, a grey sky, cold and whipping winds, and pounding breakers from the North Sea. A ragged band of men dressed in skins and furs, wading ashore, wild hair and beards blowing in the wind sweeping out of the cold skies. The men carry swords and spears and are wary as they enter a new land, untouched and un-trodden. The first band finds a way up the cliffs face and there they find open moors and, further off, dense forests. In the days that follow, more men wade ashore from the waiting ship and small parties fan out to explore their new home.

The moors seem endless, wild and featureless. The inland forests are pristine and, at times, impenetrable. But these men have known the featureless sea and they come from stock at home in the forests, and they plunge ahead in their explorations. In the midst of large expanses of endless trees, occasionally there were clearings. In these, the sunlight seemed more intense and striking to them in contrast to the expanses of dark and ancient forest. Their name for such a clearing was “lea”, derived from “leocht”, their word for light.

The plains in their sameness and the forests with their obstruction of sight presented challenges for these sea faring men. As they ranged farther from their beach establishment they sometimes became disoriented and finding their way was difficult. But there is an advantage to the land that the sea does not possess. Their passing leaves a mark on the land: a footprint, a broken branch, a scratch on a rock. By carefully following the tracks that they, or their fellow explorers, had left behind they could find their way again to distant places, or home.

Of course, as they followed one another’s footprints through the forests and meadows the trail soon became clear, then worn, and eventually a depressed path, almost a furrow, marked the way to travel. Their word for footprint, track and furrow was “leis”, obviously taken from “lea”, the word they used for the forest clearing, because a track provides information, similar to the shedding of light on a subject.

They also developed a special word that meant to follow the track, to benefit from the knowledge of those that came before, to memorize the way, to study out the way to go. They called the process “leornian”, or “lernen”, the word that became our modern word to “learn.”

As the paths became established, one who had traversed the way many times could describe them to someone who had not been there. Of course, the traveler wouldn’t describe every step. That would be too confusing. But the experienced traveler could tell the major landmarks, where to turn at branches in the trail, about how far to go before you would expect to see the next landmark.

Eventually there came to be many paths in the land. Some were worn into deep furrows. Some tracks were barely visible except to the sharpest eyes. Some went to one place and some to another. But, of course, hearing about the trail isn’t the same as walking the trail. Knowing where you want to go is the most important step. In the end, if you really want to know, you have to go.

Isn’t it interesting that our concept of learning comes from ancient concepts of sunlit meadows, of tracking previous footprints, of following a trail, and listening to the tales of those who have traveled before us? Does it give us a better understanding of what we do when we learn about a new subject? Does it give us a better understanding of what we should be doing when we attempt to teach others?

TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION

2011-11-11T20:04:00.000-08:00

Like you I pay property taxes. Probably the biggest part of my property taxes goes to the local school district. All of my children were educated there and I was involved in their schools and education as much as possible. I know, and admire, many public educators. Later I served a term on the school board. Now I am a grandfather with grand children in the same schools.

However, I am not allowed to have anything to say about what goes on in the schools. Neither does anyone else in the community. The school board consists of a handful of members with very limited authority. There role is in policy and they seldom meddle in school or classroom affairs.

In other words, if I do not want R rated movies shown in the public schools I have very little I can do about it. If I think a principle has made a poor decision, there is really nothing effective I can do to change it. If a teacher seems to be doing a poor job, I might be able to get my child out of that classroom, but only with great effort and that act will do nothing to improve the situation for other students.

In addition the schools have become tyrannical rulers of family life. The school day, not parents, determine when children should go to bed by the demands of the time school starts in the morning. It is inflexible and rigid. Homework dictates what every family that has children does in the evenings and much of the weekend. School activities take up much of a family’s free time. Family vacations must occur around the school year, and day care is required based upon the schools schedule. If you wish to take your children out of school for a family emergency or vacation the school will make it difficult and in some cases can literally report you to the legal authorities.

If you have children in school, you are already under the governments’ almost total control. It just isn’t the President, the Governor, or the police dictating your life. It’s the school. Most teachers are well-intended, but the administrators, and especially the educator unions, are enormously aware of their power and do not intend to give up a bit of it. I know, I have sat in negotiations with the teachers union and they are NOT concerned for your child.

The schools have become a law unto themselves. The only alternative left to parents is to leave the public schools for private schools or home schooling. I have heard the arguments about how vouchers would make the education system more businesslike. I suppose that may be true. But the real problem is that presently the taxpayer has no recourse, no say, no control, and no rights when dealing with the schools.

Do not claim that a school board is representative of the community. If that were so, home and private schooling would not be growing so explosively in the United States.

I believe a war was once started over the problem of taxation without representation.

I CANNOT REMAIN QUIET ANY LONGER!

2011-10-25T13:42:00.001-07:00

FIRST, you are not 99%. You are a small, pitiful group of a few thousand rude, obnoxious, loud, privileged spoiled brats who have no idea what suffering or want truly are, or what tyranny and cruelty actually look like.

The banks have never abused you and you have never known want. The very tents you sleep in are available because of your prosperity and the riches of this country. You women dress as you please and go where you would like, freedoms unavailable to most women of the world. You men condemn the manly and destroy civilization and safety that other men have sought so hard to build.

It is America’s wealth and freedoms that afford you the possibility to do what you are presently doing. None of you are at slightest risk of being gunned down by the forces of a mad dictator. Your relatives are not at risk, and you will not disappear. In most countries of the world you would not have been allowed to do what you are doing for even one night without terrible bloodshed and great risk.

The truth is you are not 99% no matter how many times you say it and how often the stupid media repeat it for sales. There are others who also know how to use the internet and social media sites and WE are truly legion. You should be afraid that you will accomplish what you hope, for then you will find out how few, how cowardly, how foolish, and how weak you truly are.

SECOND! Hatred of other men is wrong! It is evil! I do write this message because I hate those who disagree with me. I write this message because others, and those who I disagree with, must know that there is determined, courageous, and equally noisy opposition.

To condemn a human for being black is racist. To condemn one because of their culture is bigotry. To condemn the Jews is not only a form of both, but is the basis of nearly every evil action taken in western history. I am shocked, appalled, and furious at the language I have heard in recent days coming from loud ignorant protestors who are either dumb or evil.

To see a black women attack a group of people because they are Jews is almost unbelievable. To see political leaders and academics endorse the same accusations and hatred that has been heard time and again in history, and as recently as the last century, is simply unbelievable. But my eyes and ears cannot deceive me.

Perhaps worst of all is to listen carefully for the condemnation and courageous refutation from our countries leaders, public officials or even loan citizens and to find there is none. The few loan voices are timid or drowned out by the silence of acceptance from the masses. Well, listen closely. JEW HATERS ARE EVIL, IGNORANT BIGOTS!

THIRD! Taking money by force, even the force of government and giving it to someone else is theft. Theft is the epitome of GREED. Those who demand social justice are guilty of the crime of which they accuse others. Consider the complaints against the banks and society at large.

“I want what you have” is the cry of spoiled children. “You don’t deserve what you have” is playing God. You may not believe in God, but I do not believe human judgment is superior. (In fact your behavior proves my point.) “I deserve more than I have” is so arrogant as to be almost unbelievable. “It’s not fair” is what my children used to say.

Do you not understand that in nearly every other society in history, and even in present day, that people have NO chance to improve their lot in life? There is NO chance to change economic circumstances. Capitalism is the first and only system that makes it possible for common people to work and improve their lot in life. In fact, most of you protestors are able to protest because your parents improved their lot through capitalism.

There may be none greedier than the poor and the envious. Most of you in the streets do not know what poverty is, so I am left to assume you are simply greedy.

FOURTH AND LAST! The unions no longer represent oppressed workers. There was a time when people were often forced to work in inhuman and dangerous conditions. Pay was inadequate and workers were oppressed. That is obviously no longer true in America. American teachers are NOT oppressed. I know I am one as are others in my family. American union workers live well and have excellent working conditions.

The unions no longer have any moral ground on which to represent anyone. They now fight for control and power for the union, not the worker.

NUMERACY AND LITERACY

2011-10-09T20:04:00.001-07:00

What can a person younger than, say 18, use numbers for?
• Nope, not telephones. It’s all on speed dial.
• No one cooks, at least anything that requires more than measuring one cup of milk.
• They don’t make change at McDonalds. The cash register tells them what to do.
• When they purchase off the internet the math is done for them.
• They have no opportunity to plan complex activities that would require math.
• They can’t generally work in the building trades where they might have to measure and calculate.
• They are sophisticated about electronics, but they know almost nothing about programming.
• They don’t weigh a cow, or a crop, to determine its value.
• They don’t balance a budget for a household.

So for 12 years of public education they are asked to study mathematics, which they never use, but are told they will need someday. Do you suppose they believe that? Would you? For 12 years? Could you really get very interested in when to trains might collide between Boston and Philadelphia given their speed and the time they left?

Now apply that approach to reading and writing. A person can survive pretty well just reading some simple instructions, face book pages, text messages and web sites. The only reason to read seems to be entertainment, but they can be more easily entertained with a movie. In an effort to get them to read we assign more and more easy fiction because they won’t read the hard stuff. There seems to be no immediate reason to.

A 14 year old is more adult than child in stature. I suspect they could be more adult than child in fact if we allowed them to be. But we force teenagers to be childlike for as much as 8 more years. Then we scratch our heads and wonder why they can’t do math, read, write, or make responsible decisions.

UNDEFINED TASKS LEAD TO UNDEFINED OUTCOMES

2011-09-21T12:46:00.001-07:00

(These Chinese characters represent the word “learning.” The first character means to study. It is composed of two parts: a symbol that means “to accumulate knowledge” above a symbol for a child in a doorway. The second character means to practice constantly, and it shows a bird developing the ability to leave the nest. The upper symbol represents flying; the lower symbol, youth. For the oriental mind, learning is on-going. “Study” and “practice constantly” together, suggest that learning should mean: “mastery of the way of self-improvement”.)

We speak about learning like it was teaching. But it isn’t. In fact, most of us couldn’t say what learning is at all. We might learn a fact and repeat it, only to discover that we have forgotten it a short time later. We read books and watch movies that we can’t really recall.

For that matter, I don’t know what teaching is either. I know when I am trying to communicate with someone about something they don’t seem to know, that I call it teaching. But it sure doesn’t look the same all the time. Even worse, I suspect that I have taught a lot of things that the students never learned at all.

