2011.2.12 통계 자료의 양면성
말이나 마찬가지로 통계 자료도 양면성이 있다. 진실적으로 말할 수도 있고 거짓말할 수도 있는 것이다. 또한, 과학처럼 통계 자료도 인류한테 이로운 도움이 될 수도 있고 해로운 무기가 될 수도 있다. 통계 자료의 양면성에 대해서 서술하고자 한다.
지금같은 정보 사회에서 통계 자료가 생활 정보로 많이 이용된다. 국민들이 건강, 교통, 경제 등에 대한 지식을 많이 받게 된다. 바른 결정하기에 좋기는 하면서도 불편하게 할 수도 있다. 예를 들어, 가끔 먹는 맛있는 햄버거거 캘로리가 엄청나게 높다는 사실을 알게 되면 큰 도움이 되지도 않고 괜히 마음만 아프게 한다. 알고 싶지도 않던 것들을 이제 모를 수가 없다. 또한, 통계 자료로 알게 된 건, 사실이어도, 잘못 이해하면 생활에 불편을 초래할 수 있다. 즉, 만명에 한명 걸리는 희귀병에 대한 뉴스를 들으면, 그 통계를 숫자로만 알고 걱정거리가 될 수 있다.
이와 비슷하게 통계 자료가 사회 현상에 대해서는 이해증진시킬 수 있으면서 왜곡시키기도 한다. 우리가 사는 세상은 기술 발전으로 계속 좁아지고 있지만 그래도 물론 한 눈으로 다 볼 수는 없다. 그러니까 우리 모두 통계를 통해서 세상에 대해서 알아낸다. 그럼으로써 걱절한 제도 마련도 좋은데 두 가지 위험성이 있다. 첫짼 일부러 또는 우연히 워낙 잘못된 통계 자료가 생길 수 있다. 토대가 나쁘면 건물도 나쁠 것이다. 줄째는, 해석하는 데 잘못으로 오용할 수도 있다. 통계로 거짓말할 수도 있단 말이다. 예를 들면 한 유명한 통계 조사는 사회 현상을 무시하고 시험 결과에 따라서 흑인들은 백인들보다 유전적으로 머리가 안 좋다고 보고했었다.
인간이라면 완벽한 것은 없단다. 그래도 통계라는 건 우리의 문화를 이해하고 더 좋게 하려는 한 가지의 도구다. 잘 쓰기를 바란다.
Friday, February 25, 2011
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Minute 7:10 AM
Minute 7:10 AM
The sound of his phone vibrating reaches Aaron's exposed ear, gets
modeled in his head by chemicals. Just timeless moments ago the same
signal had arrived. But then it was with those drums, accompanied.
That meant it was an alarm. That meant it deserved the same response
as a mosquito. Extinguishing.
This is just one vibration. Night Aaron didn't plan this. Trip-wires
are snapping across the unconscious wilderness in the dark. What could
cause this. It could be a text message. But it's early. Who would do
that? Is it Aaron's boss? His teacher? His classmate? Those could be
dealt with effectively by further sleeping, maybe.
It could be a text message from that girl, that one who used to send
pleasant text messages, up until not so long ago. The deer in the
subconscious pick up their heads and smell the air. The conscious mind
whirrs into action. Rotate head. Eyes open. The blue box floating over
the clock radio blinks out. Too late. Couldn't see what it said.
But it could be that girl.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Minute 7:09 AM
Minute 7:09 AM
It's not all hyperinflation racing mega-debt for future Aaron. Past
Aaron took the bedside table from his old apartment, so that's
positive inheritance, and maybe theft. The top drawer is full of
coins, every day, heavier and heavier, it's a pirate treasure four
floors above ground. It'll be fun to take to the bank one day, but it
won't be one month's rent, won't be one plane ticket. It'll be heavy.
Maybe the trip to the bank will be memorable. There's luggage in the
corner there, that mostly sits these days. Two summers in a row
through Europe; how did past Aaron manage that, and why? Why doesn't
he feel the urge to travel any more? For the past few years it's been
travel as a matter of course, or routine routes to disappointing
destinations. Sleep, sleep, sleep.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Minute 7:08 AM
Minute 7:08 AM
Night Aaron is in there somewhere, struggling somehow to preserve
continuity. Wrapped in blankets, wrapped in folds of unconscious mind,
he will reassert himself eventually, more or less the same person as
yesterday and the day before.
Night Aaron thinks getting up early will be good for morning Aaron,
but it isn't all virtue and grace for night Aaron either. Night Aaron
left a bowl and fork in the bathroom and shower stall, filled with
water to loosen the curry sauce. Night Aaron didn't want to go to the
shared kitchen on the floor to wash it; morning Aaron can wash the
dishes while he showers. The bowl and fork are visible from the
laundry piled at the head of the bed, just in front of the book shelf,
through an open transparent door in the translucent wall divider to
the shower, the same space as the toilet.
Night Aaron left two more socks in that pile, but it's morning Aaron,
or one of his descendants, who'll have to wash everything. Night Aaron
can be a real jerk too. Morning Aaron doesn't feel too bad about lying
in bed - or wouldn't, if he was feeling anything at all.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Korean classes at Sookmyung University, Saturdays 3-5pm
I can't believe I didn't find out about these classes earlier. They have something like five levels, with really decent books that they make themselves, and the cost is just 1,000 won, aka basically free (maybe an extra 1,000 won when you first get your book). You can just show up and walk in any Saturday you want. The teachers are students at the university, so they're not trained like professors or anything, but they're cool and they run the classes as a sort of club activity. They also organize other events for people learning Korean from time to time, as I understand it. By far the best free/cheap Korean class I've encountered.
TIME: 3:00 - 5:00pm EVERY SATURDAY
LOCATION: Sookmyung Women's University
HOW TO GET THERE:
Go to Sookmyung Women's University Station (숙대입구역) on line 4. Exit through exit number 9 (nine). Go straight and then take the first possible right, which will be a smallish street. You'll go through a little tunnel thing, an underpass or whatever, and then cross a bigger street. Continue going straight, past cafes and so on. It won't be quite ten minutes walking, I think, and the university will loom on your left. Referring to the picture: go up the first set of stairs, then go up one of the next sets of stairs. Head for that corner in the back there. You can go a little ways to the right there, and the building will be on your left. You'll see people in the lobby organizing things, and you can talk to them to "pay" and get a book and head to class! Get there a little before three so you can get to the right place on time!
TIME: 3:00 - 5:00pm EVERY SATURDAY
LOCATION: Sookmyung Women's University
HOW TO GET THERE:
Go to Sookmyung Women's University Station (숙대입구역) on line 4. Exit through exit number 9 (nine). Go straight and then take the first possible right, which will be a smallish street. You'll go through a little tunnel thing, an underpass or whatever, and then cross a bigger street. Continue going straight, past cafes and so on. It won't be quite ten minutes walking, I think, and the university will loom on your left. Referring to the picture: go up the first set of stairs, then go up one of the next sets of stairs. Head for that corner in the back there. You can go a little ways to the right there, and the building will be on your left. You'll see people in the lobby organizing things, and you can talk to them to "pay" and get a book and head to class! Get there a little before three so you can get to the right place on time!
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Minute 7:07 AM
Minute 7:07 AM
There goes the alarm, right on time, as synchronized across the phone
network. The sound of vibration is actually louder than the alarm
sound itself, somehow.
Night Aaron set the phone alarm for seven minutes after the clock
alarm, with the idea that attempts to jar morning Aaron into
consciousness would be wasted if they can all be extinguished in the
same sweep of an arm.
Now the phone's screen is glowing, an amazing feet of modern
engineering. The phone is more powerful than the first four computers
Aaron ever used, even combined. All that power, to pop up a little
blue box that says "Snooze."
Morning Aaron pulls himself up just enough to throw an arm across the
chasm of floor, and gently tap "Okay." His mind is gone again on the
way back down to the pillow.
Friday, February 11, 2011
Minute 7:06 AM
Minute 7:06 AM
Sounds travel very well here. Last night Aaron knew that, which is
part of why his iPhone, standing in the cradle on top of the clock
radio, is still set to vibrate. Bought that radio in America. Korea
doesn't seem to know about clock radios.
The alarm last night Aaron set to "Timba", which is some sort of
drumming sound. Maybe a different alarm sound will be surprising in
the morning, thought night Aaron. Maybe morning Aaron will actually
get up, thought night Aaron, like an ancient tycoon writing his will,
hoping his descendants will honor his wishes, knowing their
motivations will not be his own. Night Aaron and morning Aaron have
that kind of relationship.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Minute 7:05 AM
Minute 7:05 AM
There is no past, no present, no future. Is that success?
Then, the sound is first. A dull thud, as if the sound is still
lethargic too. Chemicals along axons and dendrites carefully relay a
message, and Aaron works out what made the sound. The wall hit his
elbow. Groan.
