Do students learn more from the struggle or from models?

I'm joining some active local advisers later today for a planning meeting for a journalism workshop we are leading next week, and we only do this once a year... so every time seems like the first time.

Here is the key choice that we always seem to come back to in creating a schedule and deciding on what to include (or leave out) in our limited time with students and teachers.

Which is the better strategy?

• Examples first. Before you try anything on your own, study examples of how other people solve similar problems.
• Problems first. Before looking at any examples, try to solve the problem independently. If you fail or don’t get very far, then learn how others approach it.

Summer workshops need to attempt strategies that don't just copy the regular school year. Otherwise, kids don't find them attractive, nor do advisers. Even the presenters would prefer to break away from the standard schedules and procedures. So things are looser, with fun activities built in, with no looming deadlines to cripple creativity. 

Sometimes summer workshop students and teachers want the opportunity to try something completely new, with no limitations, and to have light bulbs go off, so to speak. Other summer workshop students would really like a recipe for future success, thus alleviating some anxiety about their coming year on a staff. The latter is the more common situation.

The "examples first" option relies on Direct Instruction, using a basic pattern of "see", "do," and "feedback," before the loop begins again. The "see" step usually includes specific examples that might act as a menu of sorts. The "do" step is guided and independent practice, where students can tinker with what has been presented in the hopes of finding their own versions of other people's solutions. The "feedback" is the natural way to assess how things are going, suggest or ask about additional options, and create new direct instruction opportunities.

The "problems first" approach is related to Discovery Learning, where we simply trust students to hammer out solutions without much preparation. They are motivated, but they are forced to create their own strategies and tactics and often will become frustrated. On the other hand, "problems first" can produce more creative and unique solutions to long-standing challenges. 

In short, the basic pattern here is "do," feedback, and "see" -- with the feedback step being where we check in on our goals and success or lack of same, and finally "see" what some other thinkers have previously come up with. 

I favor direct instruction followed by loads of practice... which produces more learning and more questions. I advise student journalists to copy what the professionals do, and to then make adjustments to fit their particular needs and interests. There really ARE some best practices for journalists and designers and photographers.

The more restrictive the skills we need to learn, the more starting with direct instruction can help. For instance, when I want to learn some skill on the computer, I value the gazillion YouTube videos that can provide pragmatic and thoughtful advice. A vision of what hell might be like would be opening up Adobe Premiere Pro software for the first time (for video editing) and simply using trial and error to create a project.

It is possible we would never get very good at that software, missing some of the "tricks" and shortcuts and somewhat obscure techniques that seem so obvious once we see them in action. 

In a perfect world, summer workshops might be the place where smart kids tap their "prior knowledge" of some topic to develop new, previously unthought of solutions and tactics. As you can imagine, this takes time and often leaves students feeling a bit overwhelmed or simply frustrated. 

In our imperfect world, we will rely on direct instruction next week, though we hope to provide the valuable feedback that allows students to continue digging for better solutions, techniques, and skills.

Schools would become quite chaotic without direct instruction.

One last -- until next time -- post about schools and guns

My head tells me to not get my hopes up for any changes at all in gun regulations or increased safety measures regarding firearms, but my heart contains some vague hope that the image of heavily armed police standing yards from kids being slaughtered and bleeding to death and not swiftly engaging with the madman in Uvalde might produce something... 

How can anyone deny the harsh reality that fallible and confused humans, even armed to the teeth and trained to respond to school shooter, will often (usually?) fail to perform very well. 

All that horse manure about arming teachers and offering a Rambo in every classroom has been exposed as the worst sort of mythology. And don't get me started on turning school buildings into maximum security institutions. As if a fortified door and one bored dufus with a gun would ever keep a determined nut case out of a building. 

I don't totally blame the cops who cowered rather than stepped up. They were scared. They were not 100 percent sure what they were getting into. They have their own families and no one woke up that morning hoping to be wounded or killed at an elementary school. On the other hand, that is the job they took on.

People will be fired. Lawsuits will linger for months to come. Children and families and the entire community of Uvalde will never be the same. Prayers will only comfort the ones saying prayers, assuring them that they are doing the right thing. Ministers will continue to claim that God has a plan and that if we only have faith, all will be well.

No wonder church attendance has fallen to very low levels. Anyone with a brain must realize that if God is interested, he has delegated any fixes or changes to humans. We are on our own, and always have been.

I was hoping I would maybe hear a minister offer some practical advice about how the Lord would prefer that everyone run like hell when they hear gunshots in the building. He gave us legs, after all. It's only school officials who think it's a great idea to hunker down in little classrooms and wait for death. 

I remember my first year teaching at Heritage HS, in Littleton, just three years after Columbine, which occurred a dozen mile west of our school. I heard from officers who were there. I heard from fellow teachers who had transferred to Heritage. 

The school had small, infrequent windows and looked like a WWII bunker. I happened to teach in a small addition to the original monument to cement and brick and there was a single, large window overlooking a neighboring park.

One officer privately told me that if it were him, he would find any way he could to break that window and take my students and run into the woods. We practiced "sheltering in place," but my private plan when the gunman came was to toss a desk through the window and run like hell.

Maybe what schools really need are MORE doors and windows and ways to escape. Would there be chaos from that? Um, yeah. Could the gunman escape along with the running students? Sure. 

But should our first thought be how to clean up the scene of the massacre and get accurate counts of who lived and who died. Or should it be to get away? 

I sat in the choir loft yesterday planning escape routes (instead of listening to the vapid sermon, which contrasted murdered children with the joys of spring... or something). The church has no armed guards and I wouldn't trust most of those in attendance to take care of things with their concealed weapons, should there be any. Churches are full of, well, old people. 

I did think we would be a juicy target for anyone interested in racking up a large body count.

I saw a provocative column yesterday that boiled down to gun safety advocates adopting the same sort of long-game tactics as the anti-abortion zealots. What if protesters stood on the sidewalk outside gun dealers, holding signs like, "Shame on you"? And then returned every day, as protesters do around Planned Parenthood clinics?