Yet we pay people a lot of money to do something that is undefined (teach) and which has an undefined outcome (learn). Is this a problem? Considering the amount of money being spent, I’d say it is.

The educational establishment claims to know what learning is and what learned material looks like. However, it’s pretty hard to verify that someone has done something that you don’t know what it is when it’s done. Educational standards are supposed to take care of this, but for the most part all standards do is describe curriculum, or topics, that are supposed to have been learned, whatever learned mean.

I used to look at the amount of work people put into some of their toys and I wondered why they would want them. Then I would see them loose interest after awhile and ignore the toys and would wonder why they spent the money.

Then I watched students showing off their new cell phones and apps. It became very clear that no one really cared about the phone. They wanted to show what it could do, what apps it had. Then others would want to show what their phone could do. People didn’t want phones. They wanted to do things. Perhaps most of all they wanted to learn about their phones, by doing stuff.

People don’t learn. People don’t even know what learning is. But they want to do things. We are programmed to move, talk, build, write, cook, hunt, play, and an endless list of things to do. When we DO any of those things, we learn. Students go to school for sports, band, choir, drama, friends or an after school job. They don’t go to school to learn.

The problem with the entertainment industry is that it tricks us into thinking we are doing something. The visual and audio images, the arguments, conflict, pretend adventures, fights, chases, and love scenes make our brains believe, for a little, while that we are doing something. That maybe we really do matter. Then the movie ends and we find we have done nothing at all and our lives feel even emptier than before.

Humans must find ways to help students learn to write by writing something meaningful. They need to learn to calculate in order to build something useful. They need to learn to govern by governing themselves and others. Schools need to become a place of doing, not learning.

FANTASY WORLDS

2011-09-15T19:42:00.001-07:00

I have about decided that we live in a fantasy world. No one knows how the world works.

The electrician has to call a plumber, and the plumber has to go to a mechanic.

People landscape their yards, but couldn’t feed their own family from a garden.

People read e-mails, tweets, and web pages but not philosophy or scriptures.

People write e-mails, tweets, face book comments, legal briefs and memos but don’t stay personally in touch loved ones or express complex ideas.

Engineers hire communications majors to write the reports they can’t write.

Communication majors write reports for engineers about things they could never build.

We have health care laws, but no one can define health except as the absence of disease. And no one can define disease except as the absence of health.

In school we teach children to read, write and calculate, but we don’t teach them how to grow food, build buildings, repair machines, or anything else that one might want to read, write or calculate for.

In such a society no one knows what reality is.

We propose solutions to problems that don’t exist, and ignore problems that do exist because we don’t recognize them.

We argue bitterly over theoretical solution that have never been tried and agree to try things that have no chance of succeeding.

We continually ask why are the things the way they are without considering that either we want them that way, or at least there are people in power who want them that way, or they wouldn’t be that way.

There is something called “reality”. It is simple to find out what it is. Simply ask the question does it work? If the answer is yes, it is real.

If the answer is no, it isn’t. If the answer lapses into a long involved explanation of theory, it isn’t real. The person with the theory either thinks it is real, or wants you to think it is real. But it’s not.

This rule does not only apply to practical everyday things. It applies to all kinds of abstract ideas as well.

If faith gives you courage to continue then it works.

If freedom makes your life better then we should try to be free.

If not drinking, smoking, or drugs makes your life less happy and productive you shouldn’t do them.

If thrift makes you more secure and happy you should be thrifty.

People get all confused about reality. They sometimes talk as if it is real, as in, “You should have been there on that cliff. It was really scary.” Here they mean the actual physical presence of being on a cliff. But then they say something like, “Oh all that really happened is you were influenced by the beautiful music, the setting, and the girl.” Of course here they mean just the emotions involved as if they weren’t real at all.

One of things our schools need to do is to teach reality. If they won’t the parents must. If the parents won’t, grandparents may be able to help. But if we don’t teach reality the society will eventually collapse.

SCHOOL. WHO NEEDS IT?

2011-08-28T16:35:00.000-07:00

All social structures must be accepted by the participants. As long as the participants are persuaded that the organization is beneficial to them they will cooperate and, well, participate. When the benefit is no longer obvious, or is brought into question, the social organization or structure will change or be abandoned.

I went to public high school in the sixties. I was never rebellious or counter-culture as some students were. Up until that time, and I suppose even throughout high school, I accepted the fact that school was my passport to a better life. But let me clarify that. I did not think that school was relevant, only that the adult world declared it important. I lacked sufficient confidence to act on my belief of irrelevance. And in fact, without an alternative, the adults around me were probably correct.

Not even sports or music were sufficient to make me think school was for anything other than staying out of trouble and having fun. My real world consisted of my after school employment, which I saw as an adult activity, my few friends, and the problems I had in my family life.

It isn’t that I do not believe that education is the key to a better life. It is that I no longer believe school is the key to education. I believe that modern technology, media, and universal machines (computers) have, more and more, brought modern students to a point where they no longer see school as legitimate.

While politicians, educators and well meaning adults continue to tinker around the edges of “schooling”, it becomes increasingly clear that “school” as we know it cannot be saved. The only thing that has saved it thus far is the lack of confidence on the parent of the public to totally abandon the model. But more and more of the youth, and an increasing number of adults, are beginning to doubt the legitimacy of school as anything other than a warehouse for children.

There are two cultural forces that threaten school as we know it. The first is technology. Let me give you an example. Recently a student told me about their little girl (third grade) who asked her mother how giraffes sleep. She didn’t think they could have a pillow, but she didn’t know where they put their head. This is a perfect example of how school is changing.

Up until a certain age children learn by direct experience. They formulate theories of how things work and when experience teaches them otherwise they reform their theories. But at some point they begin to have questions that go beyond their experience. Until recently, throughout history they were forced to turn to an adult with experience, or books and other sources of expertness, to explain matters to them.

However, this third grader, with basic reading literacy, was able to consult the internet to learn that giraffes don’t sleep very much and when they do, they sleep standing with their heads resting on their back legs. What is the role of the classroom teacher and school in this type of environment?

Of course not everyone has access to the same level of technology, and the wealthy are usually just fine. Bill Gates came from a private school and influential connections. But more and more, information and even technical expertise is available to people at younger and younger ages, and of all social strata.

There is much evidence of the public’s growing doubts about “school”.
• The home school movement is growing exponentially.
• Schools require increasing amounts of money without increasing returns.
• Schools are more and more asking for volunteers to help teach children.
• Dropout rates are stagnant or increasing in many school districts.
• Children do not like school.
• There is overwhelming evidence that children value extra-curricular activities more than instruction.
• Commercial tutoring programs are increasing in number and expanding in scope.
• Alternative charter schools are becoming increasingly popular.

I don’t know when public education will collapse, but it has been collapsing since the sixties at least. I also do not know what will take its place. But tinkering around the edges will not make it relevant to the young people, and increasingly to their parents. This is especially true of higher education that has increased in cost and decreased in value in recent years. The multiculturalism and political correctness are killing the necessary technical advantages for serious students.

The question educators and politicians need to be asking is, “School? Who needs it?”

2011-08-07T18:37:00.001-07:00

Do you know any of these songs?
• When Johnny Comes Marching Home
• Frankie and Johnny
• The Streets of Laredo
• Barbara Allen
• Oh Susanna
• A Bicycle Built for Two
• Home Sweet Home
• Auld Lang Syne
• Black Is the Color of My True Loves Hair
• London Bridge
• When the Saints Go Marching In
• She’ll Be Comin’ Round the Mountain

Your children don’t! There are hundreds of songs that are no longer
sung in our public schools. I have sixteen grandchildren. I regularly attend their school programs. I haven’t heard a song I know in years. Curious I polled my grand children. I teach some of the music lessons and I would ask if they knew such and such a song from our Nation’s history. They didn’t.

Does this matter? Am I just an old curmudgeon lamenting the younger generation?

No, I am not lamenting the younger generation. I am lamenting the public schools! I am lamenting the generation that has distorted the mandate and promise of the public school for a politically correct emphasis on ethnicity, racism, and fragmentation of the American identity.

The founders of America forged a new identity in the world: American. Prior to that time all people were known by their blood line, their tribe, and their ancestral heritage. But with the establishment of America, all the different bloodlines were forged into the identity of place.

This identity came under threat when the Civil War threatened to destroy the United States into regional fractions. But once again, through the fire of war, we tempered the steel of our identity and made American an identity. The new migrants that arrived following the Civil War were mostly from southern Europe, but their involvement in the new country and the civic involvement required and encouraged melded them into the American identity.

Not all has been perfect, of course. Racism has been a damaging inheritance, where certain elements of American society resisted assimilation of some ethnic groups. But until the mid-1900’s an American was an identity.

However, beginning twenty or so years ago a new tribalism infested American education. The public schools ceased to teach Americanism and began to celebrate ethnic identity over the national identity. This is manifest in the songs that are now taught public schools, as well as the many topics and classes in special ethnic studies and life styles.

This has been further enhanced by other minorities beginning to advocate their identity over the national identity. For example, it is now more important to be loyal to the homosexual movement than to seek what is good of all as a nation. Special favors for the elderly who fought the Second World War, hiring advantages for the poor and the redistribution of wealth between social classes all emphasize group identity over national identity.

The United Nations and the forces clamoring for globalism also feed into this fracturing of identity. There are those who would have us put membership in the world over our membership as an American. The decisions of a world body are said to take precedence over our national constitution.

The Christian religion, historically and obviously the foundation of the nation, is now marginalized in favor of respecting minority religions, which in many cases do not even share similar fundamental principles the our founding ideals.

The list of songs with which I started this essay is simply a small indicator of how our public schools have failed to teach and preserve our national identity. For the United States to remain American, for the word America to continue to mean something, it must be something identifiable, not an amalgamation of ethnic groups.

Look at the history of every other nation on earth and you will see that the major cause of social disruption has been tribalism. Even in the British Isles and northern Europe the fractioning between Catholics and Protestants, social class, Germans and Austrians, France and Germany have caused untold wars and suffering.

The tribalism that is now masquerading as multiculturism is threatening to destroy America, just as it has destroyed other cultures where it has been tolerated. And those who encourage, teach, model and promote multiculturalism are not Americans, but tribesmen, but tribesmen.

WHEN I WAS A CHILD . . . .

2011-07-17T14:45:00.001-07:00

“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” (I Cor. 13:11) Not only does this mean that an adult no longer thinks like a child, but, perhaps more importantly, that a child does not think like an adult.

