Wednesday, July 30, 2003

07/01/2003

My philosophy going into this ACP all along has been that I would limit the scope of the material that I would test on without sacrificing the quality of the questions asked. This translates into distilling every lesson down to one question, that when answered fully, will adequately prepare the student for the ACP. I've given office hours for my students, one hour every day at a convenient time for them. The questions I gave, I did not give answers for, because theoretically, they already have them - and it's a good motivator to talk to me during my office hours.

But they still don't see what is so basic to me, that I can't quite figure out how to teach it. One of the questions I ask for the review is, "Why is the superior side of the Dicot leaf more green than the inferior side?", which is not an easy question, requiring some research. The answer is only found by breaking down - by analyzing - the question asked. The first item that needs to be discovered here is, "What causes the color green in the plant?" which is the chlorophyll, contained in chloroplasts. This is something I harped on first trimester, but has been forgotten and is the main stumbling block to answering this question.

Once it is realized where the green color comes from, then you can ask "Where are the chloroplasts in a Dicot leaf?", which leads you to the kicker: the layer closest to the superior side.

I don't expect my students to all get it right or have all the info memorized; but I do expect them to try and put the information they HAVE together in some coherent, constructive manner. And that's the challenge. I'm trying to give a crash course in how to think, using Biology in Portuguese, and all the students are learning are biological words in Portuguese.

Peace

John

06/30/2003

I think about one year's time from now, and it seems like forever. I think about one year ago, and it seems like yesterday. I think about tomorrow and another day seems like nothing. I need to realize that the only day is this one.

I controlled the ACPs today. There were no cheat sheets or books used, that I saw. Which is surprising, but not shocking. They know now that I'll give them a zero if I find it, and word has gotten around that I'll find it. Dread is the only word that comes to mind when a student thinks I might be controlling their exam.

The rain was pretty bad today. The flooding was worse. There's an entire bank of classrooms in the back of campus that became an island today. I ended up jumping from stone to stone placed in the water, to the delight of a couple hundred 8th and 9th graders. Still got wet.

Entire yards are completely under water - many streets are impassable, with a foot or two of water. No big deal, though, as cars are equipped to handle it and people find alternate routes.

Everyone's still asking me about English classes. I'm trying to put together an audio CD with Charles, but that's only a stopgap. Hopefully, Diamentino and I will find a place where I can teach. We'll see.

Peace

John

06/29/2003

I've been wearing my snow boots lately with all of the mud. They're the only boots I have here, and I brought them specifically for the heavy rains we were warned about.

However, I get laughed at wherever I wear them - big time. "His boots" I hear all of the time, in Portuguese AND in Changana (luckily, it's the same thing), and when I turn around to point the boots out, I get a good laugh myself. The problem is that they are big and made for snow - which doesn't happen all that often around here.

I was thinking about fate today, and why it's so easy to be trapped (or believe) into thinking that everything we do is predetermined. If you think of the world as three possible timeframes (past, present and future), then you need to account for the transition that the future makes into the past. Often, it's easy to say that this endless and quite intimidating wealth of possible paths is best dealt with by invoking an outside, invisible, unalterable force like fate. Sometimes it's God, sometimes a combination of the two. And if you believe that you have the power to make all of these decisions on your own, and you are in complete control of your future, then you feel empowered. Then, there's a middle ground where you feel that 99% of the decisions are not left up to you, but to others who are busy living their lives. The 1% that you can control empowers you, too.

But if you avoid the trap of compartmentalizing time and realize that the past and future are just constructions of an indivisible present, things look totally different. Because time has no opposite - there is no TIMELESS state - it doesn't really exist. We define seconds, hours, and minutes based upon our planet's rotation around the sun and historical chance. So what's happened has happened and only exists by its manifestations in the present. If I break a window, we can see a broken window, a video of the window breaking, or think of our favorite memory of looking through the window. All in the present. The past as this static, irreparable thing is false. The past is imply what has happened to make the present what it is - the present is a direct result of the past and it can be said IS the past.

So, what to do about the future? The future is all of the things that have not yet happened, implying that we know that things that will happen. It is this point which fools the fatalists. The future, as it should be defined, is all of the things that haven't ALREADY happened. It is the direct opposite of the past. Nothing that has happened can happen in exactly the same way. And so in this split between future and past, we see that it is the singular thing that we were splitting the entire time. Our line in the sand just happened to be whether something has happened or not. Which is quite arbitrary. Can anyone tell you everything that has happened? Can you remember everything that has happened to you in the last hour? EVERYTHING? Yet, if something that has happened has no manifestation in the "present", has it really happened? For example, if a tree falls in the forest...

Clearly, this past/future split is not so simple. So I'm not going to go nuts trying to define what the past/future split really is, suffice to say that it is only a line in the sand. The future and the past are equally mysterious. We have a good idea about both of them, but we're never sure.

Yet given all this, it seems like Fate can fit nicely with both the past and future, because all Fate says is that the future has a subdivision between what will happen and what won't happen. But what's drawing this line? And if nothing other than this entity drawing lines in the sand knows about these lines, do they really exist? So what's Fate, aside from giving a label for what moves from the future side into the past side of the line?

Really, it doesn't matter. Regardless of the existence of Fate (which cannot be determined), I want to exercise my control over what I can control. If Fate was there the whole time, then so be it. But at least I tried.

