Random Thoughts on the Wisdom and Ethics of my Father

For some reason I find myself thinking about my father and some isolated conversations I seem to recall from the years preceding my bar mitzvah. I think I asked about the stories of so many in the Torah who were flawed or who committed bad acts. It starts of course with Cain but includes Abraham and Moses and so many others. My father said that the point of the records reported in Jewish liturgy is that all of us are flawed. We all have shortcomings, and the point of those stories is to understand that we all fall prey to bad inclinations on occasion but that we can strive to become less flawed. The one character in Jewish liturgy who was the least flawed suffered more than most – Job. As a result, I have long been fascinated with Job and that book. What sticks with me still today is G-d’s questions (or harsh reminders) to Job: “Where were you when I created the earth and set the stars in motion?” Today that seems like G-d asking Steven Hawking what he knew about things prior to the big bang. So I managed to gain two big lessons from my father that have stayed with me all these years. First, I, like everyone else, have flaws … more than I care to admit even to myself. Second, I, like everyone else, have limited knowledge. There are things I do not know, will not know, and can never know. Given those early lessons, I decided I could not follow in my father’s footsteps and become a rabbi … I was always amazed at how well he fulfilled the many duties and obligations of being a rabbi. So, I became a wanderer … drifting from place to place and profession to profession. If one concludes that all people have flaws and limited knowledge, then how should one interact with others and how should one conduct one’s life? Accumulating wealth and words of praise seems like the wrong thing to do especially when one realizes that so many have so little and when so many others have done so many things far more remarkable than anything I can do … where is my place and what can I contribute? I find myself asking but not answering … remembering but not doing … one can be a better person … I still try on occasion to be better … mostly with my children but I have no indications of success. Well, few indications. None of my children have become mass murderers … none have been convicted of criminal behavior … all have graduate degrees … and all have been loved. What more can one ask? To paraphrase Robert Zimmerman, “may they always do for others, and let others do for them.”

Who is responsible?

At the end of "Night and Fog" Resnais asks "Whis is responsible?" as Nazi officer and Kapo one after another at the Nuremburg trials say he was just following orders - https://lisathatcher.com/2013/02/04/night-and-fog-resnais-asks-who-is-to-blame-and-reminds-us-we-have-to-know-film-review/ After the insurrection on Jan 6, 2021, we should be asking the same question ... who was responsible? We should be asking ... not answering ... but some do not even want to ask. Reminds me of the four sons and the four questions at the Pesach seder .... a wise son, a wicked son, a simple son, and one who does not know how to ask ... we have four or more groups in the USA ... some who are wise and want to understand, some who are wicked and were perpetrators, some who are simple and only accept simple-minded words, and some who do who want the others to even talk about the question. And then there are the daughters who become mothers and do not want their sons and daughters to die needlessly or in vain. We have not come far from that Birmingham Sunday in 1963 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQ0y-vO9QLE For what it's worth, we have not learned much from history - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp5JCrSXkJY Confucius - "He who learns but does not think, is lost! He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger." Socrates - "If a man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it." Aristotle - "At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst." Nietzsche - All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth." Washington - ""It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one." Marx - "History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce." Camus - "One must imagine Sisyphus happy." Wittgenstein - "The world of the happy is not the same as the world of the unhappy." Mao - "The people, and the people alone, are the motive force in the making of world history." Trump - "A little more moderation would be good. Of course, my life hasn't exactly been one of moderation." Well, then, who is responsible? The answer, from Jewish prayers asking for forgiveness, is that we all are responsible. We are all responsible for each other. See https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/confessing-our-sins/ and https://www.aish.com/h/hh/yom-kippur/guide/Exploring_the_Al-Chet_Prayer.html Enter, stage left, the chorus singing the words of the Rock - see https://www.poetrynook.com/poem/choruses-%C3%B4%C3%A7%C2%A3the-rock%C3%B4%C3%A7%C3%B8

the views of Majorie Taylor Greene ... and too many others ...

