A Walking Dialogue on Government

I had a fabulous experience this afternoon.  Voting days are always special to me (especially coming from DC), and I never, NEVER miss voting--not primaries, not run-offs, and especially days when we had as many offices and judges to vote on as we did in Wake County, NC today.  Voting to me is a right and a responsibility, a duty and a joy, an honor and a privilege, and a celebration and expression of what it is to be an American.  And I feel that way whether or not my candidates are flying in the polls or, as is the case this year, looking like they won't be the winners this time around.

And ever since my son was born, he has accompanied me to every vote on every election.  With the low numbers of young people voting (although that figure certainly went up in the last presidential election), I hope that I can convey to him what a gift it is to be able to vote, and that he will come to participate as whole-heartedly as I do.  So we have tended to make Election Day kind of a party day, and we usually have a special lunch or dinner or something to make it a festive occasion (in addition to getting to stand in line, fill out our ballet, insert it in the machine, and proudly wear our "I Voted" sticker for the rest of the day).

But now that he is a middle schooler, he is beginning to think about these things a little more carefully.  I showed him the voters guide and we talked about it some, but I think he was intimidated by the idea of making the right choice for all these different offices (and frankly, as at least of couple of us were discussing at a curriculum planning meeting tonight, we adults are too).  So he was asking about how he would be able to understand all the policies and issues involved when he was older so that he could make an informed vote.

Our polling site is about a mile away from our house, and since it was a beautiful autumn day, I decided we would put our "school work" aside and walk over there.  Walking is better for the environment (he did say that I should vote for the candidate who would protect the trees), better for our health, and better for making this a more memorable occasion.

What I didn't realize was that walking would be a better time for us to discuss the many topics related to today's vote.  We discussed the branches of government, the rotating system of who gets elected when and how it is designed to always have some continuity and have some change, and the system of checks and balances build into the American system of government.  We talked about the different levels of courts and why why we were voting for so many different offices--federal, state, and county (our town elections are held on off years).  We reviewed some of what we had studied last year about the Constitution and explored what areas it covers and what it doesn't.  We also brought up the fact that today the U.S. Supreme Court was hearing arguments about the constitutionality of the California law banning the sale of violent video games to minors (a topic I discussed in a previous post) and what "free speech" really means.  We walked by a sign in one neighbor's yard that was saying something derogatory about the national Speaker of the House, and noted that was covered by the free speech clause.  But what if it said something bad about the U.S. President?  What if it urged violence against the President?  And how does the new technology effect the idea of free speech in general?

And to top it off, these dialogues were also interspersed with him pointing out various plants that he has been learning about in the nature hikes led by a local biologist that we've been taking this month.

In short, we put aside our work to enjoy this day of civic involvement.  But I bet it also ends up being one of the most educational discussions we have all week.  It's a great reminder, when we find ourselves caught up with curriculum planning and enrolling our children in educational programs and participating in extracurriculur activities, etc., that, to paraphrase John Lennon,  sometimes learning, just like life, is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans.

Plans for the NC Museum of Natural Sciences New Research Center

As I discussed in a previous post, the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences is building an addition that will house new educational, research, and exhibition areas to help visitors understand how science has developed the scientific knowledge it has attained.  While there are all sorts of exciting plans in the works--multimedia presentations, interactive displays, and working state-of-the-art labs, particularly exciting for those of us with middle schoolers students and above are the possible of expanded educational programs that can go into greater depth about some of science's most pressing issues.

Today we got a preview of some of the plans under development from one of the Museum's educational staff.  First, the bad news:  the new facility will probably not be operational until 2012.  They expect to complete construction by late 2011, but preparing the exhibits and laboratories will take additional time.  In particular, there has to be a "settling in" period of some months that will allow dust, particles, or other cast-offs of the construction materials to clear the air before they can bring in the sensitive computer and laboratory equipment that will outfit the building.

