You get what you pay for — Good news from Washington

President Obama has it right on merit pay for teachers.  Business knows that rewarding achievement leads to more of the same. Teachers, on the other hand, get the state’s published wages no matter what. Smart?  Savvy? Current? Engaging communication skills? Interesting lessons? High student achievement?

So? You get what the guy down the hall gets even though he spends much time on the web and phone for personal business, doesn’t prepare, can’t or won’t work hard in the classroom, and can’t point to significant student achievement. 

Crazy.

What is the psychology of paying someone what he is worth based on performance? Hard-working teachers have been who they are while wages remained standardized. Will they be even more motivated with the extra pay? They will certainly have that pat on the back, the sense that somebody cares and notices AND the knowledge that they have been distinguished from others. And cash beats a certificate for folks whose pay is already not what it should be.  And if the sky’s the limit, schools will reap the benefits, one of which may be slackers leaving in shame.

Two problems have to be addressed: achievement guidelines and administrator subjectivity.

First, what will school systems reward?  It will certainly include good standardized test scores and completed lesson plans based on a check list. These are concrete and easily documented. But sometimes a teacher’s class gets the windfall from the previous teacher’s work. And any teacher can write out (or now simply print from the web) an impressive lesson plan. Some principals simply don’t know how to evaluate intelluctual development beyond the easily quantifiable form or basic skill.

Intangibles will be harder to grade: changes that occur as a student is enlightened in his thinking about the world and its complex subtleties, the progress, even if limited, of moving from sentence to paragraph to argument — compete with logic. I could go on about the real work of a teacher — it’s not an exact science and it requires  je ne sais quoi.  No doubt there will be a “standard” about the teacher’s ability to “control the classroom.” But how is that quiet environment sustained and does the silence quarantee learning? No, but it makes principals look good.

The second challenge will be personal and subjective. School administrators favor those that support them and make their life easier. And those that they just happen to like.  Hopefully deserving teachers will not be penalized because of petty jealousy, simple antipathy,  or the administrator’s lack of evaluative skills. Hopefully less brilliant, but generally satisfactory teachers will be not be rewarded and therefore encouraged to maintain their status quo based on their neat, correct forms, finishing the text, subdued environments or, God forbid, their snazzy bulletin boards!

Agnostic editor makes case for the Bible, but not God

Slate’s David Plotz read every word of the Bible and lived to write about it in  Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous, and Inspiring Things I Learned When I Read Every Single Word of the Bible,

He tells about how fascinating are the stories, the etymologies (shibboleth),  the frequently used allusions. And how cruel the slayings, judgments, and punishments.

Plotz says he began the reading project as an unconcerned agnostic and ended as an angry agnostic. The Bible, it seems, turned him further against God. Yet he admits the value of such a study and wonders why, given the Bible’s significance, more of it isn’t required reading in college and high school.

We know the answer to that.

Who reads the Bible today? We  might “cherry pick” our favorite texts or the easier reads. Or we have determined which parts are just “in there” but not particularly relevant or were cultural manifestations and not applicable. In previous centuries in the West, a working knowledge of the Bible was a given. Today, in teaching, the many biblical allusions are lost on most students. And I’m talking S0lomon-level references.

So ket us hear the end of the matter. The Bible is for many The Word of God. For others, like Plotz, an interesting and important text. Others don’t have a position on it any more than they do on The Grapes of Wrath: it doesn’t figure into anything.

 

http://www.slate.com/id/2212616/pagenum/all/#p2

Slumdog — for the dissent

The acting is certainly engaging, the score enchanting, and the plot and theme valid, if expected.  These alone should comprise a movie that earned plenty of viewers and box office dollars, which, of course, is the case.

And I can see exactly how and why the various juries named it the Best Picture.

For me, the film pleases in the general areas mentioned. Who doesn’t like a rags-to-riches tale?  But Jamal doesn’t win through his own intelligence or skill or even determination. He isn’t that interested in winning the money. He thinks the beloved might be watching because she was watching that one time.