The news: https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/25/politics/marjorie-taylor-greene-holocaust-outrage/index.html 

Night and Fog: https://vimeo.com/189672641 

 My older and wiser brother (hopefully resting in peace), said it could happen in America ... I did not believe him so many years ago growing up in East Tennessee ... now I believe him ... It could happen here as Trump's treatment of immigrants at the border suggests and as Marjorie Taylor Greene demonstrates ... she is Trump's Kapo ... 

 the problem of evil has been known for centuries ... see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_evil#:~:text=The%20problem%20of%20evil%20is,was%20popularized%20by%20David%20Hume. ... see also https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/leibniz-evil/ ... or just look around on this anniversary of the murder of George Floyd ... 

in America there has been systematic disregard for the sanctity of life since immigrants arrived here with slaves centuries ago ... and the fact that so many sanctimonious republicans are encouraging the destruction of this fragile democracy is so discouraging ... in a land "where seldom is heard a discouraging word" ... nonsense ... 

 we are not innocent ... as the Al Chet prayer at Yom Kippur suggests ... we are all responsible ... (see https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/6577/jewish/Text-of-Al-Chet.htm) I find it very difficult to focus on my little patch of existence when there is so much brutality , greed, and degradation of human life at such high levels in this country ... I am depressed ... 

as the donkey in Shrek said, I need a hug . .. 

 Afterthoughts: 

 Having now received a virtual hug from cousin Becky, and having thought more about what I was thinking I wanted to add the following:

First, it is not just brutality, greed and degradation of human life in high places ... it is all around at nearly every level in nearly every neighborhood. I live in the most violent country on the planet. 

 And, I think it was Epicurus who articulated the problem of evil and an all knowing, all powerful, and always benevolent supreme being - namely, if that being knows about evil but does not prevent it, then the notion of all benevolent is out the window ... if that being knows about evil but cannot prevent it, then out goes all powerful or perhaps that being is unaware of evil and there goes all knowing ... 

 The Greeks introduced this problem a couple of thousand years ago ... and along came Leibniz centuries later ... when I was a doctoral student at the Univ of TX a visiting professor came and offered a seminar on Leibniz and how Leibniz still defended this as the best of all possible worlds ... I do not recall that professor's name nor the details of the argument but it seemed like his defense of Leibniz relied on our ability to make this a better world ....of course I was impressed at the time ... but no longer .... 

 "the arc of justice" must be infinitely long ... or at least a lot longer than I can imagine ... but then my imagination is limited and reality may not conform to the limits of my imagination ...

 What seems a little surprising to me is that after all my years in higher education in the field of learning technologies is that things that happened to me some 50 years ago seem to dominate my thinking ... and I have a bad memory ... 

 "I should have been a pair of ragged claws ... Scuttling across the floors of silent seas." 

 Name that tune and you win an all expense trip to the nearest coffee shop ... 

 my name is michael, mechanical man .... drive me and steer me wherever you can ...

HOW THE TRUE WORLD ENDED

HOW THE "TRUE WORLD" FINALLY BECAME A FABLE

The History of an Error By Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)

A chapter from his book, The Twilight of the Idols, or How to Philosophize with a Hammer (1888). The following single page is the whole chapter.

1. The true world — attainable for the sage, the pious, the virtuous man; he lives in it, he is it. (The oldest form of the idea, relatively sensible, simple, and persuasive. A circumlocution for the sentence, "I, Plato, am the truth.")

2. The true world — unattainable for now, but promised for the sage, the pious, the virtuous man ("for the sinner who repents"). (Progress of the idea: it becomes more subtle, insidious, incomprehensible — it becomes female, it becomes Christian.)

3. The true world — unattainable, indemonstrable, unpromisable; but the very thought of it — a consolation, an obligation, an imperative. (At bottom, the old sun, but seen through mist and skepticism. The idea has become elusive, pale, Nordic, Königsbergian.)

4. The true world — unattainable? At any rate, unattained. And being unattained, also unknown. Consequently, not consoling, redeeming, or obligating: how could something unknown obligate us? (Gray morning. The first yawn of reason. The cockcrow of positivism.)

5. The "true" world — an idea which is no longer good for anything, not even obligating — an idea which has become useless and superfluous — consequently, a refuted idea: let us abolish it! (Bright day; breakfast; return of bon sens and cheerfulness; Plato's embarrassed blush; pandemonium of all free spirits.)

6. The true world — we have abolished. What world has remained? The apparent one perhaps? But no! With the true world we have also abolished the apparent one.

(Noon; moment of the briefest shadow; end of the longest error; high point of humanity; INCIPIT ZARATHUSTRA.)