However, once things get underway, they expect to be running educational programs in several different labs.  The labs specifically mentioned were a macrobiology lab, a microbiology lab, and a digital visualization lab that will specialize in helping us to understand how all the data scientists collect can be displayed in a visual way so that humans can actually understand it.  It sounds like these labs will come complete with fantastic microscopes and other equipment that will allow a small class to have hands-on experience with some advanced science topics.

So we still have to be patient for a little while.  However, particularly for those of us in the Raleigh area, it seems like this will be a great addition to our children's access to high-quality hands-on science education.  Also, for those of us who homeschool, the Museum is definitely open to and enthusiastic about working with homeschoolers to make sure their new offerings help meet our needs for the kinds of hands-on laboratory science that prepares our students for college.

A Literary Halloween

In our house, Halloween is all about the costume.  Ever since my son's first Halloween, when we bought him a little outfit from a local Indian store, made him a turban out of gauze stuck together with hot glue with a big fake jewel in the center, and put him in the baby backpack on the back of my husband, who was dressed in gray sweats and a spray-painted-grey Freddy Kruger mask (I think) with a gray tube hot-glued on to make the trunk of the elephant that was carrying our minature majaraja, we have always made a big deal out of our home-made costumes.

This year, my son picked a character from his favorite book from the summer reading program I described in a previous post.  First, I'll give you the passage that introduces his costume character:

He was the largest man Milo had ever seen, with a great stomach, large piercing eyes, a gray beard that reached to his waist, and a silver signet ring on the little finger of his left hand.  He also wore a small crown and a robe with the letters of the alphabet beautifully embroidered all over it.

That description comes from the classic 1961 book, The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster.  My son loves that book, because it has a lot of puns and turns of phrases, and reminds him a bit of another of his favorites, Alice in Wonderland (he went as The Mad Hatter several years ago before Johnny Depp made the Mad Hatter cool again).

The costume, as usual, took more time that I had expected, due in part to my son's exacting demands for accuracy (I, for example, just planned to write letters on his robe with a Sharpie, but that was rejected out of hand, since the text said the letters were EMBROIDERED).  But, in the end, I think it looked pretty good.

Here is the end result:

I hope everyone else's Halloween was as fun and as creative as ours was!

Should the Government Ban Minors from Buying Violent Video Games?

Next Tuesday, two wonderful expressions of our democratic government will take place.  For millions of us, Tuesday will be the day we vote for our U.S. Congressional Representatives and a host of other state or local officials (the others, I'm sure, have already voted by early ballot).  Meanwhile, in our nation's capitol, the U.S. Supreme Court will be hearing arguments about whether or not the free speech protections of the U.S. Constitution extend to video games.

On Tuesday, November 2, the Supreme Court will hear arguments on the case of Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association (EMA), which deals with a 2005 California law that restricts the sale of certain violent video games to people under 18.  The law was overturned by the California courts for being unconstitutional, but the US Supreme Court agreed to consider the matter when the state of California appealed the decision.


On one side of the issue are various parent groups, who cite studies that linke playing violent video games to actual acts of violence, and argue that we should restrict children's access to such dangerous items just as we refuse to allow them to buy cigarettes or alcohol.  On the other side are civil libertarians and media groups, particularly the game developers themselves, who argue that with their ever-increasing ability for interaction and interconnectivity between players, video games are a growing means of self-expression for tweens and teens, and denying them access to that media runs counter to their constitutional rights, which have been re-affirmed in regards to books.

For our particular family, this matter is not really an issue; we don't own any game consoles, my son doesn't play many video games, and he doesn't enjoy violent games or activities in general, so I can't see him getting into such games whether or not they were banned.  And I can certainly understand the arguments of the proponents of the law.  I highly recommend the book Stop Teaching Our Children to Kill by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman and Gloria Degaetano, which makes a chilling case that time spent on violent video games (some of which were adapted from military sharpshooter training materials) not only numbs children to violence but gives them the skills to shoot with deadly accuracy, and was a factor in the mass school killings such as Columbine.