But there is yet another difference between adults and children. Children do not grow up in the same world as the adult. In fact, the adults have usually done everything they can to make sure that the child does not grow up the way they did as children.

Parent’s who came of age fighting a war, are usually reluctant to declare war. Parents who came of age during times of peace and abundance often see the world in distinct moralistic views, often to the extent that they are willing to declare war over ideas. Parents who grew up in difficult times do all that they can to protect their children. Adults who grew up overly protected do all that they can to prepare their children for hard times.

The generations never experience the same world as children. Each generation of children are educated according to what the adults of the previous several generations believe they should be educated like. But of course, neither the children nor the adults know what the world will be like when the children are adults.

At least children don’t pretend to know. The adults always claim that they are educating for the future. Ask any educator. Yet all attempts to define what the future holds have failed miserably. This is partly because the children themselves will generally try to make it as unlike the times they were raised as they can.

Why don’t children think like adults? It is because thinking is a cellular process. It takes place in our brains and our brains are composed of cells. During the first ten or twelve years of life, our brains are developing connections between other cells that allow us to control our bodies and to think according to our experiences in the physical world.

At puberty an interesting thing takes place. Cells communicate with one another mostly through numerous chemicals that are released from one cell that tell another what to do. Under the influence of the sexual hormones that flood the system at puberty, the brain undergoes a massive reorganization. S when a teenager changes dramatically from the cute little kid they have been to someone new and often very different, it is because they are becoming someone new and different. When teenagers can’t seem to think straight and make good judgment calls, it is because the machinery is being radically remodeled.

After the remodeling it is difficult for them to recall the way they really were or how they thought. The connections have simply been changed they aren’t there. They can remember events, but not thought processes.

And so adults continue to study children trying to understand how they think and how they can improve their thinking, ignoring the fact that the child probably already thinks quite well even though they may lack certain fundamental skills.

We treat children like a mysterious black box. We do something to it, and watch what it does in return. If we gain some control over the boxes activity we think we know what is going on inside. But since the mechanisms are radically different than our own, it leads us to adopt all kinds of strange teaching behaviors that are totally foreign to the child’s brain.

This blog is quite long enough. So now that I have identified the foundational problems with our educational system. I will stop. But my next blog will make suggestions about how to structure an educational system that might actually prepare students for the future and do so in a way meaningful for students.

THE PRETENSE OF EDUCATION

2011-07-09T17:46:00.001-07:00

I’m not sure where to begin.
• If one wanted to teach a child to tie their shoe, would they gather up twenty five or thirty children and set them down for a lecture, or even a demonstration?
• Is it important that all children tie their shoes at the same age, in the same way?
• Is it useful to require a toddler to practice walking everyday at 10:15 am for fifteen minutes?
• If someone fails at a difficult task today, would you require them to practice that task until it was mastered, or would you move on and come back and revisit the task later?
• Do adults ever require that other adults take tests? How often?
• Is it necessary that every child learn the same skills by the same deadlines? Do we require such of adults?
• Why are children still being left behind many years after the enactment of “No Child Left Behind”?
• Is it good educational practice to group one thousand or more teenagers, of both genders, in the same building, at the same time, and expect them to pay attention to math?
• Why is breakfast and lunch for children the responsibility of an institution beside the family?
• Why are schools in charge of checking shot records, or even forming clinics to help with vaccination, for public health safety?
• Why is it better for learning to build large buildings and group hundred of children together than have small neighborhood homes and smaller buildings?
• And why do we need more and more school volunteers to teach children when we pay specially educated teachers? We need more and more money, now we need more and more volunteers.
• Didn’t we have a volunteer education system called parents before there official public schools?
• Why do we ask children to master skills like reading and writing that they seldom see adults engaged in?
• Why don’t we ask children to engage in things that they see adults doing, like building, repairing, creating, taking apart, programming, buying, selling, calculating, and such?
• Why do most children dislike school after the first grade?
• Why do almost all children like sports, arts, and extra-curricular activities more than regular school? Is it because they have some responsibility and autonomy?

I could go on but you are probably bored by now. The point is almost nothing we do in school promotes Learning. (In fact, there is little evidence that public education adds very much value to a student’s life.) If we just look at what we do and compare it to how people learn we will see that school is not about education at all. It is about warehousing children. Well, that and providing employment for large numbers of warehouse workers called educators. Individually these warehouse people are well meaning and doing their best to help children. But their leaders are not concerned with children. The unions, with which I have sat in negotiations with, are NOT concerned with children. They are concerned with the warehouse workers.

It is my opinion that the current education system, with its stated goal, is not feasible and will eventually collapse financially. I believe the union unrest and defensiveness presently seen in some parts of the United States is a symbol of their recognition and fear of that eventuality.

STATIC EDUCATION

2011-06-20T07:46:00.001-07:00

Humans are all confused about thinking and education. Schools and teachers often claim they teach students to think. But thinking may not be what you think it is. This is because we totally misunderstand what the brain is for.

There are five identifiable lobes of the human brain and they each interpret something different. The occipital lobe interprets sight. The temporal lobe interprets sound. The olfactory lobe interprets smell. The parietal lobe interprets sensations from the body such as touch, temperature, pain, hot cold and so forth. The fifth lobe is not connected to any particular sense and is called the frontal lobe. That is the lobe we usually say is for thinking.

So what? So four fifths of the brain isn’t for thinking at all, it is for sensing and responding to the physical world. Further, it doesn’t actually sense the world in an absolute way. You can’t just walk out and say that it is 78o F today. You can sense changes, and identify that it is cooler now than it was an hour ago.

In other words, your brain is made to sense changes in the environment: motion. You brain doesn’t really register a lot until something moves or changes. This is a great advantage when living in a physical world that may have a number of inherent dangers. Changes in our circumstances, or the world around us, may be very significant to our survival. The brain is actually for surviving the physical world. Thinking is a byproduct.

So what do we do in school? We minimize change and motion. The theory behind modern education is to make everything the same subject, at the same time, in the same place, in the same way, with the same people, for the same reasons. For the most part we ask students to sit still for as long as possible and study and pay attention to static non-moving objects such as books, paper, or pencils.

If we stare at something for awhile, probably no more than a few seconds, we usually want to either turn it over to examine it, or change our position, if it is too large to manipulate. You know, walk around the object and see it from different perspectives. We really learn very little until something, or we, move.

The fifth lobe of the brain, the frontal lobe is what does what we call thinking. Yet it has no direct connection to the physical world. Instead it gathers information about the physical world from the other four lobes. The frontal lobe deals with abstractions and ideas. Abstractions are things that one cannot hold in their hand. These are things like love, faith, and democracy. It does not mean that these ideas are not important. But it is almost impossible to talk about them without using physical world terminology such as big ideas, hot emotions, forward thinking, loud colors, or even the political right and left.

So, it should be obvious that movement, action, variety, and doing are essential to clear thinking. Moving fingers to play an instrument, making objects or products, building models, repairing things, taking things apart, putting things together are all things that would be rich in learning to think. Yet we do almost none of it in school.

A further interesting observation concerning our modern education is that our modern world of technological marvels and accomplishments was not created by a school educated population, but mostly by eighth grade educated older generation with a background off the farm and full of activity. Public school as we know it today is still a grand experiment, with absolutely no evidence that it actually improves thinking, or is the best way to learn.

MENTAL MAPS

2011-06-07T11:40:00.000-07:00

If such a three dimensional road system existed, it would mean that there would be many different routes one could take to get from the top, left, front corner, to the bottom, right, back corner. Obviously there would be one “best” route. Some routes would be extremely circuitous and complex. But the number of ways of getting from one point to another would be huge. Especially if the cube was larger than a checkerboard, say a billion cubes instead of five hundred and twelve.

Now suppose that you had to drive one such route to work each day. You discover for yourself what you think is the shortest, most convenient route, and you begin to drive to work that way every day. Eventually the route becomes ingrained in our memory until we can drive to work each day and hardly be aware of what we are doing.

Then someone asks you to do them a favor and pick something up from the grocery store on your way. You think about your route carefully, but don’t recall any grocery store on the way. You ask around and discover that there is a grocery store not far from your usual route, just a few blocks. You adjust your route and pick up the item needed.

Later, you need some groceries on a Saturday when you aren’t going to work. But the only grocery store you are familiar with is the one on the way so you go there. Groceries have become a part of your work knowledge. Later you learn that the post office is not far from the grocery store; just a jog to the left and on for three blocks. The post office has become connected in your mind with work trajectory and groceries.

Of course, there may well be other grocery stores even closer that you discover later. Possibly there is a branch post office. Your knowledge of streets, intersections and landmarks improve to the point where you can begin to navigate between places without following your work route. But even when you have chosen what you think is the best path from one place to another, you may miss a turn, or find out that a street doesn’t go through, or that an intersection is temporarily closed. Then you may have to wander around a bit looking for a new way to travel.

Obviously, the more carefully laid out the community is, the easier it will be for you to find places you want, to plan routes, and to find your way when there are disruptions. This is why old cities that have developed over hundreds if not thousands of years are often very inconvenient to live in and complicated for visitors. Roads and locations developed over time in an accidental manner, often having nothing to do with the topography of the cubes.

What I have been describing is an analogy of how the brain is laid out, and develops. When a child is born they have a three dimensional matrix of neurons with billions of cubes and branches. There is no one best path, so each new event that occurs travels in multiple directions at once, often taking a very long time to reach a destination that results in an action. They are often slow to respond, partly because the road system is incomplete, and partly because there are no favored pathways developed.

As the child develops favored pathways, they will most usually develop new ideas as branches of their favored pathways. That means that the idea of distance will probably develop first as a branch of direction. Not just forward and back, but forward and back by a certain distance. These early ideas relating to the physical world will usually develop along the same lines and pathways in most people.

But the more carefully structured the original pathways, the more clearly later concepts will be added. The more clearly concepts are laid out the more rapidly those mental constructions can later be accessed. Children who are raised in the midst of complexity with little parental attention and/or confusing events and surroundings still learn to control their bodies and how to negotiate the physical world. But it is in their later ability to understand increasingly complex learning that they may struggle with inefficiently constructed early pathways.

What is strange about this idea is that what seems to be best for children is not more and earlier child hood schooling. Instead, later intellectual ability seems to profit from extended periods of a stable, home environment. In this atmosphere of stability, care, and increasing responsibility for their own and others care; they lay down the structured pathways that aid them in constructing future branches in a more logical, rapidly accessed, and useful manner.