The bed is flush against the wall, and flush again against the wall
under the window at the foot of the bed. The head of the bed is flush
against the short side of a bookshelf. The mattress is smaller than a
standard twin, in every dimension. It is not a royal flush.
If Aaron flung out his arm in the other direction, it would touch the
desk across two feet of floor space, or the chair that rolls in that
space. A foot kicked in that direction could contact the mini-fridge
door. Not that anything's inside. A higher kick would hit the
mini-cabinet over the fridge. A kick straight up would part clothes
hanging from a hanger bar that spans the room, maybe six feet long.
Here is a vampire spaceship submarine palace.
Aaron hopes the sound from the elbow wall doesn't disturb his
neighbor, just a hand's breadth away.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Minute 7:04 AM
Minute 7:04 AM
Sometimes Aaron wakes up with the wrong idea about where he is. It's
remarkably disorienting, for example, to think you are waking up in
Menasha, Wisconsin, in the United States of America, under a yellow
blanket with butterflies that you could imagine your grandmother
embroidered on herself.
This blanket is just green and oddly textured, left behind by Aaron's
college friend Dan when he headed back to the US. The texture, and the
Korean crooning from the radio now, are enough to prevent mistakes of
location without any conscious effort.
Fa la la, Aaron's brain is busy with something still. Terribly busy,
and terribly quiet about whatever it might be that it's up to, like a
child working alone on some misconceived project alone in his room.
Just a few more minutes, don't interrupt. Maybe I'll really finish it
this time and everything will be all better.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Minute 7:03 AM
Minute 7:03 AM
There wasn't any reason to get up quickly today, was there? If a
question is directed to no one in particular, it's hard to expect an
answer.
In his latest contortion, a new creature awakens within Aaron, like a
life form from a Jovian planet. It crawls along just a bit, and is
finally expelled with a sound like wind over dry leaves. Internal
pressure is re-normalized.
Another question appears in Aaron's mind, like the last one, just
nerves firing in a lonely part of the skull, nobody to hear them. An
old, unattributed quote: "If God is so smart, then why do we fart?"
Minute 7:02 AM
Minute 7:02 AM
What happened yesterday? Had he been out drinking? Was that just a
dream? Aaron's insides are like an unfinished watercolor. Not alcohol,
then, but not quite done setting, for some reason. Had he actually met
those two... No, that was definitely a dream. Better not get up for a
minute.
The song finishes and now it's the calm morning guy voice. Korean
Korean Korean, he says. Korean Korean-name possessive's song
object-marker listen-respecting-the-listener past-tense formal. Thanks
for the info, morning guy.
Pulling all the world's energy into himself, Aaron summons the magic
of motion to pick himself up and hurl himself onto his stomach. Now he
is a beached whale, only protected from the unkind sun that drops down
from a frosted window at the foot of the bed by a seaweed blanket. He
releases the energy of the world and it exhales to flat again.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Minute 7:01 AM
Minute 7:01 AM
No, it's a Korean song after all. Just the chorus is in English. It's
trendy. It's cool.
Was there a dream back there, somewhere around the seven o'clock
chime? Are there snatches of a warm place, or a mystical beast? If
there was a dream, now it's all evaporated, just a fog around the
verdant mountains that hold in the heat of a subterranean elemental.
Here and there inhuman air finds a way in to chill the skin.
Aaron's face is flattened against the pillow, grotesquely deformed and
inanimate. The same song plays on.
Thinking about (comprehensible) input and ouput
"Comprehensible input" is a theory about language learning, which has this simple and appealingly (to me) mathematical explanation. If somebody knows "n", they learn "n+1" when they encounter input that includes "n+1". The example being, and I think I'm paraphrasing all of this from the wiki, that if a kid knows what "kick your brother" means, and the teacher says "kick your sister" and points to the sister, then the kid learns what that means.
This is tempting, but in the end I think it is not such a great theory, at least not for adult learners. I do appreciate the related application of the term comprehensible input that means that language classes should be made comprehensible to the students, i.e., don't talk way over their heads or whatever, and even that the appropriate level of discourse in the classroom is just slightly over the students' current level. That's all cool.
But I don't think that's how most of second language acquisition happens. As an example, I just don't trust stuff that I figure out or guess myself until I confirm it with a dictionary or by asking about it. It's too easy to make mistakes. Just yesterday I saw a book with a big picture of a shark on it and a big word that I didn't know, but that was kind of familiar. So I guessed that it was shark. But it wasn't even related to sharks. So that's one problem. People make mistakes. The other problem, I guess, is that people just won't figure out enough on their own, fast enough, to make good progress.
People need to make the target language comprehensible to themselves first. That happens by learning vocabulary and grammar, by studying explicitly, by being taught explicitly. Things must be made comprehensible.
I've just thought of a caveat to my acceptance of comprehensible input for adapting the language level to that of learners. I think that should be limited, because it is not the goal level of the language. You don't want to read children's books your whole life, and you certainly don't want to be stuck in the goofy stage of a partially formed and cumbersome, awkward grammar. It is necessary for learning some basic concepts, but as much and as soon as possible the language input should be native.
I've been appreciating the value of a lot of native language input recently as I watch a lot of episodes from 지붕뚫고 하이킥, a Korean sitcom. But what I find is not that I learn new things from it, usually, but rather that I practice (or am reminded of) things that I have learned, and moreover learn how things that I have learned are actually used. I can almost never make out words that I don't know, and I can't really make out foreign grammar (not that there is much of it) but the bigger issue is that after learning vocabulary and grammar in other places, there are infinitely many ways to combine them, only a handful of which are actually used by native speakers. Watching a show like this provides a lot of known-good expressions, which I can understand because I have already learned their components elsewhere. This reinforces things I've learned and guides me toward more natural expressions.
Somehow I feel like this happens more when I watch TV than when I read - maybe because I slow down and break apart everything I read so much. Or maybe because I go fast and don't spare thought about sentence structures etc. Huh.
I guess really the main thing that caught my eye about comprehensible input was a corollary on the wiki page: "speaking (output) is not practice." This kind of resonated for me, or maybe just gave me permission to think about things like this.
How can you learn from speaking, or writing? If you make a mistake, you won't necessarily know it. It's like waving around a flag; it won't make the flag any bigger or cleaner. And it isn't hard to think of people who speak a language plenty and yet still make tons of the same mistakes, with terrible accents, etc.
But then back at input, you can easily imagine someone spending a lot of time listening to (and/or watching) a foreign language, and never learning anything. It's not easy to bootstrap up from nothing to competency. I have to think that those folks who go and learn undiscovered languages or whatever are pretty incredible. That's not easy. Even if you could already read at some level, you could read and read and never improve your language skills if you weren't trying to. Consider Korea, where tons of foreigners come for a year or more, the writing system can be learned in a matter of hours, and while yes a lot of foreigners do avoid Korean language scenarios, they certainly aren't isolated from it, and yet they never learn anything.
For all that, I think all of listening, reading, writing, and speaking should be called practice. Importantly practice, as distinct from learning. They are all useful and even important for taking what we have begun to learn but not yet perfected and making those skills more secure, fluent and useful. The productive skills are especially important for developing new skills and knowledge as they are learned. Listening and reading become more valuable after a significant base has been built; otherwise too much will just whiz by.
Conversation... Conversation seems like more than just listening and speaking. It gives some opportunity for feedback, although that will not necessarily be perfect. I think it can still be taken as a kind of practice. All the language skills are practice, aren't they, the practices of native speakers too. I think they are unlikely to lead to acquisition of new forms, at least not quickly - I think that's my point here.
I guess that doesn't make it wrong to call a class that's just "free talking" a class... I just usually think of teachers teaching new material.
Summarizing: "Just" reading, or listening, or speaking, or writing, is not an efficient way to learn new material. It is, however, a valuable way to review and reinforce material that has already been initially learned. The same goes for conversation, with the qualification that because of interactivity it has more potential for learning than the others, but like the others the learning value will depend on the participants.
This is tempting, but in the end I think it is not such a great theory, at least not for adult learners. I do appreciate the related application of the term comprehensible input that means that language classes should be made comprehensible to the students, i.e., don't talk way over their heads or whatever, and even that the appropriate level of discourse in the classroom is just slightly over the students' current level. That's all cool.
But I don't think that's how most of second language acquisition happens. As an example, I just don't trust stuff that I figure out or guess myself until I confirm it with a dictionary or by asking about it. It's too easy to make mistakes. Just yesterday I saw a book with a big picture of a shark on it and a big word that I didn't know, but that was kind of familiar. So I guessed that it was shark. But it wasn't even related to sharks. So that's one problem. People make mistakes. The other problem, I guess, is that people just won't figure out enough on their own, fast enough, to make good progress.
People need to make the target language comprehensible to themselves first. That happens by learning vocabulary and grammar, by studying explicitly, by being taught explicitly. Things must be made comprehensible.
