Passover 5784

 Growing up, Passover was a favorite holiday in our home. We got new candy … kosher for Pesach .. and often had visits from or visited our relatives who lived in Baltimore … that is to say, happy days, no school … I am nobody’s fool … we also had a chance to find the Afikomen and win a reward although usually our siblings and cousins were also rewarded but the competition was fun … as were the four cups of wine rarely withheld from children … we were supposed to be celebrating our freedom … I was celebrating the lack of sobriety … yes, my father was a Rabbi, as was his father and his grandfather who had travelled to Israel and the Sinai and even Egypt … Jews are inherently wanderers … and I am a wonderer as well … I wonder why there is so much religious violence around the world and here in the land of the brave and craven … I have a recording my gather’s reading of the Haggadah and will listen to it tonight or tomorrow night … he recorded it for me when I was becoming a steely eyed defender of democracy at the Air Force Academy … my eyesight is now quite weak as is my resolve.

I recall a large Passover seder at our house in Oak Ridge. Tennessee with many Baltimore cousins present when my older and wiser brother and I got in a fight and were banished from the Passover table … I had made a bad joke about our mother and my brother attacked me … I lost the fight of course but we were both punished … justice served … we missed two cups of wine … a significant punishment that evening.

I miss my parents … my father’s wisdom … my mother’s directness … harsh tongue that is … I do not miss the 4 cups of wine which in my case was usually 5 as I often stole the cup of wine left for Elijah … a shame to waste that cup of wine … as Elijah never showed up except once at a Seder at my brother’s home in Jacksonville, Alabama when he hired a friend to play the role of Elijah … my brother had a great sense of humor which I lack. He kept a picture of kitchen in his wallet condiments which he called his “pride and joy” … pictures of bottles of Pride and Joy … he suckered in many with that joke.

Growing old is strange … I cannot remember what happened yesterday but have so many memories of my early life. How is that possible? I remember a time when a child would never say a harsh word to a parent. It was not the fear of a spanking as my parents did not spank although my father once slapped me for saying something unkind about my mother … that was the only physical punishment I or any of my siblings ever got. I never spoke ill of my mother again. Lesson learned.

Back to growing old. I dream of finding a woman who is independently wealthy … I mean independent and healthy … my fingers slipped … perhaps a nurse skilled in care for the elderly who is dumb enough to move to Texas … she should be Jewish, of course, although none of my three wives were Jewish … call me a dreamer.

When I grow up, if that ever happens,  I want to be younger.

Freedom and joy to a laughless world,

mike

What makes good instruction good?

 

I have wondered about this question for years and wandered around various answers during that time. I have asked distinguished colleagues such as Bob Gagné and Dave Merrill and Joost Lowyck and Oets Kolk Bouwsma and others … their consensus was that they did not really know. I do not know. But others claim to know. Some might say things like the following:

1.      Most students got high grades;

2.      Most students took a follow-on course;

3.      Most students rated the course highly;

And other such answers …

But none of the answers had anything to do with sustained knowledge or performance.

So many of those involved in higher education pretend to know but have no clue.

First, lets clarify what instruction is. According to Gagné, instruction is that which supports learning and performance.

I choose to focus on learning next. Again according to  Gagné, learning is demonstrated by stable and sustained changes in what a person knows or can do. That means that in order to establish that learning has occurred, one must determine what changes took place. The change cannot be not having taken the course before … the change should be linked to knowledge and performance. Without premeasures, one cannot establish a change. Moreover, without long after the course finished, one cannot establish a significant and sustained change. Therefore, most instructors are NOT in a position to claim that learning has occurred. Nor are the students. I took many advance math courses but am unable to recall or do very much that could do to earn As in those courses. I learned NOTHING but got good grades.

Now we have true believers who claim that having measurable objectives and relevant activities and practice that one can ensure that learning occurs. Most of those true believers do not have doctoral degrees nor have done research on learning. Yet they so willingly browbeat others … especially the elders who have had decades of experience.

So the show goes on. To get ahead, many people just go along. A few decide to go alone. I moving closer to the few. I am convinced I have wasted my life in higher education. “I should have been a pair of ragged claws, scuttling across the floors of silent seas.” Look it up or ask someone else for the reference. Looking might get you to thinking. After all, learning is about searching … not about telling or listening.

Mike Spector, Aka, an embittered professor

Footprtints or mudprints

Is DJT leaving behind footprints in the sands of time (https://poets.org/poem/psalm-life) or mud prints in the fog of mind ... you know to whom I refer ... I simply cannot understand how so many still support that criminal ... I am weak of mind ... I admit ... but some things are quite clear to me ... namely that I should have moved to Bali ... or stayed in Bergen ... mike

"late and soon, getting spending ... we lay waste our powers"

 (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45564/the-world-is-too-much-with-us) ... 

Hillel: "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?" 

Socrates: :”True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.”:

 ...See also:

"Ozymandias" - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46565/ozymandias 

:Abou Ben Adhem: - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44433/abou-ben-adhem 

Why do those things that I never studied come so easily to mind? I wonder ???

Mike Spector

Lost, as usual