What if a significant number of Americans decided to quit trying to fix everything -- the true Achilles Heel of the Democratic Party -- and instead embraced single-issue voting? What if voters began voting for anyone willing to increase gun safety, no matter the party and no matter how much or little they agreed with other positions?

You are likely thinking like me: protesters around gun shops would need their own body armor and would be courting death... something those protesters around abortion providers don't fear. After all, it's rarely the progressives wielding the guns and murdering innocents. 

I haven't quite worked out some "unified theory" of how to improve America, but I suspect that reducing gun violence is connected to a lot of our anti-woman, anti-child (other than those still in the womb), anti-immigrant, anti-"other" language and action.

The most rabid anti-abortion people are single-minded, and they can overlook voting for a repulsive, obscene jerk if there is a chance to advance their cause. It's appalling, but logical. 

My questions: "Where are the repulsive, obscene jerks on the Democratic side? The ones who can get votes, even if for the wrong reasons, and then relentlessly push for a reduction in gun violence?"

If the point is to make progress, focus is important. 

I fear that next week progressives will yank their attention to any one of the many other issues we are facing, and then they will fatalistically place gun violence back among so many issues... and life will just go on.

Democrats have the right ideas, overall, but they don't have the willpower to get things done. I have heard all the excuses and about Republican opposition to, well, everything. 

Time to get pragmatic and to show people how government and civility can move us forward, however imperfectly.

Can we find balance between "freedom" and "safety"?

America is a paralyzed nation in many ways, with our leaders (whom we almost always don't trust) unable to make rational decisions and living in fear of not meeting their most rabid supporters' expectations.

What could be a more convincing piece of evidence supporting this statement than the fact that about 90 percent of Americans (including all political views) support some sort of reasonable waiting period to obtain a gun. Our latest killer walked into a gun store on the day he turned 18 and was able to buy a semi-automatic rifle. He could not buy a beer at the tavern next door. 

Doesn't that say everything about our collective insanity?

We can have no hope for any action that creates an immediate turnaround on guns -- after all, there are over 400 million already in the hands of our citizens -- so we need to work on some "little" actions that can get through Congress and start little changes.

I was reminded of a truth just today: change happens slowly and then all at once. The latest example of this might be gay marriage, which was not on most peoples' radar until it was suddenly the law of the land. Small victories for the right to marriage piled up. 

That is the proposed way forward when commentators like Nicholas Kristoff advise us to avoid "triggering" phrases like "gun control," and instead discuss "gun safety." The tactic of exploring more safety is what keep cars on the road. Yes, lots of Americans continue to die on our roads but we have produced much safer vehicles and those increased safety measures have reduced deaths.

Could people be persuaded that all gun sales should require some sort of waiting period, much as many states demand a waiting period for women desiring abortions? Could people be persuaded that a basic gun safety course be required prior to purchasing a gun of any kind, much as we require some sort of training before people receive a drivers license? Could people be persuaded that creating a national age requirement of 21 is as reasonable as our drinking laws?

Could people be persuaded that it is OK for the FBI or some authority to gather data on gun violence, not just deaths, and thus provide some data we can work from in finding new ways to honor Second Amendment advocates while minimizing massacres of children?

The religious fanatics -- and I use that adjective because worship of the gun in a peculiarly American cult -- will still object. But there is a reason we can call those folks "fanatics": there aren't all that many of them.

Kristoff admits that small, reasonable restrictions around the edges of gun ownership will only reduce gun deaths by a third, but 14,000 lives is worth something, wouldn't you say?

There are dozens of regulations about ladders, of all things, and the total number of deaths connected to faulty ladders is about 100 per year.

If I had total power, I would destroy most of the guns (full disclosure). But I don't. 

It's time to explore "gun safety" and for industry and scientists and legislators to start producing some regulations/laws that show that there is still hope for the U.S. We can never be completely safe, of course, and death waits for all, but reasonable people try to avoid flaunting death.

It's tough to be optimistic about a nation that is OK with dead kids just to continue a fetish. But even cult members can be convinced to leave the cult.

Can we find ten Republican senators who feel strong enough to explore additional gun safety?

America values "I" over "we" and the powerless continue to suffer

In order to make any progress on a problem, it is a good idea to be able to clearly identify just what the problem consists of and examine history and traditions.

Thinking about exactly what America's problem is with guns and murders and suicides (and school shootings, of course) is how I have tried to avoid feeling overwhelming shame and despair about my country. Of course, to call it "my country" is not very accurate, I suppose. America belongs, and has always belonged, to the rich and powerful.

This is not unique to the United States. I would imagine Romans from 57 CE would have said the same, as well as tenant farmers in Ireland and Wales, and Okies in the depression. 

I saw a basic argument today that stated that the gun problem is actually a gun culture problem, and that makes sense. Many Republicans have adopted the principal of individual freedom as being more important than collective freedom. That is, MY right to buy guns, no matter how many or how lethal, along with giant stockpiles of ammunition, is far more important than the rights of young children to attend school without fearing being murdered.

I am disgusted by all politicians at this point, with nobody willing to really try to make changes in our national dystopia, where the country just shrugs as one million fellow citizens die from Covid -- hey, we're all going to die someday! -- and 18-year-olds murder in cold blood. 

I'm certain the NRA convention this weekend will offer "thoughts and prayers," while drawing attention to almost anything that takes our minds off the fact that there are over 400 million guns in the U.S. "How dare you play politics after the latest mass shooting?" the worst hypocrites will say while knowing that they have created a system where there will never be a time for that discussion.

If there are cheap cigarettes available everywhere, one solid prediction is that there will be more smoking. If there are cheap fast food outlets everywhere, a solid prediction is that people will eat more food that is not all that good for them. If there are cheap guns available to anyone with a pulse... you get the idea.

The Republican Party is filled with hypocrites, but we all are part of the problem. I anticipate that I will attend church this Sunday and the minister will light the "compassion candle," and "lift up" the slaughtered innocents in prayer, as if that will do anything. Heaven forbid that anyone display any anger in a house of worship. We all just need to breathe and trust in God. 