I've just thought of a caveat to my acceptance of comprehensible input for adapting the language level to that of learners. I think that should be limited, because it is not the goal level of the language. You don't want to read children's books your whole life, and you certainly don't want to be stuck in the goofy stage of a partially formed and cumbersome, awkward grammar. It is necessary for learning some basic concepts, but as much and as soon as possible the language input should be native.
I've been appreciating the value of a lot of native language input recently as I watch a lot of episodes from 지붕뚫고 하이킥, a Korean sitcom. But what I find is not that I learn new things from it, usually, but rather that I practice (or am reminded of) things that I have learned, and moreover learn how things that I have learned are actually used. I can almost never make out words that I don't know, and I can't really make out foreign grammar (not that there is much of it) but the bigger issue is that after learning vocabulary and grammar in other places, there are infinitely many ways to combine them, only a handful of which are actually used by native speakers. Watching a show like this provides a lot of known-good expressions, which I can understand because I have already learned their components elsewhere. This reinforces things I've learned and guides me toward more natural expressions.
Somehow I feel like this happens more when I watch TV than when I read - maybe because I slow down and break apart everything I read so much. Or maybe because I go fast and don't spare thought about sentence structures etc. Huh.
I guess really the main thing that caught my eye about comprehensible input was a corollary on the wiki page: "speaking (output) is not practice." This kind of resonated for me, or maybe just gave me permission to think about things like this.
How can you learn from speaking, or writing? If you make a mistake, you won't necessarily know it. It's like waving around a flag; it won't make the flag any bigger or cleaner. And it isn't hard to think of people who speak a language plenty and yet still make tons of the same mistakes, with terrible accents, etc.
But then back at input, you can easily imagine someone spending a lot of time listening to (and/or watching) a foreign language, and never learning anything. It's not easy to bootstrap up from nothing to competency. I have to think that those folks who go and learn undiscovered languages or whatever are pretty incredible. That's not easy. Even if you could already read at some level, you could read and read and never improve your language skills if you weren't trying to. Consider Korea, where tons of foreigners come for a year or more, the writing system can be learned in a matter of hours, and while yes a lot of foreigners do avoid Korean language scenarios, they certainly aren't isolated from it, and yet they never learn anything.
For all that, I think all of listening, reading, writing, and speaking should be called practice. Importantly practice, as distinct from learning. They are all useful and even important for taking what we have begun to learn but not yet perfected and making those skills more secure, fluent and useful. The productive skills are especially important for developing new skills and knowledge as they are learned. Listening and reading become more valuable after a significant base has been built; otherwise too much will just whiz by.
Conversation... Conversation seems like more than just listening and speaking. It gives some opportunity for feedback, although that will not necessarily be perfect. I think it can still be taken as a kind of practice. All the language skills are practice, aren't they, the practices of native speakers too. I think they are unlikely to lead to acquisition of new forms, at least not quickly - I think that's my point here.
I guess that doesn't make it wrong to call a class that's just "free talking" a class... I just usually think of teachers teaching new material.
Summarizing: "Just" reading, or listening, or speaking, or writing, is not an efficient way to learn new material. It is, however, a valuable way to review and reinforce material that has already been initially learned. The same goes for conversation, with the qualification that because of interactivity it has more potential for learning than the others, but like the others the learning value will depend on the participants.
Thoughts and recommendations on language books after a visit to the book store
Yesterday I went to Kyobo, the big Korean bookstore, to check out the books for learning English. I was starting to think I should offer some well-defined content, some "now we will learn this and nothing else" material, in the workshops I'm planning.
I guess there's a kind of spectrum in "speaking classes" like this, from "free talking" where everybody just talks, to lectures with material and prescribed no-variance activities. I was thinking maybe I'd go somewhere in the middle.
One thing about Korea: there are a LOT of books for learning English. One gets the feeling that maybe it would be more accurate to describe them as books for earning money when people who wish they knew English go looking for books.
So there are a lot of books, a huge ecosystem of books, with a million different hooks. The one that amused me the most was the one called "You can date an American, in just 30 minutes study a day for 30 days." And that is a little horrible, but if it catches somebody's attention I can imagine that person learning something from it. There's a good deal to be said for the importance of personal interest. A book, no matter how "educational" (judged how?) will just sit on a shelf if you're not motivated to use it.
Okay the other thing is that the way all these books seem to deal with the multitude of people with varying English proficiencies is just doing their thing, just throwing it out there, and hoping I guess that enough people will be at an appropriate level or at least buy the book. I don't think I saw one book that started from scratch though, with the possible exception of some miserable grammar books with obligatory chapters on pronunciation at the beginning.
Issue: Phrases vs. vocab+grammar
If you just learn phrases, you have very specific, very correct-in-that-instance language ability. But you have to learn so many phrases it's ridiculous. The phrases don't transfer to other situations, etc.
If you just learn vocab and grammar, you still have the so-much-it's-ridiculous problem. If you learn some subset though, you should be able to communicate in more situations, gaining some of the language productivity advantage. But you will probably say a lot of awkward, obviously non-native things.
A lot (maybe 70%?) of language is idiomatic. So learning phrases seems unavoidable. But it would be nice to take advantage as much as possible of the generative character of language.
Main types of books
Some books are basically dictionaries. I think dictionaries are useful, but these books seem intended to be read/studied straight through, or something. It's ridiculous. Who's going to sit and read/study five thousand vocabulary words in a row, or sentences, or phrases, or whatever? These books provide only content and no learning methods, so I can only imagine them being useful if they were used for reference (which seems difficult, and besides computers do it so much better for search etc.) or if the reader was simply godlike in memory and discipline and/or had some pre-existing study methodology they were using the book as input for. Summary: These books seem to be a crap waste of time.
I think I'll include most of the grammar books in this category too. They're organized a little different from alphabetization, but if you were to try to learn from one I think it would be like kicking yourself in the face. Maybe some of them could be used for reference.
Related note: some of these type of books are "pattern books" which take some sentence pattern and show how parts of it can be changed. These are a step in the direction of the next type, kind of, but I think they belong in this section. It's sort of a dictionary of specific cases of grammar rules, usually ones that happen to be commonly used.
Oh, and as mentioned above, some of these books are on the 30/30 concept, or related: spend 30 minutes a day for 30 days with this book, and you'll have learned something. I think it is not quite fair to say that prescribing time management counts as a learning method.
Some books are selling conceptualization. Their selling point is that they organize information in a useful way and present it so that you could conceivably learn from it as you read the book. So they have content and the learning method is just reading. Many of these will have some claim on the cover like "don't just memorize, learn!" I think this class of book has some value, although it probably wouldn't be the first thing I'd recommend to somebody who wants to actually learn a language. What I think is the best book like this that I found, while it still has some dictionary tendencies, is 영어의 원리 (Principles of English) which organizes it's chapters based on generalizations about the way English is used, explains the differences in conceptualization that go into English versus Korean sentences, and gives examples that illustrate these generalizations. I would recommend a book like this as a supplement to a language learner who wants to keep learning even when they're too tired too keep focusing on more direct, more effective methods, to be read mostly for pleasure.
As a note, there are vocabulary books like this too. I saw one that provided groups of related words with some explanation, making connections between the words either just by conceptual relatedness or etymology or both.
I'll also include here the books that provide pictures to help guess meanings of words or phrases, or to aid in memory, although when there's just page after page of this kind of thing it's still pretty darn dictionary-ish.
Some books have a prime focus on a learning method / activity other than just reading. Some are just workbooks or various kinds, of which a lot just suck. I saw several books which basically just had pictures and then asked you to fill in words to describe the pictures, often fill-in-the-blank form, either whole words or with one or two letters of the word provided. I wonder how useful these are, even as review. I saw one other book which had a translucent red card so that you could read with the Korean and then go back and review while blanking it out with the card, or some variation thereof. I think highly of this category of book, because I think that activity is necessary for learning and that just reading is not going to be active enough for many, especially with regard to speaking.
By far the best book of this type that I encountered, really a line of seven or so books, is specifically for speaking, which is probably the area where activity is the most important - and a good help for listening too. The book's creators also seem to have thought a lot about the theory behind their system, which I am reading with interest now, slowly because it's in Korean. I find myself agreeing with a lot of their stuff, and this is the first book I would suggest to any Korean hoping to speak better English. It's focused, a little anti-climactically perhaps, on listening and repeating, as a foundational step in improving speaking. It does try to bootstrap that up to creative speaking, but that's a difficult step.
I want to mention: some books are total crap. It's because of their horrible design. A lot of textbooks are this way. They have flashy pictures all over the place, text with no discernable path through it all, bubbles popping out of everything... it's a mess. Say what you want about hyper-text or whatever, people read in a straight line. I don't want to have to put a check-mark by everything on a page to make sure I've looked at it all. A book like that is a book nobody is going to read, or at best, even the people who try to read it won't know if they've really read it.