Also clever is the opening epigraphical multiple choice Q&A about why events are about to unfold as they do.

“How did he do it? A) He cheated. B) He’s lucky. C) He’s a genius. D) It is written.”

My problem is personal and aesthetic and probably not shared by anybody else. The gruesomeness is emotionally and visually unpleasant if not in spots unbearable. Let’s see, there’s torture by beating, electric shock, children’s eyes being removed so that they become more convincing (and profitable) beggars, forced prostitution. 

The depictions of very realistic (I assume) dismal, abject poverty are something I don’t like to see at any price while I munch my popcorn as if it means nothing (the representation of reality) and is provided for my entertainment. Slumdog is not a documentary. Kids rolling in their post-diahrreal excrement, digging through garbage heaps, squalid living as in washing clothes and dishes in filthy canal waters with hundreds of others. Lots of non-athletic sweat. Not for me. Someone said that I needed a good dose of reality — it’s good for us to expand our horizons. Call me shallow, but I have plenty of imagination that suffices minus disturbing visuals.

It’s probably not going to spoil it for anyone if I say that the outcome is the desired one.  Through much adversity, boy gets girl — the childhood sweetheart, no less — and they kiss and dance off the stage. AND they are filthy rich, no pun intended, their problems solved, their suffering erased. Because “it is written.” It’s conventional and naive following the film’s pervasive negativity, but this is melodrama. Somebody’s watching over Jamal.

 

An excellent, graded review http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/reviews/multiple-choice-review-slumdog-millionaire.php

Looks: A Shell Game

Looks are a shell game as in they’re the exterior shell that the real us lives somewhere beneath. Try selling that. While widely acknowledged and even applauded in magazines like “More” and “O,” we know that as Gertrude says of the player queen, “the lady doth protest too much.” Methinks?

For the first time ever,  the president and his wife are younger than I am.  Got me thinking.

My husband looks askance when he pays me a compliment and I respond by saying something like, “that’s only the outside. It doesn’t last. Let’s hear something about the “real me.” Now my outside is real enough, but it is, after all, disentegrating. The horror begins — the constant battle between us and time, gravity,  and genetics.

Some of the most noticeably “enhanced” celebrities ‘ results offer little encouragement. You know who I mean. After  going under the knife, one hopes for more. 

But what’s this? Time magazine reports that now MEN are getting themselves “boytoxed” and entering the competition.  Seventies Olympic swimmer Mark Spitz is a spokesman for Botox. He and the others make up about seven percent of Botox users. But the numbers are growing. As the article states, with looming lay-offs, men need to be rid of deficits, namely facial lines that make them look “angry and confused.”

So how far do we take this? It’s personal. Our grandmothers may have colored their hair. Mine did not. (Nor does my mother. ) I believe they powdered their noses. But that was then. Now the doctor in the article comes to your house and for about $500, shoots your lines and off you go. Bill Torres, school teacher, is featured in the article and he did it for his wife who also had him “dye his hair, go for massages, shave his chest and get regular manicures and pedicures.” The things we do for love.

And cosmetic enhancement has grown substantially since the election. In a USA ‘Today article cosmetic dermatologists say that business is booming as everyone wants to get better looking for the inauguration. The perfect dress doesn’t cut it any more.  Pun intended.

I hope this is not going to take the direction that most societal advances take in our family.  I don’t say this with pride; it’s just fact. Of all the people we know, we were the last to get a microwave, cell phone, Internet, (handgun.) Maybe a  lunchtime lift is in my future.  A sagging economy is enough to deal with.

See also

side effects

law suit

before and after photo gallery — lots of pics

“The times, they are a-changing” or “You say you want a resolution”

It’s New Year’s Eve, 2008. It would be difficult, I suppose, to approach the advent of a new year without two things: some reflection on the passing year and speculation on what the new one holds.  For many, the process involves making resolutions — the past was insufficient/disappointing/difficult/? so I will make these _____ changes in an effort to amend.