Just a few weeks ago, the scripture reading included the 12 plagues of Egypt, which included God massacring every first-born male in the nation to convince the pharaoh to let the Israelites go. Not a word was said about how appalling the very thought of worshiping such a god is. 

Dead, innocent children? That's just how it goes. Over 45,000 gun deaths last year? The price of "freedom."

The very essence of Christianity is that the collective is more important than the individual. Why else do we celebrate one man's sacrifice long ago to redeem everyone? 

The two teachers in Uvalde who died trying to shield their students from a deranged gunman will be praised as "selfless" and "models we all can aspire to be." I would guess that many ministers will focus on their sacrifice for others, and that their actions were "Christ-like."

And then they, and all their congregation, will go right back to taking care of themselves first. "America First" is a slogan that appeals to our country these days, as it excuses our own glorification of individual rights over the common good. 

Those two teachers were heroes, or maybe just hapless victims caught in the hail of bullets, but they are most certainly dead, as are many of the students they attempted to save. 

Many Americans will go to church Sunday and congratulate one another on how bad they feel, how many prayers they have offered, how THEY can protect themselves and their families with their own guns. They will be praying to a God who is fine with children being butchered, so why would the congregation change any behaviors?

Hey, I heard that same milquetoast minister proclaim a couple weeks ago that "God stops wars." Really? Can any evidence for such a claim be presented? Wars do eventually end, when the rich and powerful have had enough and lots of innocent children and powerless citizens are dead and cities are razed. If that reflects a clear strategy from the deity, I want a new deity.

It's tough to stay perpetually angry, unless you are the former president who obsesses over his own lies about a "stolen" election. And even he likely knows it's all just a game, the sort that the rich and powerful can have fun with.

And the massacres continue in the land of the free.

We all should be mad as hell

Various studies on why America is the undisputed leader in gun violence on the planet agree on a couple causes: the sheer number of guns in this country and the loose laws about obtaining and using them.

In the latest American carnage, with 19 elementary kids murdered along with two adults in Uvalde, Texas, the terrorist was an 18-year-old from the town. In Texas, you can purchase a gun when you are under 21 simply by buying it privately. 

I don't have all the details on the shooting, which naturally produced chaos and fitful fact-sharing by authorities, but I suspect most if not all of the victims were Hispanic. Ten days ago, in Buffalo, the victims were mostly Black, and that was intentional. In Uvalde, the shooter appears to have been Hispanic, so at least white supremacy isn't the related topic of the day.

No. Uvalde keeps it simple: one kid (I know, an 18-year-old is an adult in the eyes of the law in many cases, but I have known too many 18-year-olds to swallow a legal fiction that they are adults), one or two weapons, and a collection of available victims. 

It appears that there were some guards who attempted to stop the gunman at the school but ended up outgunned against the young man wearing body armor. If only all the teachers at the school had been armed, say the lunatics among us, everything would have been different. Madness.

I have been playing with the idea of using this clip from the 1976 film "Network" in summer workshops but it seems appropriate today, of all days. The clip will clue you to my post headline for today.

This film was provocative those 46 years ago and remains both riveting and revelatory today. It is likely a good idea to share this clip with current high school students who must think they are living in a special sort of hell right now, between Monkeypox and Covid and the Ukraine war and supply shortages and community members who couldn't give a damn about individual students and teachers attacking schools and educators. 

I am hoping to do something with the energy from being angry and encouraging students to use that energy to report on what matters and to advocate for change, even incremental change.

I looked up the inflation rate in 1976 and it was about 5.76 percent, not far from today's rate. I keep reading that it's inflation that will sink the tentative Democratic majority in the federal government, and that may turn out to be true.

I also looked up how many school shootings there were in 1976, and it was 10... in the entire country. This year there have already been 135. In 2021, there were 240, the highest number ever, by far. There will be a break over summer, as schools shut down, but we have a great chance of beating last year's record before January.

Record deaths from guns will create zero impact on politicians. As a nation, and to our shame, we have simply given up.

I'm sure I will hear about the need for prayer and forgiveness at church this coming Sunday, though nothing of note will be said by the minister. Taking a stand or being provocative? That is the sort of thing that wrecks churches these days. Don't rock the boat. Everybody breathe. Trust in God's plan. Check the screen for our next hymn.

America has decided that it is fine with a high level of death, poverty, and suffering, as long as it is not predominantly white people... but even white people will need to die from gun violence. The gun has become our religion, our focus, our idol.

All hail the holy bullets.

The country has lost its ability to be shocked

I know we are supposed to be properly shocked by the new independent report detailing many years of the Southern Baptist Conference suppressing information on sexual abuse of church members by clergy. 

But are we, really? 

We are living in the aftermath (with some cases ongoing) of the gigantic Catholic priest scandals and massive payouts to victims. We have a large percentage of prospective Republican legislators and governors and state officials proudly lying about the 2020 election. We have the wife of a Supreme Court justice lobbying for a coup while her husband bemoans the loss of status of the Court. We have justices now about to overturn Roe v. Wade, despite proclaiming it "settled law" during confirmation hearings. Who would have guessed that people would lie so blatantly?

Mass shootings continue to occur with numbing regularity, and gun suicides are reaching record levels. Deaths from auto crashes are soaring. Drugs are killing Americans at ever-higher rates. 

I know. I should take a breath. After all, there are so many great things going on across the planet while all the crap is continuing, and most of us may not be directly affected.

I am sitting in my comfortable Highlands Ranch home, grading some papers and planning some summer workshop sessions and looking forward to a lunch break to watch some shows with Kathleen this afternoon. And then, off to see the newest Downton Abbey film followed by dinner.

What, me worry?

I did get a notification on my phone this morning that someone I had been around has tested positive for Covid, but the information is so nebulous that I wonder what I am supposed to do with it.

We just were in Seattle and we wore masks on the plane, etc., but isn't it a virtual guarantee that if we are out among people we have been in close contact with someone with the virus? It would be more helpful to receive a notification that I have NOT been in close contact with someone with the disease.