I guess that's what frustrates me sometimes. People who don't try because they see some uncontrollable end to any and all of their efforts. Even if it's predetermined, YOU don't know the future.

More rain. I'm tired of not being able to do things outside. Granted, I've made a lot of progress on a couple projects, but I'm here to help people directly.

ACPs (exams) start tomorrow. That means I'll most likely be doing a lot of typing for other teachers' exams.

Peace

John

06/28/2003

Today was mainly spent indoors, out of (most of) the rain. It's frequently damp indoors, especially near the kitchen. And people complain about Cleveland!

Nimi came by today to grab money and a chicken. Alive. We ate at a restaurant owned by a nice Portuguese lady who has a 5-year old son (or grandson?) He was pretty bored, so Nimi and I became his best friends in the world. We tossed a bottlecap around, then he showed us his toy cellphone. He tried on our hats and got pretty angry when we decided to go - so I let him off with a tickle torture. Fun kid! Didn't stop calling me Tober, though. Sometimes it's truly like tracing someone else's steps.

After pleading with the bank to give Nimi money, we headed out to catch him a ride. Nimi's Sri Lankan, so I do much better at getting rides, unfortunately. We were denied a few times by trucks and a few cars before Nimi realized his mistake.

"I forgot to flip the coin!" he said. The coin flip is key, of course. The first flip is for getting a ride vs having to take a chapa. The second is having to wait 5 or 10 minutes. The third is whether the driver will know Nimi or not. It was determined that he would get a ride in 10 minutes from a stranger.

Fully anticipating having to walk from the main road to his village (4 miles), he'd eaten big. With the weather as it is, dirt roads are often impassable. But as luck had it, he caught a ride about 10 minutes later to his village, from a stranger. Odd, because he knows most of the people who make the short route, and also the fact that the coin flip was right!

Peace

John

06/27/2003

(addendum)

Well, I turned the writing spigot off, but the thinking spigot just kept on trucking.

One of my main frustrations in the past few years has been this itch to make the most of what I'm capable of. I try to avoid traps like seeking fame, quantification or recognition for whatever it is I want to do, and in so doing, get closer and closer to what I really want to do with my life. I'm a lucky enough person to be able to earn enough money to live and at the same time pursue many other exploits. And when I get back, I will have a clean slate, with a good foundation. The next move is my choice. I've got these 18 months to figure it out.

And yet I can use these 18 months to do exactly what this itch tells me to - make the most out of myself. I don't know what it is inside of me that insists there's something bigger than trying as hard as I can. But I know that making the most out of the present moment is really the only way to take advantage of everything I'm capable of, letting that part of me which desires fame, etc., just to drift away.

And so it SHOULD scare me that in 18 months I won't be in Africa. But it should only scare me as much as knowing that I have no idea what tomorrow will bring. I CAN change the world, one Biology quiz at a time.

Peace

John

Sunday, July 20, 2003

05/04/2003

There is a moth so large in our house right now, I was afraid it was a bat. And now it's attacking our living room light, somewhat successfully.

As far as English teaching goes, things are going insanely quickly. The combination of a motivated Diamentino and a Primary School Director who's more than happy to have English education happening at his school a full year earlier than it's supposed to happen, is a good one.

Next year, the curriculum will begin to have 6th graders start learning English. Right now, they start in 8th grade. And brownie points are always good when it comes to getting more funding. Granted, we're doing this outside the typical school setting, but we're essentially teaching free classes.

Assuming my director approves.

We'll be giving two different classes, a beginner and an advanced, 3 times per week. The Primary School Director has arranged two rooms and obtained a list of 80 students (of all ages) who are not currently in school and are interested. Everyone involved is utterly amazed at how swiftly things are moving.

In other news, I've got a couple groups of neighborhood boys who come over pretty often. One likes to play cards and other pretty stationary games. The other is the Ultimate Frisbee group who come over to borrow Frisbee cones, Frisbees, me(!), etc. I'm learning Changana (mainly bad words) at a pretty good rate. I can now fully describe the groin area of a man AND a woman.

Yes, boys are all the same.

Peace

John

05/03/2003

Sometimes I feel like writing in my journal. Sometimes I feel like writing long letters to people. Well, now that I've accomplished both of these, I feel like taking a big, long poop.

You'd be surprised how lucky I feel to have a toilet in my home.

Peace

John

05/02/2003

Many kids here never learn HOW to learn. I don't know whether it's a product of the system, the culture or my inexperience in the field of education, but it's almost impossible to teach to some kids.

I'm finding that out because I'm trying a new way of calling on kids. I'm tired of the same ones always answering my questions, so I used Zach's idea and made numbered cards - one number for every student. Because there are so many students in Mozambican schools, within every classroom, every student has a number. So I simply made 53 cards and shuffled them randomly.

I didn't even know I had some of these kids as students. It's like they started popping up out of nowhere.

I taught today about the morphology of roots. There's a "zone" where the principal root and secondary roots join together, called (in a direct translation because I don't know the English), "ramification zone". After I drew a diagram of a root with all the parts labeled, I held up a plant and announced I was going to have students identify the parts on an ACTUAL PLANT!