Good luck with that!

I don’t make resolutions, but what I find myself considering is a noncomprehensive series of thoughts listed below. I get these ideas when I read too much philosophy, especially essays on post-modernism.

Here is a good piece from Philosophy Today, Winter, 1991, written by Gary Madison from a conference on post-modernism. I was shocked to find the article to be eighteen years old! It feels so contemporary.  I guess that’s my point.

in lieu of resolutions

1. People are more interested in coping than understanding.
2. The Biblical command not to steal only applies to individuals, not institutions such as governments, who do it routinely. You may have to pay for a service that my child or mother needs minus your consent.
3. It’s all personal.
4. It’s all personnel.
5. I have been disappointed with nearly everything I’ve bought on Ebay.
6. The U.S. Constitution is a slow read, but the audio isn’t bad. Entire Constitution of the United States [72 MB] the first web-based audio file from The University of Chicago School of Law.
7. Maybe it wasn’t so smart to pay off the mortgage early. How many other pieces of “wisdom” we followed were erroneous?
8. Flipping through the channels is no longer safe for children. Or most adults. Supervision or a V-chip is required.
9. The Coen Brothers show but do not direct toward the good.
10. In a Christmas emergency, I was scammed for $40.00 by a website. (I reasearched the site AFTER I hit Place My Order.  See #2.)
11. Live large on a small budget.
12. Many people live small on a large budget.
13. I am already tired of articles about economic doom and how I can make my money go farther. This usually involves a sponsor.
14. If times get harder (everyone I know has a cell phone, HDTV, a car, a home, a job, a computer, cable or similar,) what will be the last to go — excluding items of real significance such as people and faith? Transportation.
15. If times get harder economically, what thing will be first to go?  Cable TV. Not to include hi-speed Internet. I think. (It is instructive to list all the “nonessential” things we enjoy.)
16. I can’t think of anything of significance I learned this year! Gads. I’m sure it will come to me.
17. Lyotard insists that metanarratives are out and mininarratives are in. Too bad.
18. (from Madison’s essay) It’s now “not Socrates’ “Don’t tell a lie,” but Johnny Carson’s “Don’t be boring. ”  One tries.
19. As Kurt Vonnegut allegedly said once, we should not waste time worrying about the future. What we are worrying about probably won’t happen. Crises will come out of nowhere blindsiding us.
20. Just because it’s true doesn’t mean it has to be said.

21. And since to look at things in bloom,
       Fifty springs are little room,
       About the woodlands I will go,
       To see the cherry hung with snow.   A.E. Housman

Carpe diem and Happy New Year!

“We all will be received in Graceland”

For Christmas Daughter Dearest gave her brother a copy of Lyrics 1964-2008, an anthology of Paul Simon’s lyrics from songs spanning those years. Quite a career. Of course, these lyrics are all available free online, but the book makes for easy perusing not to mention an attractive coffee table addition.

Both kids are Simon fans, as we might expect, since they grew up with the music in the background on trips and around the house occasionally. Simon is a poet, and so there were always “meanings” to discuss — something to think about. That and the music. Since they were meant to be sung, the lyrics scan well, and while some of them might be considered “simple,” they supply a kind of natural American experience and catalog of emotion representative of the FIVE DECADES Simon’s work spans.

Reading through the lyrics, as with any poet’s works, I find it interesting to look for patterns of development in style, theme , or content. Simon has moved from the dark, melanchoy world of “Sound of Silence” (Hello, Darkness, my old Friend) and “I am a Rock” to fun works like “Call Me Al.”  (Simon with Chevy Chase)   that parodies music videos. There’s a kind of middle period with lyrics more mature, knowing, and disillusioned like “Fifty Ways” and “Slip Sliding Away.” Something for everybody.

