i came across an interesting french word, actually common enough to pop up in english texts every now and then. "rapprochement." i encountered it while glancing at a bandaid box with butterfly bandaids; the english said something about "wound closure", and underneath, along with some other french words which i can't recall, was the word "rapprochment." i assumed rapprochment had some tie or association with the english word "closure." interestingly enough, it, like "closure" in english, can have connotations of reconciliation. in the french, though, it seems like those connotations are more explicit... here's the rundown definition:
rapprochement:
n.
1. A reestablishing of cordial relations, as between two countries.
2. The state of reconciliation or of cordial relations.
[French, from rapprocher, to bring together : re-, re- + approcher, to approach (from Old French aprochier; see approach).]
i like the notion of "closure" being a "bringing together," and also the notion of "approach," the approach of the two ends of a gap together to seal a wound, whether physical or political or whatever.
in this sense, you can associate "rapprochement" with the word "approximate," which, as a verb, has the same notion of "approach," this time as attempting to get near, "in the proximity."
think: isn't healing/closure, in a certain sense, an "approximation" of a wound or debt?
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
an awesome poem (i think) by suji kwock kim, "monologue for an onion"
i found this poem in "asian american poetry" edited by victoria chang. honestly, most poetry is above my head. the references seem too obtuse for me, and i can never piece the "spontaneity" together to discern some moving message. but this poem i really liked. please buy the book if you're intrigued (i am, as i often do, infringing on copyright issues):
here's her poem, "monologue for an onion":
I don't mean to make you cry.
I mean nothing, but this has not kept you
From peeling away my body, layer by layer,
The tears clouding your eyes as the table fills
With husks, cut flesh, all the debris of pursuit.
Poor deluded human: you seek my heart.
Hunt all you want. Beneath each skin of mine
Lies another skin: I am pure onion- pure union
Of outside and in, surface and secret core.
Look at you, chopping and weeping. Idiot.
Is this the way you go through life, your mind
A stopless knife, driven by your fantasy of truth,
Of lasting union-slashing away skin after skin
From things, ruin and tears your only signs
Of progress? Enough is enough.
You must not grieve that the world is glimpsed
Through veils. How else can it be seen?
How will you rip away the veil of the eye, the veil
That you are, you who want to grasp the heart
Of things, hungry to know where meaning
Lies. Taste what you hold in your hands: onion juice,
Yellow peels, my stinging shreds. You are the one
In pieces. Whatever you meant to love, in meaning to
You changed yourself: you are not who you are,
Your soul cut moment to moment by a blade
Of fresh desire, the ground sown with abandoned skins.
And at your inmost circle, what? A core that is
Not one. Poor fool, you are divided at the heart,
Lost in its maze of chambers, blood, and love,
A heart that will one day beat you to death.
here's her poem, "monologue for an onion":
I don't mean to make you cry.
I mean nothing, but this has not kept you
From peeling away my body, layer by layer,
The tears clouding your eyes as the table fills
With husks, cut flesh, all the debris of pursuit.
Poor deluded human: you seek my heart.
Hunt all you want. Beneath each skin of mine
Lies another skin: I am pure onion- pure union
Of outside and in, surface and secret core.
Look at you, chopping and weeping. Idiot.
Is this the way you go through life, your mind
A stopless knife, driven by your fantasy of truth,
Of lasting union-slashing away skin after skin
From things, ruin and tears your only signs
Of progress? Enough is enough.
You must not grieve that the world is glimpsed
Through veils. How else can it be seen?
How will you rip away the veil of the eye, the veil
That you are, you who want to grasp the heart
Of things, hungry to know where meaning
Lies. Taste what you hold in your hands: onion juice,
Yellow peels, my stinging shreds. You are the one
In pieces. Whatever you meant to love, in meaning to
You changed yourself: you are not who you are,
Your soul cut moment to moment by a blade
Of fresh desire, the ground sown with abandoned skins.
And at your inmost circle, what? A core that is
Not one. Poor fool, you are divided at the heart,
Lost in its maze of chambers, blood, and love,
A heart that will one day beat you to death.
newest reincarnation of "amphibious", couple of paragraphs
“It was his fault, you know.”
Randy pulled the pillow over his ears, sandwiching his head. Then, as though recalling the futility of the gesture, he reached instead for Donald Duck and Owlie, wrapping his arms around the stuffed creatures, to choke the pretend life out of them. Owlie’s hollow tummy tinkled comfortingly.
“His fault,” Mr. Kappa’s voice repeated, like an echo slithering across the inner walls of Randy’s head. “His fault.”
Randy rocked slowly from side to side. The water bells in Owlie rang gently with the motion, like a buoy on the tide. “Be quiet,” he whimpered softly. “You’re not real.”
Mr. Kappa’s rebuttal was swift. “Of course I’m real,” he hissed, like an off-station radio frequency turned up really loud. “He said so himself, remember?”
And Randy, as though on cue, remembered. He rememberd the very day his older brother had confirmed, or even exascerbated, his nagging fears. It had happened while they were riding their bikes home from Mililani Uka, when the high afternoon sun and the exertion of the quick-paced peddling made the world seem solid and safe enough to speak about such things. Between gasps for air, Randy had asked, “Dean, is there such a thing as a Kappa?” And Dean, after giving the question some thought, looked over his shoulder and said, “Of course there is. Giant turtle with a wicked hook for a mouth. And no brains. It’s got a bowl of water where it’s brains should be. It lives in the gutters, where it’s wet, and when it’s dark and rainy, it sneaks out and steals little runts like you to suck out their brains and pull out their guts.” As they passed a corner gutter, Dean flinched his bike away; “Whoa, I just saw one there!” he shouted, laughing as Randy screeched his brakes, peering into the darkness.
Randy shook his head to clear the memory, but as he returned to the present, his eyes seemed to register the very same darkness, only now more pervasive. “He was joking,” Randy proffered as a desperate counter. “That’s what big brothers do. They joke around.”
“Sure they do,” chided Mr. Kappa smugly. “Sure they do.”
And Randy rocked from side to side once again, hugging Owlie and Donald Duck to his chest like some desperate and gently ringing buoy, wishing the deep black ocean of the night were far shorter in the crossing.
The day began before the alarm clock.
Despite little rest, Randy surfaced from his fathomless dreams spontaneously, like ambergris or the corpse of a fish. It wasn’t because of the perception of dawn’s light, because at 4:55, more often than not, there wasn’t a discernable trace of it; nor was it a sound, whether of waking birds or the car ignition of neighbors heading off to work. No, it was something invisible, silent, without sense. Something subtly switched when the time was just so, and the pieces of himself slowly emerged into awareness one by one until there he was, an island with a clear edge.
His first act, often before opening his eyes, was to reach for the alarm clock at his bedside to turn it off. Then, he groped for the crumpled cardboard beside the clock and, even though it was much too dark to see, squinted at the first item on the list, which he had successfully performed: “5:00 Wake up”. He smiled briefly, trying to recoup a feeling of accomplishment, and pretended to read the next item in the list (which he had long since memorized): “5:05 Wash face, brush teeth.”
As he crept out of bed, he idly wondered (as he had every morning since the first iteration of this routine) whether the 5:05 in this case was supposed to be a deadline, or a start time. After all, the waking up was an instantaneous thing, something which he did ahead of schedule; was he just supposed to wait five or ten minutes before proceeding to the next item, or was it okay to just dive in? As he did every morning, he opted for the latter, thinking it was best to be ahead of the schedule if at all possible.
It was his mother who had composed the schedule for Randy, back when there were fears that he was too amorphous a child; it was explained to him that
Randy pulled the pillow over his ears, sandwiching his head. Then, as though recalling the futility of the gesture, he reached instead for Donald Duck and Owlie, wrapping his arms around the stuffed creatures, to choke the pretend life out of them. Owlie’s hollow tummy tinkled comfortingly.
“His fault,” Mr. Kappa’s voice repeated, like an echo slithering across the inner walls of Randy’s head. “His fault.”
Randy rocked slowly from side to side. The water bells in Owlie rang gently with the motion, like a buoy on the tide. “Be quiet,” he whimpered softly. “You’re not real.”
Mr. Kappa’s rebuttal was swift. “Of course I’m real,” he hissed, like an off-station radio frequency turned up really loud. “He said so himself, remember?”
And Randy, as though on cue, remembered. He rememberd the very day his older brother had confirmed, or even exascerbated, his nagging fears. It had happened while they were riding their bikes home from Mililani Uka, when the high afternoon sun and the exertion of the quick-paced peddling made the world seem solid and safe enough to speak about such things. Between gasps for air, Randy had asked, “Dean, is there such a thing as a Kappa?” And Dean, after giving the question some thought, looked over his shoulder and said, “Of course there is. Giant turtle with a wicked hook for a mouth. And no brains. It’s got a bowl of water where it’s brains should be. It lives in the gutters, where it’s wet, and when it’s dark and rainy, it sneaks out and steals little runts like you to suck out their brains and pull out their guts.” As they passed a corner gutter, Dean flinched his bike away; “Whoa, I just saw one there!” he shouted, laughing as Randy screeched his brakes, peering into the darkness.
Randy shook his head to clear the memory, but as he returned to the present, his eyes seemed to register the very same darkness, only now more pervasive. “He was joking,” Randy proffered as a desperate counter. “That’s what big brothers do. They joke around.”
“Sure they do,” chided Mr. Kappa smugly. “Sure they do.”
And Randy rocked from side to side once again, hugging Owlie and Donald Duck to his chest like some desperate and gently ringing buoy, wishing the deep black ocean of the night were far shorter in the crossing.
The day began before the alarm clock.
Despite little rest, Randy surfaced from his fathomless dreams spontaneously, like ambergris or the corpse of a fish. It wasn’t because of the perception of dawn’s light, because at 4:55, more often than not, there wasn’t a discernable trace of it; nor was it a sound, whether of waking birds or the car ignition of neighbors heading off to work. No, it was something invisible, silent, without sense. Something subtly switched when the time was just so, and the pieces of himself slowly emerged into awareness one by one until there he was, an island with a clear edge.
His first act, often before opening his eyes, was to reach for the alarm clock at his bedside to turn it off. Then, he groped for the crumpled cardboard beside the clock and, even though it was much too dark to see, squinted at the first item on the list, which he had successfully performed: “5:00 Wake up”. He smiled briefly, trying to recoup a feeling of accomplishment, and pretended to read the next item in the list (which he had long since memorized): “5:05 Wash face, brush teeth.”
As he crept out of bed, he idly wondered (as he had every morning since the first iteration of this routine) whether the 5:05 in this case was supposed to be a deadline, or a start time. After all, the waking up was an instantaneous thing, something which he did ahead of schedule; was he just supposed to wait five or ten minutes before proceeding to the next item, or was it okay to just dive in? As he did every morning, he opted for the latter, thinking it was best to be ahead of the schedule if at all possible.
It was his mother who had composed the schedule for Randy, back when there were fears that he was too amorphous a child; it was explained to him that
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
random babble: the eye of the soul versus the eye of the world
a moment before
the world had an edge
and an eye like an eagle's
could contain its scope
the rounded horizon
from heights like his
only there could be appreciated
as a reiteration
of the roundness of
his cornea, the borders of
his lens:
the larger eye below seeking
to see the smaller
each invisibly struggling
to swallow its twin world.
but that was a moment ago.
now things are real.
nothing real has an edge
nothing real stays still
the world is a falling
and a tumbling, a garbled
tangle of vectors seeking
tangents, kinetic energy
seeking lost potentials.
and thus it is that the smaller eye
must succumb to the larger
eye of the world
that other eye so vast it seems flat
and seems to flatten
it pulls him in relentless
and unblinking
without even seeing
focused as it is,
in its unfocused way,
upon the limitless socket
of the sky.
the world had an edge
and an eye like an eagle's
could contain its scope
the rounded horizon
from heights like his
only there could be appreciated
as a reiteration
of the roundness of
his cornea, the borders of
his lens:
the larger eye below seeking
to see the smaller
each invisibly struggling
to swallow its twin world.
but that was a moment ago.
now things are real.
nothing real has an edge
nothing real stays still
the world is a falling
and a tumbling, a garbled
tangle of vectors seeking
tangents, kinetic energy
seeking lost potentials.
and thus it is that the smaller eye
must succumb to the larger
eye of the world
that other eye so vast it seems flat
and seems to flatten
it pulls him in relentless
and unblinking
without even seeing
focused as it is,
in its unfocused way,
upon the limitless socket
of the sky.
Saturday, July 26, 2008
radiohead, nude, interesting version
don't get bored... it gets kinda neat, albeit faster and "techy sounding"...
oobleck
i was supposed to use this for a tuina class demo, but i mixed the proportions wrong. ideally, oobleck demonstrates proper "penetration"; hard swift force results in nonpenetration into body tissue (because of "guarding"), but slow soft "sinking" results in "depth work." this idea was originally found in "deep tissue massage" by art riggs...
never let the world win
there is a lot of s**t in the world. unhappy people intent on spreading unhappiness.
please please please give me the composure, the peace of mind, to remain true to my original intentions, to be simple, to be happy, to be working towards something good and positive in this world... please don't let me get caught in the game of "get back" ing, of revenge (whether overt or subtle). allow me the grace to wish my enemies the best, and just walk away on the path i'd chosen from the start...
please, while i'm making requests (from WHOM???), also teach me to appreciate the littlest things. when a child is first born at the hospital, we as parents are so relieved and awed at the miracle of new life. each breath is special, it moves the universe... why is it that time dulls us, why is it that we lose sight, why do we impose so many expectations upon our children (from such an early age), that we only get angry when they don't live up to our "perfect visions" of them? what taught us to forget our thankfulness that the child blessed our life with its presence? what made us impatient at the child's mistakes, what made us so eager to correct?
sure, we want what's best for our children... but before that, we want our children. please teach me never to "throw the baby out with the bathwater..."
please please please give me the composure, the peace of mind, to remain true to my original intentions, to be simple, to be happy, to be working towards something good and positive in this world... please don't let me get caught in the game of "get back" ing, of revenge (whether overt or subtle). allow me the grace to wish my enemies the best, and just walk away on the path i'd chosen from the start...
please, while i'm making requests (from WHOM???), also teach me to appreciate the littlest things. when a child is first born at the hospital, we as parents are so relieved and awed at the miracle of new life. each breath is special, it moves the universe... why is it that time dulls us, why is it that we lose sight, why do we impose so many expectations upon our children (from such an early age), that we only get angry when they don't live up to our "perfect visions" of them? what taught us to forget our thankfulness that the child blessed our life with its presence? what made us impatient at the child's mistakes, what made us so eager to correct?
sure, we want what's best for our children... but before that, we want our children. please teach me never to "throw the baby out with the bathwater..."
aura exercise
check this out. it's from http://www.thiaoouba.com which is a somewhat, shall we say, interesting site... what you're supposed to do is try to look "between" the two circles until you can superimpose them in your vision, such that you see a "white cross" on a "purple"? circle. try it!!! if you can do this, and maintain the cross, it's believed that you will have perfect communication between the two hemispheres of your brain (each is related to one eye), and you will be better able to see auras...
