From this NY Times report on the nearly two decades since President Bill Clinton and the Newt Gingrich revolution combined to "end welfare as we know it":
One family ruled out crime and rummaged through trash cans instead. The mother, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, could not get aid for herself but received $164 a month for her four American-born children until their time limit expired. Distraught at losing her only steady source of cash, she asked the children if they would be ashamed to help her collect discarded cans.
“I told her I would be embarrassed to steal from someone — not to pick up cans,” her teenage daughter said.
Weekly park patrols ensued, and recycling money replaced about half of the welfare check.
Despite having a father in prison and a mother who could be deported, the children exude earnest cheer. A daughter in the fifth grade won a contest at school for reading the most books. A son in the eighth grade is a student leader praised by his principal for tutoring younger students, using supplies he pays for himself.
“That’s just the kind of character he has,” the principal said.
After losing cash aid, the mother found a cleaning job but lost it when her boss discovered that she was in the United States illegally. The family still gets subsidized housing and $650 a month in food stamps.
The boy worries about homelessness, but his younger sisters, 9 and 10, see an upside in scavenging.
“It’s kind of fun because you get to look through the trash,” one of the girls said.
“And you get to play in the park a little while before you go home,” her sister agreed.
Something seriously wrong in these United States, where, as Warren Buffett noted,
there’s been class warfare going on for the last 20 years, and my class has won.
A few years ago, there was a little bit--just a tad--of an interest on campus to have discussions related to teaching and learning. I was all game for it, with my self-driven interest to be a better teacher in the classroom, and outside, and to make sure that students derive a whole lot of value from my classes.
A faculty colleague thought it was the worst idea ever. "We have PhDs and we know how to teach."
I had to make sure I maintained a straight face even as I kept walking away. What a level of ignorance, I thought to myself, in his conviction that people with doctorates know how to teach just because they have a PhD!
Over the years, I have had to learn how to ask questions and keep pushing students to think. Often I fail. Maybe because I am not sharp enough a teacher, or without the gravitas of a teacher, or perhaps most students don't care and merely go through the motions to earn a diploma, or perhaps it is all of the above.
But, I know that a reflective approach to teaching and learning, and reading essays about teaching, have made me a much better teacher now as compared to even five years ago. I joke with students that they ought to be happy they were not in the discussion section for which I was the teaching assistant two-plus decades ago at USC, or even when I started teaching at CalState.
Nobody ever taught me how to teach. I mean, nobody!
Now, I try my best to impress upon students the idea that in the modern world of free access to an infinite amount of written and video materials, a classroom is less and less about the instructor "lecturing" any words of wisdom, and is increasingly about students coming in to raise questions, test hypotheses, and leave with a sharper mind that gets better and better at critical thinking.
A good lecturer doesn’t simply reproduce information or summarize
knowledge to save students the effort and time of reading for
themselves.
A good lecturer convinces students that the theme is of first-rate
importance, arousing curiosity and driving them to investigate the
subject further on their own; he or she imparts genuinely new knowledge
or a new point of view not obtainable in textbooks, from the Internet,
or from the other obvious sources, and raises new problems upon old
material, which force students to think for themselves how to solve
them.
When done well, a good lecture is a useful and an effective mode of
instruction because it gets students to think in ways they have not
thought before, it fills in gaps in knowledge, and it cultivates
understanding by correcting wrong impressions
No doubt this is easier said than done, but if you want to learn how
to conduct a classroom discussion, study and imitate the mental agility
of Socrates in Plato’s dialogues; if you want to know how the mind
learns and retains knowledge, read and study Locke’s Of the Conduct of the Understanding and William James’s Talks to Teachers.
As I walk past any classroom where an instructor stands in front a semi-darkened room, and with a screen that has nothing but bulleted-text of a PowerPoint slide, I wonder what it might feel like to be a student in one of those classes--to sit there through the entire meeting, week after week, for an entire term. I shudder at the thought!
The Chronicle of Higher Education has launched a project on "Lecture Fail."
PowerPoint is boring. Student attention spans are short. Today many
facts pop up with a simple Google search. And plenty of free lectures by
the world's greatest professors can be found on YouTube.
Is it time for more widespread reform of college teaching?