Simon slips in plenty of irony, paradox, imagery, allusion, and metaphor to satisfy literary cravings as in my all-time favorite: “Graceland.” Working from the allusion to the Elvis home in Memphis as a metaphor for this, what I call “travelling song,” the gently driving music leads us through places of heartache and lonliness to a pilgrimage toward a place of solace and salvation — grace — favor. The kind we don’t have to deserve.  And the speaker has a “reason to believe/we all will be received in Graceland.”  Adding to the metaphor are images of the South and its hospitality,  not to mention Bible Belt Christianity.

The similes work: 
The mississippi delta was shining
Like a national guitar
I am following the river
Down the highway
Through the cradle of the civil war
I’m going to graceland
Graceland

He also writes

And she said losing love
Is like a window in your heart
Everybody sees you’re blown apart
Everybody sees the wind blow.

and a metaphor –

There is a girl in New York City
Who calls herself the human trampoline
And sometimes when Im falling, flying
Or tumbling in turmoil I say
Oh, so this is what she means
She means we’re bouncing into graceland.

I’d put “Graceland” in the category of songs of hope — optimisitic words from one who has known failure but who still is able to glimpse and reach for something better — a kind of salvation at least.

Mike Ragogna at the Huffington Post has some thoughtful remarks on Simon and the new book as well as some good commentary on the music industry.

Though it’s hard to separate a song like “Mrs. Robinson”  from the music, for fans it’s enlightening to read the lyrics as stand alone poetry.  And though Barnes and Noble has it rated at three stars, I would recommend it to any Simon fan’s library.

Pound cake

I have the whole menu planned except for dessert. What would you like?

Me?

You.

Anything?

Your choice.

Hmmmm. Okay — pound cake.

Pound cake?

You know, like that one my mother made.

I don’t think pound cake would be good.

Why not?

Because it’s Christmas.  Pound cake is an everyday dessert.

We don’t have it every day. You haven’t made it in six years.

It’s common . We should do something special. It’s Christmas. What about pecan pie?

Pecan pie? Why are nuts, syrup, sugar and, I guess, eggs, tossed together so special?

Because pecans are five dollars a pound. We don’t eat pecans every day, so they’re special. What about Red Velvet Cake?

I don’t like Red Velvet Cake.

Yes, you do. You always eat it when people have it.

That’s because there’s no pound cake.

Fine. I’ll toss the ham and asparagus and fry up some chicken and make macaroni and cheese.

You asked.

I did.                 Okay.  Pound cake. With chocolate ganache and raspberry coolee.  It’s Christmas.

Family: We’ve decided to pull her out

My third wife’s stepdaughter, who now lives here with us, is in love with a boy in her class. Normally we would have no problem with that, neither of us being beginners when  it comes to affairs de coeur, but we are taking her out of school and homeschooling her. Relatives are against it, claiming it will stunt her growth socially, but she seems to be developed enough socially for a sixteen year old to me. And we can only do so many massages in a day, not enough to pay for a private school.

The problem is the boy. Get this: he’s a vampire!  I said it first, I said this will come back to bite us just you wait. These public schools are breeding grounds for trouble and confusion. Integration! Government says they have a right to be there. In the old days all you had to deal with was races and we got used to that quick enough. Heck, Destiny’s mom is black, so that shows how open minded I am.  But a stinking blood-sucker like that — off limits, Missy!

Of course, he’s handsome (the wife says) and he’s smart and maybe we should let it go instead of forcing them into each others’ arms. (Sometimes I wonder about her.)

No. We will not back down on this one. The boy, Nathaniel, claims, as they all do, that he won’t hurt her, that he only sucks animal blood. Now that’s attractive, right?  We know how long that will last anyway.

And what about his powers? He can fly. He can be invisible and be a shape-shifter to boot. Imagine a spouse capable of sneaking around like that!  And if she should get tired of him like the women in this family tend to do, what man can follow an act like his? And what about when he gets bored with her? No one will believe she hasn’t been bitten a few times and who wants a wife that’s gonna live on forever after he’s gone — like being a temp or something?