Well, many of them know the basics either from previous years, or just because this is an agricultural society, but the ones who don't, REALLY don't know it.

I called on one girl (randomly) who hesitated to get up and was very timid in responding to me, not unusual at all. I asked her to identify the ramification zone. She pointed to the leaves of the plant.

So I took a couple of steps back. When doing this lesson, this happens all the time - simplify, then work back to the question.

I explained that therre was a soil level, and that the roots were beneath this level. I asked her to demonstrate and she did. I then asked her where the principal root was.

And I know this is incredibly intimidating for her. A strange white teacher and 50 of her friends staring at her to answer a question. So I'm constantly shushing others and trying to be as nice as possible without losing my "professor" character.

She found the principal root, so then I asked her which were the secondary roots. She found these too. So I told her to identify the ramification zone, which is where the roots join. She was clueless. I asked if she understood, and got a firm "NO". Others did, and started trying to help her. It was nice to see, but in the long run, didn't help. Sure, she'd get this right, but if she doesn't know HOW to answer the question, then all she'll know are answers.

So I tried to ask it another way, to no avail. It's not that she didn't understand my language, it's that she didn't see how my language translated to the thing I was holding. Suddenly, putting two concepts together was foreign and scary.

And this happens all of the time. Words are words to these kids. They're quite existential. Western culture finds so much power in the word - there's so much emphasis on writing and speaking clearly as a means of expressing yourself.

Here, you move through space - a being, moving through air. You express yourself equally in every direction and dimension. People - people who CAN speak and hear - sometimes communicate entirely by gestures. Conversations often occur after you've passed each other. If I throw someone out of class, everyone knows exactly why, even if I've said nothing.

So the mouth is just that - a mouth. It makes noise and we can hear that noise and realize that therre are words that we are hearing and we can choose to have those mean something more.

This is the challenge.

This is a society that embraces forms of Christianity on a superficial level without sacrificing their deeply-rooted beliefs in "moya" or "the spirit". They've been taught that if you don't pray, you'll burn in hell. I know, because they tell ME this. But they don't truly believe it - they don't really have a good idea of what hell is like, other than hotter than Mozambique (which is pretty scary). It's just words.

And I'm a teacher using these words. And if I eventually teach anything in Changana, I'm just using different words. Maybe the words will make more sense to them, but it's the same thing. So, how do I teach in this culture? I use visual aids, real-life examples, students to personify examples, etc. But all of these still get lost in the void that is the word. They never make their way to the heart.

Maybe kids are taught here that there is no connectionn between education and quality of life. Or maybe the only education they need is the one they get anyway, and our imposition of the Western ideal of "education" is fruitless.

But I'm too harsh. There are students who get it, who know my way of "learning" and are practically bored in class. In the middle, are many students who get it about 50% of the time, and just memorize the rest of the time.

I've hesitated to dumb down my lessons for that reason. I could give ONLY what I would ever test on, but then the memorizers win. There's less to memorize, so the kids who are seeking to understand, don't have the upper hand. So I give long-winded definitions for things, but explain them simply and make sure the kids who are listening understand how the definition can mean the simple explanation.

And I try to keep it light, if the kids are being good. Someone yawns, "Am I boring you?" is my response. Someone's speaking while I am, and I stop mid-sentence and stare at them until they stop. If it happens twice, they get kicked out. And then I continue my sentence exactly where I was, which ends up being pretty funny. Kids heckle me as they're walking by, so I respond in mid-sentence as well. While talking, I take away notebooks for other subjects, random paraphernalia, and sometimes students. And the best is to pretend like I don't see someone who is talking, then call on them in the next moment. When they use the excuse, "I didn't understand", I call them on it and say they'd understand better if they didn't talk while I was talking.

And the kids who are paying attention get it. They appreciate that I see what's going on and I'm not just giving a lesson, but trying to get them to understand. And even if they don't understand, they're trying to. I love the kids who try hard and only get it half the time. They're interested in why they're wrong and why they're right. I wish there were some way to give these kids better grades. I ought to think about that one...

And speaking of lightness in the classroom, my big drawing of a root that the kids copied down, ended up a subliminal image. Only to me, of course. I was looking at one student's drawing upside-down, and realized I was looking at a menorah. Hehe..

So in case you linguistics nuts are interested, here's a little something about Changana, and most likely all Bantu family languages. Bantus have classes of nouns, just like Romance languages have genders. Except Bantus hve over a dozen different "genders". Changana has about 20. What this means is pretty complicated.

There is a class for the first person singular, first person plural, second person singular, and second person plural, and the third person is in the general class of "people". What this means is that, depending on the class of the subject, adjectives have a different prefix, possessives are different, demonstrative pronouns are different, etc. And if you're talking about a doctor, you use the "people" class, but if you're talking about the hospital, you use the "buildings" class.

And best of all, verbs are just one of these classes. Coming from verb-based languages, this is a very foreign concept. So essentially, the entire language is captured in this idea of classifying things in these very distinct compartments. So before you can know how to say "That tree is pretty", you need to know how to conceptualize a tree in relation to everything else. And then, the words "that" and "pretty" get changed, based upon the class of "tree".