The best-designed books have a clear line through them that the reader can follow. (Not to say they can't skip around if they want to, but it should be possible to go through the book.) They present things in a way that people can understand as they read, with illustrations in-line so they can be taken in as part of the narrative. They have logical breaks into chapters or sections that follow one after the other. They have the right number of examples, and they understand the difference between an example and an exercise. A book is not a magazine is not the web is not a Pollock.
As I'm thinking about it, I'll say something about explicit instruction and what might be the ideal book. Korean pronunciation is very close to perfectly phonetic from spelling, but there are some strange rules and some exceptions. The kind of rules that are not obvious, necessarily. The kind of rules that I didn't know and just kept making mistakes around. I did (notice not just "read") these books (it's two volumes) and I think it helped a lot.
First, the book organizes it's content brilliantly. It's called "Korean Pronunciation 47" because it's divided into 47 chapters, each one the next "concept" or rule in an orderly progression of rules that build on one another. When something uses a rule from another chapter, it's cross-referenced. I think it represents a kind of linguistic brilliance, and a lot of hard work.
Each chapter gives very explicit explanation of the rule, how it is applied, and it mentions any exceptions. Then, there are a lot of exercises: listening, read-and-identify, and listen-and-repeat exercises with just words, then sentences, and then mini-dialogues. There are little listening "tests" at the end of chapters.
So you go from thinking consciously about a pronunciation rule, to immediately applying it and practicing it. And the result is, I don't remember the conscious rules necessarily, but when I see a Korean word in writing I have a much better idea of how it should sound spoken. I think explicit instruction can be very good, but it does have to be matched with application and internalization, or the learner's personal "re-construction."
A note on comprehension: I think comprehension is important. I don't think anybody should be reciting things they don't know the meaning of. What help is that? So when I used those Korean pronunciation books, for example, I spent a lot of time with a dictionary, and occasionally asked for help with grammar and stuff like that. Maybe it was only possibly because I already knew a lot of grammar. Building grammar - that might be the main challenge.
Maybe to summarize a little bit, to wrap up:
Dictionaries just collect information.
Organizers put information into a meaningful framework.
Trainers give things to do, from which you can develop skills (and come up with information and frameworks, maybe).
Super-books present well-organized information and provide the activities that lead you to internalize this information and related skills.
Yeah, "super-books"... Yeah...
I guess there's a kind of spectrum in "speaking classes" like this, from "free talking" where everybody just talks, to lectures with material and prescribed no-variance activities. I was thinking maybe I'd go somewhere in the middle.
One thing about Korea: there are a LOT of books for learning English. One gets the feeling that maybe it would be more accurate to describe them as books for earning money when people who wish they knew English go looking for books.
So there are a lot of books, a huge ecosystem of books, with a million different hooks. The one that amused me the most was the one called "You can date an American, in just 30 minutes study a day for 30 days." And that is a little horrible, but if it catches somebody's attention I can imagine that person learning something from it. There's a good deal to be said for the importance of personal interest. A book, no matter how "educational" (judged how?) will just sit on a shelf if you're not motivated to use it.
Okay the other thing is that the way all these books seem to deal with the multitude of people with varying English proficiencies is just doing their thing, just throwing it out there, and hoping I guess that enough people will be at an appropriate level or at least buy the book. I don't think I saw one book that started from scratch though, with the possible exception of some miserable grammar books with obligatory chapters on pronunciation at the beginning.
Issue: Phrases vs. vocab+grammar
If you just learn phrases, you have very specific, very correct-in-that-instance language ability. But you have to learn so many phrases it's ridiculous. The phrases don't transfer to other situations, etc.
If you just learn vocab and grammar, you still have the so-much-it's-ridiculous problem. If you learn some subset though, you should be able to communicate in more situations, gaining some of the language productivity advantage. But you will probably say a lot of awkward, obviously non-native things.
A lot (maybe 70%?) of language is idiomatic. So learning phrases seems unavoidable. But it would be nice to take advantage as much as possible of the generative character of language.
Main types of books
Some books are basically dictionaries. I think dictionaries are useful, but these books seem intended to be read/studied straight through, or something. It's ridiculous. Who's going to sit and read/study five thousand vocabulary words in a row, or sentences, or phrases, or whatever? These books provide only content and no learning methods, so I can only imagine them being useful if they were used for reference (which seems difficult, and besides computers do it so much better for search etc.) or if the reader was simply godlike in memory and discipline and/or had some pre-existing study methodology they were using the book as input for. Summary: These books seem to be a crap waste of time.
I think I'll include most of the grammar books in this category too. They're organized a little different from alphabetization, but if you were to try to learn from one I think it would be like kicking yourself in the face. Maybe some of them could be used for reference.
Related note: some of these type of books are "pattern books" which take some sentence pattern and show how parts of it can be changed. These are a step in the direction of the next type, kind of, but I think they belong in this section. It's sort of a dictionary of specific cases of grammar rules, usually ones that happen to be commonly used.
Oh, and as mentioned above, some of these books are on the 30/30 concept, or related: spend 30 minutes a day for 30 days with this book, and you'll have learned something. I think it is not quite fair to say that prescribing time management counts as a learning method.
As a note, there are vocabulary books like this too. I saw one that provided groups of related words with some explanation, making connections between the words either just by conceptual relatedness or etymology or both.
I'll also include here the books that provide pictures to help guess meanings of words or phrases, or to aid in memory, although when there's just page after page of this kind of thing it's still pretty darn dictionary-ish.
By far the best book of this type that I encountered, really a line of seven or so books, is specifically for speaking, which is probably the area where activity is the most important - and a good help for listening too. The book's creators also seem to have thought a lot about the theory behind their system, which I am reading with interest now, slowly because it's in Korean. I find myself agreeing with a lot of their stuff, and this is the first book I would suggest to any Korean hoping to speak better English. It's focused, a little anti-climactically perhaps, on listening and repeating, as a foundational step in improving speaking. It does try to bootstrap that up to creative speaking, but that's a difficult step.
I want to mention: some books are total crap. It's because of their horrible design. A lot of textbooks are this way. They have flashy pictures all over the place, text with no discernable path through it all, bubbles popping out of everything... it's a mess. Say what you want about hyper-text or whatever, people read in a straight line. I don't want to have to put a check-mark by everything on a page to make sure I've looked at it all. A book like that is a book nobody is going to read, or at best, even the people who try to read it won't know if they've really read it.
The best-designed books have a clear line through them that the reader can follow. (Not to say they can't skip around if they want to, but it should be possible to go through the book.) They present things in a way that people can understand as they read, with illustrations in-line so they can be taken in as part of the narrative. They have logical breaks into chapters or sections that follow one after the other. They have the right number of examples, and they understand the difference between an example and an exercise. A book is not a magazine is not the web is not a Pollock.
First, the book organizes it's content brilliantly. It's called "Korean Pronunciation 47" because it's divided into 47 chapters, each one the next "concept" or rule in an orderly progression of rules that build on one another. When something uses a rule from another chapter, it's cross-referenced. I think it represents a kind of linguistic brilliance, and a lot of hard work.
Each chapter gives very explicit explanation of the rule, how it is applied, and it mentions any exceptions. Then, there are a lot of exercises: listening, read-and-identify, and listen-and-repeat exercises with just words, then sentences, and then mini-dialogues. There are little listening "tests" at the end of chapters.
So you go from thinking consciously about a pronunciation rule, to immediately applying it and practicing it. And the result is, I don't remember the conscious rules necessarily, but when I see a Korean word in writing I have a much better idea of how it should sound spoken. I think explicit instruction can be very good, but it does have to be matched with application and internalization, or the learner's personal "re-construction."
A note on comprehension: I think comprehension is important. I don't think anybody should be reciting things they don't know the meaning of. What help is that? So when I used those Korean pronunciation books, for example, I spent a lot of time with a dictionary, and occasionally asked for help with grammar and stuff like that. Maybe it was only possibly because I already knew a lot of grammar. Building grammar - that might be the main challenge.
Maybe to summarize a little bit, to wrap up:
Dictionaries just collect information.
Organizers put information into a meaningful framework.
Trainers give things to do, from which you can develop skills (and come up with information and frameworks, maybe).
Super-books present well-organized information and provide the activities that lead you to internalize this information and related skills.
Yeah, "super-books"... Yeah...
Some musings on construction and flashcards...
It seems pretty clear to me that in at least some sense, people need to construct meaning or knowledge or whatever if they are going to really learn it.
As a mundane, possibly silly example: With the goal of learning Korean, I've started using an iPhone flash-card app that uses some version of graduated recall ideas of memory to maximize effectiveness.
I make my own flash-cards for this app, based on words that I encounter and want to remember and use. I enjoy reviewing them and feel like it really helps me to remember them.
I've tried using pre-made "decks" of the elements, the US state capitals, etc... and they're just dead boring. I don't care.
