Progressive

Todd and I watched a program on PBS tonight that featured the Texas Board of Education and their revisions to the state curriculum.  We both grew more and more agitated as the program went on and we were able to see how the Board was engaged in the process of rewriting history:  minimizing struggles for rights by minority groups, sugarcoating American actions abroad, and redefining (or erasing) words like "imperialism" and "capitalism" to sound less... imperialistic and capitalist.  The charge from the Board was that textbooks are written by liberal academics and thus skewed sharply to the left;  the arguments for changing the textbooks were absurd and Christian conservative, based on the narrowest possible worldview without regard for fact and without any serious research.

The program sparked a wonderful, hours-long discussion with my husband about the nature and purpose of education, and about how important it is for parents to have a clear sense of what it is that teachers are teaching in the classroom and what is it that is left for parents.  We discussed our priorities for our children, we discussed our politics, we discussed our children.  And it was wonderful to realize that, even though we don't always have the chance to have an in-depth conversation such as the one we had tonight, we are cut from the same cloth.  We are progressives.  We are compassionate.  We are culturally literate.  We are communicators.  We are united by a single purpose.

For the record, I thought that the most important thing to emphasize for our children was written and oral communication.  I want them to be good readers, and by being good readers to become good writers.  I want them to be able to sustain an argument in writing, to follow one as they read, and to construct one as they speak. This is a skill that will serve them well no matter what career path they choose in the future.  Todd's emphasis was on engagement:  he didn't want them to be passive observers of the world around them, but to learn to appreciate and become part of it.  He wants them to understand and appreciate a ballet as much as a baseball game, to be able to enjoy the physical exertion of a nature hike but also recognize the birdsong and the patterns in nature.  

If we can accomplish these things in our children, I will be very happy indeed.

Zip

A few weeks ago, my old dissertation adviser emailed me asking for some data we had collected back in 2002. I wasn't sure I still had the data, given that I've used four computers and have made major moves twice since the last time I worked with the dataset.  After nearly giving up on finding the data, I remembered that I still had two old Zip disks in a box in my office closet, and I wondered if the dataset was on one of those ancient disks.

The problem, of course, was that I no longer had a Zip drive.  So I headed over to Academic Computing to use one of their old drives this morning.  I was thrilled to actually find the dataset on one of the disks, as well as a number of other documents I don't remember ever writing.  I copied the information to a USB drive.

As I was finishing, the technician in the room said, "You know, you shouldn't use Zip disks anymore.  They're really old technology."

Ummm, really?  Did he really need to say that?  Did he actually think my current research was stored on clumsy Zip disks?  And if I was that stupid, wouldn't I have my own Zip drive?

I just laughed a little (typical!) and said, "Dude, I don't mess with Zip disks.  I keep most of my stuff on floppies."  He didn't seem to have much of a sense of humor.

Carrots and Sticks

At a meeting today, each participant was asked to describe his/her strengths.  I decided to use a description given to me by one of my students several months ago.

"Most professors," he said, "have carrots and sticks, and they're different.  But you... you're pretty much all carrots.  And even your sticks look like carrots."

This made me laugh out loud at first, but then I decided that it's a great way to be remembered.

Cheep!

Today Meg and I were chatting about one of her favorite subjects: songbirds. She collects stuffed songbirds that, when their bellies are pressed, chirp their individual songs.

"Meg, what bird says 'chick-a-dee-dee-dee-dee!'" I asked her.

Her face lit up. "It's a chickadee, Mom!"

She thought for a moment and said, "It's your turn, Mom." Then, in a very high-pitched little voice, she said, "What bird says 'cardinal-cardinal-cardinal-cardinal'?"

I could barely answer, though I'm pretty sure I would have gotten it right.