... or maybe you'll become cross-eyed, i'm not quite sure...
an idea for a manipulative
i was thinking about teaching reading and writing to sped kids. and since i was inspired by montessori, and her emphasis on motor skills as being fundamental to "cognitive" skills, i thought about creating simple manipulatives.
i thought that it would be fun to create something like that "trial of fire" on that japanese show. you know that one (maybe you don't), the one where the contestant has to pass a metal electrode through a "maze" composed of metal pipes; contact between the electrode and the pipe results in an explosive "spark," and the contestant loses... of course, nothing so dramatic and dangerous... but since i am an acupuncturist, and i use an electrostim, and the electrostim does have a "sensing mode" that passes a current from a pen-like probe to a "banana" plug "ground," i was thinking that i could connect the ground to some metallic sheet with some nonconductive tape in the shape of whatever i would want the student to trace (letters, words, etc.). the student would have to keep the probe on the nonconductive surface and move through the "maze" (in imitation of writing). if he strayed, then the electrostim would register a current and make a buzzing sound...
this would serve as an entertaining manipulative to train kids the basic motor skills to "write" (tracing letters), or perhaps even "read" (have the kid trace a line from left to right, and back again, as in reading). very basic stuff. of course, this wouldn't replace the actual teaching of phonics, whatever, but it could serve as an incentive/reward; since it's relatively entertaining, students could have it as a reward for accomplishing more mundane work, and since it serves an indirect purpose itself (practicing motor skills necessary for writing), well, it's win win.
i'll test this out with aiden, who needs to work on his letter-writing skills. who knows, maybe it'll be a cheap hit! sort of like those old "surgery" games, but with a practical bent.
i thought that it would be fun to create something like that "trial of fire" on that japanese show. you know that one (maybe you don't), the one where the contestant has to pass a metal electrode through a "maze" composed of metal pipes; contact between the electrode and the pipe results in an explosive "spark," and the contestant loses... of course, nothing so dramatic and dangerous... but since i am an acupuncturist, and i use an electrostim, and the electrostim does have a "sensing mode" that passes a current from a pen-like probe to a "banana" plug "ground," i was thinking that i could connect the ground to some metallic sheet with some nonconductive tape in the shape of whatever i would want the student to trace (letters, words, etc.). the student would have to keep the probe on the nonconductive surface and move through the "maze" (in imitation of writing). if he strayed, then the electrostim would register a current and make a buzzing sound...
this would serve as an entertaining manipulative to train kids the basic motor skills to "write" (tracing letters), or perhaps even "read" (have the kid trace a line from left to right, and back again, as in reading). very basic stuff. of course, this wouldn't replace the actual teaching of phonics, whatever, but it could serve as an incentive/reward; since it's relatively entertaining, students could have it as a reward for accomplishing more mundane work, and since it serves an indirect purpose itself (practicing motor skills necessary for writing), well, it's win win.
i'll test this out with aiden, who needs to work on his letter-writing skills. who knows, maybe it'll be a cheap hit! sort of like those old "surgery" games, but with a practical bent.
closure
time, they say, heals all wounds
but they neglected to say
that it must be a secret and forgotten time
the watched pot never boils
and eyes, too hopeful for redemption,
will only make it shy of appearing.
there is something magical about
a band aid
how it conceals a scrape
like a sticky eyelid,
the gauze a
planetarium sky to
the open hurt below
its roof evaporates
the yellow clouds of pus.
something works secretly
in that hidden dark
a spider akin to
the invisible weavers
of cobwebs in old unseen corners.
it bridges the gap
with finger-like legs
builds cat's cradles
that will eventually bridge and stitch
impossible chasms
into keloid landfills...
closure
demands closure.
wounds end
only long after the tears have dried
the eyes have closed in oblivion
so long
they forget to see.
but they neglected to say
that it must be a secret and forgotten time
the watched pot never boils
and eyes, too hopeful for redemption,
will only make it shy of appearing.
there is something magical about
a band aid
how it conceals a scrape
like a sticky eyelid,
the gauze a
planetarium sky to
the open hurt below
its roof evaporates
the yellow clouds of pus.
something works secretly
in that hidden dark
a spider akin to
the invisible weavers
of cobwebs in old unseen corners.
it bridges the gap
with finger-like legs
builds cat's cradles
that will eventually bridge and stitch
impossible chasms
into keloid landfills...
closure
demands closure.
wounds end
only long after the tears have dried
the eyes have closed in oblivion
so long
they forget to see.
megalomaniac tyrranical a-holes
forgive me for tonight's rant (especially after so long an absence).
mta (otherwise known as mililani town association) sent me a notice. according to the town covenants (whatever), any improvement to the house must be approved by the board before being made. inspectors recently noted that i had put up rain gutters on my house (they are now roughly five years old), and that i had a "driveway extension." each of these "infractions" will cost me $100 in "after the fact" fees; plus, i will have to reapply to have these "additions" approved. if they aren't, i will have to "take them down."
let's take these renovations into account one by one.
first, the rain gutters. i don't know who got these renovations (vital, if you ask me) "approved" by mta. most people just hire a contractor and put them up. if you don't, and soon after buying a house, you're in for some water damage. my parents never had to get these "common sense" renovations approved...
second, the "driveway extension." it isn't really a driveway extension at all. it is beside the driveway, but it is a sidewalk. and, i got this approved when i had my wall built (the sidewalks were done at the same time). i plan to fish for the original blueprints which mta approved, and shove it in their face (okay, maybe after cooling off).
right now, i consider mta as a big money making operation. think about it. they get at least $400 from each household in the town for annual "association dues." you might imagine that this would pay for things like automatic membership, and grant you access to pools and such, but to participate in any mta activities, you have to pay for these separately. in addition, if you ever are delinquent in your dues (i had the misfortune of being delinquent), they quickly hire lawyers who enforce the due collection, and instantly charge an additional $200 for the lawyer fees.
guess what mta dues go for? sure, they go for landscaping, which i have to admit, they do a great job of. but they also pay for people to drive around the town and snoop for "rule breakers," so that they can filch some more money out of town residents. i mean, give me a break!
to be honest, i believe that it is our immediate neighbors who have been part of this recent effort at persecution. supposedly, our neighbor is some kind of "hot shot" with influence. they have been pissed off ever since we built a planter box on their side to shore up the foundation of their rock wall. after the wall was built, they called the city and state to check on us, to see whether the plans had been submitted, etc. at the time, the plans were going through (if you aren't aware of it, it's a very time-consuming process; you have to take off work 4 or 5 days sometimes just to make sure an architect looks at the plans). i almost got charged for this.
we are a relatively happy, carefree family, and i think it galls our neighbors to see us so relaxed. they are the sort of people who are constantly bickering amongst themselves (fundamentally unhappy; i always hear them barking at each other), and are eager to "share the wealth."
well, whatever. i'm mad right now, primarily at mta, somewhat at the neighbors (largely because it's just strong suspicion), but i won't let either win. i'll pay if i have to... but for all you mililani-ans out there, especially with new houses: are you aware:
that if you want something like raingutters or air conditioners or tinted windows, you have to get prior approval from mta? better get busy or the "renovation cops" will be sending you a letter pretty soon!!!
[other ridiculousness... you can't hang up laundry on lines, even within the privacy of your own home, because covenant rules say so... so much for being a green town, and trying to save needless energy on dryer costs!!!]
... i know i'll be asking forgiveness for this later, but if any mililani-ans are out there with similar sentiments, PLEASE RANT!
mta (otherwise known as mililani town association) sent me a notice. according to the town covenants (whatever), any improvement to the house must be approved by the board before being made. inspectors recently noted that i had put up rain gutters on my house (they are now roughly five years old), and that i had a "driveway extension." each of these "infractions" will cost me $100 in "after the fact" fees; plus, i will have to reapply to have these "additions" approved. if they aren't, i will have to "take them down."
let's take these renovations into account one by one.
first, the rain gutters. i don't know who got these renovations (vital, if you ask me) "approved" by mta. most people just hire a contractor and put them up. if you don't, and soon after buying a house, you're in for some water damage. my parents never had to get these "common sense" renovations approved...
second, the "driveway extension." it isn't really a driveway extension at all. it is beside the driveway, but it is a sidewalk. and, i got this approved when i had my wall built (the sidewalks were done at the same time). i plan to fish for the original blueprints which mta approved, and shove it in their face (okay, maybe after cooling off).
right now, i consider mta as a big money making operation. think about it. they get at least $400 from each household in the town for annual "association dues." you might imagine that this would pay for things like automatic membership, and grant you access to pools and such, but to participate in any mta activities, you have to pay for these separately. in addition, if you ever are delinquent in your dues (i had the misfortune of being delinquent), they quickly hire lawyers who enforce the due collection, and instantly charge an additional $200 for the lawyer fees.
guess what mta dues go for? sure, they go for landscaping, which i have to admit, they do a great job of. but they also pay for people to drive around the town and snoop for "rule breakers," so that they can filch some more money out of town residents. i mean, give me a break!
to be honest, i believe that it is our immediate neighbors who have been part of this recent effort at persecution. supposedly, our neighbor is some kind of "hot shot" with influence. they have been pissed off ever since we built a planter box on their side to shore up the foundation of their rock wall. after the wall was built, they called the city and state to check on us, to see whether the plans had been submitted, etc. at the time, the plans were going through (if you aren't aware of it, it's a very time-consuming process; you have to take off work 4 or 5 days sometimes just to make sure an architect looks at the plans). i almost got charged for this.
we are a relatively happy, carefree family, and i think it galls our neighbors to see us so relaxed. they are the sort of people who are constantly bickering amongst themselves (fundamentally unhappy; i always hear them barking at each other), and are eager to "share the wealth."
well, whatever. i'm mad right now, primarily at mta, somewhat at the neighbors (largely because it's just strong suspicion), but i won't let either win. i'll pay if i have to... but for all you mililani-ans out there, especially with new houses: are you aware:
that if you want something like raingutters or air conditioners or tinted windows, you have to get prior approval from mta? better get busy or the "renovation cops" will be sending you a letter pretty soon!!!
[other ridiculousness... you can't hang up laundry on lines, even within the privacy of your own home, because covenant rules say so... so much for being a green town, and trying to save needless energy on dryer costs!!!]
... i know i'll be asking forgiveness for this later, but if any mililani-ans are out there with similar sentiments, PLEASE RANT!
Monday, July 21, 2008
richard lavoire and some counterintuitive teaching (parenting) principles
saw a video from richard lavoire, who is some expert on teaching kids with learning disabilities (but arguably great at teaching teaching AND parenting in general).
here are some of his interesting ideas:
1) switch from punishment to reward based systems of reinforcement. lavoire makes the significant statement: "punishments only STOP behavior. but rewards CHANGE behavior." he gives the example of kid a who pushes kid b. typical teacher (capital A) proceeds to punish kid a by imposing sanctions (no recess!), forced labor (write: "i will not hit kid b forever and ever amen" 100 times [more on why this is inappropriate later]), calls to the security council (phone calls to mom and [gulp] dad)... which results in, yes, kid a NOT pushing kid b... at least in your immediate presence. as soon as the bell rings, and as soon as kid a catches kid b as kid b attempts to flee school, there is VIGOROUS pushing from kid a to kid b to the ground... yes, teacher A stopped the behavior in a specific context, but there is little, if any TRANSFORMATION. if anything, there is a proliferation of negative behavior, just not in teacher A's presence...
switch to teacher B. yes, kid a pushes kid b, and there are consequences for that action, as outlined in the geneva treaty to which all the kids agreed beforehand. but teacher B doesn't "push it." and teacher B happens to witness kid a doing something nice to kid b while out on the baseball field. so at the very next opportunity, teacher B decides to point this out, calls kid b up, maybe in front of the class... "i saw what you did out there-" and here kid a cringes thinking he'd been caught doing yet another mischievous act "-and that was great, awesome, helping kid a like that." kid a is more likely to change, be nice to kid b in the future, than in teacher A's class...
2) don't say you're "disappointed" in a kid. lavoire says that that is perhaps the most hurtful thing to say to a child... you can say you're angry, but disappointed- that's a hard thing for a child/adult to stomach... it also makes their self-esteem dependent upon external expectations which they may feel they have no control over...
3) [hard for me] punishment must fit the crime. say kid a does something bad, maybe brings home a bad spelling test. is it appropriate to punish kid a by taking away something he loves to do, say swimming? before, i would say yes... but upon reflection... wouldn't it be more appropriate to increase the amount of time kid a had to spend studying spelling? to penalize a child by removing something he loves: 1) makes the kid hate the original thing [spelling] even more; 2) hurts the child by perhaps cutting off his one route to pleasure and maybe even giftedness; 3) doesn't improve the original situation [spelling], not one bit...
also, if kid a hit kid b... why not make the punishment fit the crime by, say, having kid a spend POSITIVE time with kid b, like interviewing him, finding 10 positive things about him, etc.? sure, an imposition on kid b, but it seems more apt than other "punishment" mechanisms.
4) time outs are NOT punishments, they are intended to remove a child from stimuli so that he can return to the normal environment "grounded" and in "neutral" so to speak... moreover, it is the teacher/parent who decides when the child returns from time out, NOT the child... to tell a child, "you return when you're good and ready" empowers the child, and perhaps reinforces the negative behavior: "okay, so whenever i want a break, i just pull a fast one, and i'll go on time out, hee hee."
5) bottom line: self esteem is like poker chips. some kids have a lot going for them, so they've got boundless self esteem and a ton of poker chips. such kids will have easy times taking risks, trying to answer questions posed by the teacher, because even if they make an "unwise gamble," they've still got a ton of poker chips... other kids, maybe kids with ld, have only a handful of chips, which they clutch in their hands tightly. EVERY INTERACTION imposes a risk that could prove the end of their "gameplay." so they take few risks, even on relatively safe bets...
OUR JOBS AS TEACHERS AND PARENTS IS TO FIND A WAY TO GIVE A CHILD POKER CHIPS, such that he leaves with more than when he came to us. build a child's self-esteem, so that they will be better able to deal with the risks of the world.
also, if you do advocate, seek out those "negative" poker chip stealers in the world: people, situations, etc. that cause a child to lose their esteem WITHOUT ANY POSSIBLE GAIN. these are the unfair gambling houses, the thieves, etc. find them, expose them for what they are...
here are some of his interesting ideas:
1) switch from punishment to reward based systems of reinforcement. lavoire makes the significant statement: "punishments only STOP behavior. but rewards CHANGE behavior." he gives the example of kid a who pushes kid b. typical teacher (capital A) proceeds to punish kid a by imposing sanctions (no recess!), forced labor (write: "i will not hit kid b forever and ever amen" 100 times [more on why this is inappropriate later]), calls to the security council (phone calls to mom and [gulp] dad)... which results in, yes, kid a NOT pushing kid b... at least in your immediate presence. as soon as the bell rings, and as soon as kid a catches kid b as kid b attempts to flee school, there is VIGOROUS pushing from kid a to kid b to the ground... yes, teacher A stopped the behavior in a specific context, but there is little, if any TRANSFORMATION. if anything, there is a proliferation of negative behavior, just not in teacher A's presence...
switch to teacher B. yes, kid a pushes kid b, and there are consequences for that action, as outlined in the geneva treaty to which all the kids agreed beforehand. but teacher B doesn't "push it." and teacher B happens to witness kid a doing something nice to kid b while out on the baseball field. so at the very next opportunity, teacher B decides to point this out, calls kid b up, maybe in front of the class... "i saw what you did out there-" and here kid a cringes thinking he'd been caught doing yet another mischievous act "-and that was great, awesome, helping kid a like that." kid a is more likely to change, be nice to kid b in the future, than in teacher A's class...
2) don't say you're "disappointed" in a kid. lavoire says that that is perhaps the most hurtful thing to say to a child... you can say you're angry, but disappointed- that's a hard thing for a child/adult to stomach... it also makes their self-esteem dependent upon external expectations which they may feel they have no control over...
3) [hard for me] punishment must fit the crime. say kid a does something bad, maybe brings home a bad spelling test. is it appropriate to punish kid a by taking away something he loves to do, say swimming? before, i would say yes... but upon reflection... wouldn't it be more appropriate to increase the amount of time kid a had to spend studying spelling? to penalize a child by removing something he loves: 1) makes the kid hate the original thing [spelling] even more; 2) hurts the child by perhaps cutting off his one route to pleasure and maybe even giftedness; 3) doesn't improve the original situation [spelling], not one bit...
also, if kid a hit kid b... why not make the punishment fit the crime by, say, having kid a spend POSITIVE time with kid b, like interviewing him, finding 10 positive things about him, etc.? sure, an imposition on kid b, but it seems more apt than other "punishment" mechanisms.
4) time outs are NOT punishments, they are intended to remove a child from stimuli so that he can return to the normal environment "grounded" and in "neutral" so to speak... moreover, it is the teacher/parent who decides when the child returns from time out, NOT the child... to tell a child, "you return when you're good and ready" empowers the child, and perhaps reinforces the negative behavior: "okay, so whenever i want a break, i just pull a fast one, and i'll go on time out, hee hee."
5) bottom line: self esteem is like poker chips. some kids have a lot going for them, so they've got boundless self esteem and a ton of poker chips. such kids will have easy times taking risks, trying to answer questions posed by the teacher, because even if they make an "unwise gamble," they've still got a ton of poker chips... other kids, maybe kids with ld, have only a handful of chips, which they clutch in their hands tightly. EVERY INTERACTION imposes a risk that could prove the end of their "gameplay." so they take few risks, even on relatively safe bets...
OUR JOBS AS TEACHERS AND PARENTS IS TO FIND A WAY TO GIVE A CHILD POKER CHIPS, such that he leaves with more than when he came to us. build a child's self-esteem, so that they will be better able to deal with the risks of the world.
also, if you do advocate, seek out those "negative" poker chip stealers in the world: people, situations, etc. that cause a child to lose their esteem WITHOUT ANY POSSIBLE GAIN. these are the unfair gambling houses, the thieves, etc. find them, expose them for what they are...