So learning about the latest outrage or illegal or immoral or unethical actions of a religious group or a federal institution or the gun/death lobby? Shrug.

H.L. Mencken once wrote: No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby. The mistake that is made always runs the other way. Because the plain people are able to speak and understand, and even, in many cases, to read and write, it is assumed that they have ideas in their heads, and an appetite for more. This assumption is a folly.

He wrote that 100 years ago.

Yes, this attitude is a bit elitist, but isn't it basically just a truth that observation confirms over and over? I suppose the only question is about how to define "plain people."

Certainly not you and me.

No one can keep up with everything in pop culture, but teachers need to know a little bit, at least

Yesterday I had a somewhat embarrassing moment at the first rehearsal for a quick musical review our Wesley Players Theatre Company is presenting the last Sunday of June.

We were not given the music prior to the rehearsal, but that is normally fine. The music director assigns parts and there is an accompanist to support everyone as we struggle through everything.

One of the seven songs for our Act I part of the show turns out to be "You'll Be in My Heart," from the animated film Tarzan, from 1999. I have never seen that movie and I swear I have no memory of the song at all.

Of course, THAT'S the song the director wants me to sing lead for (tenors are in short supply). I had to admit I did not know the song at all.

Others in our cast of 17 were astonished that I did not know the song, but I gamely tried to sing the lead, but it was not good. On the other hand, I am certain that I will be able to learn the song in plenty of time.

Later I looked it up and it won the Academy Award for best song as well as the same award from the Golden Globes... and the song won a Grammy, to boot. In other words, this is not some obscure tune.

That's not really the point. The point was that I must have been doing other things as the last century was ebbing away (I had moved from teaching to an assistant principal position that year, and I blame my ignorance on that added stress/learning new things).

I can make myself a quick "expert" on almost anything if I am given a heads up and a little bit of time to practice or read more or just think about the topic in more depth.

But I don't read music, in this case, so if I don't "hear it" in my head, it's not happening. I need a little prep.

The teaching point for me was that I do better by staying in touch with the zeitgeist, even if my knowledge couldn't be more superficial. That is why I will "waste" an hour or two on some movie or TV show that is a current hit among people (usually) younger than I. 

It's nice to be able to participate in even the smallest part of informal conversations and not just stand there at the party with a glazed look of total confusion when someone brings up the latest SNL episode or the newest Downton Abbey movie.

Kathleen and I are in a little weekly discussion group and we meet on Monday mornings, and today that new Downton film came up, with several in our group already having seen it and loved it. We are Downton fans, BTW.

I was only able to participate in any way because I had listened to an episode of the podcast "Pop Culture Happy Hour" while flying home from Seattle yesterday morning. BTW, the panel of "experts" were not big fans of the film, which was not the way the true-blue Downton fans were responding. 

At least one couple attending our discussion today has not seen Downton Abbey in any form and I noticed that they were not able to participate in even small ways during that portion of the discussion. Perhaps they will find time to watch some old episodes on Netflix and they may become avid fans. Or they may simply accept that they missed this little blip in the cosmos and go on quite happily with their lives.

But teachers need to maintain connections with where their students are, not matter how much they may question current musical or dramatic trends. 

Without some common knowledge and some shared cultural touchstones, classrooms can lose their necessary cultural ties. Teachers should consider paying attention to such things as a job requirement, albeit without pay.

But we sometimes can be pleasantly surprised.

My quick take today: That 1999 song is pretty good. I look forward to learning it and the challenge will be to make sure that audience members who, like me, must have been busy back then and missed it, can enjoy the message and the music.

Most of life is not a problem to be solved, and that's OK

We are off to Seattle for a very quick trip to visit daughter, son-in-law, and grandsons, and I am taking Friday off. We will miss a late-May snow storm, evidently, with some predictions of up to 10 inches of snow early Saturday. The temperature in Denver today is going to top out at 90 and will drop to under 30 at night within 36 hours. 

Reporting on the weather qualifies as one of those things I would call "predicaments," meaning there is not much anyone can do about the situation. We can take precautions, like bringing in some plants, covering some others, and turning on the heat while we are away. By the time we return, we will likely see no trace of the snow, however much falls.

By next Tuesday we can turn off the heat again, and I hope for the last time until next fall.

We will drive to the airport, looking to park in a commuter lot for the first time in over two years. DIA shut down shuttle buses during the pandemic and only restarted them in December. There won't be as many as pre-pandemic, so we need to build in a bit more time. In related news, DIA's security lines have been growing longer once again as people (like us) return to flying. 

We invested in a five-year TSA Pre certificate, so we may miss the worst of the lines... and that is a choice by us to mitigate a predicament, which boils down to overcrowded airports and inefficient practices, by investing a bit of money.

And we will drive ourselves to the commuter lot, which will burn some gas, recently purchased at $4.05 a gallon. We can whine about the high gas prices but there's clearly not much that can be done about them. We can drive less, and we do. We are down to one vehicle and it is a 2010... still under 50,000 miles. You control what you can control.

High school is a predicament, in my mind, rather than a clear problem to be solved, and that is unsatisfying to many students and parents, not to mention educators. Progress as a learner or teacher can't be measured in small bits of time, or even in one year. We don't learn in a steady way, but in fits and starts and stops. 

Sometimes I wonder how we managed prior to all the standardized tests to decide what kids were learning and how they measured up. I suspect we managed by not engaging in all the national comparisons at all. We just trusted teachers and schools to do their jobs. 

Sure, people complained and disagreed, but mostly people retained an overall confidence in the worth and success of public education.

High school media programs are predicaments. How do we train, motivate, and organize a significant number of students of various skill levels and interest levels to inform, entertain, and persuade a complex community? And how would we ever know if we have "succeeded"? 

We are at the point in the school year when many states and national organizations offer critiques of media over the summer... as a way to rank and rate and confirm and question and suggest new ideas. I have written such critiques for many years, and here's why I know student media is a predicament:

I could copy and paste many of the same comments I was writing 20 years ago into almost any publication critique today. Change is incremental, at best.