What a simple but awesome image, eh! (source, via)
Speaking of global warming and icebergs, William Nordhaus continues to be annoyed, for all the right reasons, at the group that penned the WSJ op-ed and are now critiquing his comments. Nordhaus writes:
Climate scientists have moved way beyond global mean temperature in
looking for evidence of human-caused climate change. Scientists have
found several indicators that point to human-caused warming, including
melting of glaciers and ice sheets, ocean heat content, rainfall
patterns, atmospheric moisture, river runoff, stratospheric cooling, and
the extent of Arctic sea ice. Those who look only at global temperature
trends are like investigators using only eyewitness reports and
ignoring fingerprints and DNA-based evidence.
Nordhaus is clearly pissed, right? He makes a wonderful point about how rational people ought to think about uncertainties:
We sometimes hear that we cannot act because scientists are not
really 100 percent sure that global warming will occur. But a good
scientist is never 100 percent sure of any empirical phenomenon. This
point was captured by the following comment on scientific uncertainty by
the distinguished physicist Richard Feynman:
Some years
ago I had a conversation with a layman about flying saucers…. I said, “I
don’t think there are flying saucers.” So my antagonist said, “Is it
impossible that there are flying saucers? Can you prove that it’s
impossible?”
“No,” I said, “I can’t prove it’s
impossible. It’s just very unlikely.” At that he said, “You are very
unscientific. If you can’t prove it impossible, then how can you say
that it’s unlikely?” But that is the way that is scientific. It is
scientific only to say what is more likely and what less likely, and not
to be proving all the time the possible and impossible.j
This story is a reminder about how good science proceeds. It is possible that the world will not warm over the coming years. It is possible that the impacts will be small. It is possible
that a miraculous technology will be invented that can suck CO2 out of
the atmosphere at low cost. But in view of the evidence we now have, it
would be foolish to bet on these outcomes just because they are
possible.
Geraldo Rivera set off an inferno with his comments, stupid as they always are whenever he opens his mouth, that wearing a hoodie is to invite trouble.
Cartoonists quickly reminded us about the hoodie-wearing people of a few decades ago who made sure that blacks knew well where they belonged in the US.
And then today, I see the following photo in the news:
Eerie it looked. But, guess what? The photo of hoodie-wearing crowd is from across the Atlantic:
Penitents from the Jesus Yacente brotherhood wait to take part in a procession in Zamora, Spain, April 5, 2012.
So, curiosity took over: what is the Jesus Yacente brotherhood and why this hood? Wikipedia, sadly, is of no help! And this one is all Spanish :(
Someone must explain why people escape from communist countries to ones ruled by capitalist pigs. Why is there no traffic in the opposite direction if what Arundhati says is true?
I am no maniacal supporter of the market system--the highly unequal distribution of incomes and wealth is, for instance, something that worries me a lot. I agree with her on Anna Hazare too. But, ahem, the lady doth protest too much!
There is always a small little feeling of panic when I am away from the US and this is profound evidence to me that America has truly become my home. Even though, I came here as a foreigner a quarter of a century ago. As I noted in this post, which was during my hundred days in India, I acutely felt being foreign in a land that was simultaneously familiar and yet strange. More evidence that the US is what my heart also recognizes as home.
This two-year old piece in The Economist carries with it a warning, presumably for people like me:
however well you carry it off, however much you enjoy it, there is a
dangerous undertow to being a foreigner, even a genteel foreigner.
Somewhere at the back of it all lurks homesickness, which metastasises
over time into its incurable variant, nostalgia. And nostalgia has much
in common with the Freudian idea of melancholia—a continuing,
debilitating sense of loss, somewhere within which lies anger at the
thing lost. It is not the possibility of returning home which feeds
nostalgia, but the impossibility of it.
I can't remember feeling any homesickness. But, there have been plenty of moments over the two and a half decades when I have been hit with nostalgia. The high school reunion went a long way towards taking care of that nostalgia. Interestingly enough, the wonderful experiences at the reunion and after seem to have wiped out the yearning that I always had for my old school and the town. Does that mean the end of nostalgia, at least with respect to these?
