March « 2010 « Round Dice

March 31, 2010

Troubled Times At Ridgemont High

Filed under: Culture,Current Affairs — anilm @ 2:32 am

In places where there are few schools– like Afghanistan or the Congo– schools represent progress, hope, and modernity. In places where there are lots of schools– like India– schools have come to represent congress, anxiety and irrelevance. Thus, the Indian school system is in trouble. The Australian school system is in trouble. The British school system is in trouble. The Japanese school system is in trouble. The German school system is in trouble. Even the Canadians— God’s Why-Can’t-You-Be-More-Like-Them kids— are worried about their school system. If the Canadians can’t get it right, there’s little hope for the rest of us.

Needless to say, the American school system is also a mess. I can write “needless to say” now, but I remember a time when this would’ve been news to me. Until I arrived in the States, I’d been under the impression that John Dewey had designed the American school to be along the lines of a Jihadist’s promised heaven. Though I’m more clued in, it was still astonishing to listen to Diane Ravitch, the former assistant secretary of Education, outline in a C-SPAN interview the sheer intractability of the problem.

Dr. Ravitch had the resigned calmness of a Xerxes who’s just turned his back on a pile of burning boats. Which is understandable, since she has done just that. Her radical turnaround from being a staunch proponent of No Child Left Behind to being a staunch opponent has attracted a great deal of controversy. After decades of a thumbs up position on making teachers legally accountable for student performance, standardized performance measures, introducing market-choice in school systems, and emphasis on science and mathematics, she’s flipped her thumb in the other direction.

And for a very good reason. She believes none of these solutions really solve the basic problem of modern education, namely: how and what to teach millions of students– differing widely in abilities, backgrounds and interests– what they need to know as adults? In fact she believes the proposed solutions, ranging from the Mastery Learning movement through CRL, OODM, COMP, PSI, STPSTR, ACiE, RSST, STM to No Child Left Behind (NCLB), have only made the problem that much more intractable. She doesn’t see any quick fixes either. As she wrote in a recent LA Times article:

“There have been two features that regularly mark the history of U.S. public schools. Over the last century, our education system has been regularly captivated by a Big Idea — a savant or an organization that promised a simple solution to the problems of our schools. The second is that there are no simple solutions, no miracle cures to those problems.”

She may be right. But even if there is no magic solution, perhaps there is a magic question. It’s familiar to computer scientists because it’s the heart and soul of the analysis of algorithms. The magic question is this: compared to what?

So TV is too violent. Compared to what? Der Struwwelpeter? So the world is getting worse. Compared to what? Venus? So the American school system is in terrible shape. Compared to what? The Congolese system? The French? The Indian? The Japanese? The Australian? The Canadian?

The answer, most likely, is that the American system is getting worse in comparison to some idealized notion of itself. Thus in 2008, 35% of the nation’s schools were labeled ‘failing schools’, where failure was judged according the NCLB criterion of showing steady increase in the percentage of students meeting competency standards in grades 3 through 8. NCLB has set a target of 100% by the year 2014; that is, by the year 2014, 100% of the students at a school, in grades 3 through 8, are expected to obtain 200 points or more in the NJ-ASK tests. As Dr. Ravitch remarks dryly in a WSJ article,

“This was not my vision of good education.”

To my mind, the difficulties with school education have always had a model– a ghastly but elegant reflection– in grammar instruction. The teaching of grammar has always been a source of grief, for educators as well for students. Kids enter school knowing how to talk, and they leave with the same general expertise, but in between they’re bludgeoned, coaxed, coerced, cajoled, and bombarded with attempts to teach them grammar. These attempts generally do no harm, and they generally do no good. The famous (notorious) conclusion of Braddock, Lloyd-Jones and Schoer in 1963 on grammar instruction, the result of a commissioned study by the National Council of Teachers of English, is brutally honest:

“In view of the widespread agreement of research studies based upon many types of students and teachers, the conclusion can be stated in strong and unqualified terms: the teaching of formal grammar has a negligible or, because it usually displaces some instruction and practice in composition, even a harmful effect on improvement in writing.”