Friday, July 18, 2008
killing space and time: my montessori paper
... this to challenge the notion that there's "no time or room for error" in our modern educational system... on the internet, in a blog, there's a s***load of space to drop a load!!!
NOW AND THEN: MARIA MONTESSORI AND SPECIAL EDUCATION
INTRODUCTION
There are several reasons why the subject of Maria Montessori kept insisting itself upon me as I considered topics to write about. First, and perhaps most important, was the fact that my two children attend a Montessori school (named, appropriately, “The Children’s House” after Montessori’s first school, the Casa dei Bambini). Prior to enrolling my elder daughter into the school, I had, like any harried but concerned parent, done some research on the Montessori philosophy during the school selection process, but it was, quite frankly, cursory. Ultimately, all my forays retained were a vague notion of “independent learning,” and a favorable and striking impression of a clean and orderly classroom environment stocked with interesting manipulative “toys.”
Second, during Professor Garnett Smith’s initial lecture concerning the “platypus-like” nature of Special Education, Montessori’s name was briefly mentioned. Basically, Smith explained that Special Education was the hybridized, bastard child of four “parents,” or perspectives: medical, legal, education and special education. The medical perspective was significant historically, because, as Smith stated, the first pioneers in Special Education were either medical doctors or had a generally medical outlook: Itard, for example, and Montessori. When I heard Montessori’s name come up in that lecture, in the context of special education, I idly wondered what possible tie could exist between the preschool my children were attending, and “idiot children” (as they were called back then).
Third, and more recently, was the fact that I started my class in “Classroom Organization and Behavioral Management.” I was struck by the overwhelming primacy and influence of “behavioral psychology” in the text for the class. Our textbook was, in fact, essentially a handbook on how to apply behavioral science in the classroom setting (Thomas J. Zirpoli’s “Behavioral Management: Applications for Teachers”). Where was the legacy of the cognitive theorists (Piaget, for example) whom I had so enjoyed in our initial readings for the class? As I began looking for traces of Itard and Piaget in contemporary learning theory and practice, I kept running into that most influential figure tying these two giants together: Montessori (Montessori was a student of Itar’d’s, and Piaget at one point in time studied children at a Montessori school). It was at this point that I decided to take a closer look at this monumental figure, and discern her ties to both special education and cognitive theories of learning.
Although she is most well known (particularly in this country) as the founding mother of a certain style of preschool education, it is important to note that: 1) her understandings of the nature of the minds of children originated in her studies of “special children”; and 2) her insights are extremely appropriate when considered in the context of contemporary special education, and, ironically, can be seen as anticipating many of the insights and “modern” approaches to teaching exceptional children today.
MONTESSORI’S STORY
Montessori’s life story is a fascinating one, worthy of the several biographies have been written about her. She was the first woman physician in Italy, itself a historical accomplishment. While she was an assistant doctor at the Psychiatric Clinic of the University of Rome, where she intended to study children’s diseases, she visited several insane asylums across the city of Rome in order to find and select subjects for study. In this way, she became acquainted both with the “idiot children” (a diverse grouping of children who were deemed “unteachable” in the normal school system) and the current method of education for them, developed by Edouard Seguin. She thoroughly studied Seguin’s methods (she was to eventually translate his 600 page French volume into Italian!) and strove to put them into practice. It was at this time that Montessori underwent a natural but nonetheless dramatic shift in vocation, for she realized that “mental deficiency presented chiefly a pedagogical, rather than mainly a medical, problem.” (Orem, 1969, p. 15) In short, she began to teach.
Before we proceed further, we should put Seguin in the context of some of the influential figures we encountered in our readings. Seguin was a student of Itard, whom we know of as the teacher of the “Wild Boy of Aveyron.” It is significant to note that Itard began his “pedagogical work” with experiments to educate deaf-mutes; his treatments involved “re-educating” or recalibrating the dysfunctional sense of hearing. With the “Wild Boy of Aveyron,” Itard extended the treatment methodology he had employed with the deaf, but extended it to incorporate all of the senses (temperature, touch, etc.). This emphasis upon sensory education in Itard clearly influenced Montessori, for it remained a cornerstone of her pedagogical method. But above and beyond this was Itard’s attitude towards his “student,” which contrasted sharply with that of her contemporaries towards their students. Itard approached his students in the same way that a concerned physician approaches a sick patient. In Montessori’s own words, Itard was “the first educator to practise the observation of the pupil in the way in which the sick are observed in the hospitals, especially those suffering from diseases of the nervous system.” (Orem, 1969, p. 17)
Seguin essentially organized Itard’s insights into a working pedagogical methodology, which he developed and refined over ten years of working with children from insane asylums across France. He later emigrated to the United States, where he founded more institutes for “idiots.” Montessori credited Seguin with “having completed a genuine educational system for deficient children.” (Orem, 1969, p. 17)
After teaching several of her “idiot” children how to read and write, Montessori had them take a test at a public school together with other normal children, and, surprisingly, her children passed the examination successfully. This striking confirmation of her teaching methodology, however, only instilled in Montessori a desire to extend its application to “normal children.” As Orem writes: “While others were admiring the progress of her deficients, she searched for the reasons that kept the happy, healthy children of the regular schools on so low a plane that they could be equaled in tests of intelligence by retarded pupils.” (Orem, 1969, p. 18) It was at this point which she made a fateful decision, one which, ironically, may have served to obscure her contributions to the field of special education: she decided to apply her proven teaching methods to normal children. If she had been able to teach “idiot” children to compete with normal children, then what boundless heights could she achieve by using the same methods on the normal children? As she wrote, “the abyss between the inferior mentality of the idiot and that of the normal brain can never be bridged if the normal child has reached his full development.” (Orem, 1969, p. 18)
Montessori began her pedagogical “experiment” with normal children aged three to seven. She felt that such an age group would best parallel her previous work with “idiots,” because “the child who has not the force to develop and he who is not yet developed are in some ways alike.” (Orem, 1969, p. 19) This was the start of the Montessori preschool, a model that was so influential that, by conservative estimates, there are at least 4,000 Montessori schools nationwide, and 7,000 around the world (Unfortunately, Montessori is not a “trademark,” and any school can claim to be “Montessori” without adopting any true Montessori methods. Many schools in fact do this primarily for marketing purposes).
MONTESSORI’S THEORY: SEQUENCING OF DEVELOPMENT
Perhaps the most well-known and significant idea of Montessori’s theory (and one which is very reminiscent of Piaget) is her idea of the Four Planes of Development. Montessori divided the years from birth through age 24 into four six year periods. The first and third periods (0-6 years and 12-18 years) she considered to be active periods of much transformation and growth. The second and fourth periods (6-12 years and 18-24 years) she considered to be relatively calm or quiescent periods, during which the changes of the previous period were consolidated and stabilized. Like other stage theorists (Piaget), the actual ages were only approximations, but the sequencing of the stages was significant.
Montessori also believed that certain age ranges were “sensitive periods” in which the child was genetically programmed to be especially absorbent of certain kinds of information. She believed, for example, that there was a sensitive period for the perception of order in the environment, which began at or before age two; and, she felt that the period between ages 3 and 6 contained many sensitive periods, most notably sensitivity to language.
This sequencing of the development of the child is significant, because it informs several key dimensions of Montessori as practiced. First of all, the “lessons” given to a child must be appropriate to the developmental level of the child. The child, in other words, must be developmentally (in all dimensions: cognitive, sensorial, motor) ready to absorb the lesson. Montessori felt that it was not only ineffective, but potentially detrimental (to a child’s esteem, and to a child’s true understanding) to “force” a child to learn a lesson for which he was not prepared. Thus, Montessori’s commandment to “Follow the child.” This, by the way, is in direct opposition to both the general thrust of behavioral management and pedagogy (which essentially seeks to “motivate” the child to learn, without regard for whether he is ready for a lesson or not), and to the push (primarily by parents) for accelerated learning (i.e., “Why can’t my preschooler practice read an entire book or do long division?”).
Following along the idea of stage-appropriate lessons is the idea that lessons need to be presented in a specific order or sequence. According to Montessori, any given concept requires the complete understanding and assimilation of certain other concepts (much like the prerequisites of college courses). Thus, Montessori charted in often intricate detail the sequencing of lessons. For example, the study of anthropology (the differences and similarities among cultures) required a prior study of physical geography (because a distinctive aspect of culture is that it is a specific adaptation of a group of people to the immediate environment).
MONTESSORI’S THEORY: TOPOGRAPHY OF THE MIND
Montessori believed, as many of us do today, that the mind consists of three layers: the Unconscious, the Subconscious, and the Conscious. To the Unconscious, Montessori attributed the influence of what she called the mneme (roughly translated as the “hereditary memory, an unconscious memory reproducing the past and preserving all experiences of the beings before us” [Chattin-McNichols, 1992, p. 223]) and horme (roughly translated as “The leading force of the great intelligence that is pushing all matter, living and nonliving, toward its final goal” [Chattin-McNichols, 1992, p. 222]). The picture painted of the Unconscious is not of some stable, quiescent “depth,” but one which actively informs development, in the manner that DNA informs development. This makes Montessori’s theory similar to Piaget’s in that both assume the mind as having a fundamentally active nature. It also provides a striking contrast to the behaviorist perspective of the mind, which either makes no assumptions of the workings “inside the skull” or assumes a blank slate, a tabula rasa.
The Subconscious layer, Montessori felt, was where all sense experiences were stored as “engrams” or “memory traces.” Again, as with the Unconscious, Montessori presumed that the Subconscious was also fundamentally active, constantly being sorted and processed, in order to better serves the needs of the Conscious mind. When information in the Subconscious eventually “put itself together,” a new idea could emerge into the Conscious mind.
This understanding of the Subconscious mind was what informed a few key ideas in Montessori methodology. First of all, because the Subconscious mind was filled with sensory experiences (engrams), and because these engrams were the source of new ideas in the Conscious mind, Montessori believed that it was vitally important that children manipulate and directly experience objects as much as possible. She further believed in accessing as many different senses as possible with her manipulative objects; thus, her objects utilized not only sight (color, size), but also sound (bells), touch (sandpaper letters), and even smell, temperature, and weight.
But it was not a haphazard exposure to sense experience that “taught a child.” Montessori believed that a sense experience would more efficiently “teach” a concept if it were ordered in some way. Thus, she developed her manipulatives in such a way that there would be what she called an “isolation of difficulty.” Her early manipulatives all varied in one dimension, and one dimension only (the dimension of focus for a child at his/her specific level of development). For example, if the teacher intended to teach length, then she would have the child seriate (sequence) wooden cylinders of varying length BUT EQUAL IN EVERY OTHER DIMENSION (thickness, color, etc.). By “isolating the difficulty” of the manipulative, she could focus the child’s sensory experiences to only one varying dimension, thus teaching the nature of that dimension (in our example, length).
Yet another Montessorian principle that arises out of the understanding of the Subconscious mind is that of “indirect preparation.” Montessori meticulously planned her lessons and structured her manipulatives in such a way that there would always be an overt lesson and a covert lesson (an indirect preparation). To continue with our example of the cylinders: 1) they were typically presented in groups of ten to indirectly prepare the child for the decimal system; 2) the order of seriation or sequencing, particularly if the child had to insert the cylinders into holes, was always from left to right, in order to prepare the child for the directionality of both reading and writing. These “indirect” lessons would escape the Conscious understanding of the child (and indeed, the awareness of most observers), but they would remain as powerful structuring elements in the child’s Subconscious mind, such that when more complex lessons in math or reading occurred, their Subconscious mind would already have been “prepared” and “primed” for the new concepts.
MONTESSORI’S THEORY: RESPECT FOR THE CHILD
A final principle of Montessori’s is much harder to articulate as a concrete concept, but is nevertheless present, influential, and indeed, a hallmark of the Montessori method. This principle is “respect for the child.” Montessori was often in awe of and thoroughly respected children. She saw children as children. This may seem like a quaint notion, but it is actually radically different from the view of children in her time, and in contemporary times. Usually, adults do not see or treat children as children. Children are, more often than not, either perceived as being little more than property or animals (ordered around like dogs), or (equally inappropriate) they are seen as “little adults” (sharing the same motivations that adults have, with the same capacities to understand concepts, and held accountable to the same expectations we have of other adults).
Montessori’s theory of the Four Planes of Development led her to look at children (particularly very young children) as radically different beings from adults, with miraculous innate potentials and with (stage-appropriate) limitations in understanding and cognitive ability. She designed her schools to respect the child in a stage-appropriate way. Montessori planned sequenced and stage-appropriate lessons to respect the child’s cognitive abilities at any given time. She also developed school environments that catered to the child’s size (and not the other way around); all furniture was supposed to be child-sized, and even the toilets and bathroom stalls had to be short enough for the average toddler to easily sit upon it.
But Montessori’s respect extended beyond these accommodations. It even extended into the relationship between the “teacher” (she preferred the term “directress,” and modern Montessorians use the term “guide”) and the child. In Montessori schools, teachers are not the fount of knowledge that they are in traditional schools. Nor are they even a “guide” or “manager” in the traditional sense.
In Montessori schools, first of all, it is the child who chooses what s/he wants to work on for the day (of course the teacher gently “guides” the child to “choose” appropriate tasks in a balanced way). Second, the most crucial “education” occurs in the interaction between the child and the manipulated object (or other sensory/cognitive experience), and NOT between the teacher and the child. The manipulatives were designed to be “self-correcting,” that is, errors in manipulating the object would be obvious to the child, without necessitating recourse to the teacher. For example, if a child were attempting to sort cylinders of various lengths and insert them into the appropriate holes, and if any given cylinder did not fit perfectly into its hole, then the child would automatically know that s/he had placed the wrong cylinder in that hole.
The teacher in a Montessori classroom is an “observer” first; that is, she must consciously “stand apart” from the child in his busy interaction with the manipulative, and allow him to discover, on his own, the correct answer. Intervention is reserved only for those situations in which a child’s behavior threatens safety or disrupts, or if the use of the manipulative markedly deviates from its standard usage. (There is great debate among Montessorians to this day on what constitutes an “appropriate intervention.” Note Chattin-McNichols’s work in this regard).
This contrasts greatly with the fundamentally behaviorist approach applied in schools nowadays. While safety issues or classroom disruptions would lead to overt behavioral interventions in both Montessorian and traditional classrooms, in the latter, they would also typically occur for “cognitive” problems as well. For example, if a child were performing poorly on a spelling test, behavioral interventions might be employed (reward/punishment) to “motivate” the child to perform better. This would not occur in a Montessorian classroom (both because of the reluctance to intervene, and because traditional tests are not utilized in Montessorian classes).
Note that Montessorian classrooms and traditional classrooms (public education in particular) differ fundamentally. In Montessorian schools, there is no overt timeline; a child is supposed to progress through the curriculum at his/her own pace, following his/her own interests. In traditional classrooms, the pace is externally set (both external to the student, and, particularly under NCLB, external to the teacher) and must be imposed upon the student. This necessitates testing, which is assumed to determine whether a lesson is “learned,” and it necessitates interventions when children perform poorly on tests (when they “lag behind” the set pace).
Let me summarize this discussion on Montessori’s theory by using her own words:
“We may say that the great difference lies in the life, vivacity, interest, and joy which the child shows in doing the work and also in the facility and precocity with which he learns. To enable us to follow the development of the child we try to find and follow the impulse of the child. We are trying to cultivate and give exercises which strengthen these inner energies. For this reason, instead of logically teaching certain things, we expose in the adapted environment certain stimuli and allow the child to choose.” (Chattin-McNichols, 1992, p. 47)
THE HISTORY OF THE MONTESSORI MOVEMENT IN AMERICA
The history of Montessori’s rise and fall (and rise again?) in America is a complex story with many interpretations. Chattin-McNichols puzzled over the present (as of 1992) ignorance or “pooh-poohing” of Montessori as a serious educational theory and model. He urged readers to perform the following test to demonstrate this:
“Choose a university, either a famous one, or a local college that offers Masters or Doctoral level programs in Early Childhood Education. … When you actually get a faculty member on the telephone, ask … if the University offers any courses on Montessori education, or what the professor thinks of the Montessori method in general. When you have noted the reply, ask about the professor’s own knowledge in that area: has she or he read any books by Montessori? Ever observed in a Montessori school?” Chattin-McNichols predicted that such an interrogation would reveal both a “lack of detailed familiarity with the Montessori method, but [that the professor] will also recommend against it in favor of ‘more modern’ programs, or ‘programs that allow for more creativity.’” (Chattin-McNichols, 1992, p. 25)
Why the general disfavorable impression?