So I was thinking maybe it was because I made the flashcards that I found them more interesting and valuable, but now that I think about it it's probably just that those topics are dull as heck. But I do lack context for them as well. I think if I was doing a class with vocab for every lesson, or something like that, I wouldn't mind having pre-made cards that I could just start studying right away. But I think it would just be for review - it wouldn't do as a first exposure to the material.
Related wondering: How useful are flashcards for other topics, like science or history, where things don't fall into little card-sized pieces as easily as language vocabulary words?
The original question that started this ramble is this: "Do people need to construct their learning method, in addition to just what they learn?" The answer seems to be no, although I do feel more personal investment in the flashcard thing for having chosen it for myself. I didn't invent flashcards, and I got the idea from a friend who was already using a related program. Teachers prescribe material and methods, and when they forget that they need to prescribe methods they invent whole classes on "study skills." I think if a student understands and faithfully follows a prescribed study methodology, that should be sufficient. They are free to add more on top of it, as always.
As a mundane, possibly silly example: With the goal of learning Korean, I've started using an iPhone flash-card app that uses some version of graduated recall ideas of memory to maximize effectiveness.
I make my own flash-cards for this app, based on words that I encounter and want to remember and use. I enjoy reviewing them and feel like it really helps me to remember them.
I've tried using pre-made "decks" of the elements, the US state capitals, etc... and they're just dead boring. I don't care.
So I was thinking maybe it was because I made the flashcards that I found them more interesting and valuable, but now that I think about it it's probably just that those topics are dull as heck. But I do lack context for them as well. I think if I was doing a class with vocab for every lesson, or something like that, I wouldn't mind having pre-made cards that I could just start studying right away. But I think it would just be for review - it wouldn't do as a first exposure to the material.
Related wondering: How useful are flashcards for other topics, like science or history, where things don't fall into little card-sized pieces as easily as language vocabulary words?
The original question that started this ramble is this: "Do people need to construct their learning method, in addition to just what they learn?" The answer seems to be no, although I do feel more personal investment in the flashcard thing for having chosen it for myself. I didn't invent flashcards, and I got the idea from a friend who was already using a related program. Teachers prescribe material and methods, and when they forget that they need to prescribe methods they invent whole classes on "study skills." I think if a student understands and faithfully follows a prescribed study methodology, that should be sufficient. They are free to add more on top of it, as always.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Minute 7:00 AM
Minute 7:00 AM
The clock radio is just a few seconds late, so it comes on after the
official broadcast chime that marks seven o'clock.
"Just like a happy Christmas," sings a voice, out of tune with the
season. They play a lot of English language songs on Korean radio.
"Hmph," sings a voice, out of a blanket and pillow. This is not a
word, not in English, not in Korean. But what it means is, "I am not
quite all here yet."
In which I decide to write a novel, starting tomorrow
For some time, I've wanted to write a novel. Or maybe I've wanted to have written a novel. Anyway, the idea of writing and then having written a novel seems cool to me, despite the glut of novels and the questionable worth of any and all of them. But I've read a lot of novels, so maybe I'll just write one, thought me.
And I thought about doing that National Novel-Writing Month thing. In fact I read the book on that thing. And for that they have you doing 2,000 words per day, aka more time than I'm going to spare on a typical day. I'm not doing writing full-time. I'm not even doing writing NaNoWriMo-time.
And I started a sort of series of connected short scenes that could possibly develop into some sort of novel, the one about the kids who nuke Jerusalem, but each individual scene takes a while to write, and I did like eight of them but haven't gone back to it in months.
So on the train today I was thinking, if I just knew what to write at each point of the story, I could do a tiny little bit every day and then in the end it would be all done. But how to plot out that whole story and break it down into tiny enough pieces?
The solution I have arrived at is this: I will write a novel called "Minute." It starts at 7:00AM when the main character, Aaron (a fictional composite character based on myself) hears his alarm go off. Every day I will write about only what happens in the next minute of Aaron's day. If Aaron is around until 10PM, that's 900 minutes. If I write 100 words for every minute, that's 90,000 words, which is a good-size novel. And of course it takes 900 days to write - some two and a half years. I'm not too worried about there being some big plot. It's just a day, minute by minute. It's kind of like that guy who took a picture of himself once a day for a long time. Sort of. And I can publish the next minute every day online, which motivates me to write anyway.
I think this is the plan.
And I thought about doing that National Novel-Writing Month thing. In fact I read the book on that thing. And for that they have you doing 2,000 words per day, aka more time than I'm going to spare on a typical day. I'm not doing writing full-time. I'm not even doing writing NaNoWriMo-time.
And I started a sort of series of connected short scenes that could possibly develop into some sort of novel, the one about the kids who nuke Jerusalem, but each individual scene takes a while to write, and I did like eight of them but haven't gone back to it in months.
So on the train today I was thinking, if I just knew what to write at each point of the story, I could do a tiny little bit every day and then in the end it would be all done. But how to plot out that whole story and break it down into tiny enough pieces?
The solution I have arrived at is this: I will write a novel called "Minute." It starts at 7:00AM when the main character, Aaron (a fictional composite character based on myself) hears his alarm go off. Every day I will write about only what happens in the next minute of Aaron's day. If Aaron is around until 10PM, that's 900 minutes. If I write 100 words for every minute, that's 90,000 words, which is a good-size novel. And of course it takes 900 days to write - some two and a half years. I'm not too worried about there being some big plot. It's just a day, minute by minute. It's kind of like that guy who took a picture of himself once a day for a long time. Sort of. And I can publish the next minute every day online, which motivates me to write anyway.
I think this is the plan.
Conceptualizing language for teaching and learning
I am thinking about how I understand language, because I want to teach and learn well.
First, I subscribe generally to something like the Chomskian generative grammar idea of deep structure and surface structure. I think abstracting to just two structures is a big simplification, and that all the intermediate structures are equally present, and further that the deep structure, if it is taken to be language-specific, is not the deepest structure.
The brain is doing something, and even if there is no language happening I think it is fair to call what the brain does thinking. (Maybe if you want to be picky this could be limited to "what the cerebral cortex does," but I think such a division is likely to be artificial.) Neurons firing hither and thither.
At some point a thought may start to move up the assembly of language, and make it some or all the way to a final surface form, which may be vocalized or written (or otherwise expressed externally) or not. Whether or not it is, the machinery of language will (almost?) automatically re-process the surface form, re-understanding what the brain just came up with, allowing it to be re-considered and re-processed, leading to further thought.
I think this may be the main evolutionary advantage of language over simpler communication systems like grunting, etc. - trumping communication. Language is good for communication, but for evolutionary purposes it isn't all that much better than non-linguistic communication. I think the re-processing effect, the feedback loop that you get, may be the prime benefit.
(could put examples here)
Anyway, here's a theoretical linguistic stack diagram of the language mechanism:
And now I'll add my glossing to normal language terms. I know this isn't perfect. I think the original divisions aren't perfect either, as semantics is interrelated with the other bits, and you can't really tear them apart neatly. Anyway, my attempt to go in a useful direction:
I think this could be useful. I now introduce the following very short story:
I do think that as people become more educated, better readers and thinkers, the bounds of what they can learn from a book expand. People get good at translating language to action through the faculty of their minds. Imagination, visualization, that kind of thing. Most people can learn how to use their clock-radio by reading the instructions. You don't have to figure it out by messing with the clock. But even then, you may need some practice to get good. The point here is that I think about whether certain things are more like swimming or more like bird-naming, for educational purposes.
Okay, so how about this? I think it can work, with some clarification. The surface-swimming match seems pretty good to me. Pronouncing something is a clear skill-performance, and I think it makes sense that it needs to be practiced. Bird-naming doesn't seem very deep, though.
Okay, so it's not. The swimming-style skill of going directly from pre-lingual thought to lingual word is the deep thing here, more or less, and the bird-naming intellectual knowledge, probably stored in a native-language/target-language pair, are clearly different. However, when trying to bring out that pre-lingual thought in the target language, it's clearly not that hard to go from pre-lingual thought, realize that there's relevant bird-naming knowledge, go to the native language word and then the target language word, and bring it back and finish going to a surface form in the target language. It is slower, but doing it this way is practice that will develop the relevant swimming-skill. It's much harder to go from intellectual knowledge of pronunciation to a good performance of the pronunciation skill.
So maybe the bird-naming / swimming axis would be better understood or labeled as an axis from easily-applied abstract knowledge to practice-immediately-or-you-drown swimming skills. Maybe it's a fine distinction.
Compare: In my Korean language program we learned the Korean 'alphabet' / sounds totally without provided romanization, just repeating after the teacher. The sound systems are different between English and Korean, as you can easily hear if a native English speaker encounters a native Korean speaker who pronounces English words by saying Korean phonetic spellings. Some vocabulary early on was done with Korean-for-pictures as well, avoiding English glosses, but soon English glosses became very important for understanding and learning Korean vocabulary.