This exists on a much more universal level, too. There are roots in Changana, such as "-tirh" which is the general idea of "work". Depending on the class, there are different prefixes and suffixes. For the person class, you can say "mutirhi" - a worker. For the verb class, you can say "kutirha", to work. You can extend that to be work (as in a job), work (as in something you did), a way of working, at work, a little work, or a lot of work. And all of these are different words! But once you know the scheme, it's just a matter of knowing the roots and the exceptions. It's a completely different way of thinking...

Peace

John

Friday, July 04, 2003

06/13/2003

One drawback of teaching in an unfamiliar language, to students who speak a completely foreign language, in a subject that is both technical and at times culturally trying, is having to talk about subjects that have as a main description, a cognate in that third language which means something completely different.

In case the run-on sentence above made no sense, I'll explain again. I teach in Portuguese, a language I know only mildly well. They speak Changana, a language I'm only just beginning to learn. I have to say words in broken Portuguese that have meanings in Changana. Bad ones.

For instance. Consistencia (consistency) in Portuguese, "masturbation" in Changana. The name McKenzie means "testicles" in dialect, and enzima (enzyme) and xilema (xylem) both have unflattering meanings. Which brings me to estoma.

The estoma (stoma) is a very important part of the leaf. I have an entire lesson devoted to it. Unfortunately, and inevitably, the Changana for the female anatomy sounds very similar. And not the innocuous "vagina", but the almost unutterable "c" word. As if this weren't bad enough, I have to draw the estoma. If you remember this part of biology, you'll see where this is going.

The stoma is a hole in the outer layer of the leaf which opens and closes, allowing gases to be exchanged. It is composed of two sausage-shaped cells that dilate. A drawing looks almost exactly like a rough sketch of a vagina. So really, I have no choice but to milk this lesson. I'm going to make every possible cognate reference I can and maybe I won't die laughing. It's really the only choice.

I've found that I don't cry when I need to, but only when I'm prompted to. This reminds me of after the death at my school, teaching the class the next day. I didn't need to cry, but the emotions of the students were overwhelming and it was everything I could do to maintain my composure. (Now, I think about what would have happened if that incident happened now and how much differently it would affect me and how much I could help the kids out. Not to say that I want it to happen. Not at all.)

There are things that make my want to cry, like how my students demonstrate a complete failure in understanding that I'm a human being, being away from everyone, etc. But these things aren't suddent events but gradual and well up inside me. I've even sat down a couple times and told myself to get it out, but to no avail.

And then it all comes pouring out when it's safe and can be easily justified. Like tonight, watching "I am Sam". A good movie, but nothing groundbreaking. I was like a faucet. And something inside just let go - found an opportunity and ran with it.

I find it dangerous to open myself up here, because of my students. And it isn't their fault. I'm as strange a subject to them as the biology I teach. They don't know where to begin, so like teaching, I have to start out simple and work my way up.

What am I going to do with my life? I really hate that question. It's as if there's a mandatory objective for everyone, that there's some finish line. And it implies that life is not being lived in the current moment. I don't wonder too hard about the next step, because it's so far off - and even when it is close, every situation is only what you make of it. So why bother spending all of my time looking for something "perfect" when even perfection is a lot of hard work. There's a very real unspoken aspect of "What are going to do..." that has to do with external rather than internal motivation. You have to look good to others, rather than feel good about yourself. And honestly, for all of the selflessness going around, we're only doing it for ourselves in the end. Which is fine - selfishness that betters others' lives is selfishness put to good use. And then when you look at this issue really closely, you see that there is only the unfortunately named "selfishness" and it has no opposite. So really, it is a concept that does not exist. There's nothing bad about it, because there's no good to be had in its absence.

So was it selfish to come here? Yes, and I hope more people benefit from my doing it than if I hadn't in the first place.

Peace

John

06/12/2003

I'm continually amazed by the curiosity and fascination of my students. They are quite often drawn to the simplest of challenges, wanting to find out what "right" is, more than save face.

I've been talking about the processes that bring water from the roots up to the leaves of a plant, in very broad terms. I introduce guttation as a process that brings water to the surface of the leaf in liquid form, and transpiration as a process that brings water to the surface of the leaf in vapor form.

I asked the students today what the difference is between the two processes. The goal of the question not being able to say what each does, but how they differ. It's a subtle difference, but exposes exactly the memorization vs understanding conflict.

A girl stood up, and almost on cue read the definitions off the board, confident in her ability to see the difference between the definitions. I said, "Good, you can read the definitions. Now, what is the DIFFERENCE between the two?" Usually a blank stare or smile creeps across the student's face, as if to say "What, you actually expect us to believe you can grade us on anything but the definitions?"

But this was different. She immediately responded, "Well, transpiration is what happens when water evaporates and guttation is when it doesn't." Perfect! However dumbed down my definitions were, I found a subject that challenged their ability to truly understand. And when this student got it, she was (expectedly) unimpressed with her relatively informal answer. 95% of the time, I get the first answer. But the other 5% of the time, I get some truly insightful if often erroneous answers.

But I held her response up as an example of thinking about the information and using your own words to explain the relationship.

In my next class, I had a few "aha" moments when I was able to sit down and explain a couple of questions. But by far, the best moment was at the end of the lesson, explaining the same two concepts. I asked if it was clear, and they said in response, "No, it's dark." This wasn't a language thing. They were just playing with me. Being my favorite turma, they knew they could. But they emphasized that they didn't quite understand. I thought for a moment, then called on one of my best and most cooperative students.