And yet, paradoxically, Chattin-McNichols (1992) (based upon a rough survey of Washington State generalized to the entire nation) that roughly 43% of all private preschools had someone on staff with Montessori teacher preparation. That is a fairly sizable number of preschools, for a methodology that seems to have fallen into disfavor.
Why the discrepancy?
To answer this question, Chattin-McNichols attempts to untangle the complex history of Montessori in America. When Montessori was preparing for her first school (1907), the United States was experiencing a surge of interest in early childhood education, largely due to the influence of the kindergarten movement from Germany. Although overt support for this movement faded with anti-German sentiment during and after World War I, the number and quality of nursery schools continued to increase in America. In response to this, interest in Montessori was sparked in America from as early as 1909; five articles in Kindergarten-Primary Magazine, while highlighting the differences between Montessori classrooms and the kindergartens in America, generally encouraged more observation of her method. One of the most significant differences noted, whether it was appropriate or not, was the impression that Montessori’s program emphasized reading and writing from an early age (recall Montessori’s dramatic results with the “idiot children”). Another article by one Miss Josephine Tozier served to reinforce the impression in America that Montessori was a reading and writing program; it contained a photograph of a child writing on a blackboard, with the following caption: “One of Maria Montessori’s pupils writing from dictation at the blackboard. The average child of four learns to write in six weeks by the Montessori method.” (Chattin-McNichols, 1992, p. 28)
By 1911, the first American Montessori school was opened in Tarrytown, New York. This school (in contrast to Montessori’s Casa dei Bambini) was a private school that drew its students primarily from “cultured families, whose greatest ambition it was to give their children everything possible in the way of education and rational enjoyment” (Chattin-McNichols, 1992, p. 28). This was so largely because of the not entirely accurate impression that Montessori was an academically oriented program focusing on reading and writing, and at that time in America, such things were reserved for the middle to upper classes.
By 1912, the Montessori American Committee was founded. Despite the fact that it would have great influence in promoting the Montessori method, and indeed would help to organize the first International Training Course in Rome, the foundress did not hide her anger towards the organization, and its associated American schools, because she felt they were contrary to her intents.
Chattin-McNichols attributes the source of the split (and the general fall of Montessori in America) to three main reasons. First of all, the educational establishment, vested in the kindergarten movement (and their own reputations), freely criticized Montessori’s methods without investing the time to understand her. This was true of many, including perhaps her most famous critique, W. H. Kilpatrick. His 71 page manuscript, “The Montessori System Examined,” was filled with attacks, not just on the method, but the woman herself. For example, Kilpatrick wrote: “While Madam Montessori’s interest in the scientific attitude is entirely praiseworthy, her actual science cannot be so highly commended. Her biology is not always above reproach … she generalizes unscientifically as to the condition of contemporary educational thought and practice from observation limited …” (Kilpatrick, 1914, p. 4) Interestingly enough, Kilpatrick had no background in biology (while Montessori was a physician), and his observations of the Montessori were brief exposures compared to the years the woman herself spent studying the then current educational methods.
A second reason for the split was the privatization of the Montessori method in America. While Montessori had intended her method to be used for all children, and particularly the underprivileged, the misperception of the academic nature of her system seemed to make it more appropriate for the upper classes. Interestingly enough, this is still both the draw towards and the stigma against Montessori in many middle class parents today; while they initially “hear” that Montessori develops good learning foundations in preschool age children, some parents eventually withdraw their children from Montessori programs when they realize that their children are not literate by age 4.
A third reason lay in the fact that America’s naturally eclectic tendencies (it was and is an immigrant nation, after all) led to the tendency to borrow piecemeal elements from her system, when it was intended to be applied in its entirety, with all parts integrated. Some American schools claimed to be Montessori simply because they used Montessori manipulatives, while retaining notions of “play” and “fantasy” (something somewhat contrary to Montessori philosophy) that were then popular in kindergarten schools.
According to J. McVicker Hunt, this split resulted from a fundamental mismatch between the educational leaders of the day (John Dewey’s progressive education, the behaviorist movement) and Montessori. Among the areas of disagreement he noted between the two were: the belief in a fixed level of intelligence, unchangeable by experiences; a belief that all behavior had to be motivated; a focus on the response, not the child’s experience; and the unwillingness of teachers to relinquish control of the classroom and move out of center stage. (Chattin-McNichols, 1992, p. 30)
MONTESSORI TODAY… AND TOMORROW?
Arguably, the tendencies resulting from the original fall of Montessori’s popularity in America resound to this day. Montessori is not taken seriously in most colleges and universities on early childhood education, and is usually not even mentioned in the lineage of educational theorists covered in a survey course. Her legacy, however, is strong in her preschool movement. Again, the initial American Montessori schools were private, and carried the perception that they were ideal environments to prepare children to read and write. Whether parents’ expectations were met or not, there must have been some degree of satisfaction with the method, or it would not have survived, and indeed, thrived, to this day.
What is interesting, however, is the slight resurgence of interest in Montessori’s insights, particularly with regards to children in the special education population. This relatively recent development has occurred primarily because, I hypothesize, the equally recent legislation mandating public school education for exceptional children (Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975). As has been frequently noted, the drive for public school education for handicapped children resulted, not from any “top-down” concern for this population, but from advocacy groups (parents) who were largely inspired by the 1954 Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education case. As a result, the educational institutions of America were mandated by law to confront various “special” populations of students. Teachers soon discovered that the standard interventions (primarily based upon a didactic model of teaching, employing behavioral interventions) did not seem to work on these types of students. New interventions, based on new models of cognitive functioning, needed to be found.
It thus strikes me as ironic that the American educational establishment only recently discovered the insights of Montessori in this regard. Just as Montessori first cued into the workings of the mind through her work with the “idiot children,” modern education theorists are only now confirming many of her ideas through their recent mandated exposure to “special education” populations. Fundamental Montessori principles, such as orderly child-friendly environments, stimulation of all senses, and the “isolation of difficulty” for example, are employed to assist many special education populations, such as the Learning Disabled or the Autistic or the Mentally Retarded.
Nevertheless, it is my opinion that Montessori’s method will never be employed wholesale in public schools. For one thing, as evidenced by the class text on “Classroom Organization” (Zirpoli’s “Behavioral Management and Assessment”), the behavioral model is firmly entrenched as the theory of choice for educators. Sure, it has been modified to accommodate new theories (cognitive, social), but the bent remains: children are measured solely by their external behaviors (their results on “objective” tests), and interventions are meted out when problems exist, so that everyone can live up to a target behavior. Arguably, this bent exists not only in the educational establishment, but in our culture as a whole. We are “results driven”; the call for NCLB serves as evidence of this. Parents of toddlers, feeling this pressure, urge their children to learn to read and know the geography of the world from earlier and earlier ages, without regard for whether such “knowledge” is developmentally appropriate, and without concern for the emotional consequences of such overt “pushing.” Unfortunately, the primary and central principles of Montessori’s method, a fundamental respect for the child, and the entreaty to “follow” him through all of his repetitious behavior and wondrous mistakes, can only be given passing acknowledgment (if at all) in a modern society that has neither room nor time for error, or for a child to figure out his world for himself.
NOW AND THEN: MARIA MONTESSORI AND SPECIAL EDUCATION
INTRODUCTION
There are several reasons why the subject of Maria Montessori kept insisting itself upon me as I considered topics to write about. First, and perhaps most important, was the fact that my two children attend a Montessori school (named, appropriately, “The Children’s House” after Montessori’s first school, the Casa dei Bambini). Prior to enrolling my elder daughter into the school, I had, like any harried but concerned parent, done some research on the Montessori philosophy during the school selection process, but it was, quite frankly, cursory. Ultimately, all my forays retained were a vague notion of “independent learning,” and a favorable and striking impression of a clean and orderly classroom environment stocked with interesting manipulative “toys.”
Second, during Professor Garnett Smith’s initial lecture concerning the “platypus-like” nature of Special Education, Montessori’s name was briefly mentioned. Basically, Smith explained that Special Education was the hybridized, bastard child of four “parents,” or perspectives: medical, legal, education and special education. The medical perspective was significant historically, because, as Smith stated, the first pioneers in Special Education were either medical doctors or had a generally medical outlook: Itard, for example, and Montessori. When I heard Montessori’s name come up in that lecture, in the context of special education, I idly wondered what possible tie could exist between the preschool my children were attending, and “idiot children” (as they were called back then).
Third, and more recently, was the fact that I started my class in “Classroom Organization and Behavioral Management.” I was struck by the overwhelming primacy and influence of “behavioral psychology” in the text for the class. Our textbook was, in fact, essentially a handbook on how to apply behavioral science in the classroom setting (Thomas J. Zirpoli’s “Behavioral Management: Applications for Teachers”). Where was the legacy of the cognitive theorists (Piaget, for example) whom I had so enjoyed in our initial readings for the class? As I began looking for traces of Itard and Piaget in contemporary learning theory and practice, I kept running into that most influential figure tying these two giants together: Montessori (Montessori was a student of Itar’d’s, and Piaget at one point in time studied children at a Montessori school). It was at this point that I decided to take a closer look at this monumental figure, and discern her ties to both special education and cognitive theories of learning.
Although she is most well known (particularly in this country) as the founding mother of a certain style of preschool education, it is important to note that: 1) her understandings of the nature of the minds of children originated in her studies of “special children”; and 2) her insights are extremely appropriate when considered in the context of contemporary special education, and, ironically, can be seen as anticipating many of the insights and “modern” approaches to teaching exceptional children today.
MONTESSORI’S STORY
Montessori’s life story is a fascinating one, worthy of the several biographies have been written about her. She was the first woman physician in Italy, itself a historical accomplishment. While she was an assistant doctor at the Psychiatric Clinic of the University of Rome, where she intended to study children’s diseases, she visited several insane asylums across the city of Rome in order to find and select subjects for study. In this way, she became acquainted both with the “idiot children” (a diverse grouping of children who were deemed “unteachable” in the normal school system) and the current method of education for them, developed by Edouard Seguin. She thoroughly studied Seguin’s methods (she was to eventually translate his 600 page French volume into Italian!) and strove to put them into practice. It was at this time that Montessori underwent a natural but nonetheless dramatic shift in vocation, for she realized that “mental deficiency presented chiefly a pedagogical, rather than mainly a medical, problem.” (Orem, 1969, p. 15) In short, she began to teach.
Before we proceed further, we should put Seguin in the context of some of the influential figures we encountered in our readings. Seguin was a student of Itard, whom we know of as the teacher of the “Wild Boy of Aveyron.” It is significant to note that Itard began his “pedagogical work” with experiments to educate deaf-mutes; his treatments involved “re-educating” or recalibrating the dysfunctional sense of hearing. With the “Wild Boy of Aveyron,” Itard extended the treatment methodology he had employed with the deaf, but extended it to incorporate all of the senses (temperature, touch, etc.). This emphasis upon sensory education in Itard clearly influenced Montessori, for it remained a cornerstone of her pedagogical method. But above and beyond this was Itard’s attitude towards his “student,” which contrasted sharply with that of her contemporaries towards their students. Itard approached his students in the same way that a concerned physician approaches a sick patient. In Montessori’s own words, Itard was “the first educator to practise the observation of the pupil in the way in which the sick are observed in the hospitals, especially those suffering from diseases of the nervous system.” (Orem, 1969, p. 17)
Seguin essentially organized Itard’s insights into a working pedagogical methodology, which he developed and refined over ten years of working with children from insane asylums across France. He later emigrated to the United States, where he founded more institutes for “idiots.” Montessori credited Seguin with “having completed a genuine educational system for deficient children.” (Orem, 1969, p. 17)
After teaching several of her “idiot” children how to read and write, Montessori had them take a test at a public school together with other normal children, and, surprisingly, her children passed the examination successfully. This striking confirmation of her teaching methodology, however, only instilled in Montessori a desire to extend its application to “normal children.” As Orem writes: “While others were admiring the progress of her deficients, she searched for the reasons that kept the happy, healthy children of the regular schools on so low a plane that they could be equaled in tests of intelligence by retarded pupils.” (Orem, 1969, p. 18) It was at this point which she made a fateful decision, one which, ironically, may have served to obscure her contributions to the field of special education: she decided to apply her proven teaching methods to normal children. If she had been able to teach “idiot” children to compete with normal children, then what boundless heights could she achieve by using the same methods on the normal children? As she wrote, “the abyss between the inferior mentality of the idiot and that of the normal brain can never be bridged if the normal child has reached his full development.” (Orem, 1969, p. 18)
Montessori began her pedagogical “experiment” with normal children aged three to seven. She felt that such an age group would best parallel her previous work with “idiots,” because “the child who has not the force to develop and he who is not yet developed are in some ways alike.” (Orem, 1969, p. 19) This was the start of the Montessori preschool, a model that was so influential that, by conservative estimates, there are at least 4,000 Montessori schools nationwide, and 7,000 around the world (Unfortunately, Montessori is not a “trademark,” and any school can claim to be “Montessori” without adopting any true Montessori methods. Many schools in fact do this primarily for marketing purposes).
MONTESSORI’S THEORY: SEQUENCING OF DEVELOPMENT
Perhaps the most well-known and significant idea of Montessori’s theory (and one which is very reminiscent of Piaget) is her idea of the Four Planes of Development. Montessori divided the years from birth through age 24 into four six year periods. The first and third periods (0-6 years and 12-18 years) she considered to be active periods of much transformation and growth. The second and fourth periods (6-12 years and 18-24 years) she considered to be relatively calm or quiescent periods, during which the changes of the previous period were consolidated and stabilized. Like other stage theorists (Piaget), the actual ages were only approximations, but the sequencing of the stages was significant.
Montessori also believed that certain age ranges were “sensitive periods” in which the child was genetically programmed to be especially absorbent of certain kinds of information. She believed, for example, that there was a sensitive period for the perception of order in the environment, which began at or before age two; and, she felt that the period between ages 3 and 6 contained many sensitive periods, most notably sensitivity to language.
This sequencing of the development of the child is significant, because it informs several key dimensions of Montessori as practiced. First of all, the “lessons” given to a child must be appropriate to the developmental level of the child. The child, in other words, must be developmentally (in all dimensions: cognitive, sensorial, motor) ready to absorb the lesson. Montessori felt that it was not only ineffective, but potentially detrimental (to a child’s esteem, and to a child’s true understanding) to “force” a child to learn a lesson for which he was not prepared. Thus, Montessori’s commandment to “Follow the child.” This, by the way, is in direct opposition to both the general thrust of behavioral management and pedagogy (which essentially seeks to “motivate” the child to learn, without regard for whether he is ready for a lesson or not), and to the push (primarily by parents) for accelerated learning (i.e., “Why can’t my preschooler practice read an entire book or do long division?”).
Following along the idea of stage-appropriate lessons is the idea that lessons need to be presented in a specific order or sequence. According to Montessori, any given concept requires the complete understanding and assimilation of certain other concepts (much like the prerequisites of college courses). Thus, Montessori charted in often intricate detail the sequencing of lessons. For example, the study of anthropology (the differences and similarities among cultures) required a prior study of physical geography (because a distinctive aspect of culture is that it is a specific adaptation of a group of people to the immediate environment).
MONTESSORI’S THEORY: TOPOGRAPHY OF THE MIND
Montessori believed, as many of us do today, that the mind consists of three layers: the Unconscious, the Subconscious, and the Conscious. To the Unconscious, Montessori attributed the influence of what she called the mneme (roughly translated as the “hereditary memory, an unconscious memory reproducing the past and preserving all experiences of the beings before us” [Chattin-McNichols, 1992, p. 223]) and horme (roughly translated as “The leading force of the great intelligence that is pushing all matter, living and nonliving, toward its final goal” [Chattin-McNichols, 1992, p. 222]). The picture painted of the Unconscious is not of some stable, quiescent “depth,” but one which actively informs development, in the manner that DNA informs development. This makes Montessori’s theory similar to Piaget’s in that both assume the mind as having a fundamentally active nature. It also provides a striking contrast to the behaviorist perspective of the mind, which either makes no assumptions of the workings “inside the skull” or assumes a blank slate, a tabula rasa.