Education and student media are moving targets, much like Colorado weather or gas prices. There is a constant turnover of teachers and students, with each new group needing to be taught. I saw that late snows in Colorado are hardly unusual, and I guess that helps a bit when we worry about how the peony bushes will fare in this quick storm.

They will probably be fine. So will be all.

Our choices often bring unintended consequences

Cause and effect is always the key logical connection that those in authority need to consider. It's also at the heart of most argument writing.

I was listening to an NPR program this morning and caught some of the conversation about the need (or the opposite) of universal Medicare for all. Many of the experts and callers saw "single payer" to be the obvious choice to solve a large number of health problems, and it is so tempting to want ONE simple solution to be the cause of an effect almost anyone would like to see.

Alas, the world rarely turns out to offer easy "win-win" situations. If solutions had clear cause and effects, with a change in policy or procedure leading to great things for everyone, wouldn't we just go ahead and do those things?

The NPR "1A" program evidently focused on the need for better mental health services in America and one reporter whose beat is health mentioned that a challenge if "Medicare for all" were ever to be approved would be that there are not enough mental health professionals to handle all the patients.

If it's tough to find a mental health professional right now, it's likely that a nation that will support universal medical care of any type would be producing more users/patients. Cause and effect. Right now many high school students, for instance, could use some mental health support, but the lack of professionals and high costs keeps those numbers down.

A sudden change in policy would not produce a sudden change in the number of professionals, the reporter pointed out. It takes quite a while to bring more people into psychiatry, for instance. But wait times would predictably get longer, a natural effect of supply not meeting demand.

Having a large number of qualified mental health professionals might be the cause of an increase in people taking advantage of their services, but who is willing to invest years and thousands of dollars in education and training "just in case" there will be a need for those services in the future? 

It's a chicken and egg situation, where a country having more mental health professionals, for example, might be able to handle increased numbers of users. But anyone trying to build new models would be faced with the challenge of balancing, probably slowly, health care providers with user needs.

I read recently in the NYT that a trend is for young people to purposely NOT save for retirement, preferring to enjoy life to the fullest while they can. After all, the future looks bleak, at least from their point of view, living in a nation that doesn't offer them all that much (their POV) and that doesn't seem to care about them.

It's not that different an attitude from we might see if scientists proved to us that the planet would be destroyed by an unavoidable collision with a large asteroid that will hit in one year. There is no possible escape. 

That "cause" would produce some logical effects, from people NOT saving for retirement to engaging in dangerous pursuits to thrill seeking, to unethical and immoral behavior.

Over 42,000 Americans died in car crashes last year, a huge increase over even the worst pre-pandemic years. Young people who are bored and/or without much hope and all sorts of people who just didn't drive much over the course of the pandemic's worst days are back on the roads. They are driving too fast, perhaps impaired.

It's a pretty clear cause for increased deaths on the roads, even as vehicles get safer and safer. 

I was thinking that the numbers would be even worse if vehicle manufactures had not continuously moved to make cars safer. But you can't guard against every potential stupid or aggressive or ignorant choice drivers can make.

Our society is a complex organism that creates complex cause-effect relationships. Nothing is simple.

But at some point, choices must be made.

When it comes to media bigotry, follow the money

Yawn. Another mass shooting, this one clearly aimed at Black people and just as clearly mixing in some ugly white supremacy with easy-to-buy killing instruments.

Oh, and a young white male is the villain. Shocking!

Heaven forbid that anyone take any responsibility or that anything substantial will be done. America has "voted" as a society that these frequent mass killings are simply the price the nation must pay for, well, freedom. Abortions are just not "sporting," I guess, while gunning down adults and young children is part of our trade-off for being able to live as we wish.

Video game violence is not the root of the gun violence epidemic, but lonely young males pushing each other to more extreme expressions of violence are likely mixing game violence with the real world. 

America now possesses nearly half of all guns in the entire world, more than one gun per American. We are quite crazy, and we are paralyzed, unable to do anything to reduce gun violence, not to mention rising racist conspiracy theories. Hearts and prayers, everyone.

There is no one solution to be pursued, but there is a clear connection between the rise of FOX News and its increasingly racist underpinnings to at least consider one practical action: put pressure on Fox advertisers to simply spend their ad dollars elsewhere.

Fox may be home to America's most insidious media racists, but the owners of the network value money more than any ideology. No television network is immune to advertisers taking their dollars elsewhere. Forget freedom of speech. If the network starts losing money as advertisers flee, changes will occur. The worst voices will be silenced or modified. 

A TV network is not going to "stand on principal" once the principal threatens financial gains. The same may be true of entire countries.

McDonald's invested billions in Russia and is now selling its franchises, withdrawing its global branding, etc. Many other American corporations have already managed to do the same, at least for now. When in doubt, follow the money.

When corporations buy ad time for, say, the Tucker Carlson show on Fox, they are de facto endorsing his racist, radical views. Corporations can claim that they are doing whatever they can to reach potential customers, but even a highly rated show like Carlson's brings in about 3 million viewers per night. That is a significant number, but still is less than one percent of all Americans.

We need some sort of organization to help people keep tabs on companies that continue to keep the Fox opinion machine running. Then consumers can take action. 

I feel the same way about Twitter, BTW, despite it being dominated by liberal posters. If a large number of people deleted their accounts, the company's leadership would immediately take notice. I see that Musk is holding off on his purchase of Twitter until he is satisfied that their reported total users are not artificially inflated by "bots." 

We should find it quite appealing to consider undermining a multi-billionaire's purchase of Twitter by just not using the platform. Humans love to see the mighty brought low.

Twitter is a cesspool. But so is Facebook. And Fox News? Duh.

My quick research shows that Tucker Carlson already has very few sponsors left, but a wider boycott by American companies might get Fox executives thinking of their future.

Anything would be better than nothing at this point.

Writing and reading from a sense of abundance

Some nice sample sentences from recent papers, courtesy of Frank Bruni and his readers (who nominate their favorite sentences each week).