MENTAL MAPS

2011-06-07T11:38:00.001-07:00

Imagine a three dimensional checkerboard. There would be eight cubes wide, long and deep, or five hundred and twelve cubes. The junctions at the corners of each cube would be a six way intersection. If you were traveling on the edges, at each intersection you could turn right, left, forward, back, up or down.

If such a three dimensional road system existed, it would mean that there would be many different routes one could take to get from the top, left, front corner, to the bottom, right, back corner. Obviously there would be one “best” route. Some routes would be extremely circuitous and complex. But the number of ways of getting from one point to another would be huge. Especially if the cube was larger than a checkerboard, say a billion cubes instead of five hundred and twelve.

Now suppose that you had to drive one such route to work each day. You discover for yourself what you think is the shortest, most convenient route, and you begin to drive to work that way every day. Eventually the route becomes ingrained in our memory until we can drive to work each day and hardly be aware of what we are doing.

Then someone asks you to do them a favor and pick something up from the grocery store on your way. You think about your route carefully, but don’t recall any grocery store on the way. You ask around and discover that there is a grocery store not far from your usual route, just a few blocks. You adjust your route and pick up the item needed.

Later, you need some groceries on a Saturday when you aren’t going to work. But the only grocery store you are familiar with is the one on the way so you go there. Groceries have become a part of your work knowledge. Later you learn that the post office is not far from the grocery store; just a jog to the left and on for three blocks. The post office has become connected in your mind with work trajectory and groceries.

Of course, there may well be other grocery stores even closer that you discover later. Possibly there is a branch post office. Your knowledge of streets, intersections and landmarks improve to the point where you can begin to navigate between places without following your work route. But even when you have chosen what you think is the best path from one place to another, you may miss a turn, or find out that a street doesn’t go through, or that an intersection is temporarily closed. Then you may have to wander around a bit looking for a new way to travel.

Obviously, the more carefully laid out the community is, the easier it will be for you to find places you want, to plan routes, and to find your way when there are disruptions. This is why old cities that have developed over hundreds if not thousands of years are often very inconvenient to live in and complicated for visitors. Roads and locations developed over time in an accidental manner, often having nothing to do with the topography of the cubes.

What I have been describing is an analogy of how the brain is laid out, and develops. When a child is born they have a three dimensional matrix of neurons with billions of cubes and branches. There is no one best path, so each new event that occurs travels in multiple directions at once, often taking a very long time to reach a destination that results in an action. They are often slow to respond, partly because the road system is incomplete, and partly because there are no favored pathways developed.

As the child develops favored pathways, they will most usually develop new ideas as branches of their favored pathways. That means that the idea of distance will probably develop first as a branch of direction. Not just forward and back, but forward and back by a certain distance. These early ideas relating to the physical world will usually develop along the same lines and pathways in most people.

But the more carefully structured the original pathways, the more clearly later concepts will be added. The more clearly concepts are laid out the more rapidly those mental constructions can later be accessed. Children who are raised in the midst of complexity with little parental attention and/or confusing events and surroundings still learn to control their bodies and how to negotiate the physical world. But it is in their later ability to understand increasingly complex learning that they may struggle with inefficiently constructed early pathways.

What is strange about this idea is that what seems to be best for children is not more and earlier child hood schooling. Instead, later intellectual ability seems to profit from extended periods of a stable, home environment. In this atmosphere of stability, care, and increasing responsibility for their own and others care; they lay down the structured pathways that aid them in constructing future branches in a more logical, rapidly accessed, and useful manner.

HOW CHILDREN LEARN

2011-05-14T18:04:00.001-07:00

Humans learn a tremendous amount in the first five years of life. They pretty much master the oral expression of language. Even Chinese children learn Chinese. Amazing! They learn to control their bodies. They can run, jump, skip, ride bikes, dance and play some fairly complex games. They learn many subtle things, like when Mother means “no” and how to tell that someone is sad or happy from social cues. Children are born brilliant.

Then as adults, in charge of teaching children, we ignore all this and immediately begin to structure learning in almost the exact opposite way than the way young children learn. When children are less successful with our method we rank them and tell them it is their fault. They need to work harder. In fact, if they don’t do as well with our method as we think, we make them go to some school. That is, we give them more of the same thing at which they are not good at.

So how do children learn? They watch examples. They try to mimic the examples. They master specific skills. They show off their abilities. They try to combine these simple skills into new activities. Sometimes they fail. Sometimes it works. They demonstrate their new skills. Sometimes they have a party to celebrate their advancement.

No school! Many different teachers. Little structure. It isn’t that there isn’t any homework. It is that the homework is constant and more or less self-imposed. They want to be able to speak. They want to be able to walk. They want to do things that older children and adults can do. Are they afraid sometimes? Sure. Are the self-conscious sometimes? Of course. But they don’t want to be helpless. They don’t want to be clueless and cared for. They also don’t want to be told what to do. Do you?

This is all so self-evident. Even the honest, caring teachers know this and try to structure their classes accordingly. But modern US education has become what it is. I do not know how to change it. I am working diligently to change it for my own grandchildren. But millions of children are trapped in a failing system.

REPETITION IS THE MOTHER OF ALL LEARNING

2011-04-27T06:13:00.001-07:00

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LEARNING TAKES PLACE

2011-04-21T06:40:00.000-07:00

Imagine a round-about at an intersection; one with several different exits running in different directions. Of course, you could take any of the exits and still get to the same destination. Some might require you to back track, or make some extra turns, but your choice at the round-about doesn’t forever exclude you from any particular destination. Of course, there are some exits that would help you reach your destination faster and more easily, and most of the time, if you are paying attention that is the exit you would choose.

What if there was one destination that was favored by most of the drivers on the highway? Over time the road would become worn, the shoulder rounded off and perhaps rutted, and the ruts would begin to form leading to that exit. In fact, it could become so well traveled that cars would be led into that turn by the worn pathway and drivers would have to carefully exert effort to avoid taking that exit. If a driverless car rolled through the intersection it would most likely follow the ruts in the road.

I have just described a neural synapse. What is a neural synapse? Neurons are the cells that transmit information in your nervous system. The signals they send are like cars moving in a single direction on a highway. But it takes more than one neuron to travel from your finger tip, for example, to your brain, so along the way the signal must be passed along to another neuron. Where two neurons meet is called a synapse.

However, these junctions are seldom restricted to two neurons. Most often they involve several neurons like a round-about, with the possibility of the message taking many different directions. In this case our analogy breaks down somewhat because a car can only take one exit, but the signal traversing a neuron is electrical in nature and can literally take all the exits at once, sending signals in many different directions.

This is exactly what happens in a baby. Incoming information takes all of the possible directions, sending information to every possible destination. This is so confusing to the infant that they have great difficulty responding. If they can respond it will be very slow, and often inaccurate. It may take several seconds to get an infant to focus on one thing, and quite a bit longer for them to respond because the information is traveling in so many directions all at once. Eventually they may attempt to reach out to grab something only to miss. When they do get their hand on it and try to put it in their mouth they may miss and stick it in the eye.

But with time and continued usage, certain pathways become favored pathways. Not so much by wearing down, as in the round-about, but by building up the connections between those two neurons. This is a little like building up a muscle with use. You literally increase the size of the region you want to favor by building proteins in that area. The result is a favored pathway for one action, at one intersection, for one destination.

This process is called potentiation and is the simplest form of learning that we think we understand. It must happen over and over again to develop the favored exit and literally thousands of round-abouts in the brain. But eventually the signal can follow that pathway so strongly that it entirely skips the other exits that were once available to it and can only take those exits with difficulty and effort.

The point of all this is that learning “takes place”. Learning doesn’t just occur on a surface, in a room, in a medium like water or air. But it also occurs over a surface even at the microscopic level of the neuron. Learning at some level appears to be an increase in surface are at the synapse. Learning takes place.

WHAT IS THE BRAIN FOR?

2011-03-24T18:40:00.000-07:00

Humans use the brain for many fascinating activities: solving algebraic problems, writing symphonies, making legal judgments, reading, designing buildings, or writing poetry. Yet these activities are accomplished in a very small portion of the brain. The human brain weighs about three pounds and is a little larger than two clenched fists side by side. However, only a very small portion of that mass operates under conscious control.

Only the outermost covering, called the cerebrum, is used in doing conscious, voluntary, and sometimes creative, tasks. The cerebrum is only about as thick as six playing cards stacked together and is, in fact, made up of six layers of cells. These cells are so small; however, that there are still around 20 billion cells in these six layers.

One might wonder why it is necessary to have so many cells live in this world. Amoebas seem to get around with a single cell. But there are several big differences between a human and an amoeba. The first is that we are, well, big! What happens on the right side of an amoeba, whichever side that is, is not so far from the other side. But circumstances at the feet of a human may be far different than the circumstances at the head, several feet away.

For example, bare feet on asphalt have a significantly different experience than the head under a straw hat. This information must be communicated to all parts of the body so appropriate adjustments can be made in behavior. Likewise, moving a larger mass around requires more communication abilities than moving a very small single cell. This is one of the simple reasons for more cells: more and better communication.

Another difference between amoeba and humans is that they are aquatic. We require water, of course, but we do not live in water; we live on land, in the air, a far less viscous medium than water. But this means that things happen faster on land than in the water and our response time must be a magnitude faster than any amoeba. As humans we have learned, "speed kills". Response time must be much faster than an amoeba because a fall has far more serious consequences: further distances and greater velocities.

Oh yes, and then there are those pesky appendages. We have five you know. Two arms, two legs, and a head perched up on top of a stick. In fact, in this respect, we look a little like a starfish I suppose. But running multiple appendages, and keeping the correct foot down before picking the other one up, requires a good deal of internal communication, and more cells.

In fact, the cerebrum with its 20 billion cells is actually only a small fraction of the total number of cells in the nervous system. The current estimates are that the entire brain has about 100 billion cells (and that estimate usually doesn't include the peripheral neurons). The great majority of these cells operate below the conscious level, taking care of the internal monitoring and communication needed to monitor a rapidly changing environment, moving appendages and coordinating changes of position in a large structure.

So it appears that much of the brain is actually for sensing the environment and making appropriate automatic and conscious responses. So maybe the brain isn't for all that high powered chess, mathematics, language and music after all. Maybe the brain is just about getting to the grocery store and back.

Or, maybe these simple abilities to move about, sense changes in a fast changing world, and do complicated tasks has something to do with the unique creative intelligence found in humans. Just maybe our ability to do what we usually think of as thinking is actually dependent on our abilities to do a whole of bunch tasks that we usually don't think of as thinking at all.