The Subconscious layer, Montessori felt, was where all sense experiences were stored as “engrams” or “memory traces.” Again, as with the Unconscious, Montessori presumed that the Subconscious was also fundamentally active, constantly being sorted and processed, in order to better serves the needs of the Conscious mind. When information in the Subconscious eventually “put itself together,” a new idea could emerge into the Conscious mind.
This understanding of the Subconscious mind was what informed a few key ideas in Montessori methodology. First of all, because the Subconscious mind was filled with sensory experiences (engrams), and because these engrams were the source of new ideas in the Conscious mind, Montessori believed that it was vitally important that children manipulate and directly experience objects as much as possible. She further believed in accessing as many different senses as possible with her manipulative objects; thus, her objects utilized not only sight (color, size), but also sound (bells), touch (sandpaper letters), and even smell, temperature, and weight.
But it was not a haphazard exposure to sense experience that “taught a child.” Montessori believed that a sense experience would more efficiently “teach” a concept if it were ordered in some way. Thus, she developed her manipulatives in such a way that there would be what she called an “isolation of difficulty.” Her early manipulatives all varied in one dimension, and one dimension only (the dimension of focus for a child at his/her specific level of development). For example, if the teacher intended to teach length, then she would have the child seriate (sequence) wooden cylinders of varying length BUT EQUAL IN EVERY OTHER DIMENSION (thickness, color, etc.). By “isolating the difficulty” of the manipulative, she could focus the child’s sensory experiences to only one varying dimension, thus teaching the nature of that dimension (in our example, length).
Yet another Montessorian principle that arises out of the understanding of the Subconscious mind is that of “indirect preparation.” Montessori meticulously planned her lessons and structured her manipulatives in such a way that there would always be an overt lesson and a covert lesson (an indirect preparation). To continue with our example of the cylinders: 1) they were typically presented in groups of ten to indirectly prepare the child for the decimal system; 2) the order of seriation or sequencing, particularly if the child had to insert the cylinders into holes, was always from left to right, in order to prepare the child for the directionality of both reading and writing. These “indirect” lessons would escape the Conscious understanding of the child (and indeed, the awareness of most observers), but they would remain as powerful structuring elements in the child’s Subconscious mind, such that when more complex lessons in math or reading occurred, their Subconscious mind would already have been “prepared” and “primed” for the new concepts.
MONTESSORI’S THEORY: RESPECT FOR THE CHILD
A final principle of Montessori’s is much harder to articulate as a concrete concept, but is nevertheless present, influential, and indeed, a hallmark of the Montessori method. This principle is “respect for the child.” Montessori was often in awe of and thoroughly respected children. She saw children as children. This may seem like a quaint notion, but it is actually radically different from the view of children in her time, and in contemporary times. Usually, adults do not see or treat children as children. Children are, more often than not, either perceived as being little more than property or animals (ordered around like dogs), or (equally inappropriate) they are seen as “little adults” (sharing the same motivations that adults have, with the same capacities to understand concepts, and held accountable to the same expectations we have of other adults).
Montessori’s theory of the Four Planes of Development led her to look at children (particularly very young children) as radically different beings from adults, with miraculous innate potentials and with (stage-appropriate) limitations in understanding and cognitive ability. She designed her schools to respect the child in a stage-appropriate way. Montessori planned sequenced and stage-appropriate lessons to respect the child’s cognitive abilities at any given time. She also developed school environments that catered to the child’s size (and not the other way around); all furniture was supposed to be child-sized, and even the toilets and bathroom stalls had to be short enough for the average toddler to easily sit upon it.
But Montessori’s respect extended beyond these accommodations. It even extended into the relationship between the “teacher” (she preferred the term “directress,” and modern Montessorians use the term “guide”) and the child. In Montessori schools, teachers are not the fount of knowledge that they are in traditional schools. Nor are they even a “guide” or “manager” in the traditional sense.
In Montessori schools, first of all, it is the child who chooses what s/he wants to work on for the day (of course the teacher gently “guides” the child to “choose” appropriate tasks in a balanced way). Second, the most crucial “education” occurs in the interaction between the child and the manipulated object (or other sensory/cognitive experience), and NOT between the teacher and the child. The manipulatives were designed to be “self-correcting,” that is, errors in manipulating the object would be obvious to the child, without necessitating recourse to the teacher. For example, if a child were attempting to sort cylinders of various lengths and insert them into the appropriate holes, and if any given cylinder did not fit perfectly into its hole, then the child would automatically know that s/he had placed the wrong cylinder in that hole.
The teacher in a Montessori classroom is an “observer” first; that is, she must consciously “stand apart” from the child in his busy interaction with the manipulative, and allow him to discover, on his own, the correct answer. Intervention is reserved only for those situations in which a child’s behavior threatens safety or disrupts, or if the use of the manipulative markedly deviates from its standard usage. (There is great debate among Montessorians to this day on what constitutes an “appropriate intervention.” Note Chattin-McNichols’s work in this regard).
This contrasts greatly with the fundamentally behaviorist approach applied in schools nowadays. While safety issues or classroom disruptions would lead to overt behavioral interventions in both Montessorian and traditional classrooms, in the latter, they would also typically occur for “cognitive” problems as well. For example, if a child were performing poorly on a spelling test, behavioral interventions might be employed (reward/punishment) to “motivate” the child to perform better. This would not occur in a Montessorian classroom (both because of the reluctance to intervene, and because traditional tests are not utilized in Montessorian classes).
Note that Montessorian classrooms and traditional classrooms (public education in particular) differ fundamentally. In Montessorian schools, there is no overt timeline; a child is supposed to progress through the curriculum at his/her own pace, following his/her own interests. In traditional classrooms, the pace is externally set (both external to the student, and, particularly under NCLB, external to the teacher) and must be imposed upon the student. This necessitates testing, which is assumed to determine whether a lesson is “learned,” and it necessitates interventions when children perform poorly on tests (when they “lag behind” the set pace).
Let me summarize this discussion on Montessori’s theory by using her own words:
“We may say that the great difference lies in the life, vivacity, interest, and joy which the child shows in doing the work and also in the facility and precocity with which he learns. To enable us to follow the development of the child we try to find and follow the impulse of the child. We are trying to cultivate and give exercises which strengthen these inner energies. For this reason, instead of logically teaching certain things, we expose in the adapted environment certain stimuli and allow the child to choose.” (Chattin-McNichols, 1992, p. 47)
THE HISTORY OF THE MONTESSORI MOVEMENT IN AMERICA
The history of Montessori’s rise and fall (and rise again?) in America is a complex story with many interpretations. Chattin-McNichols puzzled over the present (as of 1992) ignorance or “pooh-poohing” of Montessori as a serious educational theory and model. He urged readers to perform the following test to demonstrate this:
“Choose a university, either a famous one, or a local college that offers Masters or Doctoral level programs in Early Childhood Education. … When you actually get a faculty member on the telephone, ask … if the University offers any courses on Montessori education, or what the professor thinks of the Montessori method in general. When you have noted the reply, ask about the professor’s own knowledge in that area: has she or he read any books by Montessori? Ever observed in a Montessori school?” Chattin-McNichols predicted that such an interrogation would reveal both a “lack of detailed familiarity with the Montessori method, but [that the professor] will also recommend against it in favor of ‘more modern’ programs, or ‘programs that allow for more creativity.’” (Chattin-McNichols, 1992, p. 25)
Why the general disfavorable impression?
And yet, paradoxically, Chattin-McNichols (1992) (based upon a rough survey of Washington State generalized to the entire nation) that roughly 43% of all private preschools had someone on staff with Montessori teacher preparation. That is a fairly sizable number of preschools, for a methodology that seems to have fallen into disfavor.
Why the discrepancy?
To answer this question, Chattin-McNichols attempts to untangle the complex history of Montessori in America. When Montessori was preparing for her first school (1907), the United States was experiencing a surge of interest in early childhood education, largely due to the influence of the kindergarten movement from Germany. Although overt support for this movement faded with anti-German sentiment during and after World War I, the number and quality of nursery schools continued to increase in America. In response to this, interest in Montessori was sparked in America from as early as 1909; five articles in Kindergarten-Primary Magazine, while highlighting the differences between Montessori classrooms and the kindergartens in America, generally encouraged more observation of her method. One of the most significant differences noted, whether it was appropriate or not, was the impression that Montessori’s program emphasized reading and writing from an early age (recall Montessori’s dramatic results with the “idiot children”). Another article by one Miss Josephine Tozier served to reinforce the impression in America that Montessori was a reading and writing program; it contained a photograph of a child writing on a blackboard, with the following caption: “One of Maria Montessori’s pupils writing from dictation at the blackboard. The average child of four learns to write in six weeks by the Montessori method.” (Chattin-McNichols, 1992, p. 28)
By 1911, the first American Montessori school was opened in Tarrytown, New York. This school (in contrast to Montessori’s Casa dei Bambini) was a private school that drew its students primarily from “cultured families, whose greatest ambition it was to give their children everything possible in the way of education and rational enjoyment” (Chattin-McNichols, 1992, p. 28). This was so largely because of the not entirely accurate impression that Montessori was an academically oriented program focusing on reading and writing, and at that time in America, such things were reserved for the middle to upper classes.
By 1912, the Montessori American Committee was founded. Despite the fact that it would have great influence in promoting the Montessori method, and indeed would help to organize the first International Training Course in Rome, the foundress did not hide her anger towards the organization, and its associated American schools, because she felt they were contrary to her intents.
Chattin-McNichols attributes the source of the split (and the general fall of Montessori in America) to three main reasons. First of all, the educational establishment, vested in the kindergarten movement (and their own reputations), freely criticized Montessori’s methods without investing the time to understand her. This was true of many, including perhaps her most famous critique, W. H. Kilpatrick. His 71 page manuscript, “The Montessori System Examined,” was filled with attacks, not just on the method, but the woman herself. For example, Kilpatrick wrote: “While Madam Montessori’s interest in the scientific attitude is entirely praiseworthy, her actual science cannot be so highly commended. Her biology is not always above reproach … she generalizes unscientifically as to the condition of contemporary educational thought and practice from observation limited …” (Kilpatrick, 1914, p. 4) Interestingly enough, Kilpatrick had no background in biology (while Montessori was a physician), and his observations of the Montessori were brief exposures compared to the years the woman herself spent studying the then current educational methods.
A second reason for the split was the privatization of the Montessori method in America. While Montessori had intended her method to be used for all children, and particularly the underprivileged, the misperception of the academic nature of her system seemed to make it more appropriate for the upper classes. Interestingly enough, this is still both the draw towards and the stigma against Montessori in many middle class parents today; while they initially “hear” that Montessori develops good learning foundations in preschool age children, some parents eventually withdraw their children from Montessori programs when they realize that their children are not literate by age 4.
A third reason lay in the fact that America’s naturally eclectic tendencies (it was and is an immigrant nation, after all) led to the tendency to borrow piecemeal elements from her system, when it was intended to be applied in its entirety, with all parts integrated. Some American schools claimed to be Montessori simply because they used Montessori manipulatives, while retaining notions of “play” and “fantasy” (something somewhat contrary to Montessori philosophy) that were then popular in kindergarten schools.
According to J. McVicker Hunt, this split resulted from a fundamental mismatch between the educational leaders of the day (John Dewey’s progressive education, the behaviorist movement) and Montessori. Among the areas of disagreement he noted between the two were: the belief in a fixed level of intelligence, unchangeable by experiences; a belief that all behavior had to be motivated; a focus on the response, not the child’s experience; and the unwillingness of teachers to relinquish control of the classroom and move out of center stage. (Chattin-McNichols, 1992, p. 30)
MONTESSORI TODAY… AND TOMORROW?
Arguably, the tendencies resulting from the original fall of Montessori’s popularity in America resound to this day. Montessori is not taken seriously in most colleges and universities on early childhood education, and is usually not even mentioned in the lineage of educational theorists covered in a survey course. Her legacy, however, is strong in her preschool movement. Again, the initial American Montessori schools were private, and carried the perception that they were ideal environments to prepare children to read and write. Whether parents’ expectations were met or not, there must have been some degree of satisfaction with the method, or it would not have survived, and indeed, thrived, to this day.
What is interesting, however, is the slight resurgence of interest in Montessori’s insights, particularly with regards to children in the special education population. This relatively recent development has occurred primarily because, I hypothesize, the equally recent legislation mandating public school education for exceptional children (Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975). As has been frequently noted, the drive for public school education for handicapped children resulted, not from any “top-down” concern for this population, but from advocacy groups (parents) who were largely inspired by the 1954 Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education case. As a result, the educational institutions of America were mandated by law to confront various “special” populations of students. Teachers soon discovered that the standard interventions (primarily based upon a didactic model of teaching, employing behavioral interventions) did not seem to work on these types of students. New interventions, based on new models of cognitive functioning, needed to be found.
It thus strikes me as ironic that the American educational establishment only recently discovered the insights of Montessori in this regard. Just as Montessori first cued into the workings of the mind through her work with the “idiot children,” modern education theorists are only now confirming many of her ideas through their recent mandated exposure to “special education” populations. Fundamental Montessori principles, such as orderly child-friendly environments, stimulation of all senses, and the “isolation of difficulty” for example, are employed to assist many special education populations, such as the Learning Disabled or the Autistic or the Mentally Retarded.
Nevertheless, it is my opinion that Montessori’s method will never be employed wholesale in public schools. For one thing, as evidenced by the class text on “Classroom Organization” (Zirpoli’s “Behavioral Management and Assessment”), the behavioral model is firmly entrenched as the theory of choice for educators. Sure, it has been modified to accommodate new theories (cognitive, social), but the bent remains: children are measured solely by their external behaviors (their results on “objective” tests), and interventions are meted out when problems exist, so that everyone can live up to a target behavior. Arguably, this bent exists not only in the educational establishment, but in our culture as a whole. We are “results driven”; the call for NCLB serves as evidence of this. Parents of toddlers, feeling this pressure, urge their children to learn to read and know the geography of the world from earlier and earlier ages, without regard for whether such “knowledge” is developmentally appropriate, and without concern for the emotional consequences of such overt “pushing.” Unfortunately, the primary and central principles of Montessori’s method, a fundamental respect for the child, and the entreaty to “follow” him through all of his repetitious behavior and wondrous mistakes, can only be given passing acknowledgment (if at all) in a modern society that has neither room nor time for error, or for a child to figure out his world for himself.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
passing a message: Okinawan Food Festival
so sorry, haven't been posting in a few days... been very busy. and i haven't any time nor space for the garbage thoughts that fill this blog... so:
passing on a message/announcement from my friend sharit:
Celebrate Okinawan Food Culture
@ Lama Library, Kapi'olani Community College
Saturday, July 26th
Celebrate! Join us for a special day centering around Okinawan food and culture. Exhibits open at 10 am, with events starting at 11 am.
On Sale: The ever popular Andagi (and Anda-dog!). . .and delicious servings of Nantu (Okinawan sweet potato mochi).
11 am: Dr. Brad Willcox, nationally recognized expert on healthy aging, talks about the Okinawan Diet.
Noon: Special panel discussion on Okinawan Restaurants in Hawaii.
1 pm: Learn about Awamori, the alcohol indigenous to Okinawa, w/ Randy Kuba.
1:30 pm: Eisa performance by Ryukyukoku Matsuri Daiko.
2 pm: Talk story with Harriet Takaesu on Okinawan food on the plantation.
2:30 pm: Hui O Laulima introduces their new book: Chimugukuru the soul the spirit the heart, Okinawan Mixed Plate II.
3 pm: Sanshin performance, featuring Okinawan whistling and kachashi.
4 pm: Lecture/Discussion (TBA).
Three Great Exhibits on FOOD! The Smithsonian Institution traveling exhibition, Key Ingredients, explores the fascinating topic of food in America. A local component, Hawaii by Food, examines Hawaii's food culture and "local food." The Oroku Restaurant exhibition tells the remarkable story of Okinawan-owned restaurants in Hawaii. [Japanese translations of all 3 exhibits available.]
ALL events and parking are FREE!
For more information, please visit: http://kcc.hawaii.edu, email keyingredients@gmail.com or call 808.734.9562.
passing on a message/announcement from my friend sharit:
Celebrate Okinawan Food Culture
@ Lama Library, Kapi'olani Community College
Saturday, July 26th
Celebrate! Join us for a special day centering around Okinawan food and culture. Exhibits open at 10 am, with events starting at 11 am.
On Sale: The ever popular Andagi (and Anda-dog!). . .and delicious servings of Nantu (Okinawan sweet potato mochi).