 

Here is the revised Trumpian version (2021) – follow the links down the rabbit hole:

1. The true world — attainable for the sage, the pious, the virtuous; they live in it, they are it. (The oldest form of the idea, relatively sensible, simple, and persuasive. A circumlocution for the sentence, "truth crushed to earth shall rise again.”)

2. The true world — unattainable for now, but promised for the sage, the pious, the virtuous (for those awaiting a rebirth of wonder).

3. The true world — unattainable, indemonstrable, unpromisable; but the very thought of it — a consolation, an obligation, an imperative. (For those who live in the world of fear and trembling).

4. The true world — unattainable? At any rate, unattained. And being unattained, also unknown. Consequently, not consoling, redeeming, or obligating: how could something unknown obligate us? (The cat in the cradle escapes into the canticle for Leibowitz).

5. The "true" world — an idea which is no longer good for anything, not even obligating — an idea which has become useless and superfluous — consequently, a refuted idea: let us abolish it! (Long live the Big Lie!).

6. The true world — Trumplicans have abolished it. What world has remained? The apparent one perhaps? But no! With the true world we have also abolished the apparent one. (What remains? Deception and duplicity   … and fealty to DJT).

(Noon; moment of the briefest shadow; the end of democracy; low point of humanity; INCIPIT THE DONALD.)

End of Semester Thoughts (EOST)

 

Given the delay between the spring semester and the start of the summer semester, I have been thinking about a number of things, such as how my students have progressed, the situation with regard to the pandemic, and things I thought I understood but had reason to doubt my thinking. A common thread runs through those things and it is encapsulated in what is known in the instructional design community as the ADDIE (analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation) model. ADDIE is a generic process thought to be useful in addressing challenging problems and it is used in a number of disciplines. Sometimes, ADDIE is applied in a rigorous manner that discourages innovation and can result in less than optimal solutions. I vaguely recall writing that one might better think of ADDIE as a guide, like a caddie in golf who can assist the golfer and help the golfer improve. The extra ‘c’ at the beginning of CADDIE might be thought to stand for ‘continuous’ or ‘comprehensive’. An effective problem-solving process is an ongoing enterprise that often revisits earlier stages and revises the plan as things evolve and the plan unfolds – whence ‘continuous’ for the initial ‘c’. Or, an effective problem-solving process is comprehensive in that the entire context surrounding the problem is taken into consideration. To be truthful, I cannot recall why I added the initial ‘c’ and dubbed instructional design processes as CADDIE. I grow old and my memory grows weak.

I think about advice I often give my graduate students, which is a version of advice I was given. Identify a central problem, examine what has been done to address that problem, select an under-addressed small part of that problem, and try to contribute something useful to make progress in that specific area – i.e., examine, understand, plan, and act – oh, a new acronym – EUPA … sounds almost like yippee … as in finally something I can do. Or perhaps it is a strange variant of eureka, which is Greek for “I found it” which is allegedly what Archimedes said when he fell into a well and discovered a solution for calculating the volume of an irregularly shaped body. Who knows if any of that is true? Who still cares about truth these days? We should all care about truth these days. Definitions only lead to other definitions – I think I read this in one of Wittgenstein’s posthumous publications. Facts, on the other hand can lead to other facts and eventually to a deeper understanding of something puzzling. Truth … well, truth shows itself in what one does, as Bouwsma wrote in an unpublished journal, “Surely your life will show what you think of yourself,” and as Ruth’s words to Naomi reflect, truth shows itself in Ruth following Naomi into an uncertain future. Truth is not something personal …. It is something others can see and understand and judge, which is what I have gathered from Wittgenstein, Bouwsma and Ruth. It seems to me that many are off course with regard to truth, facts and definitions, but then I am off course in these remarks about CADDIE.

