Once upon a time, I was dining out with some good friends. They brought along a woman I didn’t know—let’s call her “Mensa”—presumably to try and set us up. What ensued was a perfect example of why I hate setups.

The topic turned to birthdays on holidays, or shared with celebrities and historical figures. I mentioned that I share a birthday with Boris Karloff, Billy the Kid, and R.L. Burnside (“All I did was shoot him in the head. Him dyin’ was between him and the Lord.”), and that last year, my birthday was on Thanksgiving.

Mensa asked, “What about this year?”

I replied, deadpan, “It’s on Thanksgiving this year, too.”

With, like, total seriousness, she said, “No it isn’t.”

Me: “Sure it is.”

Her: “It can’t be.”

Animals instinctively know that showing signs of weakness will get you abandoned or eaten. It’s for the best, as far as the species as a whole is concerned. We supposedly enlightened humans have to settle for mocking those worthy of natural deselection. My friends saw the humor, and saw that Mensa didn’t, and did not intervene.

Me: “My birthday falls on Thanksgiving every single year.”

Her: “Not every year.”

Me: “Well, maybe not every year, but every year since I’ve been alive.”

Her: “That can’t be! It’s always on a Thursday—“

Me: “So’s my birthday.”

Her: “But it changes every year. Are you stupid?”

Me: “I’m not going to argue with someone who has the audacity to claim she knows more about my birthday than I do.”

Her: “Do you have any idea what you’re talking about?”

Me: “All I know is, every Thanksgiving I’m a year older and I eat cake.”

Her: “This is stupid.”

That made my night. Whatever my friends had hoped to accomplish by bringing her along had safely been thwarted. We laughed about it later.

Should I tell people when I’m kidding? Or do they deserve to think otherwise?

…

It occurs to me that there’s nothing special about turning 31, or 32 for that matter. In some cultures, 33 is a big deal because that’s how old Christ was when he was crucified. So this year, instead of turning 31, I’m going to turn 29 again. That way, I can heighten the drama next year when I turn “30,” and then the following year I’ll just turn 33. I’ll turn 33 again the year after that, and then turn 35. I’ll hold at 35 for the next four years, then turn 39 so I can have the big buildup to 40. None of this Jack Benny nonsense where I’m 39 for the rest of my life—that’s just silly.

…

This Thanksgiving, I am especially grateful:

…for my job. When people complain about being teachers—when they complain about the conditions, or the stress, or the district, or the exhaustion, or when they poor-mouth–I think back to some of my other jobs, and am contented. I will take my job at my school over most jobs that are out there.

…for my closest friends. The father of one of those closest friends used to say, “If you can count your closest friends on more than one hand, you’re lucky. If you count them on more than two, you’re lying.” I’m lucky. Looking back at college, I was lucky to get assigned to overflow honors housing. I wouldn’t have met my best friends otherwise.

…that I am me. I can’t imagine the horror of being anyone else. It chills me.

…that radical eco-nuts are sterilizing themselves. For this, O Lord, I thank thee.

…that I met most of my grandparents’ brothers and sisters before they died. One more died earlier this week, and is reunited with her husband who died in France in WWII.

…for my health. Avoiding the doctor has worked out pretty darned well for me, for a good long time.

…that the red pen I accidentally left in my shirt pocket didn’t break, open or melt in the washing machine or the dryer.

3 Responses to “On turning 29.”

1. gatorbob Says:
   November 26th, 2007 at 10:12 PMBest returns on your birthday, my friend. Interestingly, my better half turns 35 every year and somehow she pulls it off, whereas I look more and more like my old man every year. By the way, I’ve had dates like that. My favorite was the woman who compared me to Alexander Haig when I confessed that I preferred reading non-fiction books.

   Cheers!

2. VDV Says:
   November 27th, 2007 at 6:13 PMAl Haig? You?

   I won’t mention to KC that you’ve caught on.

3. Somesense91 Says:
   December 1st, 2007 at 5:09 PMWow, that is a funny story. She sounds like a keeper!

This year I was selected to represent my department at a six-day training seminar for a program that we’ll call “Not A Thing,” or “N.A.T.” This was not exactly an honor, because I loathe having to miss school days. The kids take advantage of the substitute, I lose a day of instructional time because I can’t trust a sub to teach the curriculum, and usually, no matter how idiot-proof I make the instructions, the sub manages to screw them up. These training days simply put me further behind my schedule.