11 am: Dr. Brad Willcox, nationally recognized expert on healthy aging, talks about the Okinawan Diet.
Noon: Special panel discussion on Okinawan Restaurants in Hawaii.
1 pm: Learn about Awamori, the alcohol indigenous to Okinawa, w/ Randy Kuba.
1:30 pm: Eisa performance by Ryukyukoku Matsuri Daiko.
2 pm: Talk story with Harriet Takaesu on Okinawan food on the plantation.
2:30 pm: Hui O Laulima introduces their new book: Chimugukuru the soul the spirit the heart, Okinawan Mixed Plate II.
3 pm: Sanshin performance, featuring Okinawan whistling and kachashi.
4 pm: Lecture/Discussion (TBA).
Three Great Exhibits on FOOD! The Smithsonian Institution traveling exhibition, Key Ingredients, explores the fascinating topic of food in America. A local component, Hawaii by Food, examines Hawaii's food culture and "local food." The Oroku Restaurant exhibition tells the remarkable story of Okinawan-owned restaurants in Hawaii. [Japanese translations of all 3 exhibits available.]
ALL events and parking are FREE!
For more information, please visit: http://kcc.hawaii.edu, email keyingredients@gmail.com or call 808.734.9562.
Monday, July 14, 2008
straddling the divide: behaviorism, cognitive psychology?
first, let's begin with the etymology of "behave":
behave:
c.1410, from be- intensive prefix + have in the sense of "to have or bear oneself in a particular way, comport." O.E. behabban meant "to contain." Behavior is 1490, from havour, altered (by influence of have) from aver, from O.Fr. aveir "to have." Behaviorism coined 1913 by U.S. psychologist John B. Watson (1878-1958).
much of what is termed "classroom management" (and arguably much of what we call "education" in the classrooms) is dominated by behaviorist models. i'm currently taking a class on "classroom organization," and the textbook is written pretty much as an elaboration of the applications of behaviorism in the classroom.
i wondered, where was the cognitive based or social psychology applications?
i realize that behaviorism seems well-suited to "taking control" of or "motivating" students. and i know that behaviorism, as naively understood, has a "bad rap," either for its use of punishment, or its similarity (?) to "bribery..."
but: is it the only tool we can use to foster a positive learning environment?
i am currently reading a book on montessori, partially because my children currently attend a montessori school, and partially because i was hungry for a more cognitive-based model for classroom organization... apparently, montessori was inspired by itard and his work with the "wild boy of avignon", and whether she was aware of jean piaget or not, her ideas have been compared to his, particularly in her four stages model of development and her use of "sensorial" materials...
montessori utilized "self-correcting" materials: i.e., materials that could only "work" in certain ways, thus requiring the student to manipulate the materials to "figure out" the answer for him/herself... this removed the teacher from the role of "instructor," and placed her more in the role of "observer," and, when necessary, "gentle guide."
of course, a major critique of montessori has been that it allows too much independence on the part of students, and this naturally leads to situations where students don't "progress" according to standards...
montessori's response to this critique was: who invents these standards? should educators (to use modern parlance) "teach to tests"? or should educators and schools be truly "student centered," accommodating appropriately to a student's needs at any given moment? not "rushing," not "pushing," but, like a gardener, simply giving the child what he/she needs at any given moment... trusting that, like a plant, a child has an implicit drive to learn and grow...
okay, so i'm not entirely sold on montessori's claim that this works on EVERY child... but as an on again off again behaviorist with regards to my children, i at times feel that behaviorism reduces the interaction between teacher/student and parent/child to coercer and coerced... note the etymological tie between "behave" and "containment." i want to combine cognitive psychology and behavioral techniques into a more humanistic AND effective method, a pedagogy... with my kids, with my students...
well...
behave:
c.1410, from be- intensive prefix + have in the sense of "to have or bear oneself in a particular way, comport." O.E. behabban meant "to contain." Behavior is 1490, from havour, altered (by influence of have) from aver, from O.Fr. aveir "to have." Behaviorism coined 1913 by U.S. psychologist John B. Watson (1878-1958).
much of what is termed "classroom management" (and arguably much of what we call "education" in the classrooms) is dominated by behaviorist models. i'm currently taking a class on "classroom organization," and the textbook is written pretty much as an elaboration of the applications of behaviorism in the classroom.
i wondered, where was the cognitive based or social psychology applications?
i realize that behaviorism seems well-suited to "taking control" of or "motivating" students. and i know that behaviorism, as naively understood, has a "bad rap," either for its use of punishment, or its similarity (?) to "bribery..."
but: is it the only tool we can use to foster a positive learning environment?
i am currently reading a book on montessori, partially because my children currently attend a montessori school, and partially because i was hungry for a more cognitive-based model for classroom organization... apparently, montessori was inspired by itard and his work with the "wild boy of avignon", and whether she was aware of jean piaget or not, her ideas have been compared to his, particularly in her four stages model of development and her use of "sensorial" materials...
montessori utilized "self-correcting" materials: i.e., materials that could only "work" in certain ways, thus requiring the student to manipulate the materials to "figure out" the answer for him/herself... this removed the teacher from the role of "instructor," and placed her more in the role of "observer," and, when necessary, "gentle guide."
of course, a major critique of montessori has been that it allows too much independence on the part of students, and this naturally leads to situations where students don't "progress" according to standards...
montessori's response to this critique was: who invents these standards? should educators (to use modern parlance) "teach to tests"? or should educators and schools be truly "student centered," accommodating appropriately to a student's needs at any given moment? not "rushing," not "pushing," but, like a gardener, simply giving the child what he/she needs at any given moment... trusting that, like a plant, a child has an implicit drive to learn and grow...
okay, so i'm not entirely sold on montessori's claim that this works on EVERY child... but as an on again off again behaviorist with regards to my children, i at times feel that behaviorism reduces the interaction between teacher/student and parent/child to coercer and coerced... note the etymological tie between "behave" and "containment." i want to combine cognitive psychology and behavioral techniques into a more humanistic AND effective method, a pedagogy... with my kids, with my students...
well...
Friday, July 11, 2008
but what does it MEAN!?
a student at icaom made this pic of me as a panda... yup, i'm the taiji panda. skedoosh.
ties between structural integration and acupuncture
i've been thinking a lot about applying "anatomy trains" concepts to the way i do acupuncture... some thoughts. first, i've been thinking a lot about insertion angles and insertion depth. what is the significance of these (often taken-for-granted) aspects of needling? sure, there is talk about achieving a proper depth in the tissue in order to "obtain the qi," but: what, concretely, is going on, what is the needle physically being inserted into? no one knows where the "qi" flows... some hold that the ying qi (nutritive qi), which is the main substrate flowing through the 12 + 2 main channels, is "midway deep" in the tissue, somewhere between bone and skin. thus, the presumption that to reach this channel qi, you need to insert from .5 to 1 cun in... HOWEVER, japanese stylists as a whole tend to opt for much more superficial insertion, actually a flat (transverse) insertion.
why the discrepancy? and does it matter?
i used to think of this solely in terms of cultural preferences: the chinese seem to like "hard stimulation," they want to "really feel" the obtaining of qi, whereas the japanese (whom, i've literally heard explicitly stated) are much too "sensitive," and require as minimal stimulation as possible... but lately, my ideas are shifting... i think that the flat insertion is for a purpose. it inserts into superficial fascia. and, as the "anatomy trains" text implies, fascia (myofascia, connective tissue) is the ubiquitous and much-overlooked substrate holding everything together (muscles to bones to internal organs) and ALLOWING COMMUNICATION between parts of the body... actual signal transferences...
needling into superficial fascia via transverse insertion is oftentimes MORE effective than "deep perpendicular needling" into, more often than not, simple muscle tissue... witness the effects of hinaishin intradermal needles, which, over time, accomplish what perpendicular insertion does not.
this gets into the issue of needling direction. here, the chinese texts talk about going "with or against" the "flow" of the meridian... as if the direction of flow was in itself unambiguous...
it has been argued (note in john pirog's text) that the directionality of the meridians is not necessarily unambiguous, and may in fact be the product of changing cultural perspectives... pirog believed that, originally, the channels ALL started distally, and flowed proximally, reflecting the "old culture's" belief that energy (good and bad) flowed INTO the human body... (reflecting man's ultimate dependence upon nature). the later culture redirected the flow of certain channels, such that there was an alternation in flow, with some channels flowing into the body, and others flowing out. this reflecting man's burgeoning sense of independence from nature, and thus a focus more upon his self-regulating mechanisms...
so if the "directionality" of meridians is not absolute, then what determines the "direction" of needle insertion?
i am slowly coming to believe that needle insertion direction is best determined through a consideration of "where" you would like fascia to "go", to "spread." this goes in line with the rolfing/structural integrationists focus on the directionality of strokes. while the run-of-the-mill bodyworkers just try to "soften tissue," without regard for "where it is going," rolfers appreciate the structural "tensegrity" of the body, and consider direction "vital" to the "information" that the rolfer seeks to integrate into the body...
why not look at needle insertion direction the same way?
in fact, looking at things in very concrete terms: if fascia is like the "plastic bag" containing the structural elements in the body, and if, like a plastic bag, it can be "pulled" and "stretched" in different directions via bodywork technique, then HOW MUCH MORE could it be "pulled" via a needle that literally "hooks into" the superficial fascia and "pulls" it in the direction of needle insertion!?
kiiko matsumoto herself seems to imply this perspective. for example, in her visceroptosis treatment, she utilizes st 13 (needled transversely, angled "up and out") in order to address palpable pain on st 30. the metaphor she uses is one of a shirt: when st 13 (below the clavicle) is pulled up and out, it "stretches" the entire shirt upwards... isn't this a fascial perspective on channel dynamics???
i am venturing to utilize acupuncture in a very different way. i call this "structural based acupuncture," because it does not deal with "channel energetics," it refuses to look upon the larger tcm ideas of channel symptomatology, etc. (which, while rich in information, has no reliable basis in present-day experience). the effects of points in this "structural based acupuncture" are mediated solely through the superficial fascia...
i believe this can be a potentially more consistent and profound form of acupuncture. it can be the basis for the discovery of "empirical points" for certain musculoskeletal conditions (ex. why st 38? for shoulder pain?). with the standard way of applying points, it's a hit or miss kind of thing. it's like hitting buttons randomly on a computer keyboard, in order to get results, without an understanding of the software... at least by thinking of the "points" as being potentially idiosyncratic and momentary accretions on the superficial fascia, we understand them as participating in a continuity which has an effect on global structure... and in this way we can potentially "discover" and use "points" intelligently and effectively.
i will experiment with patients, see how effective this perspective really is. and if i obtain good results, i will try to systematize my findings so my students can use this to adjust structure.
that would be cool.
after adjustment for structure, other, deeper imbalances could then be addressed. but i do believe that structure accounts for several "unexplained" symptomatology in itself, and the resolution of structural abberations could in itself "cure" a lot of patients...
well, we'll see.
why the discrepancy? and does it matter?
i used to think of this solely in terms of cultural preferences: the chinese seem to like "hard stimulation," they want to "really feel" the obtaining of qi, whereas the japanese (whom, i've literally heard explicitly stated) are much too "sensitive," and require as minimal stimulation as possible... but lately, my ideas are shifting... i think that the flat insertion is for a purpose. it inserts into superficial fascia. and, as the "anatomy trains" text implies, fascia (myofascia, connective tissue) is the ubiquitous and much-overlooked substrate holding everything together (muscles to bones to internal organs) and ALLOWING COMMUNICATION between parts of the body... actual signal transferences...
needling into superficial fascia via transverse insertion is oftentimes MORE effective than "deep perpendicular needling" into, more often than not, simple muscle tissue... witness the effects of hinaishin intradermal needles, which, over time, accomplish what perpendicular insertion does not.
this gets into the issue of needling direction. here, the chinese texts talk about going "with or against" the "flow" of the meridian... as if the direction of flow was in itself unambiguous...
it has been argued (note in john pirog's text) that the directionality of the meridians is not necessarily unambiguous, and may in fact be the product of changing cultural perspectives... pirog believed that, originally, the channels ALL started distally, and flowed proximally, reflecting the "old culture's" belief that energy (good and bad) flowed INTO the human body... (reflecting man's ultimate dependence upon nature). the later culture redirected the flow of certain channels, such that there was an alternation in flow, with some channels flowing into the body, and others flowing out. this reflecting man's burgeoning sense of independence from nature, and thus a focus more upon his self-regulating mechanisms...
so if the "directionality" of meridians is not absolute, then what determines the "direction" of needle insertion?
i am slowly coming to believe that needle insertion direction is best determined through a consideration of "where" you would like fascia to "go", to "spread." this goes in line with the rolfing/structural integrationists focus on the directionality of strokes. while the run-of-the-mill bodyworkers just try to "soften tissue," without regard for "where it is going," rolfers appreciate the structural "tensegrity" of the body, and consider direction "vital" to the "information" that the rolfer seeks to integrate into the body...
why not look at needle insertion direction the same way?
in fact, looking at things in very concrete terms: if fascia is like the "plastic bag" containing the structural elements in the body, and if, like a plastic bag, it can be "pulled" and "stretched" in different directions via bodywork technique, then HOW MUCH MORE could it be "pulled" via a needle that literally "hooks into" the superficial fascia and "pulls" it in the direction of needle insertion!?
kiiko matsumoto herself seems to imply this perspective. for example, in her visceroptosis treatment, she utilizes st 13 (needled transversely, angled "up and out") in order to address palpable pain on st 30. the metaphor she uses is one of a shirt: when st 13 (below the clavicle) is pulled up and out, it "stretches" the entire shirt upwards... isn't this a fascial perspective on channel dynamics???
i am venturing to utilize acupuncture in a very different way. i call this "structural based acupuncture," because it does not deal with "channel energetics," it refuses to look upon the larger tcm ideas of channel symptomatology, etc. (which, while rich in information, has no reliable basis in present-day experience). the effects of points in this "structural based acupuncture" are mediated solely through the superficial fascia...
i believe this can be a potentially more consistent and profound form of acupuncture. it can be the basis for the discovery of "empirical points" for certain musculoskeletal conditions (ex. why st 38? for shoulder pain?). with the standard way of applying points, it's a hit or miss kind of thing. it's like hitting buttons randomly on a computer keyboard, in order to get results, without an understanding of the software... at least by thinking of the "points" as being potentially idiosyncratic and momentary accretions on the superficial fascia, we understand them as participating in a continuity which has an effect on global structure... and in this way we can potentially "discover" and use "points" intelligently and effectively.
i will experiment with patients, see how effective this perspective really is. and if i obtain good results, i will try to systematize my findings so my students can use this to adjust structure.
that would be cool.
after adjustment for structure, other, deeper imbalances could then be addressed. but i do believe that structure accounts for several "unexplained" symptomatology in itself, and the resolution of structural abberations could in itself "cure" a lot of patients...
well, we'll see.
more interesting etymologies
from "online etymology dictionary":
tawdry:
"cheap, showy, gaudy," 1676, adjective use of noun tawdry "silk necktie for women" (1612), shortened from tawdry lace (1548), an alteration of St. Audrey's lace, a necktie or ribbon sold at the annual fair at Ely on Oct. 17 commemorating St. Audrey (queen of Northumbria, died 679), whose name was worn down from O.E. Æðelðryð "noble might," from æðele "noble" (from P.Gmc. *athala-, from PIE *at-al- "race, family," from *at(i)- "over, beyond, super" + *al- "to nourish") + ðryð "might." Her association with cheap lace necklaces is that she supposedly died of a throat tumor, which she considered God's punishment for her youthful fondness for showy necklaces [Bede].
gossamer:
c.1325, "spider threads spun in fields of stubble in late fall," apparently from gos "goose" + sumer "summer" (cf. Swed. sommertrad "summer thread"). The reference might be to a fancied resemblance of the silk to goose down, or because geese are in season then. The Ger. equivalent mädchensommer (lit. "girls' summer") also has a sense of "Indian summer," and the Eng. word may originally have referred to a warm spell in autumn before being transferred to a phenomenon especially noticable then. Meaning "anything light or flimsy" is from c.1400. The adj. sense "filmy" is attested from 1802.
silk:
O.E. sioloc, seoloc "silk," ultimately from an Asian word (cf. Chinese si "silk," Manchurian sirghe, Mongolian sirkek) borrowed into Gk. as serikos "silken," serikon "silk" (cf. Gk. Seres, a name for an oriental people from whom the Greeks got silk). The use of -l- instead of -r- in the Balto-Slavic form of the word (cf. O.C.S. shelku, Lith. silkai) apparently passed into English via the Baltic trade and may reflect a Chinese dialectal form, or a Slavic alteration of the Gk. word. Also found in O.N. silki but not elsewhere in Gmc. Western cultivation began 552 C.E., when agents from Byzantium impersonating monks smuggled silkworms and mulberry leaves out of China. In ref to the "hair" of corn, c.1662, Amer.Eng. Silken is O.E. seolcen; silky is attested from 1611. Silkworm is O.E. seolcwyrm. Figurative use of silk-stocking (adj.) for "wealthy" is attested from 1798, Amer.Eng. Silk-screen is first attested 1930.
and, "so close but no association":
sericulture:
1851, from Fr. sériciculture, from L. sericum (nom. serica) "silk" (see serge) + cultura (see culture).
seraglio:
"harem," also the name of a former palace of the sultan in Istanbul, 1581, from It. seraglio, alteration of Turk. saray "palace, court," from Pers. sara'i "palace, inn," from Iranian base *thraya- "to protect" (cf. Avestan thrayeinti "they protect"). The It. word probably reflects folk etymology influence of serraglio "enclosure, cage," from M.L. serraculum "bung, stopper" (see serried).