So this brings me to the traditional four language skills:
(Is that the right thing to call them? Language skills?)
Okay that was a silly way to do it, but it looks kind of pretty. Let's make one of those box diagrams, eh?
I'm ignoring the physical parts of reading and writing. I think that's fair. They don't use the phonological/pronunciation part of the language stack, anyway.
So how do people learn these skills, and/or learn a language? What should teachers do? What should students do?
Aside: I'm in a particular position of dealing with students who, similar to myself, already have some foundation in the target language. The foundation may be incomplete, and it may also be incorrect in places. What is appropriate for this type of student?
Really I guess the "virgin" student is pretty rare; but I'm thinking about adults who have already had one or more formal treatments of a language...
Okay this is too long already. Some questions are set up. Answers: GO!!!
First, I subscribe generally to something like the Chomskian generative grammar idea of deep structure and surface structure. I think abstracting to just two structures is a big simplification, and that all the intermediate structures are equally present, and further that the deep structure, if it is taken to be language-specific, is not the deepest structure.
The brain is doing something, and even if there is no language happening I think it is fair to call what the brain does thinking. (Maybe if you want to be picky this could be limited to "what the cerebral cortex does," but I think such a division is likely to be artificial.) Neurons firing hither and thither.
At some point a thought may start to move up the assembly of language, and make it some or all the way to a final surface form, which may be vocalized or written (or otherwise expressed externally) or not. Whether or not it is, the machinery of language will (almost?) automatically re-process the surface form, re-understanding what the brain just came up with, allowing it to be re-considered and re-processed, leading to further thought.
I think this may be the main evolutionary advantage of language over simpler communication systems like grunting, etc. - trumping communication. Language is good for communication, but for evolutionary purposes it isn't all that much better than non-linguistic communication. I think the re-processing effect, the feedback loop that you get, may be the prime benefit.
(could put examples here)
Anyway, here's a theoretical linguistic stack diagram of the language mechanism:
Peter wanted to know the names of the birds.I don't remember where that's from. Actually now that I think of it, maybe it was in the back of a Calculus for Dummies book. Huh. Anyway, I think it expresses a valuable idea in education.
He read a book and learned the names of the birds.
Peter wanted to learn how to swim.
He read a book and drowned.
I do think that as people become more educated, better readers and thinkers, the bounds of what they can learn from a book expand. People get good at translating language to action through the faculty of their minds. Imagination, visualization, that kind of thing. Most people can learn how to use their clock-radio by reading the instructions. You don't have to figure it out by messing with the clock. But even then, you may need some practice to get good. The point here is that I think about whether certain things are more like swimming or more like bird-naming, for educational purposes.
Okay, so it's not. The swimming-style skill of going directly from pre-lingual thought to lingual word is the deep thing here, more or less, and the bird-naming intellectual knowledge, probably stored in a native-language/target-language pair, are clearly different. However, when trying to bring out that pre-lingual thought in the target language, it's clearly not that hard to go from pre-lingual thought, realize that there's relevant bird-naming knowledge, go to the native language word and then the target language word, and bring it back and finish going to a surface form in the target language. It is slower, but doing it this way is practice that will develop the relevant swimming-skill. It's much harder to go from intellectual knowledge of pronunciation to a good performance of the pronunciation skill.
So maybe the bird-naming / swimming axis would be better understood or labeled as an axis from easily-applied abstract knowledge to practice-immediately-or-you-drown swimming skills. Maybe it's a fine distinction.
Compare: In my Korean language program we learned the Korean 'alphabet' / sounds totally without provided romanization, just repeating after the teacher. The sound systems are different between English and Korean, as you can easily hear if a native English speaker encounters a native Korean speaker who pronounces English words by saying Korean phonetic spellings. Some vocabulary early on was done with Korean-for-pictures as well, avoiding English glosses, but soon English glosses became very important for understanding and learning Korean vocabulary.
So this brings me to the traditional four language skills:
(Is that the right thing to call them? Language skills?)
So how do people learn these skills, and/or learn a language? What should teachers do? What should students do?
Aside: I'm in a particular position of dealing with students who, similar to myself, already have some foundation in the target language. The foundation may be incomplete, and it may also be incorrect in places. What is appropriate for this type of student?
Really I guess the "virgin" student is pretty rare; but I'm thinking about adults who have already had one or more formal treatments of a language...
Okay this is too long already. Some questions are set up. Answers: GO!!!
Friday, February 4, 2011
Schumacher Bathroom Signs
I had this idea a while ago and I felt like mocking it up on the computer finally today. Now I'm a graphic designer! Bwa-ha-ha.
The shapes represent gender equality in that they have exactly the same surface area, if I made them right. Of course they're also sort of over-simplified anatomical diagrams, which I think is a little funny. In case it's not obvious, I used the traditional gender-stereotyped colors, and for this post I stuck M and W underneath to make it painfully clear.
So now we don't have to imply that all women wear skirts in order for people to find their way to the appropriate segregated restroom! It's all biology, baby! I would love to see these symbols on bathroom doors around the world, hahaha...
So now we don't have to imply that all women wear skirts in order for people to find their way to the appropriate segregated restroom! It's all biology, baby! I would love to see these symbols on bathroom doors around the world, hahaha...
Reconsidering Hirsch
That's E. D. Hirsch, Jr., for those coming in late. I encountered him in grad school because of this (from the wiki on him):
In my classes, he was kind of vilified, although now that I think back on it I'm not sure whether it was more by our teachers or by us students. If we, for the moment, simplify all socio-economic issues down to black and white, the argument was that Hirsch's ideas were racist because they devalued black culture, only including white culture. Now I think we can dispense with that argument as based on the rather racist premise that white culture is a culture of knowing things and black culture is a culture of not knowing things, combined with the point that it is possible at least in theory to include both white and black traditions, if they can be so separated to begin with, in a program of training for cultural literacy.
The other mark against Hirsch was that we actually looked at a section of his dictionary of cultural literacy. It was full of stuff that seemed silly (like The Three Little Pigs) and stuff that we didn't know ourselves - old political references or whatever. So we disparaged his list-making and sort of moved on.
Now in Korea, I teach some advanced English classes with textbooks that include sections about "allusions" - and they try to include some lists of things that English-speaking authors might make allusions to. It's sort of what Hirsch was talking about. If you're a Buddhist Korean kid, you're not going to know Bible stories. So what do you do when somebody is compared to Cain, or somebody isn't somebody else's keeper, or whatever? There's a section of Bible stories in the textbook, along with a section of topics from World War II, with the implied but not written subtitle "from the American perspective."
So upon reflection, I think that Hirsch is right, in some important ways. Cultural literacy, in as much as that means having a base of knowledge shared with other people who you mean to communicate with, is important. Ultimately I think language is just one aspect, one facet of culture. The words can't be neatly cut away from the transmitted stories that underly them. I used to be a little puzzled by the "culture" components of language classes - and a lot of them are still ridiculous, I think; things like making day-of-the-dead masks or whatever - but really a language class is a culture class.
I think Hirsch's main mistake is that he appeared to freeze culture in time, which doesn't happen. The cultural literacy of today is not the same as the cultural literacy of years ago. It keeps changing. You can argue the value of some classics, sure, but a lot of stuff changes. The secondary mistake is trying to prescribe cultural literacy artificially, in a big list, at all. It seems to me that any sort of list like that is doomed to fail.
Well, maybe not doomed to fail. But I don't think you're likely to learn useful cultural literacy by some massive system of flashcards. Cultural literacy is transmitted culturally. Of course schools have a role, and maybe this is just getting into a pedagogical self-debate now... I agree with Hirsch that it shouldn't just be left up to chance. And I think a cultural literacy of pop music and TV is not the one we should encourage with schools.
Then again, there are people who say modern TV etc. literacy is quite good and complex and why shouldn't it be just as valuable as history and literature of yesterday's school? Hmm. It doesn't seem like it is, though. I feel like this might be it:
Is there anything in those "?" boxes? Hmm. Is literature really mentally helpful? If we studied television really carefully would it be just as good? Not that people typically do...
I was thinking of how Obama just said it was the nation's "Sputnik moment" - and then on the news everybody was explaining what Sputnik was, because apparently some people didn't know. Shouldn't that be part of the role of schools - making sure people know about historical things like that?
Maybe it comes down to a matter of what is chosen as the material to cover. Some choices definitely could be racist, or out of date, or bad in some other way. And the US seems far from any sort of national curriculum.
Anyway... Here's a bunch of words without a good conclusion. Harumph.
Addendum (a day later):
I guess in the end it's some dynamic equilibrium, with the older generation favoring their knowledge even as new knowledge is created. I think it's pretty similar to my other thoughts on prescriptive vs. descriptive linguistics and language learning. But I still think picking out a list of super-specific things as "what needs to be preserved" is probably the wrong way to go about it... Although it is still important to come up with educational goals. Hmm.