So I try to look on the bright side of these affairs: it’s a change of pace, I’m getting paid to get away from my little cherubs for some time, and hopefully I can get some good ideas out of it.

The first two days of the training were in September; the next two days were this past week. I’d say that we’ve spent half the time so far discussing the need to get other teachers at the schools to “buy into” the NAT program, about a quarter of the time on useless miscellany, and about a quarter of the time on interesting ideas and suggestions. One day’s worth of useful stuff, three days’ worth of crap, and I’m four days off the pace I set for my curriculum.

…

Back in September, the presenters stated that you should not let students fail, that you should never give zeroes, that you should never stop trying to get kids to learn.

It’s a beautiful sentiment, but then the Dismal Science comes into play. The more time and effort you spend on trying to teach Student X, the less time and effort you have remaining to teach Students Y and Z.

I asked the presenters, “What do you do when you come across a kid who, regardless of ability, refuses to do the work, absolutely refuses to learn?”

The response was some variation on, “That’s a good question. I don’t have the answer.”

Thanks.

…

One of the presenters, in trying to convince people of the need to adopt the NAT, paraphrased a professor from Harvard. This is not an exact quote, but it’s close:

If I have to show you any more than one piece of evidence that this program works, then you’re just making an excuse to avoid it.

My immediate reaction was, “If that professor was in the law department, he should be stripped of his tenure.” I wrote it down as quickly as I could, but it was so absurd on its face that I thought I must have misheard him—but the next day, the other presenter referred to that same Harvard professor:

Asking for more than one piece of evidence means you’re looking for an excuse.

Try that “logic” in a court of law, or a physics lab. If the first piece of evidence or data supports a claim and the next ten pieces do not, was I merely “looking for excuses” to reject the claim? Or was it reasonable to believe that the claim might be no good?

This is not to say that the NAT program is bad—but it suddenly reeked of hucksterism. They were trying to pitch a program without letting anyone look behind the curtains.

…

One of the presenters examined problems with the structures of various academic grading systems. His biggest complaint about the traditional grading system was that a grade of zero could destroy a student’s chances of passing a course—and because the student knows that, it destroys his incentive to perform better.

He ignored the fact that the very difficulty of recovering from a zero also provides an incentive to avoid zeros in the first place.

He then went on to attack the idea of using averages. He complained that the most commonly used grading systems do not have equal intervals—for example, using intervals of 10 percent for A’s, B’s, C’s and D’s leaves a 60 percent interval for F’s (i.e., a grade below 60% is an F). He went so far as to call it “ridiculous,” “absurd,” and claim that “mathematicians know this is invalid and unreliable.”

Well… no. It’s not invalid and it’s not unreliable. It’s a simple statement that you want your students to learn at least 60% of what’s taught to them.

He complained that averages are used as measures of performance “only in education,” and that nobody else “in the real world” used them. He said to imagine that that in football, you had to run four consecutive plays from a particular line of scrimmage, and at the end of the four plays you could advance the line of screimmage by the average gain. For instance, if you started from your 20 and ran plays of 8, 10, 12, and 14 yards, you’d take the average gain (11 yards) and begin the next series from the 31 yard line.

Football coaches would call you crazy, he claimed, because it’s absurd to use averages! Which is absolutely true, unless you’re looking at completion percentages, rushing averages, kicking averages, punting averages, receiving averages, average yards-after-catch…

Can anyone provide examples of using averages “in the real world”?

…

His solution to the problem of averages was to use a total points system with a twist. For instance, if there were 1000 points to be gained in a quarter and there are five possible letter grades, you divide 1000 by five to get 200 point grade intervals:

A: 800 to 1000 points
B: 600 to 799 points
C: 400 to 599 points
D: 200 to 399 points
F: 0 to 199 points

So a student earning 500 of a possible 1000 points would earn a C. Think about that: 50% is a C.

His justification: “If I’m taking a class in Chinese, and I get a 50%, that means I learned 50% more than what I knew at the beginning. How can you call that ‘failure’?”

Now, never mind that he’s still, in a sense, using averages, except that in his system you can average 20% and still pass the course. The first flaw in his reasoning is that if he knew nothing at the beginning, then “learning 50% more” would mean he still knew nothing. Half of zip is still zip.

The other flaw in his reasoning: that 50% figure doesn’t mean he learned “50% more than before,” it means he learned 50% of what he should have learned. And maybe in his courses, he’s willing to pass kids who learn less than half of the material. That’s his business.