Life now is so amazingly different now from years past, in terms of how easy it has become to move to new places and make ourselves at home there. If I was a foreigner visiting India, where I was born and raised, then consider my classmate, "KK," who was also at the reunion: India-born, he came to the US like many of us did, for graduate schooling. He earned his doctorate, started working here, became a citizen, and now has been in China for more than six years as an "expat." So, is "KK" an "Indian expat" or an "American expat" is a question that we would never have had the opportunity to ask even a couple of decades ago!
As the Economist concludes:
Life is full of choices, and to choose one thing is to forgo another.
The dilemma of foreignness comes down to one of liberty versus
fraternity—the pleasures of freedom versus the pleasures of belonging.
The homebody chooses the pleasures of belonging. The foreigner chooses
the pleasures of freedom, and the pains that go with them.
Sometimes, I do wonder if atheists like me think about the "big questions" a lot more than do most religious folks! And even when I am not, well, I run into sentences like this one, which then triggers that thinking:
In a universe where you’re no longer expecting God to provide the order,
we are forced to ask: where is the order? Where’s the sense to it all
and what are we then a part of?
Or, as we often tend to tell students, it is all about making order out of the chaos out there.
When did we first start thinking that there might be extraterrestrial
life? And my reply is: When did we start thinking that there might not
be? The sky has always been very busy, and the default position has
always been that it’s populated. That doesn’t mean anything but that
ideological substrate has always been there.
Only 200 years ago, we thought there could be people on the moon.
Then, we got a good look at the moon and saw, well there’s no Lunarians
there. And then there were the Martians — Lowell and all that
— and it wasn’t very long ago, less than 100 years ago. As our range of
vision keeps on moving outwards, the aliens keep on moving outwards
too. And that’s one way you can look at SETI; it’s the logical
trajectory of an idea that’s always been around.
And, of course, you can look at it within a religious framework. Our
20th century western culture includes Christianity and beings populating
the Heavens. But anthropologically speaking, SETI also could be seen as
being a reaction to the collapse of traditional religion.
For all I know, we are being observed by alien anthropologists wondering what the heck we are doing here!
Denning makes wonderful observations throughout the interview. The one that made me pause and think for a while was this:
NASA renamed
the Mars Pathfinder lander the “Carl Sagan Memorial Station.” Any
archeologist or anthropologist will tell you that one of the most
effective ways of colonizing territory, at least ideologically, is
through your dead.
I hadn't thought about it this way .... really? Seriously? Calling it the “Carl Sagan Memorial Station” has such implications? Are, or we kind of sort of stretching the argument?
I wish we would make contact with aliens within my lifetime. Will be awesome. Though, Stephen Hawking thinks not, and Denning has something to say about Hawking's view. Read the piece to find out what she has to say :)
The first week of classes after a term off. What better a reward than getting to see a fantastic rainbow on my way back from work! In fact, it was a double rainbow, with the second--outer--rainbow a lot hazier than the inner set of colors.
I pulled over to the side of the road with the hazard lights on. The inner colors got brighter and brighter as the clouds in the background darkened. I was not worried that eventually I would have to drive through whatever those dark clouds would dump on me.
The image my camera captured does not do justice to the phenomenal arcs across the sky.
After perhaps three or four minutes of rainbow gazing, I resumed the drive back home. A few miles later, the road was all white from the hail, which perhaps I missed out on when they fell from the sky because I was so transfixed by the colors. And then it was a slow drive for about four miles through some pouring and blinding rain. At the end of it all, it was blue skies and a dry road surface.
From Slate, which features a collection of photographs of a mass wedding of child-brides:
In rural India, young girls of the Saraniya community are often forced to turn to
prostitution to support their families—unless they’re married first.
These photos document a mass wedding of child brides in the village of
Vadia, organized by an NGO in order to save the girls from a life in the
flesh trade
Wedding organizers claim the couple won't marry until she turns 18 and
he 21, the legal age to marry in India, but it’s more likely they'll tie
the knot in less than two years, a more typical length of engagement in
rural India.
What a terrible choice for the kids!
Oh, child-"brides" because it is not always that the groom is a child--girls are kids, while the grooms can be much older!
The only good thing here: thankfully, child marriages are very, very rare anymore in India.
Honestly, I have no idea how a black feels day in and day out ... I can only imagine that it ain't always fun.
On a very, very, small scale, the only way I think I can even begin to understand how the skin color and other differences could be viewed as off the norm is whenever I return to the US.
