A Day In The Journey

Well, I suppose I'm going to be stirring the pot a bit after all. A friend (who has a thought provoking blog of her own here) mentioned that she was curious about my thoughts on health care reform, in particular the options currently in the media spotlight. So here goes. Of course, there must be the requisite disclaimers seeing that this is a rather more testy subject than it should be (really--I mean words like "death panels," "socialist," "weak," "Nazi," "Hitler," "end of America," "not good enough so we're all going to die miserably without care," "heartless," and "treacherous" are being used. It's a little overboard on both sides of the spectrum, and more vocally so, sadly to me, on the self-identified conservative side.) Therefore, I would like to mitigate an eruption of any kind not knowing who will read this.
1) I am merely pointing out the position to which I have come and how I have come there. Please do not assume or infer that I am stating everyone should hold to this opinion. I absolutely understand why those who oppose these approaches to health care reform (HCR) do oppose them. I just happen to disagree at this point for the reasons I will enumerate in subsequent posts.
2) It is perfectly acceptable to post comments of disagreement. I do expect decorum to be utilized which entails not using ad hominem attacks (which debate no point and merely result in devolution of argument and defeating discussion) while endeavoring to avoid merely parroting talking points rather than explaining the reason behind or application of the points.
3) I couldn't care less about anyones political labels of affiliations in any discussion. I care merely for the ideas they communicate. Thus, any use of "Well, that's because you're a _________________," or "Well, I'm a _________________, so I believe X." I don't care. The only relevant part to the discussion at this or any hand is the exchange of ideas not identification.

I hope I've covered everything. haha. If not, I retain the right to add to the list in the future.

Now. On to the topic at hand. I suppose the simplest way to explain my journey is to walk it again, but truncated. Trust me, you don't want to belabor your way through my hours of confused thought hashing. I began my journey with three main beliefs regarding health care: 1) receiving health care is not an inalienable right, 2) it is not the designated role of government to run health care, and 3) this country would be not only ill-affected itself while also ill-affecting others were we to find ourselves in the midst of a limiting and narrowly run system. I finished my journey still basically holding to those beliefs. You may find that surprising. The difference in my stance did not necessitate a change of those positions, you'll find. Nevertheless, I will address the second one with several examples to show that believing it is not the designated role of the government to do something is not the same as believing they should not do it.

When I began to ponder the bill, I was convinced that my three premises necessitated a stance against the bill. I had many concerns about the effects of the bill on individuals, health care providers, the economy, taxes, quality of care, and availability of care. I discovered fairly soon that in order to get counters to these concerns, I was going to need to branch out beyond my usual circle of information sources. To be honest, my usual circle of information sources weren't really disseminating or discussing information. I have sadly discovered that a great deal of vocal conservative reaction to these bills is, "This is socialism," "It's a big, fat tax!" and "Look at Medicare! Do we want government running health care?" Granted, there is some of that type from the other side: "If you're against health care reform, you're sentencing millions to death!" and "Insurance companies just want to rape and pillage for the bucks! Government cares enough to want people to live!" You get the idea. (I'll probably right a post about the incredible devolution of political debate in this country in the last few years, but it has to wait. I get too snarky about it currently.) At any rate, I branched out. I read a lot of statistics about health care and health coverage systems world-wide. I read a lot about national deficits, how they affect economies, and how much is too much. I read a lot about what the bills proposed, what they required, what they would change, and what they would cost. And I graded papers and did homework whilst all these things roiled around in my brain. I was really struggling to figure out what the bills were really about as well as how to align it with my political and ethical ideals.

Up to this point in the process I had one, and only one, sounding board: a British friend that I acquired over the summer. This had advantages and disadvantages: while he could ask the interesting questions, listen to my frustrated questions, and offer his perspective on the NHS (and a transient experience with ours via short personal experience and the anecdotes of meeting people as he traveled the US), he couldn't really offer the comparative analysis for which I was looking. Granted, what I really wanted (and would still like) is a side-by-side, comprehensive comparison of multiple aspect of our system, the Canadian system, the British NHS, and the anticipated results of these bills. I know, I know: my desires are extensive, which is why I have yet to realize them. haha. The greatest advantage here was having someone with which to discuss my thoughts. Unfortunately, too many of the people I know are either unable to discuss the issue for various reasons (no knowledge, confrontation-avoidance) or unwilling to engage outside of their ideological comfort zone. Ultimately, an even greater help was that he was able to steer me to those who could answer or at least address the main questions I was having.