THE EDUCATIONAL COMMONS

2011-03-17T19:43:00.000-07:00

The school child in 2011 varies considerably by age, gender, and location. But there are also some dramatic similarities for a large majority. These similarities have dramatic educational ramifications. What are some of these similarities?

1. The modern student spends more time under the influence of school than at home. Although the school day is generally only about six hours long, transportation, lunch hours, after school activities and social activities require far more time than the theoretical school day. School activities control how time is spent even after school hours with social, enrichment activities or homework. It is extremely difficult for families to have uninterrupted time together. Any extracurricular activities, including work, hobbies, religious worship, relaxation, or personal enrichment must be carefully planned and executed if they can exist at all.

2. The school year dictates family time and schedules far more than work, business, or personal preferences. The school year controls family vacations, choices of personal activities, leisure pursuits, family reunions, and out of school educational activities.

3. Most children live in an urban environment. This usually implies apartments or suburban homes. These environments are experientially and educationally lacking. The types of activities that can be engaged in are limited, the types of plant life experienced are restricted, the exposure to animal life is minimal, and space for experience, movement or building is limited. Further, these homes are often mechanically simple with little opportunity to experience building, repairing, tool use or problem solving.

4. Because of urban restrictions, urban children experience a poverty of possibilities. Their lives involve a great deal of television viewing and experience with electronic media such as telephones, texting, face book, web searching and so forth. Even their social experience is often limited to electronic interaction and close neighborhood associates.

5. The extended family is fragmented by time and distance. Families seldom live together, grandparents, aunts and uncles may be far away, and/or separated by divorce. In fact, the great majorities of school age children have experienced divorce and live with only a single working parent.

6. The technology and machinery available to present day children are complex and non-intuitive. If one opens the inside of a cell phone or i-pod, all one finds is a motherboard which tells them nothing about how it works. Machinery is seldom or never repaired and tools in the home generally consist of a hammer, screwdriver and pliers, if there are any.

7. Modern children have been protected into inactivity. They cannot hold a job until well past the age at which they are capable, and the types of jobs available are highly restricted and problematic. They cannot legally have small businesses such as shoe shining or lawn mowing in most communities without legal hassles for permits and restrictions.

8. Modern suburbia does not allow, or has land, for gardens or raising livestock on so they never experience growing food, canning food, making soap, budgeting, sewing or other physical skills and knowledge with ties to the real world.

Modern schools cannot possibly meet the needs for a more varied environment and set of experiences for all students. In fact, it isn’t clear than public education for everyone is even financially feasible, or culturally necessary. Obviously the above similarities among modern school children have far reaching and significant effects on the kind of education they receive. Yet public officials and school officials routinely focus on making schools more school like and ignoring the very real effect of the students environment. In fact, the school is the primary cause for the environmentally and educationally limited world of our children.

IS SCHOOL RATIONAL?

2011-02-25T05:47:00.000-08:00

Rational thought appears to be highly valued in western culture, in spite of the fact that it is often not very useful. Rational thought can help us decide between two cars being considered for purchase, but is not very useful when comparing two potential spouses.

When I want some good music I really don’t care about rational attributes. The decibel level, length, or even style will not give me the information I really want. What I really want to know is someone else’s subjective view; someone I know, who knows me, who shares my taste in music and cares about my tastes, someone whose judgment I trust.

Further, rational thought is very good at analyzing what has happened in the past, but is especially poor at predicting the future. There are several reasons for this. One is that rational thought really has no way of accounting for irrational events such as natural catastrophes and the actions of irrational people.

But an even bigger problem with rationality is that it is always based upon premises. If one begins with reliable premises, and if the deductive thought process is reliable, then correct decisions can be made. But we must always begin with a premise, and a premise cannot be derived from deduction, only from the real world.

This may seem to be an academic or theoretic distinction and of less significance. However, it is often very important. For example, there is a premise in the modern world that knowledge is good and the way we control our world. To a great degree this is true. But then the assumption is that school is the way we gain knowledge, and this is clearly not true.

Public education, as we know it, has only been in existence for about one hundred years. Much of our modern world was created by generations of men and women who were not products of our modern school system at all. So while knowledge is power, the means of gaining knowledge can be many, and “school” is not the only way it must be obtained. In fact, “school” may not even be a good way of obtaining knowledge.

This takes on a significant interest when we examine how much money and time we invest in our “schools”, with nothing more than the premise that this is the rational way to proceed. The degree to which public education dictates the life of the American family is truly astounding. And no one that I know of has asked the question whether we can afford to continue this method, or whether this method is truly cost effective in the end. That is all an accepted premise. And if the premise is wrong, the outcome can never be rational.

ON THE SURFACE OF THINGS

2011-02-15T18:46:00.000-08:00

If you lived on the surface of a rock in a pond and were only about 5 micrometers thick (a micrometer is 1/1000th of a millimeter), your life would be very different. You couldn't really fall down, since down is an extremely tiny distance. Up? Same thing. There would, of course, be forward and back, if you had some way to tell which was which. If you were quite round it might be more difficult. If you had an elongated shape I suppose you could have a right and left, but if you are more or less amorphous, those two concepts would be just a hazy notion of sideways to some degree or another.

Thus is the life of most amoeba, I suppose. Yet amoeba can do some amazing things. If you place amoeba in a container and place a food supply in any direction from them, they will all eventually turn and begin to move in that direction. If you place toxic chemicals in their environment, they will move away from the source of irritation. If they like the dark, they can find the deepest shadows.

This is even more amazing. Amoebas grow by simple fusion, dividing in two. If you take a population of any given species of amoeba from some pond and allow them to develop large numbers, and then mix them with another population of the same species but from a different pond, they will live happily together. However, if you then cut off their food supply; they will eventually eat members of the other population, but will starve to death before eating members of their own type. They can recognize their own progeny. I sometimes look at my grand kids and can't even do that.

You might wonder why it is important to know anything about amoeba. There are actually a lot of reasons, some involving disease, other involving their role in nature and the food chain. But the reason that I find most interesting is that they seem to be able to do a lot of the things I can do, but with only a single cell.

True, they can't do algebra, but then I'm not very good at that either. They don't talk audibly, but they do communicate very complicated information chemically. By secreting chemicals, they can tell other amoeba what they are doing and what they want the other amoeba to do. This is exactly what the cells of your brain do: secrete chemicals that communicate with other brain cells. That is exactly what the brain is composed of cells speaking a chemical language to one another.

So do amoebas think? I guess that all depends on what thinking is, and thinking may just not be what you think it is. And amoeba may prove to be more interesting than you think. But they seem to know forward, back, right and left. We live in a three dimensional world. I presume we came here to learn something about three dimensions. You and I also live on a surface and that is the only way that we know for life to exist. From the surface of our world to the surface of our neurons, learning takes place. Maybe that’s something to think about.

EVERYTHING TAKES PLACE

2011-02-04T20:55:00.001-08:00

Everything takes place.

Literally. Music takes place, not only on a stage, but on the back porch, and in the i-pod. It also takes place across the keyboard, the neck of the guitar, the valves of the trumpet and the keys of the clarinet.

Science takes place. In fact, in many ways, science is the study of place. Science begins with the study of a physical object. We turn it over and around and around. We examine it inside out. We take it apart. When we are done we distil our knowledge into an idea.

Art, on the other hand is the creation of the physical world. See, art begins with an idea. The artist examines the idea and turns it over in their mind. They examine the idea inside out and take the idea apart. When the artist is done he or she creates a physical manifestation of the object. It might be a sculpture or printed notes on a page, or sometimes just sound waves in the air. But it is now manifest in the physical world.

We came to this earth “trailing clouds of glory”. Many people believe they came from a pres-existence. It just seems right that it must be so, just as for many it seems right that we go elsewhere when we die. To those of the LDS faith we accept this a tenement of our beliefs.

Now what the pre-existence must have been like is not clear to us for many reasons. But it seems logical that it wasn’t a physical world. There would be no reason to leave a physical world to come to another physical world. Besides we are taught by modern revelation that it was a spirit world and that our purpose in coming here was to learn to live in a physical world, a place of our own. This is a necessary step in learning to make a physical world.

So we left a spiritual existence to acquire a physical body, a place. And here we are to learn how to occupy a place, manipulate a place, and create a place. And as I explained in the previous post that learning is the physical growth of physical items called cells: the place of learning.

So we come to this earth to have a place to learn and learning is the creation of new places. The learning place becomes the place of learning.

THE LEARNING PLACE

2011-01-24T12:45:00.001-08:00

The cerebrum, the outermost covering of the brain, is only about the thickness of six playing cards, and is in fact six layers of cells deep. Babies are born with approximately 20 billion neurons in their cerebrum alone, not counting the rest of the brain or the peripheral nervous system. When first born, each cerebral neuron has in the neighborhood of 1000 connections to other neurons. This is obviously an intricate web or maze of interconnected cells.

If we were too fast forward ten years and examine the same child’s brain, we would find that where a small handful of cells had been lost here and there, the child would still have the great majority of 20 billion cells. The biggest difference would be that the child would now have about ten thousand connections between each neuron. Can you even begin to imagine 20 billion neurons inter-connected with 10,000 neurons apiece?

So what has changed? The child has learned many things. They have learned intricate control of many body parts. They can walk, run, jump, ride a bike, tie their shoes, thread a needle, and cut along the dotted line. They have more or less mastered their native tongue, and least the verbal expression, and can write their names and name their letters. They can now count, read, may already be developing specific skills in athletics, music or art. They have learned.

I can only surmise that learning is a biological function. It is the growth of new cell extensions to communicate with yet other cells. Learning is a form of cell growth, and while the cells may seem very small, literally microscopic, to you and I, it is still take place. Learning takes place in time, and takes place in the space of the neural net. Learning takes place.

This is the year 2011. It has been a busy holiday and I am just getting back into business, if one can call it that. My first post of the New Year about two different types of knowledge. But what is knowledge anyway? Where does it come from? What does it consist of? I have been thinking about that ever since. This has been a favorite subject of mine for a long time, so I think I will devote my blogs in this new year to exploring what, where, why and how we learn. And since learning is apparently the connection of neurons to one another I will call this set of blogs “The Learning Place.” Check into this learning place occasionally.

TWO TYPES OF KNOWLEDGE

2011-01-03T20:17:00.001-08:00

KNOWLEDGE

There are two kinds of knowledge. Both have particular value in the appropriate sphere of influence.