While giving tests of relative readability at two colleges in Virginia, he discovered that while the relative readability of a text was an important factor in determining comprehension, an even more important consideration was background knowledge. Students at the University of Virginia were able to understand a passage on Ulysses S. Grantand Robert E. Lee, while students at a community college struggled with it, apparently lacking basic understanding of the American Civil War. This and related discoveries led Hirsch to formulate the concept of cultural literacy — the idea that reading comprehension requires not just formal decoding skills but also wide-ranging background knowledge. He concluded that schools should not be neutral about what is taught but should teach a highly specific curriculum that would allow children to understand things writers take for granted.
In my classes, he was kind of vilified, although now that I think back on it I'm not sure whether it was more by our teachers or by us students. If we, for the moment, simplify all socio-economic issues down to black and white, the argument was that Hirsch's ideas were racist because they devalued black culture, only including white culture. Now I think we can dispense with that argument as based on the rather racist premise that white culture is a culture of knowing things and black culture is a culture of not knowing things, combined with the point that it is possible at least in theory to include both white and black traditions, if they can be so separated to begin with, in a program of training for cultural literacy.
The other mark against Hirsch was that we actually looked at a section of his dictionary of cultural literacy. It was full of stuff that seemed silly (like The Three Little Pigs) and stuff that we didn't know ourselves - old political references or whatever. So we disparaged his list-making and sort of moved on.
Now in Korea, I teach some advanced English classes with textbooks that include sections about "allusions" - and they try to include some lists of things that English-speaking authors might make allusions to. It's sort of what Hirsch was talking about. If you're a Buddhist Korean kid, you're not going to know Bible stories. So what do you do when somebody is compared to Cain, or somebody isn't somebody else's keeper, or whatever? There's a section of Bible stories in the textbook, along with a section of topics from World War II, with the implied but not written subtitle "from the American perspective."
So upon reflection, I think that Hirsch is right, in some important ways. Cultural literacy, in as much as that means having a base of knowledge shared with other people who you mean to communicate with, is important. Ultimately I think language is just one aspect, one facet of culture. The words can't be neatly cut away from the transmitted stories that underly them. I used to be a little puzzled by the "culture" components of language classes - and a lot of them are still ridiculous, I think; things like making day-of-the-dead masks or whatever - but really a language class is a culture class.
I think Hirsch's main mistake is that he appeared to freeze culture in time, which doesn't happen. The cultural literacy of today is not the same as the cultural literacy of years ago. It keeps changing. You can argue the value of some classics, sure, but a lot of stuff changes. The secondary mistake is trying to prescribe cultural literacy artificially, in a big list, at all. It seems to me that any sort of list like that is doomed to fail.
Well, maybe not doomed to fail. But I don't think you're likely to learn useful cultural literacy by some massive system of flashcards. Cultural literacy is transmitted culturally. Of course schools have a role, and maybe this is just getting into a pedagogical self-debate now... I agree with Hirsch that it shouldn't just be left up to chance. And I think a cultural literacy of pop music and TV is not the one we should encourage with schools.
Then again, there are people who say modern TV etc. literacy is quite good and complex and why shouldn't it be just as valuable as history and literature of yesterday's school? Hmm. It doesn't seem like it is, though. I feel like this might be it:
Is there anything in those "?" boxes? Hmm. Is literature really mentally helpful? If we studied television really carefully would it be just as good? Not that people typically do...
I was thinking of how Obama just said it was the nation's "Sputnik moment" - and then on the news everybody was explaining what Sputnik was, because apparently some people didn't know. Shouldn't that be part of the role of schools - making sure people know about historical things like that?
Maybe it comes down to a matter of what is chosen as the material to cover. Some choices definitely could be racist, or out of date, or bad in some other way. And the US seems far from any sort of national curriculum.
Anyway... Here's a bunch of words without a good conclusion. Harumph.
Addendum (a day later):
I guess in the end it's some dynamic equilibrium, with the older generation favoring their knowledge even as new knowledge is created. I think it's pretty similar to my other thoughts on prescriptive vs. descriptive linguistics and language learning. But I still think picking out a list of super-specific things as "what needs to be preserved" is probably the wrong way to go about it... Although it is still important to come up with educational goals. Hmm.
Outline of a Philosophy
There's a book I've been meaning to read, called "What we believe but cannot prove." I've been thinking about what the heck I believe. I wanted to find some foundation of certainty from which I could build, as mathematical axioms give rise to whole systems of mathematics. Descartes did a similar thing, hence "Je pense donc je suis" - I think therefore I am. But I have reason to doubt that, and while I have retained it in a sort of altered form as a kind of crutch or justification for (1), what I have found in the end as my deepest foundation of belief is the idea that nothing can be known for certain. Including that very belief. It occurs to me that this may not be satisfying to everyone. Somehow, it seems to be satisfying me. It resonates with what I have heard from others, from romanticized versions of "Eastern philosophy", to Douglas Adams' "42", to perhaps even Kant's "Refutation of Idealism" and Camus's idea of "the absurd." In the end, everything we believe we cannot prove. I think I'll go read that book as soon as I finish this outline. I can get it via the Kindle app on my iPhone.
Okay I finished it for now. The later parts are much more drafty than the earlier parts. Maybe I'll come back later and work it out a little more. It's kind of including a lot; maybe too much.
0. Fundamental unknowability
a. From limitations of language and the inescapability of the human cognitive/descriptive system.
b. From the insolubility of the prime mover or ultimate cause problem.
c. From the generalization of (0.a) and (0.b), or, "The child asking 'why?' will not be satisfied."
1. Something exists (∃A)
a. I think, therefore something is going on, but I can't really say more. I feel like I'm here.
b. (0) holds by (0.a).
c. No claims on A, or, the inclusiveness of A.
2. Contingent belief; "If it is, it is." (A➞A)
a. A kind of pragmatics for functioning.
b. Imperfect alignment with science. (Maybe?)
c. (1.c) holds.
3. Belief does not affect A
a. Belief can affect perception.
b. Belief can affect behavior.
4. Free Will is a vacant concept, or, No Free Will but you won't miss it
a. Shown
i. From completeness of personal history and coin-flipping.
ii. From belief in scientific determinism. (bad argument)
iii. From belief in an omniscient being or beings. (bad argument)
b. Consequences
i. Everyone does exactly what they will.
ii. Does not imply no rewards, no punishment, or no ethics.
5. Might as well believe in other minds
a. Shaky grounds, but seems like there's no harm.
b. Clones and robots too.
c. Whether by degrees or with a jump at language or both.
6. Culture is socially constructed
a. Cultural relativism is correct in some respects.
b. Cultural relativism is fundamentally incorrect and humanity should and may move toward a "global modern" culture that is unified by a set of beliefs that happen to be these.
7. No deities
a. Harmful effects as in the slave religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam).
b. Harmful effects even in religions that appear to have non-slave aspects (Buddhism, Islam, etc.).
8. Death is the end
9. Value, values and ethics arise socially, as (6)
a. Human life has no "intrinsic" value, by (9) etc.
b. Humans should be valued as members of their community, and the appropriate community for this consideration is the global community of all humans.
i. Abortion is good but can be problematic in practice.
ii. The death penalty could be good but is wildly problematic in practice.
iii. Euthanasia is good but can be problematic in practice.
iv. Suicide could be good or bad depending on how selfish surrounding people are. As attitudes about it mature it will get better.
10. Science as modeling
a. Appropriate understanding of scientific "truth" re: (2).
i. Scientific statements are not "true" in the same sense that true statements about A would be, assuming they were possible.
b. Not quite "model-dependent realism" as in Hawking. (Does this need its own point?)
11. Language
a. The most appropriate locus for understanding language is not a whole language but an individual.
b. Language operates as a kind of operating software over the hardware of the brain; falseness of strong Sapir-Worf hypothesis.
c. Humans will tend toward a single language.
12. Education
Okay I think I'll stop here for now and work on the education bit separately for a while.
Notes and thoughts:
General ideas that come out of this thinking:
Generalizing leads to misunderstanding.
Haha, unintentional joke?
(9.b) is a big problem. I think I believe it, but I can't come up with a strong justification for universal inclusion. It seems TOO axiomatic. Should it include human-equivalent machines? Near-human animals? Should it include all of A? Hmm. Where is equality in this? Should it be included because of negative consequences of NOT including it?
Okay I finished it for now. The later parts are much more drafty than the earlier parts. Maybe I'll come back later and work it out a little more. It's kind of including a lot; maybe too much.
0. Fundamental unknowability
a. From limitations of language and the inescapability of the human cognitive/descriptive system.
b. From the insolubility of the prime mover or ultimate cause problem.
c. From the generalization of (0.a) and (0.b), or, "The child asking 'why?' will not be satisfied."
1. Something exists (∃A)
a. I think, therefore something is going on, but I can't really say more. I feel like I'm here.
b. (0) holds by (0.a).
c. No claims on A, or, the inclusiveness of A.