However, while I can't speak from personal experience, it also seems that the video games industry is evolving and has created some interesting games that lead players through the consequences of such violence.  The game industry puts forth examples of more-nuanced violent games as "Darfur Is Dying," where the player tries to avoid being killed by militias while in a refugee camp, "BioShock," where the game deals with genetically modified people being used in a bad system that players can choose to either profit from or rebel against, or "Fable 2," where players face the ultimate ethical dilemma--whether they will save only their immediate family from death, or sacrifice their family to save thousands of innocent lives.  Such games, according to game developers, actually allow teens to confront the moral issues surrounding violence and give them better coping skills if faced with violence in their real lives.

So in the end, I have to come down against the proposed law.  I think it would inhibit the free speech that mature middle schoolers and teens should be having about these issues.  And I am always reluctant to restrict civil liberties, which I think are already under seige with the threat of international terrorism.

So if Chief Justice Roberts were to ask my opinion as a parent, I would say the Supreme Court should uphold the lower court decision ruling the law as being unconstitution.  What would you say if he were to ask you?

Triangle NC the Center for Bargain Colleges

The College Board released statistics this week that claimed that while the average cost per year for a four-year  private school undergraduate education is now $36,000 (compared to $21,000 ten years ago), the increase in financial aid actually reduces the average per year cost to $22,000.  Kiplingers followed up that data with their annual listing of the best bargains in private education, based on the average amount of needs-based, and in some cases, non needs-based grants available to reduce the actual costs of attending the school.

The top school on the list for 2010-2011 is Princeton University.  However, the fifth university of their best-value listing was Duke University, located in the Durham point of Research Triangle, NC.  This adds Duke to last year's rating of University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as the best value among public universities, as well as North Carolina State University's inclusion as number 10.

So even though the college costs around here sound astronomical, it appears that the true costs can be significantly lower.  And we seemed to be blessed with a variety of choices for "bargain" undergraduate education; I didn't any other community that had options under both the public and private lists.

I've included some of the data from the report, including graduation rates and average debt upon graduation, below.  I've also included the statistics from my alma mater, The College of William and Mary, which was #4 on the list....just because it is my old school, several of my friends have children applying there, and it provides some useful comparisons to the local schools.  But if you want to see the data itself, or want to look for other colleges you are considering, you can access the Kiplinger statistics at: http://www.kiplinger.com/reports/best-college-values/

Duke University
Graduation Rate, 4yrs/5yrs:  83%, 92%
Student/Faculty Ratio:  8
Yearly cost:  $53,157
Average debt at graduation:  $23,059

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Graduation Rate, 4yrs/6yrs:  75%, 88%
Student/Faculty Ratio:  14
Yearly cost, in-state:  $15,294
Yearly cost, out-of-state:  $33,184
Average debt at graduation:  $14,936

North Carolina State University
Graduation Rate, 4yrs/6yrs:  37%, 70%
Student/Faculty Ratio:  16
Yearly cost, in-state:  $14,390
Yearly cost, out-of-state:  $26,875
Average debt at graduation:  $14,996

The College of William and Mary
Graduation Rate, 4yrs/6yrs:  84%, 92%
Student/Faculty Ratio:  11
Yearly cost, in-state:  $20,566
Yearly cost, out-of-state:  $40,358
Average debt at graduation:  $12,859

Learning Disabilities Misunderstood by Public and Educators

A study just released by the Tremaine Foundation shows that while people are becoming more familiar with learning disabilities, both the public and educators polled demonstrated some disturbing ignorance about the nature of such disabilities.  Over half of the public believed that learning disabilities are often caused by poor influences from the child's home, substance abuse on the part of the parent, or plain old laziness.  The majority also incorrectly associated learning disabilities with mental retardation, autism, and emotional disturbances.  Educators were somewhat less likely to believe these erroneous ideas about the causes and nature of learning disabilities, but still significant populations of teachers, sometimes in the 40% or more range, agreed with these wrong notions about the topic.

Another item of concern raised by the study results is the large number of parents who expect young children to "grow out" of signs of learning disabilities.  This is problematic because early intervention has proven to be so effective in helping those who learn different to succeed in school.