Thus, I began working through my questions and concerns. To make it all short, what I intend to do is address my stance and its development through my three premises. I will also (probably when I address the role of government in the health care debate) address this rampant use of the word "socialism" in regards to any government move to subsidize coverage premiums or offer a so-called "public option." At any rate, this could be quite interesting or profoundly boring. Consider this point the "Intro." Get set for the coming parts.

Posted by Renee at 08:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I really would like to write something informative and thoughtful and to the point, but lately I'm finding that my reactions to things are just snarky and aggravated. Maybe it's the cold. Maybe it's the feeling that I've come to a place where I can voice some opinions with some and other opinions with others, but never al of my opinions to anyone without causing anger of aggravation or disappointment. And then I go to war with myself: the rebellious part of me really wants to post inflammatory things just to get a reaction that I can them mock with "See? I told you" sarcasm. The other part of me more realistically eschews beginning a debate that I will tire of and wish to just quit prematurely. And none of me really wants to deal with anyone else's preconceived notions at this moment. Don't get me wrong, I have preconceived notions, too. It's just that some days I don't mind taking them into account, and other days I just want to punch the wall. Ok. Maybe not punch the wall, but you do get the point. I'm fighting a certain level of misanthropy at the moment for completely unknown reasons. Although I suppose it all comes back to the fact that I feel as though I must divide myself in order to retain approval. Or at least, equilibrium, as I've already mentioned that I wouldn't mind really aggravating some people at the moment. I've never exactly understood my penchant for rebelling when considered in light of my nigh desperate desire for approval. Sigh. At any rate, I'll probably go on to include at least a minor rant in order to justify this wanton revelation of personal emotional status. I'm not sure which one I should include, though. I'll probably avoid it, though, since all the things I can manage to find words about are political. And I tend to try to avoid that particular teapot tempest around here.

Instead, I'll say this: I hate giving tests.

Seriously.

I haven't figured out, yet how to teach Language without them, but I hate them. I'm working on how to either get rid of them entirely or change the format of the ones I'm using to be more advantageous to my goals for my students. Perhaps I should specify more particularly the context in which I hate tests. I hate the Language tests that accompany this curriculum. I also don't like giving Language tests to elementary level students. At the high school level, I gave numerous tests to my Literature students, don't get me wrong; but I feel that tests, especially unit tests are of little use in an elementary Language classroom. And here's why, parts I and II.

I: Why I don't like the tests in this curriculum.
I dislike the tests in this curriculum for three reasons:
A) They are too spaced out, which means they end up weighing too heavily in the grading structure even with the weigh modifications I make. This also means that they cover a great deal of material. More on that in my third reason.
B) Many sections have multi-step instructions. While this may seem like a minor problem, for 5th grade students it isn't so minor. Especially when said students are tremendously concerned with making a good grade/not forgetting the information they need. So what happens it this: They read the first instruction, and eager to insure they manage it right, they move directly through the exercise completing step one. At this point, many of them might remember that there are more instructions. These students go back and read instruction 2. Again they immediately go through and just complete step two. The ones who felt a sense of completion after finishing step one have already gone on to the next section without realizing they missed an instruction. The students who did remember will usually complete step two, but rarely remember that there was a step three. To make it worse, these instructions are not divided up, they are in a single paragraph with numbers like this 1) placed before each step. I rarely used multistep instructions with high school students. Doing so with elementary students, who are just beginning to grasp critical thinking and application of processes, is really making things unnecessarily difficult.
C) While the units in the book are generally confined to small groups of skills (modifiers or punctuation use or prepositional phrases), the tests tend to be vaguely cumulative. If every lesson contained review skills, this would not be a problem. Instead, review skills are relegated to a couple of review pages at the end of the unit. During the unit they've been almost exclusively focused on a single skill or closely related group of skills. Now, I do review in class, but the written work does not typically contain review. 5th grade students are barely at a level where they are able to easily recall past information and apply it to a new set of circumstances (different sets of exercises). This is compounded by the relatively long length of time between the tests.