The thought I had involved my excursion into system dynamics when I was in Bergen, Norway, which is home to the Wittgenstein archives, by the way. Anyway, I learned from folks such as Pål Davidsen and Erling Moxnes that when a system dynamicist goes about creating a system dynamics model of a complex situation an initial step is to create a causal loop model or influence diagram of the situation. This proceeds by asking key people involved with the situation four questions: (a) what factors influence this situation, (b) how would you describe each factor, (c) what relationships exist among these factors, and (d) how would you describe those relationships? Should we create an acronym for these questions, such as FDRD (try pronouncing that with a mouth full of pebbles). Those four questions seem applicable to a wide variety of problems and can help guide a problem solver to an effective solution approach, which is how I thought about CADDIE. The name of this game is helping problem solvers develop good solutions. What is a good solution? One that works … one that can be replicated … one that can be sustained and applied to similar problems – a good solution is scalable and sustainable – IMLTHO (in my less than humble opinion, which is pronounceable … try it on for size). 

Back to the thought that drove me to make notes. I was thinking about how different people think about the purpose of education, and then how those different conceptions might be put into a system dynamics model. I am certainly not the first to have such an idea; see for example, Jennifer Sterling Groff’s model). My thought has a twist, however, which is how I like my gin and tonic, with twist of lemon or lime … and it is okay to hold the gin as I am no longer drinking alcoholic beverages, unlike in my misbegotten youth growing up in East Tennessee.

There is of course an issue involving groups of people as opposed to working with individuals, but there do seem to be patterns. Do you remember the four questions – not the ones recited at the Passover Seder but the ones mentioned earlier?

So, how might a parent with children describe the purpose of education:

a)      Key factors are include finding a rewarding job, being qualified to pursue higher education, getting accepted into a reputable university, looking to future job requirements, satisfying inclinations and desires, having a liveable income, and so on. Keeping the list to about ten or so key factors is important.

b)      Factor descriptions – these vary from parent to parent and also from child to child and teacher to teacher so I leave this an exercise for those bored with this discussion (there goes my audience).

c)      Key relationships – again this will vary somewhat but looking for those relationships that seem to be most influential is worthwhile and probably revealing.

d)      Relationship descriptions – well, what counts as a liveable income will vary a lot … for a despicable few, enough is never enough … but again building this causal influence diagram is a worthwhile activity for parents, educators, students, teachers, administrators, and policy makers.

If one has multiple such causal influence diagrams for different constituencies, the twist I wish to add is to see what commonalities might exist across different constituencies. I do not consider my own case to be at all representative. I wanted to pursue a career as a philosopher professor so I would have summers off to go hiking and camping in the mountains, but there were no jobs and those that did exist certainly did not lead to job security or the accumulation of wealth. So I gave software engineering and programming a try having been through IBM’s programming school in Kansas City. That did lead to jobs but they were not exactly satisfying. So I tried teaching computer science for a number of year with limited success and discovered expert systems and artificial intelligence which led to a position at the Air Force Human Resources Laboratory and long-term and well-funded projects involving efforts to automate parts of instructional design and development, again with some success until labs were consolidated; then I escaped to the University of Bergen, initially on a Fulbright research fellowship. The point of this short sketch of my own case is that education is an ongoing process and an individual’s educational and life goals can and do change.

SO … so, the real question is how best to educate youth for a changing future. That is not how folks generally think about education. Let’s develop an educational system that helps improve a child’s chance for a good job, or helps improve the nation’s likely productivity in years to come, or helps improve our children’s ability to lead happy and satisfying lives. So what is it going to be? Build wealth or live happily? Of course it is not that simple. It is what Bouwsma wrote: “Surely your life will show what you think of yourself” and “the world may gladden your heart, but it will surely make you cry.” Or as Wittensteint wrote: “the world of the happy is not the same as the world of the unhappy.”

Here is another quotation from T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Profrock:”

And indeed there will be time

For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,

Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;

There will be time, there will be time

To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;

There will be time to murder and create,

And time for all the works and days of hands

That lift and drop a question on your plate;

Time for you and time for me,

And time yet for a hundred indecisions,

And for a hundred visions and revisions,

Before the taking of a toast and tea.

 

The truth, however, is there is not time … one must choose, one must live, and one ought to live a life in pursuit of truth, according to verifiable and widely accepted facts, and aligned with a definition of a person as an individual with a mind capable of rational thought and a body capable of caring for others.

 

Mike Spector

May 5, 2021

election reminders

 

Bush vs. Gore - 2000

Bush won 271 electoral votes (270 required to win) but lost the popular vote by 543,895 votes AND after a recount Bush won Florida, the deciding state, by only 537 votes after a recount, and Gore accepted the split decision of the Supreme Court a little more than a month after that historically close election.