If there are better grading systems out there, systems that are better at encouraging student learning, I’m all for them and I want to hear about them. But to attack the concept of using averages, and to attack 60% (or 65%, or 68%) as a minimum passing grade is a red herring. It leads us nowhere. Worse, it’s not like he was leading us toward a solution—we have to find those on our own—so it was pure, meaningless nonsense.

I have two more days of this to look forward to in January.

7 Responses to ““Only in education.””

1. Gerton Says:
   November 15th, 2007 at 8:17 PM: A substitute teacher deserves so much more credit than what they receive currently (if any). For the simple fact that anyone who can be fairly dim, unskilled, and untrained and still maintain a sense of order in the classro… actually nevermind.But as far as the grading system goes, its a great idea… Just imagine if all the teachers at Paxon adopted it, most of the students could finally pass those mentaly challenging courses (@Paxon *gasp*). Notice the use of the word “most”, you know you will still have the few handfull of students that just …don’t try.

   On a serious note when dealing with “0″s and when/how to give them out, the teachers discretion should be used on a student to student basis. If you see a student struggling but he turns in his homework daily and participates in class fully (adding to the overall educational value of the lectures), the student should receive more points (or have less deducted) when submitting a “subjective” assignment.(not turning in work always = “0″) This of course will instill hope into the sad hearts of that handfull students…

2. Andrew Jackson Says:
   November 16th, 2007 at 3:42 PM: I really hope all public high schools adopt this NAT program. Kids these days are getting smarter and smarter. (My baby nephew has already developed a sense of sarcasm.) I don’t want to have my steady job in 10 years taken away from me by some young, brainy product of a good public education system. I say, let my generation be the last smart one!
3. BluePairJeans Says:
   November 19th, 2007 at 6:07 PM: Personally I believe kids these days have it too easy as it is. I’m appalled by some of the students we unleash on society with high school diplomas. I remember a time when an A was 94 of higher and below 69 was an F.
   The The Florida Department of Education, with all of its infinite wisdom, has had quite an effect on our rising youth. Teachers nowadays seem forced to teach for the sole purpose of passing FCAT and similar tests, while little or no real life instruction is given.
   So basically what I’m getting at is: change is needed, but this guy’s ideas are plain lunacy…
4. BluePairJeans Says:
   November 19th, 2007 at 6:08 PM: hmmm, it doesn’t appear as if my last post actually posted…
5. VDV Says:
   November 19th, 2007 at 8:25 PM: I have to approve the posts before they are posted, to ensure as much anonymity and as little profanity as possible.
6. xion09 Says:
   November 20th, 2007 at 8:05 PM: Well as BluePairJeans says kids do have it easier now a days compared to past generations but shouldn’t that be thought of as a good thing like progress towards a better society. Just because todays kids don’t have to worry about war and poverty as much as past generations doesn’t mean their going to turn out as pompous idiots.
7. Que si Says:
   December 5th, 2007 at 11:52 PM: I don’t really have much to say but since everyone else was posting I decided to conform. Maybe now people will like me…

I woke up alive, which is always good.

I remembered that Clemson played yesterday but I had no idea what the score was. Clemson 70, Central Michigan 14. That’s the most points I can remember Clemson scoring since the year they won the national championship.

I had lunch with my sister, which was good, but it was at a restaurant with very slow service and the food came out cold, which was bad, but at least I know never to go there again, which is good.

I bought two wide soup bowls and a paperback copy of Ulysses, which was good. I mean the buying part, not the book. I haven’t finished the book yet.

I had two games scheduled for today. I decided that I felt like scoring five goals. It doesn’t seem that you can decide to feel a certain way, but I believe you can. And I believe you’d better do so in the case of athletic competition, or academic assessment, or in plently of other areas of performance.

We won the first game 8-0, I scored the first (and therefore game-winning) goal, and scored a left-footed volley near the end of the game. I played the last five minutes in goal—the first time I’ve played there in any sort of even remotely official game—and made a totally unnecessary save. It was awesome. We won the second game 4-1. We were tied at one, and then I scored a hat trick. Five goals and the game-winners in both games, which was good.

The cutest of my female teammates got a strawberry on her rear end from a slide tackle last week. Evidently it’s healing. That was good.

Then I got in the car to drive home, and the first words over the radio were “Chicago Bears 19, Philadelphia Eagles 16.” All four of my teams won this weekend. That was good.

Good night.