"Come here", and he did. "Let's say you're a plant," as I faced him toward the amused class. "Now, you need what three things?"

"Water, carbon dioxide and solar energy."

I placed my well-known water bottle on the ground in front of him and announced that I was the sun. I said that transpiration and guttation are responsible for bringing water to the leaves so they can make food (through photosynthesis). I explained that I was the sun during the day (waving my hands wildly to the delight of the class) and the plant was receiving my energy. I asked the class whether his leaves needed water.

"Yes!"

My "plant" grabbed the water and brought it up to eye level. Then, I had the plant put the water back down, turned around and "going to sleep", said that it was night. Does the plant need the same amount of water?

"No!"

And what's responsible for bringing water to the leaves? "Guttation, transpiration." So do these processes happen as much during the night?

"No!"

"Is it still dark?" I ask.

Laughs, smiles. The plant sits down.

"No, it's clear, teacher. We understand now."

Since the students look to understand, though they know it risks not being fully informed, it really is my responsibility to make sure concepts are understood, even if only a couple students are listening.

Peace

John

06/11/2003

I received two packages today from my mother in eight days! Incredible. (A NOTE FROM MOM -- Actually, it took about 3 months,but it was only eight days from the last place they ended up in...) Yet it often takes months for things to arrive. How many hands does a package pass through? And how many of these hands simply say, "Ahh, that can sit here for a while longer..."? But the real question is, how far does that 70 cents go? I forget whether I wrote about this before, but when Dan's letter stamped with 70 cents, 10 cents short, returned to him six weeks after being sent, Adam commented "I wonder how far it got before it was sent back?" Maybe 79 cents gets it to the postmaster's hands (Sr. Machava) but he has to send it back immediately. I dare someone to try (note: if it does arrive, please write something interesting beyond "Did it get there?" because I'll be tempted to write back simply "Yes".)

Among the packages was a book on education, specifically primary and secondary school and how the educator has to be an active, aware learner. Which I completely agree with. But her thesis seems to be that learning is active and the methods should depend on informational resources. Which is fine, but does active learning apply for every educational situation? And is it education if it can't involve learning?

She points to the teacher who stands up in front of her class and simply talks about the subject, leaving the students to memorize and repeat the information back to her, as the counter-example of education. She makes the point that information is endless, and so methods should be the focus of education instead. I completely agree, in societies where the information is readily available.

So this got me to thinking that our educational goal here is quite Western in approach and naive (hah! I knew I'd stick the naivete on someone else at some point). We have learned in an information-saturated environment. We have computers, libraries, highly educated teachers, and textbooks. An educated person is one who can absorb and make sense of this information.

Here, school's purpose is to disseminate information, which is difficult to come by. The focus of education is on memorization because the information exists more readily in peoples' minds than in books. Intelligence is much more easily quantified.

Yet a Western observer calls this educational system poor and the intellectual elite, intellectually devoid. Put simply, many Westerners see people here as "stupid" at first glance. What they don't realize is that Africans, specifically Mozambicans, would say the same thing about someone who didn't know a set amount of facts.

The issue here is that the difference between the two ways of thinking is not philosophical - they are simply two points along the same long road - it is develomental. But the manifestation of the differences seems philosophical, and so it becomes equated with ideas of education.

This conflict aside, what can be done about the development aspect? As I've seen, donation without work rarely turns out well because there is no investment in the donation by the receivers (other than rarity or actual cash value). So as a development worker, is it my role to be a liaison and motivator for my school to obtain and maintain resources? I think so, and I think as far as bringing in materials, this is the limit. but there is plenty to do in this area.

On the other end of my work, as an educator, how do I balance the local need for internalized information with the more modern idea (or should I say "developed") that learning is the processing and analysis of information? Is a student capable of both absorbing the information and processing it in a curriculum designed for the former system? Or, instead of looking in between these two lines for my answer, is there a solution that resides outside the lines? I think there is.

Even in my quick skim of this book, it was clear that my problems are not unique or solved. This is an issue that frustrates thousands of teachers. The idea that the information mandated in the curriculum is too ambitious to be properly absorbed in the time allotted seems to be a curse. Curriculum developers all over the world are some of the most optimistic and cautious members of the educational system.

In the book, this is seen as a cycle because the products of the curriculum that has no room for "learning" go on to teach in the very same way, and develop curricula in the same fashion.

But I think change MUST begin with the curriculum, and with the view that every subject is independent of the other subjects. There is always a meta-objective of an education, and it should be as specific and broadly engaging as possible. I suppose the ultimate objective would be to create a student who is able to understand and use all manner of information, utilizing and and all resources available. And so, does a curriculum that has a student learn about the differences between two functions of a lead that are both responsible for water delivery to the leaf, achieve this goal? Or is a curriculum that infuses in the student the ability to discover these differences and why these functions are in fact the same function with different end products, a curriculum that strives for learning?

Clearly, the latter curriculum is more ideal, but in reality is impossible to achieve with the presence of standardized testing, an entirely different issue.

So where along this continuum of information vs analysis should Mozambique reside?