II: Why I hate tests in elementary curriculum in general:
Frankly, as noted above, elementary students aren't at a cognitive level to perform well on tests. They are also starting to develop a certain level of test stress that can impede strong performance. Like I've mentioned previously, I have tested and would test (were I still teaching at that level) high school students. The reason for the difference has much to do with the developmental difference between elementary and high school students. High school students have a deeper ability in test-taking situations to take acquired knowledge and apply it. Elementary school is where they need to develop this knowledge, and in my experience, this is better done through written work and quizzing rather than outright tests. I also find that parents tend to place far more weight than necessary on test grades, leading to teachers' tendency to review/put on the study guide problems that are identical to the test problems. I would far rather offer them multiple ways to learn/express the skill and give small, focused quizzes on that material. This would alleviate the stress of tests from students and parents while still allowing me to evaluate knowledge/skill acquisition. Tests just seem to create an atmosphere of higher stress and unreasonable expectations with little more benefit than other evaluative approaches at the elementary level. At any rate, that's where I've come to stand on the issue of tests in elementary curriculum. I think there are just better ways on a regular basis to achieve student evaluation.

Conclusion?
Having used several 5th grade grammar curricula, I feel this one's method of using tests is deeply flawed. A curriculum that I have used before and truly enjoyed pedagogically, reviewed all necessary skills almost every day and tested weekly or bi-weekly. Further, the tests were, in essence, just another worksheet page that happened to count as a test. This, in my experience, rendered a much better result: tests were less stressful and were a better representation of what the students actually grasped on a day-to-day basis. I have a feeling I'm going to be spending some time reconfiguring these tests and how they work in the curriculum. Right now, I feel like I'm handing a lot of my students a huge mountain to overcome two or three times a quarter. That's not really advantageous for them in showing what they know or for me in evaluating it. Tests have a place, but maybe not in the form with which we are familiar. The way they currently exist, I hate them. Time to re-evaluate, I suppose.

Posted by Renee at 08:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

**Continued from previous post...

When I mentioned this topic previously, I connected it in kind to the problem with adult inability to deal with unexpected or out-of-the-ordinary emotion in that it is a problem of rearing and education. In order to become adults who value the opportunity to personalize but do not require it, in fact, sacrifice that desire when it's for the best, children must be taught how. For example, I will give you a scenario: parent takes child into a fast-food restaurant and says, "You can have anything you'd like." This happens over and over until the child expects to get what they would like every time. There is no guidance to the child's decision, no instruction teaching them that their choice is a privilege to enjoy rather than right to demand in every circumstance. Now comes an instance when, for whatever reason, the child is unable to order whatever he wants. We all anticipate the result: an attitude, a tantrum. New scenario: a parent offers guided choices. "You may get a hamburger meal. What side would you like: apples or french fries? What drink would you like: lemon slice or iced tea?" On another day: "Today Mommy needs to choose. Let's get chicken fingers and apples, ok? I'll let you choose next time." On another day: "Today is special, you may order what you'd like from the menu as long as you get a sandwich or chicken with it." And so on, offering the child guided choices when appropriate. Now comes an instance when the child may not choose. I think we will all anticipate a much more pleasant response from this child. Child A has become a creature who expects every desire and whim to be fulfilled. Child B enjoys the personalization of his order, but understands that he can't always have what he wants.

(And I do not think this type of scenario is limited to a home experience. I believe there are numerous classrooms and curricular experiences that cater to children's whims and limit their experience to only what they know or want to know.)