From Maureen Dowd’s New York Times column on the Supreme Court: “Samuel Alito’s antediluvian draft opinion is the Puritans’ greatest victory since they expelled Roger Williams from the Massachusetts Bay Colony.”

"Antediluvian" (original meaning "before the Biblical flood") now connotes "old and tired thinking," but helping students understand it combines that connotation with a bit of discussion about the flood, Noah, etc. You don't need to study the Bible to get the point -- and you might be able to use a context clue if you have some knowledge of early American history. But I was thinking I might need another five minutes just to fill in high school juniors about Puritans and Roger Williams. 

Bottom line: Dowd does not write for high school readers, but we can keep pushing those high school readers to expand their catalog of vocabulary and allusions (both historical and literary).

A sports description of note was found in Joe Drape’s vivid account of Rich Strike’s against-all-odds win in the Kentucky Derby. Drape described the winning burst of the winning steed, jockeyed by Sonny Leon, this way: “Leon started guiding his horse through the pack, zigzagging like someone late for work on a busy Manhattan sidewalk.”

You don't need to spend time in New York to understand maneuvering through a busy sidewalk.

There has been a lot written lately about Real Madrid's "magical soccer season." NYT sports writer Rory Smith wrote that it’s not “too florid, too ethereal, to suggest that Real Madrid does not so much beat teams at soccer as overwhelm them by harnessing some elemental force.” He went on to add, “At times, it resembles a form of alchemy, the transformation of a succession of base metals — a smattering of garlanded veterans, a couple of raw hopefuls, a coach with an expressive eyebrow and an easy charm, a team with no recognizable, cogent plan beyond a pervasive sense of its own destiny — into something precious.”

This extended description is over the top, which is not unusual for soccer writers. It's not a sport that fits into neatly timed pieces, and a large percentage of enjoyment for true fans is found in things beyond final scores, or scores at all -- which can be quite few. 

Soccer commentary often reads as poetry, and the top players create poetry with their actions on the pitch. This physical poetry happens throughout sports, of course, even in brutal American football, but perhaps it's all that time needing to be filled while teams battle for midfield position that allows for announcers to stretch their descriptive powers a bit.

A casual soccer fan such as myself might note that a team having no "recognizable, cogent plan" seems like what all soccer teams share. Goals can be quite sudden but often one team is far superior to another and still only wins by one goal... with that goal resulting from a long series of choices and mistakes and unrelenting pressure. Discrete plays are not part of the soccer experience, other than "set plays" and penalty kicks.

Even in this short passage, I would need to review vocabulary like "florid," "ethereal," "alchemy," "garlanded," and "cogent." Dedicated readers may have encountered all those words in various novels but none of those are words teens normally rely upon in daily conversations. 

We could also work on getting clues from context, as with the simple appositive "the transformation of a succession of base metals" supplying lots of help for "alchemy." Students would need a nudge to recognize "garlanded," I would think, as even the modern Olympics do not feature garlands placed on winners' heads. 

And a quick discussion about the root of "cogent" and a more common term like "recognize" would be worth a minute. 

When I was just starting as a teacher I would wonder how to fill a class period. Once I discovered that kids could learn a lot of vocabulary and content from simply analyzing some cool sentences or paragraphs, I wondered how I could possibly fit everything in each day.

It's so much better to have an overabundance of material.

Honestly, we just don't care that much about children

Baby formula shortages are in headlines across the nation, while the Supreme Court is prepping a decision that states will quickly use to "force" more births. 

I know these two news stories don't connect directly, but the timing is perfect... perfectly awful.

Also in the news lately are analyses that show how well America now treats its senior citizens (well, if you can overlook letting thousands of them die due to them being confined to homes) as opposed to the youngest Americans, particularly children.

In 2019, the 8.9% poverty rate among individuals aged 65 and older was lower than the 9.4% poverty rate among adults aged 18-64, and the 14.4% poverty rate among children under 18 years old. The pandemic may have made all those numbers a bit worse.

I would never claim that getting old is a cake walk, and everyone has their complaints, no matter their age. But we live in a country that is OK with one in every seven children living in poverty. That likely means they don't get enough good food, that they don't have important opportunities to read and learn, and that they are insecure most of the time in terms of housing, education, and nutrition.

The major reason seniors aren't in poverty is the combination of social security and Medicare, of course, not booming 401Ks and pensions. Neither of those social programs is perfect and the long-term financial support for both is in question. But the U.S. has created a sort of "floor" for our oldest citizens and that support pays off in high rates of voting among seniors and better lives for the retired. 

More people vote when they see a direct connection between the government and their ability to eat and pay rent and afford medicine, etc. Children can't vote, and maybe that is the main reason politicians don't spend much time developing programs to greatly reduce suffering of children. Seniors vote. They see clear cause and effect.

You would think that earning the votes of the young parents of those children would be an effective motivator for supportive laws but the birth rate is way down and those who are bearing children tend to be from lower income groups. Many young parents are too overwhelmed to follow politics or vote, so they can be safely ignored... and both parties bear some responsibility for this.

Just as the pandemic revealed all sorts of ugly truths about capitalism, the baby formula shortage is doing the same. Creaky supply lines. Concentration of ownership (there are only three companies that produce most of America's formula supply). Inefficient distribution systems. Greed of store owners and formula manufacturers. People hoarding formula, just as they did with toilet paper early in the pandemic. Strange government regulations that keep European formula from our shores merely due to some labeling issues (European formula is often superior to American, but those darn labels don't quite cut it). Families forced to drive for hours on the hunt for formula while gas continues to rise in cost... while the cost of oil is decreasing (but it's just too complicated for non-oil executives to understand, I guess). 

Owners of production continue to get richer. Rising hourly pay can't keep up with the corporate greed all around us, and people just get frustrated and angry.

They will likely vote for anyone who is not currently in power during the midterms this fall. Their reasoning may be as simple as "hey, it can't get worse, and I need to do SOMETHING to show my pain and anger."

Right now, it's hard to blame people for their irrational voting.