Hence experts are coming around to the idea that as far as improving writing instruction is concerned, stuffing kids with more grammar is not the solution. As Rei Noguchi has so carefully discussed, a better strategy might be to teach them a minimal grammar specifically designed to aid in writing.

Ditto perhaps, for schools and education. As far as educating kids is concerned, perhaps less schooling, not more, might be the answer. Do we really need to treat kids like disposable flash drives? Do we really need to fill their heads with random crap like the periodic table, Snell’s law and twelve times seven? Do they really need to know what’s the latent point of ice? Does it really matter if they believe “deciduous” is what’s left behind after you’ve made a decision? Do we really need to burn some six hours per day per student for a period of some twelve years– 30,000 hours per life– to teach stuff they’ll need rarely, apply incompetently, and forget rapidly?

If we want students to be curious, independent, rational and decent human beings, then a good first step might be to find and encourage teachers who are those very things. And a good second step would be not to take the first one too seriously. There’s that scene in Fast Times At Ridgemont High where Jeff Spicoli, the stoned surfer kid, has pizza delivered in Mr. Hand’s class:

Mr. Hand: Am I hallucinating here? Just what in the hell do you think you’re doing?
Jeff Spicoli: Learning about Cuba, and having some food.

Spicoli may be an academic failure, the kind of kid NCLB is determined, blast them, not to leave behind. But for me, trapped as I was in a Dante-inspired hell-hole of an Indian school, Spicoli’s chutzpah, fearless attitude toward authority, self-sufficiency and awareness of the things that made him happy, represented the quintessence of what an American education was all about.

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March 27, 2010

Out, damn Sprout

Filed under: Business,Technology,Web/Tech — anilm @ 6:09 am

Sprout Inc has a cloud-based tool that can be used to build flash-based “rich internet applications.” A tie-up with Gigya allows these thingamajigs to be shared and tracked over the web. It’s a neat tool and a neat idea. People looking for lost pets, entrepreneurs selling T-shirts, artists promoting their work, social orgs trying to raise funds, and anyone and everyone with a message and a menu quickly began sprouting all over the place. Best of all, it was free. Later on it became less free. In fact, Sprout Inc began to charge the early adopters about nineteen free dollars per month. I had been one of the early adopters. I didn’t mind the monthly bleeding because the tool delivered value. I built a sprout to promote the IIT-K workshop in 2009. Then I built one to promote my novel The Beast With Nine Billion Feet. It can still be seen on my home page. But not for long.

A few weeks back, Sprout Inc sent me a Dear John letter:

“One of the toughest decisions that a start-up faces is where to focus its efforts and resources. Sprout Builder was our first product and has always been near and dear to our hearts. More importantly, we value the customers who have gotten us to where we are today. However…”

However, kiss our ass. Or words to that effect. Sprout Inc. has decided, it seems, to “focus on our enterprise product lines.” Individual accounts would now cost $3,000 per year. Opt out and everybody who’d helped spread your sprout would see an empty space on their pages. Sprout Inc called this “sunsetting the SproutBuilder.” Early adopters, poor artists, orphaned children, lost pets etc. were all to be turned out into the dying light. Night had fallen, the orcs were on their way, and so sad, so sad. It was all very sad, terribly sad, and no one was sadder than Sprout Inc. I’ve never seen Gmail cry, and believe me, it’s an unnerving sight.

Sprout Inc.’s decision shows every sign of a Mr. Gekko behind the scenes. There is a Mr. Gekko behind the scenes of course. Several of them, no doubt. By now, the original founder is probably nothing more than a living writing desk for the firm’s venture capitalists. VCs, unlike business people, are pragmatists. VCs typically don’t like tools; they like products. VCs typically don’t understand people, social media, long tails, the power of free and all that crap; they understand enterprises. And they definitely don’t care how a story began; they only care how it ends. Here they see it ending in an IPO and an interview with Maria Bartiromo of CNBC, or La Belle Pout Sans Mercy, as she’s known on Wall Street.