It’s been a while since my last entry. You can stop shivering with anticipation. Here goes:

I received a large bonus in my last paycheck. I don’t know exactly why I got it. None of my coworkers can explain how the district awarded the bonuses, and those who have called the district to find out can’t get a straight answer. I think it might have to do with the fact that my students earned the highest pass rates on the AP US Government and AP Microeconomics exams last spring, but who knows? Maybe the district used their equivalent of the grading die.

…

My brother is getting married in about a year, and said I was his best man—but I didn’t hear the “his” and responded, “Ever? Probably.” Anyhow, the wedding’s going to be on a beach up in New Jersey, and the wedding party will be barefoot. Sounds nice, right? Well, think about those conditions:

New Jersey.

Beach.

Barefoot.

Any two of those conditions would be perfectly acceptable for a joyous wedding. But all three? There’ll be all sorts of ungodly medical waste washing ashore from New York. Hopefully they’ll rake the beach a day or two ahead of time, to get the hypodermics out of the sand.

…

The Bears’ offense has been atrocious, the special teams have been mediocre, and the defense has held on as long as it can—but there’s only so much you can do when the offense keeps going three-and-out or turning it over. The good news is that with the win against Green Bay, they’re halfway to a successful season.

…the Cubs’ season ended just a little bit later than usual.

…

My family dined at a new-ish restaurant called Tommy’s Pizza. It’s a New York-style Italian restaurant near Tinseltown. The pizza is good, though I’m not sure it’s sloppy enough to qualify as true New York-style. The caprese salad is very good (though I’ve never had any other to compare).

The lasagna was okay, but there was a very odd flavor in it that I couldn’t quite place. It was distracting enough that I couldn’t enjoy myself. It was like bland cinnamon—we thought it might be fennel from the sausage. We asked the chef what was in the lasagna. He responded, “If I told you… I’d have to kill you!”—which was hilarious! I’d never heard that one before, so to show him how funny he was, we cut off his thumbs and put his head in a vise. He still didn’t know what the flavor was.

Maybe it was anise.

…

I heard a gentleman on a political show suggest that a particular party should drop its stance on abortion in order to attract more people to that party—meaning the people who would vote for that party but for that one issue.

The problem with that logic is that if there are voters who refuse to vote for a party because of its stance on abortion, there are probably just as many voters who vote for that party only because of its stance on abortion. The same would go for the other party. I don’t think either party would gain much from changing its position on such a core issue.

…

The President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, spoke at Columbia University a while back. Many were upset that Columbia gave him a forum, especially after one of Columbia’s deans “Godwinned” the situation by saying that they’d have allowed Hitler to speak. The little man marched into the heart of the Great Satan, New York City itself, gave a speech, denied the Holocaust, asked the usual nutjob questions about who was really behind 9/11… and then claimed that Iran did not have homosexuals.

Think about that, think about what you’d expect the political leader of Iran’s government to say: perhaps a denial of the fact that the Iranian government persecutes homosexuals, or perhaps a condemnation of homosexuality as an abomination before Allah. Nope. He flatly claimed that Iran simply did not have homosexuals: “In Iran, we do not have this phenomenon. I do not know who has told you that we have it.”

The audience burst out in laughter, right in his face. Simple laughter made this Holocaust denier, this tool of the Supreme Leader, this man attempting to defeat the “Great Satan” in Iraq, this thug into a joke.

Sometimes history is made by accident as much as intention. That round of laughter may end up doing more to weaken the Iranian dictatorship than any armies, diplomats, or sanctions ever could. I hope that the video of Ahmadinejad being ridiculed is shown repeatedly in Iran, and that it emboldens the Iranians, that it gives them strength and courage to laugh at their dictators, and march and act against their dictators, and end the rule of the Ayatollahs.

Some Iranian students protested an Ahmadinejad speech this week in Tehran, chanting “Death to the Dictator.” We’ll see.

One Response to “These last coupla weeks.”

1. Que si Says:
   October 16th, 2007 at 5:58 PMI don’t think I would go so far as to say the combination of New Jersey and Barefoot would qualify as “perfectly acceptable”. Actually, I’m not sure Beach and New Jersey would be an acceptable combination judging by your description of the lovely gifts drifting in from NYC. I’m even considering denousing New Jersey as “perfectly accpetable” but I’m sure you have some friends (and contributors to this blog) in NJ and I don’t want to risk offending them. Now, if YOU lived in New Jersey, well I wouldn’t know WHAT to do.