'One size fits all' solutions generate so much hypocrisy

Jeff Maurer’s guest essay in the New York Times seemed perfectly timed, as the semester is ending and I see continuing calls for "forgiving" some or all student debt racked up over the past few years.

My thought was that this effort seems to favor the upper middle class or even wealthy, since they tend to be the ones paying high-priced universities and piling up debts. 

The Democrats have been choosing "let's be quick and get that money out there NOW" over more targeted programs that would support Americans who really need help.

I felt the same way about those Covid stipends last year. Kathleen and I received $4,000 total, I guess to help us pay bills and in turn stimulate the economy. We are not wealthy but we certainly did not need that cash infusion. Some of it went toward a college fund, and that account has lost about 20 percent this year so far... so hooray for investing!

That four grand would have been far more effective in the hands of a couple with three kids making less than $50,000 a year. Are we claiming that smart people in our government can't figure out how to add some fine tuning to support during a crisis? 

Honestly, is it simply impossible to get support to those who really need it, like middle class parents with young children? Republicans have the same kinds of "slap a label on everyone," BTW, as with the abortion bans... with many states banning even rape victims or endangered mothers from the procedure. 

Republicans, of course, positively revel in their cruelty and harshness, while Democrats perhaps bend a bit too far the other direction. Printing money has produced some level of inflation, though the pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine may be even more important. But it all adds up.

Banning all abortions, for whatever reasons, guarantees hypocrisy as those "holier than thou" Republicans will carve out exceptions for their own daughters and wives. I have no firm evidence for that beyond common sense and decades of watching rich people break the rules. So many privileged people preach the sanctity of the heterosexual marriage until daughter Jenny comes out as a lesbian. Suddenly, the issue is much more gray. Who knew?

But shoveling money into accounts of people who really didn't need it is a symptom of what Maurer perceives to be the Democratic Party’s “image problem” focused on Democrats’ vulnerability to certain negative criticism about student loan forgiveness.

“Republicans,” he wrote, “will portray us as fancy little Fauntleroys ensconced in our twee nursery of upper-middle-class desires, deaf to the needs of the struggling masses.” He hypothesized: “The case study will be some tragic dweeb who took out $400,000 in loans to get a Ph.D. in intersectional puppet theory from Cosa Nostra Online College and who wrote his dissertation about how ‘Fraggle Rock’ is an allegory for the Franco-Prussian War.”

And he ended his lament with a plea to party leaders that they not “let the notion that Democrats are singularly focused on the needs of pampered, navel-gazing pipsqueaks who won’t drink coffee brewed using fewer than 26 steps be indelibly burned into people’s brains.” 

Was Maurer exaggerating for effect? Duh. But there is a truth at the heart of the jokes: The 87 percent of Americans who have NO student debt have serious -- and warranted -- doubts about whether their tax money should go to support people whose lives began on second base, if not third. 

Even an Iowa farmer with only a high school degree might think that helping a young person who could never have been able to afford further education without loans might fit the definition of charity and following the traditions of Christianity (which they all seem to claim). But giving tax money to society's "winners"? That just confirms their suspicion that the game is rigged.

Let's tamp down the hypocrisy from all sides, with everyone looking to score political points and few caring much about real people trying to live real lives.

BREAKING NEWS: there's an 'expert' opinion for every possibility

Monday was May 9, and that was the day many experts warned us to expect something dramatic or horrible or escalating... or something from Putin and his thugs. Nothing of note happened.

Elon Musk announced yesterday that once he is the sole owner of Twitter, Donald Trump will be welcomed back. Experts predict the end of the Republic and present all sorts of worst-case scenarios. When those things don't happen, no one will spend much time going back and reassessing those expert opinions. If they do happen, there will be more immediate concerns.

More experts proclaim the end of any ethical or moral authority for the Supreme Court after the politicized leak of an early draft of the abortion ruling. They may be right, but how would we measure the total decrease other than in poll takers quick responses to survey questions? And some experts predict a backlash that might help more progressive politicians while others predict that the backlash won't happen.

The pandemic will come roaring back this fall, according to several health experts, and other experts support learning to live with the ongoing virus issues. Perhaps both arguments will end up being true.

Stubborn inflation, particularly in gasoline prices, means Democrats are doomed in this fall's midterm elections. Much of this is due to people demanding Biden "fix" everything that bothers them, whether he possess that power or not. Some is due to a sort of "road rage" that some of our neighbors feel toward Democrats... merely because of their political party.

The thoroughly political and radical Supreme Court majority will continue to uphold the uniquely American "minority rule" traditions, where the Electoral College grants incredible power to obscure politicians from places like the Dakotas and Wyoming while states where the vast majority of Americans live are not fully represented.

Donald Trump is the kingmaker of the Republican Party, or he is not. It depends on the state and on the candidate, evidently. Experts are eager to chime in, of course.

Books about the Trump years continue to land regularly, sparking temporary outrage and lead to... nothing. 

Evangelical churches are in crisis, with some people looking for something a bit more "Christian" while others look for even wackier, more rabid pastors to feed their anger and fears. On the other hand, fewer and fewer go to church regularly. And even fewer bother to join the association or give money.

"Forewarned is forearmed," as the old saying goes, so I understand our tendency to speculate about the future and find ways to prepare ourselves for whatever may come. But how many times do our so-called experts provide any meaningful help for society, much less convince large numbers of people to act in "better" ways? 

If you live on your phone and spend hours each day in your chosen "bubble," how could you NOT be depressed, angry and pessimistic? No institution is doing well by people. No one can be trusted. The world is a giant conspiracy designed to harm us, for mysterious reasons. 

How could high school students not be angry, on some level, at least, and feel uncertain about what the future holds for them? 

Congratulations to educators, particularly media advisers, for simply hanging in there and doing their best with a "bad hand." 

I often wonder if we might all benefit from just keeping our nose to the grindstone, so to speak, doing our little bit each day to make our classrooms, communities, and world a tiny bit better. 

Do we really have much choice?