I promised a solution outside the lines, and though it's not groundbreaking, it somewhat undermines the authority of the curriculum developers. And that is to semi-randomly deem parts of the curriculum unnecessary. Very large parts in some cases. And in order to compromise, give the information required, but don't focus on it in any way whatsoever. Focus on the concepts that can be used to inspire an analytical approach, and let the rest be statis information.

However anticlimactic a solution this may sound, it's a solution I've seen and heard of in many shapes, but never formalized. Either do it 100% or don't do it at all. Choose your battles and fight hard. And then, as more information is available, less choosing needs to happen and the battles can be fought in more analytical ways.

For some reason, the feeling side of me is uncomfortable with the smoothness of this approach. Everything, after all, has very rough edges when looked at closely enough.

But I think it's a matter of loose ends - where exactly does this battle fit in with the idea that all concepts start out as one indivisible "Way", "One", "God", whatever, and finds its own way out of this singularity by finding an opposite? Light's dancing partner is dark. We discovered nothingness when we discovered the idea of matter. Pulling an idea out of the Yin-Yang that is everything requires something equally abstract to leave as well. So taking an idea like "learning" requires there to be an opposite. Memorization is not the opposite, for there is some overlap here. Even the recognition of letters on a page is in some sense "learning". I think "forgetting methods or facts" is the closest things to an opposite - it is the decay that marks a brain that is unchallenged and unseeking. So really, in the big scheme, education can be seen as a way to avoid the attrition of our brains that occurs with disuse. What worlds this opens up to education! To be continued...

Peace

John

05/30/2003

I walked to the post office today and saw a couple of my students on the way. They said hi and I waved back, which naturally brought laughing because, well, I did something. Then, I let them enter the post office first, saying "Faz favor", and as they entered, they mockingly repeated it. Right in front of me. It's not just a lack of respect. It's a lack of thinking that I am a human being. I'm so weird to them that none of the feelings that they associate with humanity could really apply to me. Granted, this isn't everyone, but a good number of my students act this way.

And I am weird. I don't use violence to release my frustration and anger. I show up every day and teach full lessons. I emphasize understanding the material and not memorizing it. I speak from a different place in the body and use different ideas because my mind seeks to explain itself differently. I sit and wait for the class to be quiet instead of yelling over them. I ask them to answer questions in their own words. They're allowed to say "I don't know" to a question. I catch most of the crap they try to pull, but I don't always let on right away. I am an alien, but one who wants desperately to just get past it.

We're spoiled in the States because we are exposed to many different cultures, however "artificial" and capitalized our culture has become. Differences are differences, and yes they're weird and funny, but we accept them and move on.

However, when someone comes along who threatens us because of their fundamental unchangeable being, we methodically try and tear them apart to see that they, too, are in fact human. But where does that leave us?

Peace

John

05/29/2003

I was talking with Charles tonight about family - and the conversation turned insular. I talked about the members of my family, and as far as direct relatives go, there's my mom, my dad and my grandmother (on Dad's side). That's about it. I have cousins in Virginia and California (I think), but that's blood family to me.

So I got to thinking about my grandmother out on the West Coast, which is as far away from Mozambique you can get and still be on earth. I've seen it on maps and done the estimation - it's a long way.

Since I was on my way home, I looked down at the dirt road I was walking along. It's funny, when you point to the ground and say it's the ground or that it's earth, you never really fully comprehend that beneath it lies this enormous hunk of minerals that is so large, we are drawn to it by forces we can't explain. But when you look - really LOOK - at the ground and try to see that you're looking at the outermost layer of a dizzyingly huge rock spinning and hurtling through space, it looks completely different. I had to orient myself with the horizon a couple of times just to check that this was THE ground and not a hill or second level that I was walking on.

Then I thought back to these 2-dimensional maps on which I located the West Coast and Mozambique, and really for the first time, SAW that if I could somehow look through the Earth, I would see California or one of those states around there. On the complete opposite side of the world.

I thought of being a kid and building a "tunnel to China" in the playground sand that always smelled of cat poop. There were usually 2 or 3 other kids, and we would build cities or roads with tunnels, but it seems so long ago as to not even be real. Likewise, at that age, I couldn't have imagined this - where I'm living, what I'm doing, my clothes, my appearance, my experiences - to be real.

And to think, that hole wouldn't have brought me to China after all - 15 or so years later, I made my way to the other side. And now that I'm here, part of me always wants to go back. Well, me, I'm here for a while and I'm going to make the most of it.

I smelled something on the air like fast food the other day, and memories flooded back for a good 10 minutes. I just smelled airplane food somehow - wow. How odd.

Peace

John

05/28/2003

I don't know exactly why, but I've been thinking about a discussion that keeps coming up at interesting points in my life. Race.

I think it first came about in high school, when I was a member of and later president of the "Multicultural Committee". We did some interesting things, and had some good ideas for exposing our fellow students to the diversity within our region and how that reflected global diversity. It was there that the idea of Race first got discussed at length, and all of the problems inherent in the word Race. Culture was considered a nice euphemism for the great "black vs white" struggle and was a nice politically correct way to approach the subject.