It has been a different country the past few years, ever since Homeland Security became a monster organization. The immigration officers ask a whole lot of questions when I am at their counters for processing. Almost always, I don't get a green light at customs and am directed to go through additional checks. When the lighter skinned people ahead of me and behind me don't face this, which is a consistent pattern, then I am left with a working hypothesis that my appearance and accent and everything else is viewed with suspicion.
The conversation with the immigration official, during the latest instance, went something like this:
"How ya doin?"
"Fine, thanks. How are you?"
"Good. What countries did you visit while you were away?"
"Only India"
"How long were you gone?"
"For about three months"
"What did you do in India for three months?"
"Meeting with friends and family. And a whole lot of traveling"
"What work do you do for you to take off for three months?"
"I teach at a university"
"Where do you teach?"
"In Oregon?"
"What subject do you teach?"
"Economic geography"
"Where is your Indian visa?"
"Oh, sorry, it is in my passport that expired. This is a new passport. Here it is"
"Welcome home"
"Thanks"
In the years before Homeland Security, it was merely a quick scan of the documents with a friendly attitude and a parting "welcome home." Now, it is often the case that I have to deal with so many questions, while it always seems to be the old-style quick processing for the lighter skinned travelers.
And then off to the customs. I hand the customs declaration form, and the officer does not wave me through. Instead, I have to go through another process. After scanning my suitcases and carry-on, the officer there asked me, "what do you have in here?"
I was so tempted to tell him that after he scanned it, he ought to have known what was in! But, no point being smarty-mouthed in these contexts, right? So, I politely said, "clothes, books, and gifts."
"What kind of gifts?"
I hid my pissed-off feeling and replied "wood carvings, brass items"
He flagged me through and I was off wondering what the point was!
So, ... buried in the news report about a rise in consumer spending is this:
Most consumers spent more of what they earned and
saved less. The saving rate dropped to 3.7% of after-tax income in
February. That was the lowest level since August 2009. It had averaged
4.7% for all of last year.
Americans are also
taking on more debt. Consumer borrowing increased from November through
January by the most in a decade for a three-month stretch. Yet the
increases were driven almost entirely by auto and student loans. Credit
card debt decreased in January and remains well below pre-recession
levels.
Dales cautioned that at some point,
consumers won't be able to draw further on their savings. Further job
gains are needed to boost consumers' income.
Hmmm ... job growth has stagnated, and consumers are taking on more debt. Isn't this a cause for worry, rather than for the stock market to go up? What the heck am I missing in this picture?
There is at least the old reliable Robert Reich who makes sure that I am not coming across as an idiot:
Fed Chief Ben Bernanke – who doesn’t have to face voters on Election
Day – says the U.S. economy needs to grow faster if it’s to produce
enough jobs to bring down unemployment. But he leaves out the critical
point.
We can’t possibly grow faster if the vast majority of Americans, who
are still losing ground, don’t have the money to buy more of the things
American workers produce. There’s no way spending by the richest 10
percent – the only ones gaining ground – will be enough to get the
economy out of first gear.
Even more worrisome is this: the increase in student loan debt. Students are borrowing more and more hoping that a college degree will transform into well-paying jobs. But, that, too, is a mirage on many fronts for most students! The trillion-dollar debt means:
as more people go to college and assume bigger loans for
education, they may take longer than previous generations to hit key
milestones such as buying a house or getting married, U.S. officials and
economists say. It could take longer for heavily indebted graduates to
save money for a down payment on a home, or it could be harder for them
to qualify for mortgages.
Rohit Chopra, student-loan ombudsman for the Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau, said student debt could ultimately slow the recovery
of the housing market. "First-time home-buyers are a substantial part of
the housing market," Mr. Chopra said in a speech at the banking
conference in Austin. "Instead of saving for a down payment, these
borrowers are sending big payments every month."
Student debt is a burden not just for recent college graduates in
their 20s but also parents, who often co-sign their children's student
loans, as well as midcareer professionals who opted to go back to school
during the sluggish recovery.
Meanwhile, we are well on our way to think of debt as from the cradle to the grave:
new research shows a trend that’s even more troubling than Americans
going into hock to pay for a college degree: Apparently, some parents
are taking out five-figure loans to finance private school tuition for
K-12 kids. Yes, student loans even to pay for kindergarten.