The key here is that adults allow children the opportunity to choose while not indulging their selfishness. When we indulge a child's selfishness behind the justification that we want them to be happy, we actually set them up for discontent and unhappiness. A child reared to expect to have things exactly the way he likes every time will end up being a sorely disappointed adult when he discovers that rarely in life do things actually conform to our every personalized whim. Except of course, for my [redacted] sets of icons. :-P (I'll never divulge the information that hints at my selfish weakness for computer individuality. haha) The thing is, individuality can be an incredible strength. Americans revel in the freedom to be individual, to seek their individual well-being and happiness. This isn't a bad thing. We must, however, remember that the primary weakness of individuality is selfishness. Unchecked self-interest is not a good thing for an individual or for society. It is an incredible gift to be able to choose things that fit us, to have the options to listen to the music we like, to have the color car we enjoy, to choose from a plethora of desktop icons and wallpapers. The problem lies when we are unwilling to concede our desires for something better; when we fail to acknowledge that our ability to choose injures someone else; when our determination to have what we want becomes a selfish grasping, when our desires have devolved into petulant whims. Henry Ford is famous for saying, "Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black." Amazingly, he sold plenty of just, plain black Model T Fords. His customers knew that if they wanted his affordable, available automobile (alliteration unintentional) they would need to sacrifice their desire for individual color. I am skeptical that his car's colorful limitations would do so well in today's market. The viewpoint has changed. We've allowed our sense of and desire for individuality to become our excuse for self-service and selfishness. It isn't pretty. If we want to restore the nobility of the Individual, Rugged or otherwise, we must purpose to teach children the balance of desiring personalization and deferring to what's best, that using discretion in our choices sometimes means sacrificing our individual desires (particularly those of the whim strain) for what's best, that having a choice placed in boundaries for that best (eg. uniforms in school) is not a removal of some fundamental right to which they are entitled and can therefore express their discontent in any way they choose. When we expect every aspect of our life to fit our personalization plan, we have become petulant creatures of selfish whims. This is not the American spirit of individuality at all; it is something far uglier and even sinister.

This is a long post, and I failed to offer warning. I'm not even sure I managed to say everything I intended. haha. Perhaps that put some readers off. I feel it is important, though. If we wish others, those looking in on us, to see the nobility of the spirit of individuality rather than its pitfall vice, we must, as parents and educators, imbue upon children the understanding of discretion, of care for the best, of sacrificing selfishness for kindness. To me, a significant part of this process is teaching them how to handle their desires for personalization in their lives. The home and the classroom are excellent training grounds for this process. The Individual can be a noble figure when the Individual is taught to look out for his brethren even in the way he views personal choices.

Posted by Renee at 08:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Having allowed the following thoughts to carom around in my head for a couple of weeks (all the while shunting other thoughts around and through), I think I've formulated a post. haha. As I mentioned in the last post, I've been thinking about how we as Americans, as Westerners, too often find ourselves expecting to have things "personalized," and how our educational experience enhances or discourages this need to have every thing we own or do personalized. Now there are a couple of disclaimers that I must make before beginning:
1) I am only addressing this aspect of American life because it's the only culture with which I have personal experience. I suspect, by observation, that this need for personalization is present in other cultures (especially as it presents in multiple cultures here within the US regardless of cultural origin). However, I cannot speak to these cultures because I have only observed and not lived.
2) I am not here to decry all desiring to have things "your way." People are different from each other, have different likes/dislikes, and different senses of aesthetics. This post isn't about desire, it's about expectation. So please don't accuse me of trying to inflict sameness on the world. haha

So the reason this topic came to my mind was...myself. About four months ago, I bought a new MacBook to replace the iBook that was constantly full. 50G of space just isn't what it used to be. :-P As I pondered which to get and what to add to it, I was also pondering something else: Colorware. For those who don't know, Colorware provides a fantastic personalization service for the owners of certain electronics: they will take your product and custom-color it by applying a polymer-based coating. It's awesome. And $500. And yet, my desire to have a significantly unique MacBook found me with my mouse one click away from "Purchase." At which point I stopped myself. $500 dollars to give my lappy a custom color-coating when I could satisfy my need for a unique, personalized lappy with an amazing decal for a hundredth of the price? I did, however, discover another way to personalize my computer: one candybar purchase and [redacted] hours later, I have [redacted] sets of options with which to personalize every icon used by my computer. As the reality that I had spent [redacted] hours hunting down just the right icons for my lappy set in, I began to ponder the phenomenon of self-centeredness that seems to pervade society today. I have some ideas as to how it happened, mostly beginning with doting parenting, but nevertheless, we have a large group of people who do not merely desire to have things their way, but expect it. In fact, in some/many cases has become an extreme: my way, or else. These are the types who send back their hamburger because it came with pickles despite being ordered without when they could just take the pickles off. So the question becomes raised: Is the problem having the freedom to have things uber-personalized? I don't think that's the problem.

***To be continued in a second post...

*I mentioned some copywrighted and patented things up there. Those companies own that stuff, k? :-P

Posted by Renee at 01:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

In Flanders Fields
Lt. Col. John McRae, MD

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce hear amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Posted by Renee at 10:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)