We can teach great writing one sentence at a time

Tip of the hat to Frank Bruni's weekly blog feature titled "For the Love of Sentences" for today's selection of recently published work that has been brought to his attention. Sharing small chunks of great writing is a great class starter or in-class modeling for young writers.

I used this sort of approach for AP Lang classes -- not just journalism courses -- and found that I could work on vocabulary development as well as syntax development... and even get kids thinking about current events and people in the news.

From a George Will column on Missouri Senator Josh Hawley: “Nimbly clambering aboard every passing bandwagon that can carry him to the Fox News greenroom, he treats the Senate as a mere steppingstone for his ascent to an office commensurate with his estimate of his talents.”

My quick analysis: Did we really need "nimbly"? We often talk about avoiding adverbs, but "clambering" could certainly mean clumsy or hurried. All rules need exceptions. Students need to know what a "bandwagon" means here (a rhetorical fallacy involving people joining just to join) and would need to know that a "greenroom" is a place for TV guests or theater actors to prepare before going on stage. "Commensurate" is a sophisticated way to say "equal to" and would not be a word most students use often. 

I also note that although this column rips Hawley, there is no blatant negative language here. Will leaves it up to readers to make inferences and he never "writes down" to a lower level.

To pivot to The New York Times, here’s Wesley Morris on the cosmetic signature of the basketball star Trae Young, who sports a “magnificent unsolved mystery” of a haircut. “I’m calling it a haircut. But that’s the thing about Young’s hair: cut where? How? This is hair so rich with paradoxical intrigue that a season of ‘Serial’ wouldn’t be unwarranted. It’s thin yet full, short and long, wet but also dry, seemingly ‘young buck’ despite seeming geriatric too, an optical illusion of barbering. There’s a fade, a part and bangs. It’s simply not a haircut. It’s a Michael Crichton novel.”

This would go in my collection of great descriptions, but it's also full of allusions both current and dated. Do students still read Crichton novels, with their convoluted plots and sometimes scifi themes? Are students familiar with podcasts like "Serial"? It is also fun to discuss the oxymorons in that list of paradoxes that all seem to apply to the athlete's unusual locks.

A class discussion of this would benefit from a photo of Young on a screen so the non-NBA fans can get a clearer view of what is being discussed.

Then there is the difficult sentence: "It's simply not a haircut." Word order could be discussed. What happens if we rewrite this as "It's not a simple haircut"? Or "It's not simply a haircut?" Or what about tightening to "It's not a haircut."? Is anything lost or gained?

NYT columnist Bret Stephens observed that Volodymyr Zelensky and the Ukrainian people “have reminded the rest of the free world that a liberal and democratic inheritance that is taken for granted by its citizens runs the risk of being taken at will by its enemies.” 

This sentence reminded me that freedoms are never guaranteed forever and that apathy tends to allow the zealots some room to cause trouble. This is true for freedom of speech, voting rights, being able to use the bathroom of choice, and so many other things students may take for granted.

Finally, In The Wall Street Journal, Jason Gay came out against Major League Baseball’s efforts to speed up extra-inning games: “Why does baseball need to be like everything else? Why must it cave to the modern attention span? Baseball is played without a clock. There’s no horn or buzzer or countdown. It is what it is. It ends when it ends, like a pizza, or a State of the Union speech.” 

I am not a fan of "it is what it is," which seems like a fad phrase that defies logical definition. "A rose is a rose is a rose," wrote Gertrude Stein in a poem, and it has forced literature students for many decades to struggle with teasing out meaning. And Lin-Manuel Miranda's famous, "Love is love is love is love" speech is constantly quoted. What if we simply deleted that sentence? Would anything be lost? Or is it part of the rhythm of the language?

The "kicker" is the final sentence, which references what is often thought of an example of long, meandering speech, the State of the Union address. After all, it is a report and could easily be shared with the nation as a sort of memorandum. Do we need all the pomp and circumstance involved?

Notice that I offer many questions and few answers. Answers are up to students here.

I don't know who said it, but I like it

Apologies if my taking last week off from this blog caused a disruption in your life. My life was overwhelmed by dozens of final white papers and technical reports and oral presentations (on video) as the semester wraps up. It's not over, as this is the actual finals week for both CSU and Metro... but the bulk of work has been completed. 

Not surprisingly, last week did not see any slow down in news and scandals and atrocities and all sorts of negative information. Maybe it's best not to return to all those things.

This week doesn't look calmer. So any hint of some way forward is welcome. Yesterday's sermon at church included a very cool quote from St. Augustine, the incredibly prolific writer (we have over 5 million words from him) who died about 430 CE. 

Here's the quote: “Hope has two beautiful daughters; their names are Anger and Courage. Anger at the way things are, and Courage to see that they do not remain as they are.”

It's a compelling view of how hope works (and hope was the main focus of the sermon) and I came home and did the quickest search online to see if I could learn more about this view, about Augustine, and about any context that might help me better understand.

And here's the thing: Augustine did not write this and no one really knows who did. I am relying, of course, on Augustine scholars who have combed his writing (in Latin) looking for where he might have written this. No scholars have found any versions of these words.

Well, that's disappointing, though I have no plans to steal any thunder from the minister who shared the quote or go down the rabbit hole of "fake quotes" -- there is a plague of them on social media.

After all, I like the sense of the quote, though it would be nice to have the added ethos that referring to one of the most famous thinkers in history on our side. In fact, I'm going to use the quote, whatever its true origins, as the starting point of a sort of pep talk for high school media students that I am developing.

The pandemic has been tough on everyone, but young people in particular, as far as I can tell. They lost a sense of connection and purpose. They lost an expectation of steady progress and a sense of safety. 

Lots of classroom teachers are noting a growing apathy, an acceptance of a grim fate and a "less than" future among students. It's not everyone. Nothing ever is. But the teachers themselves often share some of this idea of their lives being a bit less than they hoped and about wondering whether there is a clear point to this whole education exercise.

It sounds healthy to me to be OK with some righteous anger. The related step of using courage to try to make some changes can be what provides us all with the energy and purpose that keeps the anger from turning to despair and lack of hope.

Once the hope is gone, the progress is gone.