2. Contingent belief; "If it is, it is." (A➞A)
a. A kind of pragmatics for functioning.
b. Imperfect alignment with science. (Maybe?)
c. (1.c) holds.
3. Belief does not affect A
a. Belief can affect perception.
b. Belief can affect behavior.
4. Free Will is a vacant concept, or, No Free Will but you won't miss it
a. Shown
i. From completeness of personal history and coin-flipping.
ii. From belief in scientific determinism. (bad argument)
iii. From belief in an omniscient being or beings. (bad argument)
b. Consequences
i. Everyone does exactly what they will.
ii. Does not imply no rewards, no punishment, or no ethics.
5. Might as well believe in other minds
a. Shaky grounds, but seems like there's no harm.
b. Clones and robots too.
c. Whether by degrees or with a jump at language or both.
6. Culture is socially constructed
a. Cultural relativism is correct in some respects.
b. Cultural relativism is fundamentally incorrect and humanity should and may move toward a "global modern" culture that is unified by a set of beliefs that happen to be these.
7. No deities
a. Harmful effects as in the slave religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam).
b. Harmful effects even in religions that appear to have non-slave aspects (Buddhism, Islam, etc.).
8. Death is the end
9. Value, values and ethics arise socially, as (6)
a. Human life has no "intrinsic" value, by (9) etc.
b. Humans should be valued as members of their community, and the appropriate community for this consideration is the global community of all humans.
i. Abortion is good but can be problematic in practice.
ii. The death penalty could be good but is wildly problematic in practice.
iii. Euthanasia is good but can be problematic in practice.
iv. Suicide could be good or bad depending on how selfish surrounding people are. As attitudes about it mature it will get better.
10. Science as modeling
a. Appropriate understanding of scientific "truth" re: (2).
i. Scientific statements are not "true" in the same sense that true statements about A would be, assuming they were possible.
b. Not quite "model-dependent realism" as in Hawking. (Does this need its own point?)
11. Language
a. The most appropriate locus for understanding language is not a whole language but an individual.
b. Language operates as a kind of operating software over the hardware of the brain; falseness of strong Sapir-Worf hypothesis.
c. Humans will tend toward a single language.
12. Education
Okay I think I'll stop here for now and work on the education bit separately for a while.
Notes and thoughts:
General ideas that come out of this thinking:
Generalizing leads to misunderstanding.
Haha, unintentional joke?
(9.b) is a big problem. I think I believe it, but I can't come up with a strong justification for universal inclusion. It seems TOO axiomatic. Should it include human-equivalent machines? Near-human animals? Should it include all of A? Hmm. Where is equality in this? Should it be included because of negative consequences of NOT including it?
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Thoughts on 'Does college make you smarter?'
"for many young Americans, college is not about learning" (Leef)
Thanks to the most recent Bard College alumni email, I found out that college president Leon Botstein, super cool guy, had a new thing on the New York Times web site. I don't know if it was in print or not. Looks like not. Anyway, it was part of this "Room for Debate" thing that NYT does on its web site. It's not really debate, but it's cool. A bunch of invited people write on some issue and all the pieces are up together so you can see a bunch of different opinions.
Anyway this Room for Debate was a response to some research that says that (surprise) US college kids aren't studying very much, and aren't learning very much in their first two years. The topic was ostensibly "Does college make you smarter?" Nobody answered the question exactly, but it was an interesting look at the what people think the goals of education should be and how US schools are doing.
Things I noticed: My biggest revelation was something I guess I was sort of aware of already, but it really popped out for me: These days colleges are basically occupational schools. They're super job-focused. They're not idealistic, they don't pursue goals like truth and justice - it's an expensive tech school.
Teachers' opinions reflect this, students' opinions reflect this. College is a big party. For a long time I've kind of given UW-Madison a psychological pass. I've told people that yeah, it's a big school, and there's a lot of drinking, and no, I didn't have any senior thesis, or really any unifying organization to my four-became-five years there. I had a heck of a good time, mostly, and it's possible to get yourself an education there if you go and find it.
But it's possible to get yourself an education by going and finding it without going to UW-Madison too. Revised opinion: UW-Madison is defunct as an educational institution. My one year at Bard's MAT program was so much more educational than five years at UW-Madison, it staggers the mind. Botstein is god.
New opinion: When choosing colleges, either go for a famous place like Harvard, where the name alone will help ensure that only relatively smart people are there and the standards will be set high (although I don't have personal experience at a place like that I guess it would probably be that way) - or go to a small liberal arts school like Bard, where they have vision and intelligent curricula for doing real education (again, I didn't go to undergrad there, but it seems like they really have the right idea).
Botstein's piece is called "Products of rote learning" and he links the college educational problems to high school educational problems and too much reliance on (as in the title) rote learning for standardized tests, and so on. I agree that what might be called cognitive skills ("close reading, habits of disciplined analysis, skills in writing reasoned arguments and a basic grasp of the conduct, methods and purposes of science") are vitally important, but I have also seen what I think is evidence that focusing on these skills without a matching focus on knowledge, however rote, can similarly fail.
Really a lot of the articles are about how colleges are basically for making money, they're businesses. Even one guy that I really agreed with a lot, as he was saying the following quote, framed it so that it focuses on the economic competitiveness of his educational model, while criticizing schools with more explicit, direct professional focuses:
The last thing, which I was really pleased to see, is that a lot of these folks seems to agree with what is kind of coming out as my fundamental thesis on education: work leads to thinking leads to learning. It's in that last quote, and also here:
"Most of us in higher education believe that the skills that are truly worth acquiring involve hard work. Put simply, thinking requires effort."
A good read, this "Room for debate" thing.
Thanks to the most recent Bard College alumni email, I found out that college president Leon Botstein, super cool guy, had a new thing on the New York Times web site. I don't know if it was in print or not. Looks like not. Anyway, it was part of this "Room for Debate" thing that NYT does on its web site. It's not really debate, but it's cool. A bunch of invited people write on some issue and all the pieces are up together so you can see a bunch of different opinions.
Anyway this Room for Debate was a response to some research that says that (surprise) US college kids aren't studying very much, and aren't learning very much in their first two years. The topic was ostensibly "Does college make you smarter?" Nobody answered the question exactly, but it was an interesting look at the what people think the goals of education should be and how US schools are doing.
Things I noticed: My biggest revelation was something I guess I was sort of aware of already, but it really popped out for me: These days colleges are basically occupational schools. They're super job-focused. They're not idealistic, they don't pursue goals like truth and justice - it's an expensive tech school.
Teachers' opinions reflect this, students' opinions reflect this. College is a big party. For a long time I've kind of given UW-Madison a psychological pass. I've told people that yeah, it's a big school, and there's a lot of drinking, and no, I didn't have any senior thesis, or really any unifying organization to my four-became-five years there. I had a heck of a good time, mostly, and it's possible to get yourself an education there if you go and find it.
But it's possible to get yourself an education by going and finding it without going to UW-Madison too. Revised opinion: UW-Madison is defunct as an educational institution. My one year at Bard's MAT program was so much more educational than five years at UW-Madison, it staggers the mind. Botstein is god.
New opinion: When choosing colleges, either go for a famous place like Harvard, where the name alone will help ensure that only relatively smart people are there and the standards will be set high (although I don't have personal experience at a place like that I guess it would probably be that way) - or go to a small liberal arts school like Bard, where they have vision and intelligent curricula for doing real education (again, I didn't go to undergrad there, but it seems like they really have the right idea).
Botstein's piece is called "Products of rote learning" and he links the college educational problems to high school educational problems and too much reliance on (as in the title) rote learning for standardized tests, and so on. I agree that what might be called cognitive skills ("close reading, habits of disciplined analysis, skills in writing reasoned arguments and a basic grasp of the conduct, methods and purposes of science") are vitally important, but I have also seen what I think is evidence that focusing on these skills without a matching focus on knowledge, however rote, can similarly fail.
Really a lot of the articles are about how colleges are basically for making money, they're businesses. Even one guy that I really agreed with a lot, as he was saying the following quote, framed it so that it focuses on the economic competitiveness of his educational model, while criticizing schools with more explicit, direct professional focuses:
Yet two interesting and significant findings from this study lie just below the results that have garnered sensational headlines: students who take traditional liberal arts and science courses fare better in terms of the increase in skills measured by the Collegiate Learning Assessment than students who take undergraduate course in more pre-professional fields; and courses demanding more work from students (for example, courses with larger quantities of reading or writing required) tend to raise learning more.
The last thing, which I was really pleased to see, is that a lot of these folks seems to agree with what is kind of coming out as my fundamental thesis on education: work leads to thinking leads to learning. It's in that last quote, and also here:
"Most of us in higher education believe that the skills that are truly worth acquiring involve hard work. Put simply, thinking requires effort."
A good read, this "Room for debate" thing.
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