There is the kind of broad overall knowledge where a person knows a lot about many fields, and then specializes in a specific subject. This is the kind of knowledge fostered by public education where every student is supposed to have a command of many aspects of the curriculum. Even in college, there is a core body of information that all people are to continue to pursue to another level.

If a student pursues school knowledge for a very long time they increasingly focus on a specific subject area, the college major, and become increasingly knowledgeable about a narrower field. Eventually this type of education produces people who are specialists in a subject matter field. They may become an “expert” in law, business, agriculture, or some aspect of science. Others develop specific technological skills such as in the various aspects of medicine.

There is another kind of knowledge. This knowledge is not necessarily subject based, but is a specialized knowledge attuned to local conditions and often specific activities. This is the knowledge of business. Not the knowledge of business administration as studied in the colleges, but the knowledge of a specific local business, in a specific community, meeting specific needs of people. When this kind of knowledge is pursued for a long time it builds a successful business enterprise.

Business kind of knowledge often looks very easy to those people who have the specialist kind of education. But many specialists fail when they try to operate a business. Business often looks like nothing more than buying, selling, and keeping accounts. But these activities are surprisingly complex.

It may seem like a business man with a gas station simply orders gas and sells it. But if the highway in front of his business is scheduled to be under construction he may need to decide how much less gas to purchase since the number of people on the road will decrease. Then he may have to decide how to augment his sales with some other service or product. The people in his community may favor certain vehicle types due to local terrain or conditions and that will also influence his decisions on products and services.

The scientist or engineer with cutting edge knowledge on fuel injection and combustion may know more than the business man about the internal efficiencies of the machinery. But the engineer lacks the local knowledge of customer and location. His advice on how much gas to purchase this month would be meaningless.

That is why the community is almost always smarter than the smartest individual. The business man needs the specialized products created by the subject matter specialists. But the subject matter specialist needs the intense local and product knowledge of the business man. The two sets of knowledge are often, but not always, exclusionary for some reason.

The natural example of this change has been in agriculture. At one time agriculture was a local business AND a science. But as it became more and more of a science, it became less and less of a business. Now agriculture is only a business in the large corporate sense. The universities are filled with various agriculture specialists that never farm. The farms are no longer local enterprises and the only way most continue to exist is through massive government subsidies. But that policy also has contributed to the demise of the farm as a business. It is now a welfare program.

Our culture has become overbalanced with subject matter specialists. That is not an accident. Not that it was planned perhaps, but it was certainly caused. The government policies of the past fifty years have encouraged the development of subject matter specialists and discouraged local business. This trend continues and will continue for many years to come, until the policies are reversed. If the policies are not reversed we will lose the ability to produce anything. But that has never before in history been economic vitality.

THE CREATIVE COMMUNITY

2010-11-13T22:00:00.001-08:00

While familiarity often comforts us, it also breeds complacency. In this way it is potentially dangerous. It leads us to approach the world in a cookie cutter way, reducing complex situations and relationships into the same shape and form. Familiarization destroys objects, clothes, spouses, and even, sometimes, fears. If our complex lives are lived unconsciously, then we might as well not have lived.

Art helps us recover the sensations of life and to explore new meanings in familiar objects, events and sounds. I use the term art here in an all-encompassing way, including music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry and any other medium which I may have overlooked. Art makes the familiar, unfamiliar. It forces us to look once again at things we have already seen, and see something new. It prolongs the experience of whatever the art explores. The art of de-familiarizing in a useful way may be one of the most important roles that art plays in a culture.

Much of my music has been about exploring familiar themes from new perspectives. From singing about the experience of being a Mormon in the Mormon Blues series, to exploring the nativity in Mary Christmas, I have tried to present the stories in new melodies and new points of view. In Lehi’s Blues I explored the traditional story from Lehi’s perspective, although the Book of Mormon mostly follows Nephi. In my new CD, coming out soon, I examine the first chapters of Genesis in melody and rhyme. I have entitled the new CD Immigrants: notes on Genesis.

But creativity does not lie in the person alone. It also is found in the culture in which that person resides. The flowering of art took place in Florence, Italy during the time of Michelangelo, not just because he was talented; there were many talented artists of the day. The huge outpouring of creativity was because of an alignment of economic, historical, and educational changes that occurred that allowed his (and others) talents to be recognized and rewarded. If creativity is not recognized and supported it will not influence others and might as well have never existed.

This is why it is so imperative that the Church, and others, encourage creativity. It is not something that is just found in people, it is within the culture also, or it is never found, and hence has no effect. Awards and incentives are critical to recognition and building creativity in a culture. This creativity is desperately needed by the world because without it we will experience again something like the dark ages.

THE DILEMMA OF MATERIALISM

2010-11-07T19:05:00.001-08:00

Many scientists would like us to believe that we are nothing but chemicals, and that our beliefs are nothing but chemical reactions taking place within the cells of our brains. But if we are to believe that, on what grounds do we believe that our belief in thought as chemical is true? If thought is nothing more than chemical reactions, then our thought that it is nothing more than a chemical reaction is due to nothing more than a chemical reaction.

In fact, what if we suppose something just the opposite? If we suppose that original man was made up of genetically variable individuals, some would be more competent and survive better than others. Presumably, those that adapted to the reality of the world were the ones who reproduced and survived. The genes of these individuals will become the dominant form among the population. That would mean that since the majority of people believe in the soul and a higher self, they must be the result of evolution. It is those who deny religion and postulate materialism that are in the minority and apparently have not yet evolved sufficiently.

Our thoughts, beliefs, and ideas of morality do not come from mere chemical reactions but from a higher soul. To believe anything else is questionable and has no basis in science.

LEORNIAN

2010-10-10T20:13:00.000-07:00

The moors seem endless, wild and featureless. The inland forests are pristine and, at times, impenetrable. But these men have known the featureless sea and they come from stock at home in the forests, and they plunge ahead in their explorations. In the midst of large expanses of endless trees, occasionally there were clearings. In these, the sunlight seemed more intense and striking to them in contrast to the expanses of dark and ancient forest. Their name for such a clearing was “lea”, derived from “leocht”, their word for light.

The plains in their sameness and the forests with their obstruction of sight presented challenges for these sea faring men. As they ranged farther from their beach establishment they sometimes became disoriented and finding their way was difficult. But there is an advantage to the land that the sea does not possess. Their passing leaves a mark on the land: a footprint, a broken branch, a scratch on a rock. By carefully following the tracks that they, or their fellow explorers, had left behind they could find their way again to distant places, or home.

Of course, as they followed one another’s footprints through the forests and meadows the trail soon became clear, then worn, and eventually a depressed path, almost a furrow, marked the way to travel. Their word for footprint, track and furrow was “leis”, obviously taken from “lea”, the word they used for the forest clearing, because a track provides information, similar to shedding light on a subject. They also had a special word that meant to follow the track, to benefit from the knowledge of those that came before, to memorize the way, to study out the way to go. They called the process “leornian”, or “lernen”, the word that became our modern word to “learn.”

As the paths became established, one who had traversed the way many times could describe them to someone who had not been there. Of course, the traveler wouldn’t describe every step, which would be too confusing. But the experienced traveler could tell the major landmarks, where to turn at branches in the trail, about how far to go before you would expect to see the next landmark. Eventually there came to be many paths in the land. Some were worn into deep furrows; some were barely visible except to the sharpest eyes. Some went to one place and some to another. But, of course, hearing about the trail isn’t the same as walking the trail. Knowing where you want to go is the most important step. In the end, if you really want to know, you have to go.

Isn’t it interesting that our concept of learning comes from ancient concepts of sunlit meadows, of tracking previous footprints, of following a trail, and listening to the tales of those who have traveled before us? Does it give us a better understanding of what we do when we learn about a new subject? Does it give us a better understanding of what we should be doing when we attempt to teach others?

SCIENCE AND IGNORANCE

2010-09-16T21:08:00.000-07:00

There are those who think that ignorance is a finite quantity and as we relentlessly pursue knowledge of the material world the amount of ignorance will dwindle to nothing. We sometimes hear talk of a great unifying theory of physics, the secret of the universe, or the secret of life. As soon as we have discovered these, all of our sorrows and troubles will be over.

I agree that there are kinds of ignorance that can be corrected. Beginning with compulsory public education, literacy has flourished in the United States and in some other parts of the world. While not exactly a numerically sophisticated people, Americans are at least pretty functional in math. It is hard to know if Americans know more about science than they did a hundred years ago. International testing does not show us in a good light. But the kinds of science tested in those exercises are mostly school science and often has little to do with the real world.

Every person has a school side of the brain that thinks that school is the only way to learn. But we all also have another side of the brain that knows perfectly well that it isn’t. Standardized tests are excellent at determining the mastery of facts, but not extremely useful in determining judgment, creativity, or even the ability to build things. These things often take the intuitive knowledge that comes from experience.

After the Second World War government policies encouraged the mechanization and enlargement of farms, displacing millions of people off the land and into cities. Today’s urban problems might be considered failed agriculture problems. The large mechanized farms of the twenty first century are probably unsustainable, and the generation of people who know how to farm is now disappearing. A very miniscule number of people live in truly rural environments today.

The significance of urbanization to science education is that modern children have very limited experience with the physical world. Children grow up in suburbs, on small city lots or apartments, with restrictive covenants against animals, a reduced sampling of vegetation, and little or no opportunity to experience catching frogs, crayfish, or snakes; or eat cattails, dandelions or skunk cabbage. Today’s children experience a poverty of machinery, tools and equipment. Such experiences develop an intuitive knowledge that is difficult to develop in any other way.

Instead of daily experiences with nature, physics, and machines, they must wait until an electronics unit in school for a brief, isolated exposure to circuits. The machinery itself is no longer intuitive. If they were to take apart their cell phone they would find nothing but an indecipherable mother board. Plumbing and electronics are mysteries to many.

Many people learn to speak, hear, read, and write to some degree. Most people learn to think rather clearly, when they take the trouble to think. But it should be obvious that not every child can score above average on standardized tests, but many people still insist this is the goal of education. Today’s children have an amazing sophistication about many things, but most have never caught a frog, butchered an animal, or operated or repaired complex machinery. Interestingly, even though many are high tech users, very few can write a computer program.

This lack of intuitive knowledge places a grave burden on the public schools. It may not bode well for the future of science and technology innovation in our country. However, it may also not be as grave as it sounds. Because almost every thinking person recognizes that the assumption that science can eventually reduce ignorance to nothing is simply wrong. There are problems that are unsolvable and questions that are unanswerable. We are not going to be free of mortality. It is the human condition to be fallible, partial, and to make mistakes. Science has been a big help in doing all of that well.