... if only "serraculum" (root of serried) could be tied to "sericulture", the notion of imprisonment implied in the process of silk-making could be established, and taken advantage of, in a story...
tawdry:
"cheap, showy, gaudy," 1676, adjective use of noun tawdry "silk necktie for women" (1612), shortened from tawdry lace (1548), an alteration of St. Audrey's lace, a necktie or ribbon sold at the annual fair at Ely on Oct. 17 commemorating St. Audrey (queen of Northumbria, died 679), whose name was worn down from O.E. Æðelðryð "noble might," from æðele "noble" (from P.Gmc. *athala-, from PIE *at-al- "race, family," from *at(i)- "over, beyond, super" + *al- "to nourish") + ðryð "might." Her association with cheap lace necklaces is that she supposedly died of a throat tumor, which she considered God's punishment for her youthful fondness for showy necklaces [Bede].
gossamer:
c.1325, "spider threads spun in fields of stubble in late fall," apparently from gos "goose" + sumer "summer" (cf. Swed. sommertrad "summer thread"). The reference might be to a fancied resemblance of the silk to goose down, or because geese are in season then. The Ger. equivalent mädchensommer (lit. "girls' summer") also has a sense of "Indian summer," and the Eng. word may originally have referred to a warm spell in autumn before being transferred to a phenomenon especially noticable then. Meaning "anything light or flimsy" is from c.1400. The adj. sense "filmy" is attested from 1802.
silk:
O.E. sioloc, seoloc "silk," ultimately from an Asian word (cf. Chinese si "silk," Manchurian sirghe, Mongolian sirkek) borrowed into Gk. as serikos "silken," serikon "silk" (cf. Gk. Seres, a name for an oriental people from whom the Greeks got silk). The use of -l- instead of -r- in the Balto-Slavic form of the word (cf. O.C.S. shelku, Lith. silkai) apparently passed into English via the Baltic trade and may reflect a Chinese dialectal form, or a Slavic alteration of the Gk. word. Also found in O.N. silki but not elsewhere in Gmc. Western cultivation began 552 C.E., when agents from Byzantium impersonating monks smuggled silkworms and mulberry leaves out of China. In ref to the "hair" of corn, c.1662, Amer.Eng. Silken is O.E. seolcen; silky is attested from 1611. Silkworm is O.E. seolcwyrm. Figurative use of silk-stocking (adj.) for "wealthy" is attested from 1798, Amer.Eng. Silk-screen is first attested 1930.
and, "so close but no association":
sericulture:
1851, from Fr. sériciculture, from L. sericum (nom. serica) "silk" (see serge) + cultura (see culture).
seraglio:
"harem," also the name of a former palace of the sultan in Istanbul, 1581, from It. seraglio, alteration of Turk. saray "palace, court," from Pers. sara'i "palace, inn," from Iranian base *thraya- "to protect" (cf. Avestan thrayeinti "they protect"). The It. word probably reflects folk etymology influence of serraglio "enclosure, cage," from M.L. serraculum "bung, stopper" (see serried).
... if only "serraculum" (root of serried) could be tied to "sericulture", the notion of imprisonment implied in the process of silk-making could be established, and taken advantage of, in a story...
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
prepositions, give, take: just random thoughts
why is it:
that it makes sense to "give up", "give in" (both with connotations of surrender), but it doesn't make sense to "give down" or "give out"? (what would they mean?) why DO "giving up" and "giving in" mean similar things anyway? or are they similar? is "giving up" leaving things "up" to some higher power, god perhaps? is "giving in" a collapsing inwards, or is it an "active yielding?"
there's also: "give away" which means to, well, give something away... often meaning something's too easy. like a "give away" answer on a quiz.
and then we "get" to "get." here are prepositions for "get":
we can "get up" and "get down" (both meaning something similar: picture james brown singing both in the same song...)
"get out" is a demand to go away.
but "get in," while making sense, is not a real cliche phrase, it's just a request to enter, for example, a car...
and then there's "get away." to go away, but in a liberating sense.
and "get over" means to overcome.
overall, giving has the connotation of yielding, no matter what the prepositional word associated with it. appropriate prepositions associated with it are "up", "in", and "away."
getting, on the other hand, is far more active. "up", "down", "out", "away", "over." all imply, "DO IT."
in our (western) culture, giving is not an "active" extension of the self, it is a passive thing, as though it is not "natural (?)" to do so, it is something against our "active" will; getting, on the other hand, is the actualization of things. acquisition (getting) is associated with activity (opposite of passivity).
we could do similar analyses with "taking." "take up", "take out", "take away", "take over."
that it makes sense to "give up", "give in" (both with connotations of surrender), but it doesn't make sense to "give down" or "give out"? (what would they mean?) why DO "giving up" and "giving in" mean similar things anyway? or are they similar? is "giving up" leaving things "up" to some higher power, god perhaps? is "giving in" a collapsing inwards, or is it an "active yielding?"
there's also: "give away" which means to, well, give something away... often meaning something's too easy. like a "give away" answer on a quiz.
and then we "get" to "get." here are prepositions for "get":
we can "get up" and "get down" (both meaning something similar: picture james brown singing both in the same song...)
"get out" is a demand to go away.
but "get in," while making sense, is not a real cliche phrase, it's just a request to enter, for example, a car...
and then there's "get away." to go away, but in a liberating sense.
and "get over" means to overcome.
overall, giving has the connotation of yielding, no matter what the prepositional word associated with it. appropriate prepositions associated with it are "up", "in", and "away."
getting, on the other hand, is far more active. "up", "down", "out", "away", "over." all imply, "DO IT."
in our (western) culture, giving is not an "active" extension of the self, it is a passive thing, as though it is not "natural (?)" to do so, it is something against our "active" will; getting, on the other hand, is the actualization of things. acquisition (getting) is associated with activity (opposite of passivity).
we could do similar analyses with "taking." "take up", "take out", "take away", "take over."
Monday, July 7, 2008
Sunday, July 6, 2008
hole #16
he'd intended to go star viewing
but they beat him to it
at hole #16
where the green opened up
like a bowl below the bowl shaped sky
he hid in the bushes
feeling cheated
but as the giggles turned
slow and breathy and fibrous
he felt paranoid:
the telescope was terribly
incriminating.
he wanted to leave
but the sounds were suddenly crisp
as though every blade of grass
were held erect, suspended, listening.
and it was hard to creep
with that damned telescope.
so he sat and waited
tortured.
and all he'd wanted to do
was watch the sky.
but they beat him to it
at hole #16
where the green opened up
like a bowl below the bowl shaped sky
he hid in the bushes
feeling cheated
but as the giggles turned
slow and breathy and fibrous
he felt paranoid:
the telescope was terribly
incriminating.
he wanted to leave
but the sounds were suddenly crisp
as though every blade of grass
were held erect, suspended, listening.
and it was hard to creep
with that damned telescope.
so he sat and waited
tortured.
and all he'd wanted to do
was watch the sky.
kappa head
penny for your thoughts
whispers mr. kappa head
your pate has come off
and the thing inside
the balled up you
has unwound.
but if you've a penny
copper, shiny or dull
i'll give them back to you
scoop them back to you
sew you up, good as new.
a penny's all i ask.
spare change
broken dollar
what any fool wouldn't mind
parting with.
the little nothing that won't
be missed,
that can't amount to anything
even a mountain high.
penny for your thoughts.
fair trade, no?
whispers mr. kappa head
your pate has come off
and the thing inside
the balled up you
has unwound.
but if you've a penny
copper, shiny or dull
i'll give them back to you
scoop them back to you
sew you up, good as new.
a penny's all i ask.
spare change
broken dollar
what any fool wouldn't mind
parting with.
the little nothing that won't
be missed,
that can't amount to anything
even a mountain high.
penny for your thoughts.
fair trade, no?
sometime between
sometime
between the brake and impact
how easy it is to relax for once
and go for the ride
nothing to do but meet
destiny rushing to meet me.
this easy dance of bodies
in space
caught between inertias
like insects in lace
the pedals illusions
and so is the wheel
the belt won't protect me
from the terribly real
so relax
relax
i see it all now
in this sometime.
sometime.
between the brake and impact
how easy it is to relax for once
and go for the ride
nothing to do but meet
destiny rushing to meet me.
this easy dance of bodies
in space
caught between inertias
like insects in lace
the pedals illusions
and so is the wheel
the belt won't protect me
from the terribly real
so relax
relax
i see it all now
in this sometime.
sometime.
not THE answer, but an answer; call and response
if i ask you
don't think too carefully
i don't mind if you're wrong
there isn't a hexagonal hole 3/16 of an inch wide
for you to fit your response into
the space i give to you
and request you to occupy
is as wide as the sky
a blue canvas to paint yourself.
fill it with your awkwardness
your ugliness
your beauty
and i would smile all the same,
it's not the shape of your clouds
or the subtle hues of your rainbows
or the brilliance of your sun
that i was looking for, you see.
it's you, just you.
remind me that my sky isn't the only sky
surprise me with a corner of the world
i never dreamed
teach me of a place where everything
i know and believe
is strange and new.
don't give me THE answer.
just answer.
don't think too carefully
i don't mind if you're wrong
there isn't a hexagonal hole 3/16 of an inch wide
for you to fit your response into
the space i give to you
and request you to occupy
is as wide as the sky
a blue canvas to paint yourself.
fill it with your awkwardness
your ugliness
your beauty
and i would smile all the same,
it's not the shape of your clouds
or the subtle hues of your rainbows
or the brilliance of your sun
that i was looking for, you see.
it's you, just you.
remind me that my sky isn't the only sky
surprise me with a corner of the world
i never dreamed
teach me of a place where everything
i know and believe
is strange and new.
don't give me THE answer.
just answer.
santa monica, the pier
the loneliest place in the world
is santa monica
surrounded by the beautiful people
the beautiful people
without a hand to hold
or an eye to catch
or an ear to hear.
the waves must catch california sun
and shaft it into forests of seaweed
between the barnacled columns
maybe to everyone else
but i've seen waves before
their endless repeat
and the waters here are greyish and cold and flat
like stale cola.
the ferris wheel goes round
and the screams and laughter
i will mock in my empty dreams with a sardonic grin
as though it makes me somehow above them all
above them all
and maybe i am
dead moon over a living world
dead moon paled in
santa monica
golden california
sky.
is santa monica
surrounded by the beautiful people
the beautiful people
without a hand to hold
or an eye to catch
or an ear to hear.
the waves must catch california sun
and shaft it into forests of seaweed
between the barnacled columns
maybe to everyone else
but i've seen waves before
their endless repeat
and the waters here are greyish and cold and flat
like stale cola.
the ferris wheel goes round
and the screams and laughter
i will mock in my empty dreams with a sardonic grin
as though it makes me somehow above them all
above them all
and maybe i am
dead moon over a living world
dead moon paled in
santa monica
golden california
sky.
the roof
I.
one summer, of many the only one
spent in its entirety
far from home
i stood on a rooftop
and in the humid iwakuni air
gazed out to the two apartment buildings
that were near enough to see me
backgrounded as they were
by the boulder strewn mountains
i wondered if anyone
was there,
pausing between clipping up
the laundry
perhaps spying me
between blouses of near identical color
a figure looking back
II.
in the streets on any given morning
picking up the butts
left over from last night's revel
-of the dirty-lunged lonely and red-faced
who'd spent the night recycling
memories of hopes
memories of believing in hope
at the karaoke bars
singing in tune in their own hearts
squeezing bloodshot eyes shut
so they wouldn't see that
no one was listening-
i picked up after them
my hinokishin
my daily devotion.
so many spent hours of smoke
to obscure the distance of time
cigarettes like so many yakuza pinkies
promises that were once inhaled sharply
only to be discarded
so much litter
to give me something to do.
III.
the heat of the evenings are the worse.
after evening service
and dinner with the church people
polite ignorance of
the way the younger girls
smile too long
or the eighty something year old
ba-chan coos over me
as if i were something good
an upright thing
in a world bowed and melting
beneath the heavy sun.
don't they know i'm just hiding?
laying in wait?
biding time to commit sins
with another disguised sinner
someone who pretended me into being
as i pretended her
long before this summer
and long after.
one summer, of many the only one
spent in its entirety
far from home
i stood on a rooftop
and in the humid iwakuni air
gazed out to the two apartment buildings
that were near enough to see me
backgrounded as they were
by the boulder strewn mountains
i wondered if anyone
was there,
pausing between clipping up
the laundry
perhaps spying me
between blouses of near identical color
a figure looking back
II.
in the streets on any given morning
picking up the butts
left over from last night's revel
-of the dirty-lunged lonely and red-faced
who'd spent the night recycling
memories of hopes
memories of believing in hope
at the karaoke bars
singing in tune in their own hearts
squeezing bloodshot eyes shut
so they wouldn't see that
no one was listening-
i picked up after them
my hinokishin
my daily devotion.
so many spent hours of smoke
to obscure the distance of time
cigarettes like so many yakuza pinkies
promises that were once inhaled sharply
only to be discarded
so much litter
to give me something to do.
III.
the heat of the evenings are the worse.
after evening service
and dinner with the church people
polite ignorance of
the way the younger girls
smile too long
or the eighty something year old
ba-chan coos over me
as if i were something good
an upright thing
in a world bowed and melting
beneath the heavy sun.
don't they know i'm just hiding?
laying in wait?
biding time to commit sins
with another disguised sinner
someone who pretended me into being
as i pretended her
long before this summer
and long after.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
i wish i was a porno star
no, i don't.
but on "fresh air" today, some singer was interviewed (sorry, so sketchy on details). he was born in germany, and grew up listening to american show tunes. his english wasn't always so good, so apparently he misinterpreted certain lyrics. example (hard to believe): judy garland in "wizard of oz":
the "true" lyrics?: "i wish i wish upon a star..."
this guy's misinterpretation: "i wish i was a porno star..."
actually, the latter (mis)interpretation betrays, not a failing in english, but a wicked sense of humor...
funny, but if you take that disney song sung by that cricket (oh, my conscience is buzzing!), and make a similar modification, boy does it change the meaning of the song!
"when you wish a porno star
makes no difference who you are
anything your heart desires will
come to you."
but on "fresh air" today, some singer was interviewed (sorry, so sketchy on details). he was born in germany, and grew up listening to american show tunes. his english wasn't always so good, so apparently he misinterpreted certain lyrics. example (hard to believe): judy garland in "wizard of oz":
the "true" lyrics?: "i wish i wish upon a star..."
this guy's misinterpretation: "i wish i was a porno star..."
actually, the latter (mis)interpretation betrays, not a failing in english, but a wicked sense of humor...
funny, but if you take that disney song sung by that cricket (oh, my conscience is buzzing!), and make a similar modification, boy does it change the meaning of the song!