 

Trump vs. Clinton – 2010

Trump won 304 electoral votes but lost the popular vote by 2,868,686 votes and Clinton accepted the loss the day after the election.

 

Biden vs. Trump – 2020

Biden won 306 electoral votes and won the popular vote by 7,052,770 votes and yet months after the election and after an insurrection aimed at disrupting the final approval of the votes and after the inauguration of Biden, Trump still maintains that he really won.

 

In this century, thousands of Americans have voted twice for a person who won the popular vote but was not elected. Only once has a Presidential candidate in this century challenged the final vote count and decision, and that candidate persists in doing so a half year after the election. The example set by Al Gore who lost only by 537 votes in a contested election is lost in misinformation, bias and hubris.

Is this the land of the free and home of the brave or the land of greed and the home of hatred? Lost are the words of that lady of liberty standing proudly in Upper New York Bay: "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" How long must we wait “for the American Eagle to really spread its wings and straighten up and fly right?”

A Confession

 

A Confession

Sometimes I recall things I have said or done which I regret … which make me feel ashamed. This usually happens when I am avoiding work. What came to mind was a bad habit I developed in my formative years (before and after my bar mitzvah) … a practice I devised to gain favor in the eyes of my father, Rabbi Spector. I observed that he was especially pleased when being asked questions about the Torah … the Jewish Bible. So I often tried to please him by asking question … most often questions that meant nothing to me.

That is perhaps why much later in life I made a distinction being asking questions and having questions. Asking questions is all too easy and all too often not in the search of understanding. Having questions is hard and begins with admitting one’s ignorance and is followed by committing time and effort in search of understanding, being open to alternative explanations, questioning one's assumptions, and revisiting the question and alternative explanations. So I eventually came to believe that the job of a teacher was to get others to have questions.

Anyway, I would ask my father many questions to gain favor in his eyes. That is something I now regret … pretending to be interested in the things I knew interested him. But sometimes there is a small positive bit that emerges from one’s shame. Occasionally, I asked a question about something I did not understand, for example why it is written in the book of Exodus that the sins of the father will be visited upon the children. That passage struck me as unfair and not at all becoming of G-d. My father’s answer was my first lesson in psychology. As I recall, he said the passage was merely describing what typically happens … children can learn bad things from their parents and bad things often lead to some kind of punishment. My father claimed the passage was not describing G-d … it was describing people.

Another one of my rare genuine questions to my father concerned the Al Chet prayer asking for forgiveness repeated many time during the high holy days – the Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah) and Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) – see https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/6577/jewish/Text-of-Al-Chet.htm. This prayer is the Jewish confessional. My question to my father was why was the prayer said in the plural using ‘we’ rather than ‘I’ – asking forgiveness for each of the sins WE have committed. My father’s response was my first lesson in sociology. He said that if anyone in the community had committed that sin, that everyone in the community was responsible for not having taught that person better. Or something along those lines. My aging memory is not all that reliable.

And I can add one more confession to these notes about my past. I memorized the speech I was to give following the Torah reading at my Bar Mitzvah. My haftarah – a reading from the Prophets – paired with a reading from the Torah. The Torah portion the week of my Bar Mitzvah was from Devarim (the sayings of Moses or Deuteronomy) – the early chapters that contain two remarkable things repeated elsewhere in the Torah: (1) the Shema (Hear O Israel, the Lord our G-d is one), and (2) the ten commandments. The haftarah paired with that passage from the Torah is from the Book of Isiaih beginning with Chapter 40 – comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith the Lord.

The haftarah reading did not seem at all connected with the Torah passage, so I asked my father why they were paired together. I could not find any obvious connection.