THE REALITY TEST

2010-08-30T07:29:00.001-07:00

TAXES ARE THEFT

2010-07-27T18:46:00.000-07:00

Taxes are theft. You may think that is extreme. Let me explain.

I have invested money in several things. I have a rental home, a 401K, a small amount of silver, and a separate retirement fund. Invested money is money set aside from immediate use, for a potential later return. If there is no measureable return, there is no investment. If there was a potential return but instead losses occur, it is a failed investment. If there is no measureable return it is consumption.

But humans or at least Americans are completely confused about investment and consumption. The government consistently tells us it wants to invest in the future of the country. Maybe it’s to build an interstate highway, or provide health care for all the people, or protect us from crime on the streets. But none of these activities will see a return to the government. It may make some businesses more profitable, and they may then pay more taxes, but it will be hard to tell what return on the investment the government makes.

In fact, it can be argued that the government is forbidden to receive a return. If there is some profit, such as if the government was to build a toll road, the government cannot keep those funds and return them to the taxpayer, nor would those funds be applied to next year’s taxes to lower them. There simply is no return. So by definition, government cannot invest. It can only consume. And you and I pay for the consumption but have no choice to opt out of the “investment”, and little say as to what the “investment” will be.

If I take your money as an investment in my business, you expect a profit, and probably built that profit into the transaction in the form of interest. If I fail to pay you back, with profit, it is called fraud or theft. I can be sued, fined, or even imprisoned. But the government takes our money with a promise of a return that it knows perfectly well it cannot deliver. But you cannot sue the government for your failed investment, and you couldn’t regain your money anyway, because it has already been used for consumption with no chance of return.

Taxes are theft!

RISK

2010-07-19T06:06:00.001-07:00

I don’t usually recommend books on my blog. But I read an interesting book over the weekend. It is called “Permission to Think” by David L. Buckner, a professor of economics at Columbia University. It is available from Digital Legend Press, NY. I’ll share with you one insight that is typical of the book. The following is taken from his first chapter.

He asks who takes the greater risk, an employee working for a multinational firm or one working for an entrepreneur with five customers? Most people, he says, guess the small businessman because he has so few customers. But when he presses them, they all realize that the employee has only one customer: his boss. Then he asks a series of questions.

Question: If a company does poorly, who is harmed?
Answer: both employee and the owner take the downside.

Question if the company does well, who benefits?
Answer: The entrepreneur or the company shareholders.

So the best the employee can do is break even, or lose. If the company does poorly he could lose his job. If the company does well, he might still lose his job, but he won’t profit. Only the shareholders will take the profit. So either way he runs a risk, he has little control over the variables, with no upside because he really only has one customer: his boss. His is a very risky position.

The entrepreneur has more than one customer, he has some control over all the variables of the company, and he has the potential to have the profit. Since he can control many of the variables he works to minimize the risk.

This conclusion seems logical but counter-intuitive, like a lot of the book. You might like to check it out. It just came out.

REWRITING HISTORY

2010-07-01T08:32:00.000-07:00

History is the story of the people. It becomes their identity. Their identity will determine to a great extent what they will choose to do. If you can change their perception of who they are, you can change who they will become.

If Satan can change the valiant story of the pre-existence so that we don't think of ourselves as a little lower than angels, but instead see ourselves as just another animal, he can convince us to act like animals. If we act like animals, he gets our souls. That's still his goal. To control everything and have all the glory.

Many atheistic scientists are trying to rewrite our story as animals. Many political groups want to rewrite the history of America. Even many Christian churches have tried to rewrite the story of Jesus Christ and the nature of God. History is "His Story". And as Orson Scott Card says, stories are everything.

Language is a powerful tool, under-appreciated by most people. So many words (in every language) have limited meanings. Music can mean something you make, something you hear, or a page of printed notes. Everyone wants freedom. But one person means freedom from want and economic constraints, and another person means freedom from coercion. And stories are told with language.

KNOWLEDGE IN THE BANK

2010-06-24T20:57:00.001-07:00

People think students hate homework because it is hard and they like video games because they are easy. But anyone who has ever done either knows that simply isn’t true. Video games are extremely difficult to play, and most adults become frustrated very quickly. Very few stick with them long enough to master them. There is nothing wrong with this. They have large responsibilities and have already mastered many skills in like. Adults generally already feel confident.

Homework is frequently dull, and almost never has anything to do with mastery of a challenge. In fact, school generally sees subjects not as a set of skills to use, but thinks of them as knowledge to be banked. Students are not taught algebra to use to solve problems. Instead they are taught algebra and told it will be useful to them someday when they grow up and get a job. Then they are moved into the next subject, perhaps trigonometry or calculus, so they can bank that knowledge for later use also.

This is because school is ruled by curriculum, not activity. No matter how many times we hear that children are not vessels to be filled, school invariably approaches students as if that is exactly what they are.

KNOW WHAT?

2010-06-05T13:13:00.001-07:00

Humans don't know everything. For example, I have no idea what echolocation information is like, or if it provides me with additional information about my world than I already have. I just don't have the sensory system for that. I also doubt that I understand what the world looks lie to a shark whose olfactory bulb may be nearly as large as my hand. The human olfactory bulb is about the size of your little finger. I surely don't know what's going on behind my back, or on the other side of the world. Yet we humans often have great confidence that we know things. This is in spite of the fact that nearly everyone I have spoken to admits there have been numerous times when what they thought they knew was wrong. We routinely think we know more than we do. In order to be wise, we need to become very astute in judging what we, and others, can know and do know.

This is because what we think we know turns out to be the basis for what we believe, and what we believe in turn influences what we do to try and solve our problems. Our ability to solve our problems will determine to a great extent how happy and successful we feel about our lives. Having confidence in what we know has a great influence on our lives.

So, how do we gain confidence in what we know? One way is to understand the basic ways there are of knowing what we know. Most of what we know we probably accept from someone in authority. This is how most of us arrive at some knowledge about the culture we live in. Parental values and ways of doing things are very powerful as well as the many years humans often spend in formal education, which is almost all authority based. When we Google information on the internet we are accepting the word of authority. When you read the newspaper or watch the news on television you are trusting authority. When you accept advice from your lawyer or physician you are "knowing" by authority. It is probably the easiest way for us to obtain answers to our questions.

The great weakness of this method is that we must decide how trustworthy the sender of the message is. In scholarly discourse we sometimes ask people to go through a peer review process to help us have confidence in what the authority says. But peer review does not guarantee that what is eventually said is true. There are innumerable instances where authorities have just been wrong. And for most of us who are not authorities may be pressured into accepting assertions made by fraudulent people through social pressure. For example we may feel compelled to accept statements as true from people:

in authority such as our boss or a committee chair,
people older than us,
people with special skills such as athletes or entertainers,
people who have honors such as degrees,
people who are stronger than we or are armed,
past leaders
people skilled in technical fields who possess unique jargon (doctors and lawyers),
official stationary
books
or even a person's dress and appearances.

But we should remember, "Cursed is he that putteth his trust in man, or maketh flesh his arm, or shall hearken unto the precepts of men, save their precepts shall be given by the power of the Holy Ghost (2 Nephi 28:31).

OMENS

2010-05-09T20:23:00.001-07:00

Last night I went for a walk late. Babe was tired and went to bed early, but I was restless and stayed up to read. Then I went walking in the dark. The air was cool and calm but there were floral scents everywhere. Every few steps there was the scent of a different tree, or flower bed, or lilac bush drifting across my path.

In the course of an hour I saw three falling stars, although I don’t believe this is the season for any major meteor showers. They were all in the same northeastern quadrant of the sky. Then in the middle of an hour long walk I heard a crow call. I’m sure I was not mistaken. I have spent a lifetime outdoors and I know the crow when I hear it. But of course, that was the most unusual of all as I do not ever recall hearing a crow call at night. Perhaps something disturbed it, I don’t know.

But all in all it was a strange night and I couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps these signs were some kind of omen about something. But I came home, slept well, and had no restless dreams, so perhaps it was just a strange night.

I don’t really believe in omens. But I can see why people might. There is something a little exciting about wondering if there might be such a thing. What if there are omens meant for mankind, and we are the one to receive them. Mankind’s greatest desire is to have his way made clear, and we so seldom have that blessing. Although, come to think of it, in stories omens are almost always a curse, not a blessing.

But I do believe that we can have our way made clear. I believe that through prayer, and learning to be still and listen, we can know God’s will for us. Knowing his will should make things crystal clear; much clearer than three falling stars and a calling crow. It’s the “being still and listening” part that seems to get me.

WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE TO A CHILD?

2010-03-28T19:00:00.001-07:00

What does it look like to a child? When we tell a toddler, “Don’t touch that, it’s hot!” what do they hear? I suspect they hear, “Hot? What’s hot? It must be important since it merits a command from the big people. But I’ve never heard of hot. Hmmmm. I wonder . . . .” We have almost guaranteed they will touch it.

What do children see as they experience our lives? In some recent discussions with my children, all born in the 1970’s, I discovered that their lives and experiences were very different than mine.
• During their youth and teenage years, one in three fetuses was aborted. This was in the news and common knowledge.
• During these years divorce became twice as common as the previous twenty years. All my children knew friends who experienced divorce.
• Forty four percent of the kids in the years 1970-1990 lived with complex families featuring stepfathers, stepmothers, stepbrothers or stepsisters.
• The number of working mothers went from twenty percent to just under fifty percent. Almost all their friends’ parents worked outside the home.
• Homicides of children doubled from the previous twenty years. They all knew of someone who had been murdered, usually not close friends, but someone.
• Teen suicide reached its highest level ever reported. They were all aware of someone who had committed suicide.
• Teens incarcerated in jail rose by a third. They all knew someone who had gone to jail.
• Birth control became common, the pill was in the news, and newspapers and television hailed it as a boon. The message they heard was, don’t have children. This made them question their own value.
• The cost of having children was a major theme in magazines and newspapers.

In short, my children saw that children were not very welcome in the world. What I experienced as just normal, busy life, they saw loaded with messages about their own value. I wonder what today’s children see.

THINGS WHICH ARE SEEN

2010-03-24T19:08:00.000-07:00

I am amazed and confused. I don’t suppose that it takes much to have either effect on me. But I just rediscovered a statement by the Apostle Paul, in a letter to the Hebrews (Hebrews 11:3), some two thousand years ago, that he understood that, “things which are seen are not made of things which do appear.”