Sprout Inc could have done the classy thing and kept the old accounts alive. It doesn’t cost much to store a few flash files per user. What it would gained in good will would have more than offset the few gigabytes of storage. I imagine people would have been happy as long as they didn’t lose the work they had already created. Well, fcuk you too, Sprout.

At first I worried. I was raised by UNIX. Our tribe prefers not to pay for software. There was no way I could square Mr. Gekko’ new prices with my conscience. Fortunately, I didn’t have to. RIA tools, like SproutBuilder, are fast becoming a commodity. And with the release of Adobe’s AIR platform last year, Sprout Inc can soon expect to have nothing more than first-mover’s advantage. Already, there are plenty of alternatives. There’s SlideRocket. The company seems to think it’s in the slide-making business and it too is cloud-based, but there’s a standalone version and the you don’t have to make slides. Sliderocket also allows you to export your work, something Sprout Inc deliberately decided not to let their clients do. There’s Adobe’s Flash Catalyst. It is expensive (~$700), but then again, it’s not $3,000/year. Nor is it cloud-based. There’s Wix, designed, as far as I can tell, for and by clowns. But such a company will never go IPO, so users are probably be safe for another year before the org runs through its venture capital. And finally, there’s SwishMax, a sort of poorer cousin to Adobe. It’s a standalone tool, the learning curve is not too steep (~1 week, a few eeks), and it’s a lot more powerful than SproutBuilder. It took me about a week to replicate my widget in SwishMax, and the results are, well, here:

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March 26, 2010

Odd Gods, God’s Odds

Filed under: Culture,Current Affairs,Religion,Science — anilm @ 2:34 pm

ABC News’ Nightline recently sponsored a Faceoff debate with Deepak Chopra & Jean Houston on one side and Sam Harris & Michael Shermer on the other. The topic: Does God have a future? This is a bit like debating whether Bugs Bunny will continue to be fond of carrots. It’s not a meaningless question, but perhaps it’s one best left to future rabbit scholars who’ll be around to observe the matter first hand. Still, if God’s advocates these days are the likes of Deepak Chopra and Jean Houston, then I have to feel a little sorry for the Perfect One.

Deepak Chopra is a brother, so it was somewhat painful to watch the man’s passionate incoherence. He spoke in aggrieved fragments, choppy phrases circling the wagons of his non-argument. Chopra-bhai had it in for Shermer, which is understandable, since Shermer has made it a point to ridicule him as Dr. Woo-Woo. Sample exchange:

Chopra: For people like Michael– not you so much [Sam Harris]– for people like Michael, to take all of the inner experience, all of the rich inner experience and try to codify it in a graph with data is absurd.

Shermer: As opposed to what? Just calling it fuzzy words? How does that help us understand it?

Chopra: That’s such an OUT, Michael. That’s such an out.

Shermer: And–

Chopra: You use the word ‘fuzzy’. Use the word ‘woo-woo’ and you’re out of the argument.

Indeed. What was the argument again?

But it doesn’t really matter. The debate wasn’t a debate because the two sides were using words very differently. Harris & Shermer were using reason, that is, using language with its usual adult conventions of having to make sense. The other side seem to use words to evoke cosmic feeling. Dr. Houston writes things like: “That is you — the human being that is the microcosm or, if you will, the fractal of the Infinite self. The human Selfing game may be what Infinity does for fun.” It seems to me that such speech-acts have a certain ritualistic role. It’s not too far removed– in emotional affect anyway– from shamanic chants, motherese, and the nonsense rhymes of children.

Jean Houston seemed more aware than Chopra-bhai that the place and time weren’t suited for chanting. Or perhaps it was simply that she wasn’t allowed to speak. Every now and then she’d raise her hand to indicate she wanted to speak, but her attempts were ignored by the three men. Pretty brutal.

It’s easy to make fun of Chopra-bhai and Dr. Houston. But they make life more interesting, not less. So a little sympathy may not be out of order. We need them around, if only to remind us there’s no curing the imagination. Perhaps they truly believe the woo-woo they claim to believe. And what’s the harm? At best, it’s only the stuff of foma, wampeters and granfalloons. At worst, it only further delays a serious study of Bugs Bunny and his inexplicable passion for carrots.

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