You send your kid to school for an education and she comes home in love with a vampire. So Bonnell and I will just do the job ourselves. You don’t learn that much in high school anyway. There’s something wrong with the system when a kid don’t know what normal is and his school don’t either.

In brief — recent films and books

Quantum of Solace — James Bond makes us feel good.  The wit, the intellect, the savior faire, ok, the looks, we want to kick back and watch the master spy outsmart and therefore outdo all comers. We like the fact that he excels in both planning and execution. He likes his job. He is loyal to M and to England. We want to be him. Or one of the hers. We are in good hands. Daniel Craig has all of the above, but there are detrators: his motive is revenge, a rather low-life motivator. He is too morose. Lighten up, newest Bond! You can be intense and enjoy yourself at the same time. I missed the smile. Twice.

Australia — This three-hour flick begins slowly as it attempts epic grandeur in visuals and character. But even by the end we aren’t in love with Kidman or Jackman, the protagonists. Their story is a repeat of so many good westerns: “We gotta move them cattle across this plain despite the evil cattle baron/governor so we can get ‘em to market and keep the ranch.”  They succeed with the help of two aborigines, who are the best part of the film: the young orphaned boy (a scene-stealer for sure) and his National Geographic looking grandfather — ah, the wiles and ways of the Noble Savage!  The film goes for broke throwing in the Japanese bombing of Darwin and the tearful rescue of the mission where young, indigenous children live.  It has the feel of  studio films of the forties. Bring tissue.

Four Christmases — Besides our party of four, three other people sat there and laughed out loud at Vince Vaughn, Reese Witherspoon, and their four goofy families — result of divorces all around. Each family must be visited, albeit reluctantly, since it’s Christmas.

I knew the headliners, but didn’t expect to meet the top-shelf cast: Robert Duvall, Jon Voight, Cissy Spacek, Mary Steenbergan, Dwight Yokam, and Christen Chenowith.  Duvall’s house is the low-end family where the pregnant daughter-in-law, babe in arms, prepares the last “layer” of Dorritos for the Christmas dinner casserole. Steenbergen is Witherspoon’s mom, a “cougar” who is dating the charismatic preacher, who needs a Mary and Joseph for the church play — extempore. Vaughn hams it up. Voight is Witherspoon’s remarried father, a well-to-do bunch and the most nearly normal — the reflective time. Spacek is Vaughn’s real mother, currently married to Vaughn’s childhood best friend. Hilarity results as the y attempt to play Taboo — family trying to manufacture good times , memories, and tradition the hard way. Hopefully you won’t find any of the households too close to home!

There’s some crude humor from family members. It ends well, as Christmas comedy should.

Books –

Selections — I bought a used copy of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poetry (1927), the edition for which she personally chose the selections. An important female American poet, she addresses the anxiety of the between the wars generation, all the anxiety and some of the disappointment in the new “freedoms” of modern life minus the shackles of religious faith, though she acknowledges God in one of my favorite sonnets, “God’s World.”  She authored the “Fig” poems about which I have an earlier post.

Twilight — This blockbuster is a mass-market, non-challenging  adolescent romance between a high school senior and a vampire in her class.  (Do you know your kid’s lab partner?) The novel has all the characteristics of adult genre formula fiction in which one can skip several pages without effect except to expedite reaching the end of the thing quicker.  On a positive note as affirmed to me by someone as I sugggested that vampires might not be a suitable topic for thirteen year olds, “Well, good grief, this family doesn’t suck human blood– only ANIMAL BLOOD.”  And I have to aadmit, Edward is a very nice vampire for a paranormal, bloodsucking hero. Feel better?

More on The Shack

The Shack is a runaway best-seller. What to make of that?

Garrett has written worthwhile commentary on The Shack and, in addition, on literary criticism. He also includes links to sites that also review the novel or critique literature in general. I’ve posted my comments for him here.

http://golfsierra.org/blog/?p=57#comment-1786

An earlier post I wrote on The Shack, mainly its interesting publication history

Post from last Thanksgiving on literary classics

 Post I did on “The Canon” of literature