Now he was talking about the creation of the earth specifically. What did he know about modern chemistry? A modern PhD. chemist couldn’t have described his field any better.

We always think that our modern understanding is somehow the correct understanding, and that all previous ideas were primitive and therefore incorrect. This is, of course, because we think that time is linear and must lead to something, and we assume that something must be progress. However, history shows that often enough time leads to decline, and what we think of as progress may be nothing more than recovery.

I don’t know what Paul understood about chemistry, atoms, and invisible things. We know that the concept of invisible, fundamental particles was suggested even earlier than Paul, as far back as the sixth century in India. Democritus, in ancient Greece, also wrote extensively about the idea. But such a statement is certainly interesting occurring as it does in a religious document.

But, setting the science aside, the statement is profound in other ways. Things which are seen all begin with an idea, and unseen action potential in the neurons. Accomplishments are all preceded by a dream, a possibility, or a mental construction. It is from these ethereal bits of mental energy that physical accomplishment arises. It may be well for each of us to keep in mind that, “things which are seen are not made of things which do appear.”

The following are the lyrics to a song of the same name which can be heard on the Mormon Blues CD at
www.onemanmormonbluesband.com

Things Which Are Seen

A long time ago, there were martyrs on the earth.
Men who died amidst gunshots and mirth.
Some were left to question their worth.
But for millions of others it kindled rebirth.
For things which are seen
Are seldom made
Of things which are seen.

In a land far away, decisions were made.
And the lives of millions were the price to be paid.
Some were left to mourn and cry.
Others were left to wonder why.
For things which are seen
Are seldom made
Of things which are seen.

In the beginning God created the earth,
And said it was good, surpassing all worth.
Some were left wondering how it was done.
Others were left worshiping the Son.
For things which are seen
Are seldom made
Of things which are seen.

There are tapestry and paintings hanging on the wall,
Poetry and music filling the halls,
Electrons and atoms flying through the air,
Life and death, everywhere.
For things which are seen
Are seldom made
Of things which are seen.

SOCIAL PATHOLOGY

2010-02-23T11:05:00.001-08:00

When my son was in high school I used to joke with him that he was pathologically social, and that was only one step away from being a sociopath. He thought that was funny, until he looked up the meaning of sociopath.

I used to marvel at his need for socializing and connection to other people. I'm told that all teens have this need, and my son has grown into a fine, upstanding, responsible man. I don't recall having this need in high school, or that my friends were especially driven. But memories are often not reliable about details and nuances.

In recent years, though, I have decided that maybe I was actually in the forefront of psychological theory. Maybe there is a condition that should be called "Pathologically Social". I assumed this diagnosis was my own little joke until I saw a massive experiment where the data shows unequivocally that this is an epidemic, even a pandemic.

The experiment is called Face Book. (A second controlled comparison called My Space now has confirming data). As everyone probably knows (better than I, since I have no face and no space) these are internet socializing sites where people tell about themselves, invite as many others as they can find to link to them, and post personal information, stories and pictures about themselves.

I have a charming wife, wonderful children, extended family members, a Ward (LDS Church), professional colleagues, students, and community friends. How many more people do I need to be connected to? Why would I need 397 more friends, many of who I haven't seen in years (and won't) and others whom I barely know, or even don’t know at all except through the internet?

So I have been wondering why these social networking sites are so popular. Do other people not have the same family and friends that I do? That is certainly possible. I am indeed fortunate. But are there several million such people? Maybe many users are just curious. Who’s out there? Who can I find? What are other people like? Maybe they see it as a sort of real life game with no end, just the experience.

Many people say that it useful for their business, and I know many musicians use it for exposure. However, try as I might, I can find no real data that these sites make anyone any money. In that case, is it just ego? I suppose ego could be another motive that makes people tell personal stories and show family pictures to the entire world. Maybe it’s another form of popularity contest, sort of like high school. Who has the most friends, whether you need them all or not, and whether you actually do anything with them or not. It’s just important to be seen to have a lot of friends, be popular.

There may be a lot of reasons to belong to an internet social site, some even good ones that escape me at the moment. But just maybe, our world is Pathologically Social, and it’s contagious.

DEFINITION

2010-02-09T13:43:00.000-08:00

I am studying, with my grandson, to get our amateur radio licenses. We have been listening to our instructor’s radio during class each week. Sometimes the signal is very clear and I can hear every word, but sometimes a transmission occurs where there is so much static that it is hard to tell one word from the next. It helps, of course, when the sender speaks slowly, carefully and uses good enunciation. When one can clearly hear the beginning or end of the words it is easier to tell sound from static.

With proper definition artists can sometimes suggest, with just a carefully planned line, whole images and even evoke feelings. That line clearly separates the background from the defining features of an idea. The concept of camouflage is to disrupt the recognized outline and pattern of the human body or face so others can’t see a clear definition. Without definition we cannot know where one thing ends and another thing begins.

When definition isn’t clear, as in the case of camouflage, one might not even know they aren’t seeing things that are there. A pressing modern example is what is the definition of human? The answer too many pressing questions today requires a clear definition. Yet for many people, a clear definition no longer exists, leaving them with only unclear ideas about whom they are and how they should behave.

Without a clear definition of ourselves we do not know how ambitious to be, when to restrain ourselves, what we should desire, when we have enough. In the developed world have an epidemic of not knowing when to stop. It is called economic growth, progress, fiscal preparedness, and other euphemisms that cover our covetousness. It causes us to confuse the scale of our human enterprises with the availability of natural resources. We make grand plans, and then borrow money to accomplish them, when the goal wasn’t even necessary to begin with.

For thousands of years humans defined themselves as a part of the “chain of beings”. That is, we occupied a position between the animals and the angels in the order of creation. Many have attacked that idea, but they have not provided an adequate alternative. It has simply been abandoned. But for those who believe they are children of God, they know what to desire, when to stop and clearly what is expected of them. They have a basis for decision. That’s the beginning of clarity.

WRITERS CONFERENCE

2010-02-03T10:41:00.000-08:00

I’ve signed up for what appears to be a great writers conference. I don't know how many of you are writers, or "wanna-be's" like me, but I thought I should let people know about this particular conference because it looks so cool.

It’s the 7th Annual LDStorymakers Writers Conference, April 23 and 24, at the Provo Marriot Hotel. Don’t let the name fool you-it’s not just for members of the LDS church. However, LDS people as writers have unique situations and difficulties and it is a great idea to gather with others who share that perspective. It’s got something for every writer though, including:
• Hands-on workshops with best selling author and writing instructor Dave Wolverton, who has taught such authors as Stephenie Meyer, Brandon Mull, and Bandon Sanderson.
• Over 50 classes on everything you can think of on the writing craft and industry, like how to catch an agents eye; how to market your book; how to write better openings, characters and dialogue; screenplays; writing magazine articles; and how to plot and outline your book.
• The chance to mingle with national and local agents, editors, publishers, and authors.
• Friday night entertainment provided by Shaun “Hammerhands” Barrowes, who you may recognize from season 7 of American Idol, where he made it to the top 48. Tickets for just the dinner and entertainment are also available.
• A first chapter contest with great prizes, including the chance to win a brand new netbook.

You can read what others have said about past conferences and see more about the details at their web site if you are interested. The two-day conference costs $165. But it offers a wider variety of classes and workshops than comparable conferences I have looked at that charge much more. Check it out at:

http://www.ldstorymakers.com/conference_2010.php

GEOMETRY AND UNIVERSAL ORDERLINESS

2010-01-24T07:47:00.000-08:00

Imagine a point; just a single dot of some kind like a period on a page. It has equal length and width and exists in just two dimensions. There isn’t much to say about a single point. It isn’t very complex. In fact, if one had some kind of scale of complexity, I suppose you would call a point “primary complexity”.

What would be more complex? I suppose if one added to the point’s length or width it would be considered more complex. Unless you added to both equally, in which case it would just become a bigger point. But if you added to the width, the point would become a line, and a line has characteristics that a point does not possess. It has a width, a length, a beginning and an end, and it has a midpoint. I suppose a point has these same characteristics, but they are not a clearly defined or useful. Lines might be called second order complexity

One quickly exhausts the discussion of a line. There are an infinite number of lines, based upon their length and width. But they seem rather the same. How could one add complexity to a line in an interesting way? I think the obvious thing is to add an angle: have the line change direction. Crooked lines would be more complex based upon an infinite number of angles being possible. This construction would now have two sides with variable characteristics and an infinite number of angles. I would call this third order of complexity.

We could continue adding lines arbitrarily, at different angles to the right and left, but this would quickly become a Hodge podge. If we always angle to the right (or left) and used different lengths of lines we would eventually arrive at a closed geometric figure, depending on how many angles, the degree of the angle, and the lengths of the lines. Therefore all geometric figures such as triangles and rectangles represent fourth degree of complexity.

We could, of course, not use angles but instead change direction using curved lines. Curved lines are more complex because they add the concepts of center, radius, diameter, circumference and so forth. However, they also always end in a closed circle or oval and some kind. Maybe curvature could be considered fifth degree complexity.

But by now about the only thing we could do to increase complexity with any of the above structures is add the third dimension; creating things with depth such as cubes, balls, spirals and such.

But from this point on things get harder and harder for me to visualize. For example, what would a spiral in the form of a spiral look like? I can see it in my mind, but I would have a hard time drawing it. I have made one by twisting a wire around a stick and then removing the resulting spiral and twisting it around the stick. I have even made a spiral, in a spiral, in a spiral. But when I take it off the stick it actually looks like a big fat blob of tangled wire. It doesn’t seem to have any order to it at all.

And that brings me to my POINT. When men see nothing but randomness, disorder and complexity, perhaps they have simply exhausted the limits of their ability to see the order that exists. Perhaps chaos and complex systems are orderly, but in a way that we cannot perceive. Even when we use special instrumentation to perceive our world we must still interpret the technology with the same set of senses. All of science is based upon our senses, and what we may perceive as disorder may simply be the limits of our perception.

WHERE WAS ADAM?

2010-01-17T17:23:00.001-08:00

Today in Sunday School I got to wondering, where Adam was when Eve was talking with Satan? Shouldn’t he have been around someplace? Maybe he was back at the office. Or maybe he was playing golf. I suppose he could have just been in the other room watching the game. Maybe it was hunting season. Anyway, he wasn’t there, was he?