Curriculum Resource: Introducing Personality Testing to Middle Schoolers

A friend and I are co-teaching a class at our coop on Psychology for middle schoolers/early high schoolers.  Today I was introducing the topic of Personality Testing; to be specific, I was starting to discuss the use of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), which is generally regarded as the most widely-used personality assessment test.  The official figures say that two million people take the test each year, and that number is probably increased multiple times by those who take non-official assessments out of books or websites.

In my professional life, I have done a lot of work with adults in using MBTI.  However, I must confess I have never used it with such a young age group.  However, I decided to start with the same quote I hav always used to introduce personality assessment to adults.  It is an edited quoted from Fyodor Dostoevsky's very thought-provoking work, Notes from the Underground:

Now I ask you: what can be expected of man...? Shower upon him every earthly blessing, drown him in a sea of happiness, so that nothing but bubbles of bliss can be seen on the surface; give him economic prosperity, such that he should have nothing else to do but sleep, eat cakes and busy himself with the continuation of his species, and even then out of sheer ingratitude, sheer spite, man would play you some nasty trick. He would even risk his cakes and would deliberately desire the most fatal rubbish, the most uneconomical absurdity,... simply in order to prove to himself...that men still are men and not the keys of a piano.... And that is not all: even if man really were nothing but a piano-key, even if this were proved to him by natural science and mathematics, even then he would not become reasonable, but would purposely do something perverse out of simple ingratitude, simply to gain his point. ... If you say that all this, too, can be calculated and tabulated--chaos and darkness and curses, so that the mere possibility of calculating it all beforehand would stop it all, and reason would reassert itself, then man would purposely go mad in order to be rid of reason and gain his point! I believe in it, I answer for it, for the whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano-key!

This quote, like most of Notes from the Underground, is quite dense, so it make take several times of reading it through to really get what he is saying.

The tweens/teens read it through with a good bit of giggling, as they were amused by the idea of eating nothing but cakes (quite a different nutritional message then they usually hear...but, of course, Dostoevsky was not refering to nutrition) and somewhat scintillated  by the phrase "busy himself with the continuation of the species."   Several claimed that they had no idea what the quote meant, but some others rephrased it as stating that people will do anything to avoid being manipulated (which is a pretty good distillation of the passage).  This generated a good discussion about how people hate to be controlled or put into boxes, and the sometimes extreme measures we will go to in order to avoid that happening (this could be one interpretation of why Adam and Eve chose to eat the apple that expelled them from paradise).

Several students volunteered examples of things they or someone they had done simply to defy expectations.  I offered a story from my childhood memories.  One time when my family and I were going to that great Washington DC area ice cream establishment, Giffords Ice Cream, my brothers were teasing me about how I was going to get Swiss Chocolate ice cream because that was what I ALWAYS got.  And that might have been bad enough, but one brother said, "Well, she has to get chocolate, because girls ALWAYS choose chocolate."  Well, that was it!  No way I could get chocolate now--I had to take a feminist stand!  So I got coconut ice cream instead.  Now, Gifford's coconut ice cream is really, really good--but honestly, I really wanted the Swiss Chocolate instead.

So this story illustrates several valuable points about personality work:
1.  We have recurring personality patterns
2.  Other people pick up those personality patterns
3.  People make predictions based on those personality patterns
4.  Even though we have a tendency towards a recurring pattern, we can always make a different choice.
5.  If we feel we are being too boxed in by other people (or even by ourselves) by our past patterns, we may strike out and do something completely different, even if we end up suffering from that decision.  But we would rather give up our good than, as Dostoevsky says, think of ourselves as a piano key being played by some outside power.

So even thought the crowd was young, this quote sparked a good discussion.  It was particularly important for these young people, I thought, because last week most of the said they wanted to take the class so that they could control, manipulate, or predict other people in their lives.  I suggested that a more powerful way to look at this was as a means to understand ourselves and others, rather than to control or predict them.  I'm not sure we've convinced them of the value of understanding yet.  But I think we've begun to expose them to the inherent difficulties in trying to control others.