"when you wish a porno star
makes no difference who you are
anything your heart desires will
come to you."
straw
just pretend for a moment
that the world was suspended by
a single golden thread
the tensile strength debatable
and the light dancing upon its near
invisible shimmer
could be concealing the
strain of a billion billion tons
and 6(?) billion human lives
pulling it beyond its limits.
yes, let's pretend
this disco ball earth's about to fall
off the roof of the sky
like caramel off the palate
dislodged by an arcing tongue
and, like the caramel,
the only way is to go down
and melt.
it's only a matter of time
before that golden thread snaps.
what to do in the meantime,
spin dizzy upon our spinning dizzy world
make as thought the grass is rushing to meet
our tumble
delay another day
the inevitable end.
who am i to see that golden thread
and if i could
if it wasn't just pretend
what would i do?
grab hold of it
as though the strength of my grip
could keep my world hanging intact
one second more?
that would be pretending.
no, i am the caramel camel
that breaks the
last straw.
that the world was suspended by
a single golden thread
the tensile strength debatable
and the light dancing upon its near
invisible shimmer
could be concealing the
strain of a billion billion tons
and 6(?) billion human lives
pulling it beyond its limits.
yes, let's pretend
this disco ball earth's about to fall
off the roof of the sky
like caramel off the palate
dislodged by an arcing tongue
and, like the caramel,
the only way is to go down
and melt.
it's only a matter of time
before that golden thread snaps.
what to do in the meantime,
spin dizzy upon our spinning dizzy world
make as thought the grass is rushing to meet
our tumble
delay another day
the inevitable end.
who am i to see that golden thread
and if i could
if it wasn't just pretend
what would i do?
grab hold of it
as though the strength of my grip
could keep my world hanging intact
one second more?
that would be pretending.
no, i am the caramel camel
that breaks the
last straw.
muscles of the eyes
here's another cool experiment, confirming ties in your body that you might not have been aware of. it's actually from "anatomy trains," though the relationships have been "known" by chinese from antiquity.
in the suboccipital region (the soft tissue just below the base of the skull) are such points as GB 12 and GB 20. GB 20 has long been known by the chinese as a point affecting vision. i always attributed this tie to the fact that the optical centers of the brain are primarily located "within the occiput." but there is a more direct (and interesting) tie.
for this experiment, place your hands on the back of your head, like you are doing a sit-up. feel with your fingers for the soft tissue just below the occiput (the hard rim of bone at the base of your skull). now, close your eyes. while your eyes are closed, look to the left, look to the right, look up, look down. WITHOUT moving your head, you should feel muscles subtly roll beneath your fingers. cool, huh?
apparently, there is an ancient tie between the muscles controlling the eyes and the muscles at the bottom of the skull... it has something to do with the way infants need to raise their necks (hyperextend) in order to "see the world" when they first begin to crawl... also has something to do with the way a cat thrown into the air will always manage to land on its feet- apparently, the eyes detect the level horizon (or some other landmark) and, via the muscles at the back of the skull, TURN the body to orient it feet down. INTERESTING...
i've heard it said that the reason some blind people (like stevie wonder) have a characteristic hyperextension of the neck when they play is because the lack of vision breaks the feedback loop that tells seeing people at what level to orient their heads... not sure if that is necessarily true, but an interesting line of thought.
in the suboccipital region (the soft tissue just below the base of the skull) are such points as GB 12 and GB 20. GB 20 has long been known by the chinese as a point affecting vision. i always attributed this tie to the fact that the optical centers of the brain are primarily located "within the occiput." but there is a more direct (and interesting) tie.
for this experiment, place your hands on the back of your head, like you are doing a sit-up. feel with your fingers for the soft tissue just below the occiput (the hard rim of bone at the base of your skull). now, close your eyes. while your eyes are closed, look to the left, look to the right, look up, look down. WITHOUT moving your head, you should feel muscles subtly roll beneath your fingers. cool, huh?
apparently, there is an ancient tie between the muscles controlling the eyes and the muscles at the bottom of the skull... it has something to do with the way infants need to raise their necks (hyperextend) in order to "see the world" when they first begin to crawl... also has something to do with the way a cat thrown into the air will always manage to land on its feet- apparently, the eyes detect the level horizon (or some other landmark) and, via the muscles at the back of the skull, TURN the body to orient it feet down. INTERESTING...
i've heard it said that the reason some blind people (like stevie wonder) have a characteristic hyperextension of the neck when they play is because the lack of vision breaks the feedback loop that tells seeing people at what level to orient their heads... not sure if that is necessarily true, but an interesting line of thought.
the ears of ancient fish
hey, did you know that certain "ancient fish" (like the shark) "hear" with the lateral sides of their bodies? it's true. the sides of sharks actually detect subtle vibrations as sharks "undulate" in a lateral swimming motion. this allows them to "hear" the movements of prey, and perhaps target them more accurately.
how is this relevant in any way?
well, in acupuncture, there is a channel called the Gallbladder channel that runs along the lateral sides of the body (in a rough zigzag pattern), eventually ending at the front of the ear. The GB channel has an affinity with the ear, and some points on it are used to treat problems like tinnitus. That's no surprise to most acupuncturists, as points like GB 2 are perhaps the most proximal (called "local") points to the ear. However, according to Kiiko Matsumoto and David Euler, points like GB 22 and GB 23, located on the lateral rib cage actually have a stronger effect on the ear, largely because, embryonicly, the same tissues that develop into the "ears" of ancient fish develop into the lateral sides of the ribcage. the connection between ears and the side of the body, the argument goes, is preserved via the acupuncture meridians...
cool, huh?
how is this relevant in any way?
well, in acupuncture, there is a channel called the Gallbladder channel that runs along the lateral sides of the body (in a rough zigzag pattern), eventually ending at the front of the ear. The GB channel has an affinity with the ear, and some points on it are used to treat problems like tinnitus. That's no surprise to most acupuncturists, as points like GB 2 are perhaps the most proximal (called "local") points to the ear. However, according to Kiiko Matsumoto and David Euler, points like GB 22 and GB 23, located on the lateral rib cage actually have a stronger effect on the ear, largely because, embryonicly, the same tissues that develop into the "ears" of ancient fish develop into the lateral sides of the ribcage. the connection between ears and the side of the body, the argument goes, is preserved via the acupuncture meridians...
cool, huh?
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
mudgun
peel earth like
smooth giant brown fingernails
the severed surfaces are almost shiny
ming vase shiny
cracking only when the weight
and the angle of the sheet
betrays it.
the soil,
such that it is,
demands working.
nothing grows in the earth
that hasn't been turned
and folded over
and mixed in with itself.
space is necessary,
even where the sun doesn't shine,
space between the molecules,
space between atoms.
it's a principle of the universe,
really.
and, like it or not,
someone uses the mudgun on me
when i least suspect
finding my bones
and my other fictions of solidity
peeling my layers away
so that something else,
weeds, maybe
or maybe the next great gold harvest
can grow.
smooth giant brown fingernails
the severed surfaces are almost shiny
ming vase shiny
cracking only when the weight
and the angle of the sheet
betrays it.
the soil,
such that it is,
demands working.
nothing grows in the earth
that hasn't been turned
and folded over
and mixed in with itself.
space is necessary,
even where the sun doesn't shine,
space between the molecules,
space between atoms.
it's a principle of the universe,
really.
and, like it or not,
someone uses the mudgun on me
when i least suspect
finding my bones
and my other fictions of solidity
peeling my layers away
so that something else,
weeds, maybe
or maybe the next great gold harvest
can grow.
apologies...
sorry i haven't been writing as frequently (actually, some of you might consider this a reprieve...). i've been a bit busy.
aiden had his fourth birthday this past sunday. while it was nice to have the family and family friends over, i can't help but feel that we tend to short change aiden on his birthdays. he's happy and all, he gets to play with his cousins and he gets a whole new set of toys (cars, construction vehicles, trains, wall-e) to play with. but we (i) don't put in as much effort, particularly when compared with what i used to do for willow at the same age. maybe i have less effort to put in...
while i'm making excuses for myself, i could say that our biggest concern since returning home from maui was aiden's "walking pneumonia." well, since employing the antibiotics, it's been a progressive improvement... but there was still a lot of concern, and, on my part, not a little guilt. a little more than midway through our maui trip, lynn kept mentioning that she was concerned that aiden had pneumonia or something. i kept discounting it because aiden's coughing, while frequent and sleep-disturbing, were not productive in the least (a criterion, usually, of pneumonia). still, aiden's listlessness and coughing did concern me, even at that time... but i insisted that all he needed was more rest, and we could continue the trip... upon taking aiden in the following monday, boy was i feeling bad when vince (and subsequent chest xrays) discovered that one of aiden's lung lobes was "solid" with mucus/fluid...
lynn and i actually got into a mild argument this past week. like most things, it was the result of misunderstandings and miscommunication (uncommunicated feelings)... we were still "suffering" through aiden's pneumonia, and at one point, in the wee hours of an anonymous night, aiden woke me up with complaints of congestion. so, as i always did, i took him into the shower with me, hoping the steam would help to break up some of his congestion... while i was in the bathroom, lynn questioned me: "is it alright to take him in there, with his pneumonia?" i think i was still feeling guilty over my lax judgments on aiden's condition, and took lynn's question as another nagging critique, i.e. "are you just doing that to get him to shut up and go to sleep? do you really care whether you are making his condition better or worse?" so i just didn't answer lynn. bad move.
the next day i discovered lynn in a bad mood, without really suspecting why. it was only later that evening that things sort of exploded... (funny how the kids sense things, and try to ameliorate, being on their best behavior, and pointing it out to distract us). during a reluctant disclosure session, i told lynn how i was feeling guilty about the whole thing, and that i thought lynn believed that i "didn't really care about aiden, that i was always just doing the expedient thing." and since i carried that thought around, i was feeling like a wounded animal, and any question or critique from lynn felt like salt... i confessed that, honestly, i wasn't sure of myself half the time, and that i hoped i was being a good father and doing the right thing, but the whole pneumonia thing made me wonder... lynn, half to tears, reassured me that she had never once thought that i "didn't care." she told me that i was a good father. she told me that i just needed to communicate more, so that the two of us would at least be on the same page when dealing with our kids...
all in all, a "good" argument. we rarely argue, lynn and i, but at least when we do, it ultimately ends in some kind of "compost session" that makes our relationship deeper and richer.
***
today, i finished my third assignment for my online special education course. it was supposed to be a "legal synthesis" on some topic from nclb (no child left behind) or idea 2004 (individuals with disabilities in education act). my topic was "research based instruction." this was a phrase coined by the authors of nclb, and reflects the bias or assumption of nclb as a whole, that "science" can solve our educational achievement gaps. (i can just hear double-yuh saying it: "why don't we throw some science at it. make things all scientific.")
it was funny how neatly and nicely this assumption was invalidated. "reading recovery," a remedial reading program designed in new zealand and currently held in high regard internationally, was endorsed by the us doe because it met the standard of "effective scientifically based peer reviewed" intervention methods. and yet: science is, ultimately, a human produced cultural phenomenon, and humans are self-serving and fallible creatures. turns out that the "science" backing "reading recovery" had been skewed in its favor. although "reading recovery" had been touted as a remedial reading program for the lowest performing students at the end of grade one, apparently, several studies had discounted these very students (approximately 25-40% of the subjects) to make the end results "look good."
so much for "science."
my next paper for the online course is to be a "now and then" paper on some topic in special education. haven't even begun to think about what i'm going to write about, but i'm thankfully very ahead of schedule. i hope to get all assignments for the online course done so that next week, when i start my second summer course, i'll have a clean slate...
***
the "anatomy trains" book is awesome. i'm almost done with it, although it's one thing to read a book, and another thing entirely to "embody" the information. myers draws from so many sources, and has so many insights, it's hard to distill it into something concretely practice-able. but i will definitely try.
one thing i'd like to explore (again) is feldenkrais and "somatics" and other movement awareness therapies. i think it would be fun to explore the subtle neuromuscular connections within me... just don't know if i can apply this to my patients...
i have vague ideas about increasing my lung capacity via movement and breath awareness... somehow i am hoping it will make me some kind of better singer. AS IF. i think even with enough air, my vocal chords are now faulty instruments, with only daring approximations for certain pitches. but i can dream, can't i?
***
well. sorry. got to go.
aiden had his fourth birthday this past sunday. while it was nice to have the family and family friends over, i can't help but feel that we tend to short change aiden on his birthdays. he's happy and all, he gets to play with his cousins and he gets a whole new set of toys (cars, construction vehicles, trains, wall-e) to play with. but we (i) don't put in as much effort, particularly when compared with what i used to do for willow at the same age. maybe i have less effort to put in...
while i'm making excuses for myself, i could say that our biggest concern since returning home from maui was aiden's "walking pneumonia." well, since employing the antibiotics, it's been a progressive improvement... but there was still a lot of concern, and, on my part, not a little guilt. a little more than midway through our maui trip, lynn kept mentioning that she was concerned that aiden had pneumonia or something. i kept discounting it because aiden's coughing, while frequent and sleep-disturbing, were not productive in the least (a criterion, usually, of pneumonia). still, aiden's listlessness and coughing did concern me, even at that time... but i insisted that all he needed was more rest, and we could continue the trip... upon taking aiden in the following monday, boy was i feeling bad when vince (and subsequent chest xrays) discovered that one of aiden's lung lobes was "solid" with mucus/fluid...
lynn and i actually got into a mild argument this past week. like most things, it was the result of misunderstandings and miscommunication (uncommunicated feelings)... we were still "suffering" through aiden's pneumonia, and at one point, in the wee hours of an anonymous night, aiden woke me up with complaints of congestion. so, as i always did, i took him into the shower with me, hoping the steam would help to break up some of his congestion... while i was in the bathroom, lynn questioned me: "is it alright to take him in there, with his pneumonia?" i think i was still feeling guilty over my lax judgments on aiden's condition, and took lynn's question as another nagging critique, i.e. "are you just doing that to get him to shut up and go to sleep? do you really care whether you are making his condition better or worse?" so i just didn't answer lynn. bad move.
the next day i discovered lynn in a bad mood, without really suspecting why. it was only later that evening that things sort of exploded... (funny how the kids sense things, and try to ameliorate, being on their best behavior, and pointing it out to distract us). during a reluctant disclosure session, i told lynn how i was feeling guilty about the whole thing, and that i thought lynn believed that i "didn't really care about aiden, that i was always just doing the expedient thing." and since i carried that thought around, i was feeling like a wounded animal, and any question or critique from lynn felt like salt... i confessed that, honestly, i wasn't sure of myself half the time, and that i hoped i was being a good father and doing the right thing, but the whole pneumonia thing made me wonder... lynn, half to tears, reassured me that she had never once thought that i "didn't care." she told me that i was a good father. she told me that i just needed to communicate more, so that the two of us would at least be on the same page when dealing with our kids...
all in all, a "good" argument. we rarely argue, lynn and i, but at least when we do, it ultimately ends in some kind of "compost session" that makes our relationship deeper and richer.
***
today, i finished my third assignment for my online special education course. it was supposed to be a "legal synthesis" on some topic from nclb (no child left behind) or idea 2004 (individuals with disabilities in education act). my topic was "research based instruction." this was a phrase coined by the authors of nclb, and reflects the bias or assumption of nclb as a whole, that "science" can solve our educational achievement gaps. (i can just hear double-yuh saying it: "why don't we throw some science at it. make things all scientific.")
it was funny how neatly and nicely this assumption was invalidated. "reading recovery," a remedial reading program designed in new zealand and currently held in high regard internationally, was endorsed by the us doe because it met the standard of "effective scientifically based peer reviewed" intervention methods. and yet: science is, ultimately, a human produced cultural phenomenon, and humans are self-serving and fallible creatures. turns out that the "science" backing "reading recovery" had been skewed in its favor. although "reading recovery" had been touted as a remedial reading program for the lowest performing students at the end of grade one, apparently, several studies had discounted these very students (approximately 25-40% of the subjects) to make the end results "look good."
so much for "science."
my next paper for the online course is to be a "now and then" paper on some topic in special education. haven't even begun to think about what i'm going to write about, but i'm thankfully very ahead of schedule. i hope to get all assignments for the online course done so that next week, when i start my second summer course, i'll have a clean slate...
***
the "anatomy trains" book is awesome. i'm almost done with it, although it's one thing to read a book, and another thing entirely to "embody" the information. myers draws from so many sources, and has so many insights, it's hard to distill it into something concretely practice-able. but i will definitely try.
one thing i'd like to explore (again) is feldenkrais and "somatics" and other movement awareness therapies. i think it would be fun to explore the subtle neuromuscular connections within me... just don't know if i can apply this to my patients...
i have vague ideas about increasing my lung capacity via movement and breath awareness... somehow i am hoping it will make me some kind of better singer. AS IF. i think even with enough air, my vocal chords are now faulty instruments, with only daring approximations for certain pitches. but i can dream, can't i?
***
well. sorry. got to go.
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