Then, skipping ahead a bit, it was my bar mitzvah day and I read the haftarah portion in Hebrew and also the passage from the Torah in Hebrew (without vowels – mostly committed to memory from so much practice), and then it was time for me to deliver the Shabbat sermon based on what I had learned during my bar mitzvah training. Just before I started to deliver my memorized speech, I looked at my little sister sitting in the front row of the synagogue and she made a funny face at me that erased my memory … my speech was gone. I coughed hoping it would return to memory but it was really taking a long distance vacation. What to do? I coughed again and then decided to pretend to be my father. I recalled as best I could his answer to my question about the connection of the two passages. It went something like this as best I can recall just now. Imagine Moses having led the Jewish people out of bondage under Pharaoh in Egypt and having wandered in the desert for 40 years before reaching the promised land … imagine all of that and then imagine Moses being told by G-d that he would not be allowed to go into the promised land apparently for having broken the tablet containing the gift given to him by G-d atop Mount Sinai containing the ten commandments in his anger at the people for apparently worshipping the golden calf. For losing his temper and patience with the people and for breaking the tablet, he was denied entry to the promised land. So, how did Moses react to such severe punishment? He sings the praise of the Lord with the words of the Shema – “Hear O Israel, the Lord our G-d the Lord is one” - see https://bibleproject.com/learn/deuteronomy/ . Moses is not angry hearing his punishment. Rather, he urges his people on to the promised land. He comforts and consoles. Is that the connection? I asked at the end of my impromptu speech. 

When I recall that explanation of the connection of the two passages, it brings to mind something else I do not understand – the closing words of Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus – namely, “one must imagine Sisyphus happy” – see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_Sisyphus#:~:text=The%20Myth%20of%20Sisyphus%20(French,his%20philosophy%20of%20the%20absurd.

The older I get the less I understand.

Happy 2021 … So Slow in Coming … So Needed by So Many

 

 Thinking ahead to the coming year …

From a Jewish perspective … atonement …

In the Al Chet prayer, we ask forgiveness for the sins that anyone among us has committed … as if someone else committed that sin, we are also responsible … a sobering thought of social responsibility … https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/6577/jewish/Text-of-Al-Chet.htm ...

 

From an American perspective … resolutions …

The practice of making resolutions dates back to ancient times … https://www.history.com/news/the-history-of-new-years-resolutions ...  but the basic idea is that one can become a better person in the coming year … and recognizing the mistakes of the past made by oneself and others can help one become a better person …

 

From an Asian perspective … begin debt free …

To have good fortune in the coming year, start debt free … and then one will start the new year with a clean slate and prosper … remembering and honoring the past so that one can become better in the year of the ox … https://www.calendardate.com/chinese_new_year_2021.htm

Happyday Thoughts: Yet Another Pretentious Portmanteau (YAPP)

 

Happyday Thoughts: Yet Another Pretentious Portmanteau (YAPP)

 I have been spending some spare time (not as expansive as my spare tire) thinking about people I have met and benefitted from over the years. My first realization (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VP8qXnnn4tc) was that there too many to name and thank. I grew up in East Tennessee, having moved from LA (Lower Alabama) and headed West (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAgWklREPWI) to the Air Force Academy in Colorado after high school. And then it was off to a depressing and very short career as an intelligence officer during the Conflict in Vietnam … ‘conflict’ is much softer than ‘war’ … but people died … (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iyng_cdupo8&list=RDIyng_cdupo8&start_radio=1&t=11). Three marriages, five children and six grandchildren later (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9NACZ8BxE8&list=PL-haAX7WTpwmviOUc4cxaca4xzUoWagrW&index=7), I got to thinking about people I had met and how they had managed to affect me … mostly in positive ways (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flLoj5qxURw). What this reminiscing leads me to is an overwhelming conclusion (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/44212/the-love-song-of-j-alfred-prufrock) – namely, that there has been time to wonder, time to ponder, time to look under and over and beyond myself … time to become someone else … not just a fly-boy, not just a fly-by-the-night boy, but someone who can pause and see the night sky, with one hand waving free (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeP4FFr88SQ), lend a helping hand to those who think they know more than they could possibly know (https://norman.hrc.utexas.edu/fasearch/findingAid.cfm?eadid=01286), to those who cannot pass over in silence what cannot be said (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5740), to those who talk high but walk low, with head held high when it should be bent in shame, but I digress, I have to roll  the bottoms of my trousers … I have to pause and thank the countless people who have enriched my life and help me become the person I am becoming … a “pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas” but a pair of helping hands, applauding those who have helped me become a slightly better person … so many, in so many different ways, large and small, I remember them one and all … well, probably not all, my memory is not as sharp as it used to be … as my wit got sharper my memory grew more dull … such is life … it is meant to be lived … to be full of wonder and love and things one could not dream without help … from above and from below … a toddler tugging on those rolled trousers … how can one possibly say thanks?