Later in high school, I was involved in the Connecticut Forum, junior edition. Connecticut Forum is a group committed to discussing hot issues in a formal setting among experts. The high school version was an outgrowth of this spirit, bringing together inner city and suburban schools from all around the state. In one meeting, discussing Race, I made some fairly inflammatory remarks - though completely honest - about equality and suffering. They were only inflammatory because of how sensitive the Race issue is in the States - and that a white person said it. That led to interesting discussions for a few weeks, and just like in my own high school, no conclusions.

Then I went to CWRU, a "white" school in "black" Cleveland, where these ideas of Race sat and festered, almost completely ignored. There is significant racial tension in Cleveland, though most of it isn't violent. It's an unspoken perceived class difference and more than that, a basic cultural difference. This stirred around in me for a while, until I hit upon a class my fourth year that addressed culture and race very directly, in the form of communication. We had some very interesting culture and race discussions over the course of the semester, leaving more questions than answers at the end.

And then I left for Mozambique. In training, we had a discussion on Race that once again brought out some honest and trying remarks on what exactly race and culture are. I posed the still unanswered question to Charles, "Is Race skin color, culture or somewhere in between?"

About 10 years of on-again off-again discussion of Race all boiled down to a very simple question of defining the word. And no answers.

During my first month at site, and again over the past couple weeks, I read "Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" which poses and analyzes the idea of Quality, of being the one undefinable thing which begets all of reality and the perception of reality. Different spiritual beliefs have different names for Quality, such as God, The Way, The One, Truth, etc. But problems lie in trying to define this entity that binds life together. It is only after painstaking thought - or a flash of clarity - that it's seen that this one thing can never be defined because the descriptors (words) we use to define it are created by that single entity itself. All that can be done is to describe its various manifestations and try to understand its inaccessibility and make peace with that.

The idea of a concept that exists in nme only because its meaning is undefinable is very interesting to me. I think it makes sense that the term Race is such a concept.

Many of us are taught that Race is the difference between black people and white people, because of the multitude of issues surrounding this relationship. My dictionary says it's a "group of persons of common origin", tantalizingly vague. Other definitions only require one commonality, others point to culture as the origin of Race. The problem is, there are no discrete measures of skin color, origin or culture. Who's "black"? I live in an area where there is a full spectrum of colors - including albinos. Are albinos "black"? By a skin color definition, no.

OK, so how about origin? Sure, everyone was born someplace, but does that determine your Race? What if you were born in the States to parents of African descent (they were born in Africa) and the next day you left for Africa? Do you lost your racial status as African because you were born in the States and lived there for one day?

And then there's culture. Good luck defining culture. I don't think I want to even touch this one. Let's just say it's impossible to separate cultures in discrete ways.

So all of a sudden the very foundation of Race is seen to be a pile of sand, full of a thousand different pieces that can be molded into whatever shape the owner desires. The fact is, Race does not exist. We have cultural differences, nationalistic differences, skin color differences, but there is no such thing as a racial difference. The very word Race is a blanket term for expressing frustration, ignorance and unfortunately hatred in terms of interpersonal relationships. What we do with race is inexcusable and dumb. We draw lines, dividing up cities, states and nations upon perceived differences in race. People are assumed to be different because of this racial inequality. But there is nothing inherent in the Human Race that determines these classifications. In fact, the only true race is the Human Race, a philosophical realization that might save a lot of grief within some circles.

So when someone says "I'm black" or "I'm white", as happens all the time here in Mozambique, that's all they mean. They point to their skin and then point to yours, just to emphasize the point. But that's all it is. Color.

At school, my sense of humor is finally coming through. I think it was a language barrier and not a cultural barrier, because I trade pretty good barbs with students who are giving me problems, to the delight of the class.

But as far as language goes, I'm realizing how hard it is for them to do all this in Portuguese - harder than it is for me. I know what letter-perfect Portuguese is. With focus and patience, I can even speak it. But it's not well understood - and if I had presented myself as a Brazilian or Portuguese person, it would be better understood because the students would try harder.

But they know the burden of understanding is on me. It frustrates me greatly to pronounce something perfectly only to be met with "Huh?" and then have it repeated with a Changana accent.

And listening to the Changana of younger kids, more and more Portuguese seems to be slipping in. The earmark of a creole. Rumor has it that local languages will be taught starting next year in primary school - so hopefully that will improve the quality of both languages!

And since in the 6th grade, English instruction will begin, in a few years students in the 6th grade will be learning three languages at the same time - how exciting!

I miss roller hockey. I miss going over the boards, stealing the ball, checking a defender, shipping a pass over to the middle for a one-timer and seeing it fly past the goalie. I miss blocking shots, too. Laying in front of the shooter and seeing his frustration when the ball bounces off my legs, knowing my goalie is happy he had to deal with one less shot.

Peace

John

Thursday, July 03, 2003

05/13/2003

I think more and more students are getting what learning in my classes is about, but it's still the vast minority.

I had my shoe fixed today because the sole was coming off. I paid 700 Met for the shoes ($29 US) and 8 Met to get them fixes (33 cents US). And it was done so caringly, that I felt better after I had them fixed than after I had bought them. Plus I know that the shoe repairman (in his 5th year of business on a street corner, on the ground) counts every Met.