mike

End of 2020 Thoughts

 

The year is winding down. Classes have ended. Grades have been submitted. Looking back on 2020 with less than 20-20 hindsight, I become dizzy. So much has happened. After more than 25,000 lies and more than 3.000 deaths in the USA from COVID-19, it is time to catch one’s breath, exhale a sigh of relief that relief from the lies and the deaths is in sight … if only that could happen sooner. The disruptions have been many and varied, occurring at nearly every level. My hindsight leaves me with mixed feelings about my work. My university has been very accommodating and understanding of students during the pandemic and during multiple crises involving minorities. UNT fully embraces the black lives matter movement and is engaging in a strong and ongoing campaign to promote diversity and inclusion. That is on the positive side of the ledger. However, the rate of change at UNT for things that involve faculty and staff seems to have been increasing during the pandemic. Administrators are generating changes in many systems causing more work and stress for many faculty and staff even though those changes seem warranted if considered in isolation from all else that is happening. So I am seeing faculty and staff colleagues somewhat stressed due to the increasing rate of changes generated by administrators in these troubled times. All is not well, even at this well-intentioned and well-led institution. IMLTHO. Yes … that is a word … actually it represents a phrase … in my less than humble opinion. I stumbled upon that word when it was made evident to me some years ago that I actually knew much less than I claimed to know. I find frequent reminders of that message highly useful.

In the midst of this pandemic, when UNT was doing so many things that were so positive, the Canvas system crashed the first week of the Fall semester and some courses had to be restored from a prior version, including my course which was not close to the prior version … the resulting confusion lasted most of the semester as bit by bit the restored course was transformed into what had been planned. Students complained – understandably. I was trying to keep things simple and constrained to just the weekly discussion forums which I brought back to the intended state. But students were looking at other things and getting confused. The best laid schemes of mice and men gang aft agley – look it up … you may find something interesting by Robert Burns.

Anyway, students complained and resisted my approach to instruction. Of course they had their own pressures during COVID-19 and wanted to see a course laid out like other courses with modules and separate pages for each activity and assignment, unlike my attempt to put everything in one place .. and they expected to see specific grading rubrics and being told exactly what to do for each assignment, unlike my inclination to give rather open-ended assignments with minimal initial guidance and feedback along the way as part of a developmental strategy.

The experience reminded me of my using the Strategy Dynamics Beefeater Restaurants game in educational technology seminars in Sweden and Norway only to discover that of 75 student attempts to succeed in the game, only one managed to do so and that person could not repeat his winning strategy to stay in business 10 years. Later, I had the chance to talk to the game inventors at the London Business School – John Morecroft and Kim Warren. I told them about my experience using Beefeater Restaurants and asked them how they expected learners to learn anything from that game. Their quick answer was they didn’t expect players to succeed. Rather, they used players’ failure to get those highly gifted students to realize they knew less than they thought they knew … their failure put them in a position to learn. That approach to learning appealed to me and has stayed with me ever since. The doctoral students we have in our program at UNT are highly knowledgeable and highly experienced and inclined to believe they know and understand much more than many of their instructors. They are often mistaken, but getting them to become aware of that is a challenge. And, I have to admit I am not doing very well at meeting that challenge.

The challenge is simple. To learn X, one must first admit to not knowing or understanding X. One then must be willing to commit time and effort in investigating X, preferably from multiple perspectives and with different assumptions guiding the investigations. Learning is not simple and often not easy. So, I view my task as a teacher not to feed knowledge or answers or formulaic responses to students. Rather, I see my task as getting students to HAVE questions – to admit to not knowing or understanding, to commit time and effort to finding answers, to explore alternative possibilities, to question assumptions, to go where they might not have gone before. But I rarely succeed in such efforts.

I hate ending the year on such a down note. I could pretend things were other than they are. Some politician do that so well. I could never be a politician. I did once serve as the campaign manager for a politician in El Paso – Pat O’Rouke – yes, he was Beto’s father. Pat lost that election for the EPCC Board and I got fired from El Paso Community College for supporting him. The year away from El Paso allowed me to finish my PhD at UT-Austin, and Pat filed a lawsuit on my behalf through the National Education Association that got me re-instated at EPCC. Life is sometimes just too weird, even for me.