Speaking of customer service, you can buy many things on the street from vendors walking around - hats, shirts, capulanas, bananas, cashews, etc. Before I went to Xai-Xai, I grabbed some cashews so I could make friends and bide some time. I stopped a vendor, asked the prices and I asked for a cup's worth (10 Met). He precisely and carefully searched and found the roll of plastic bags, and with full concentration on the bag, he proceeded to open it and then transfer his attention to the cashews. Clearly, he was completely focused on his job, and made sure the cup was overfilled, giving me a little extra at the end in a very deliberate but gentle manner. I walked away with tears in my eyes.

Here was a man, doing what many others would consider to be "getting by". And when you think of a job in these terms, you don't put your all into it because it's just a transitional job. But this man was dedicated to cashew-selling, regardless of the pay or the prestige. He demonstrated pride without knowing it, by simply seeking perfection in the simplicity. He made me realize how rare it is to find people who are content enough to make every moment as thoughtful as possible.

Peace

John

05/12/2003

The Peace Corps experience is challenging because you have to give up control over the things you've always controlled, and control the things you don't know how to control.

My Changana is really coming along. I'm starting to speak it with my students outside of class, and they're psyched that I'm giving it a go.

There are about a thousand ways that two plus years is extremely long and also extremely short. I think it wouldn't be either if I were closer to the people I care about. Why does that always weigh on me?

Peace

John

05/11/2003

(Sitting in the restaurant "Chave d'ouro" or "Golden Key" early on a Sunday afternoon, visiting friends in another city.)

I'm sitting inside on an 80-degree day at a table by myself, listening to a couple different flavors of Portuguese being spoken by people of every color, waiting for a cheese sandwich. Amazingly, there is no smell in the air - either that or I've completely accustomed myself to a constant odor of stale urine and picked-through garbage. I can see the road, the main road in Mozambique, occupied by typically light Sunday traffic. A boy outside is being chased by bees that don't sting. But it's keeping him occupied. The combination of a cold cheese/tomato/onion sandwich and equally chilled Coke seems to be perfect, and I don't know why.

Last night was fun, drinking with some of the guys and getting a South African (a white one) pissed off at us simply for being inquisitive Americans. At one point, I found myself staring at the wrong end of a very large and angry elbow as this man was leaning over me to discuss economics with Phillip.

My chapa ride here was largely uneventful. I met one of the workers at the bread store, which I visit nearly every day - he's one of the bakers. Blake and I have had a pipedream of working in the bakery one night, joining in the songs and comaraderie tht come with one of the oldest professions. Maybe now we'll get our chance.

Saturday morning I found out that three professors from every school in my province will be HIV/AIDS advocates and give some sort of lesson every week. Luckily (in a way), this is just a "trial run" and so it's not being sold to all the students. I'm still going to work with the rest of the students in giving my lessons, so there's no problem there.

I guess that gets me back to where I left off, with the link between language and primitive thought. I need to get going, however, and enjoy my walk to catch the next chapa.

OK, language and thought. The way I see it, language is to thought what television is to real life. A television has pixels, or discrete bits of information (colors) that are much bigger than the discrete bits of real life. Sometimes, when dealing with big objects, those pixels are exactly right. But when describing something minute, even the best television can't do it justice.

And so it is with language. Language blurs thoughts a bit when the thought is jumping between speakers. Someone on TV holds up a box of Juicy Fruit. But it's a small box and you can't read the writing on the big TV pixels. But if the color scheme is recognizable - if the context of the conversation implies deeper meaning to the words - we'll know it's Juicy Fruit and not Jujubes. But if we've never seen this package before, it's only a package and we don't see any name at all. In terms of language, words are meaningless if the thought behind it isn't understood. Languages are approximations of thought like TVs (which also vary considerably) are approximations of reality. Good languages are like good TVs...expensive. A good language is inherently complex, with subtle shifts in meaning and physical gestures a part of communication.

And because there are so many interpretations of reality (thoughts), there must be only one reality (language of thought), or learning other languages would most likely be impossible. I think I've got Stephen Pinker on my side for this one.

So my question is, can you derive the language of thought by examining all of the languages in the world? If you find that the idea of "wait" is never interpreted by two different words in any language, then it must be in the language of thought. I'm sure this is being explored right now, but it's fascinating to me. What's more, is if you isolated this language of thought, you could figure out how to make a computer think - or at least have a better idea. Because "think" is not some abstract term, but a very readily defined set of rules that have yet to be discovered. Computers are sets of rules, so why not?

Peace

John

05/09/2003

Sometimes I find myself walking along the street, feeling pain and sadness for the people I miss back in the States. I think of all the times I've needed them and vice versa, and of all the little things I'm missing - and the inevitable growing we all do. I really get myself down thinking about this, and wondering why I'm still here, messing things up.

Then I pass a woman who's walking on one good foot and one arched foot, painfully taking every step while carrying her daily supply of food and water.

This is when I realize that this pain I feel is really quite silly. If these are truly my friends, then my absence will be but a hiccup and if we haven't changed too much, we can continue to be friends. It's actually so silly that I feel bad, feeling bad for myself! I have so much...

And in the same vein, I got to thinking about how I learned about artificial intelligence in college, and how utterly inapplicable that seems now. But really, AI is just the very low-level study of human thought. And human thought is expressed by language in its many forms. The key to thought is not in words, but meanings. And what things really mean is only apparent when taken from the perspective of several different languages.

Tired. Will finish later.

Peace

John