Tricotomania and more

George Monbiot provides a very good summary of everything I think of contemporary politics in his recent piece in the Guardian.

During our last federal election, I had quipped that it didn’t matter who you voted for because the conservatives had already won. A few months later, I discovered that one of my friends had misunderstood me to have believed that a Conservative victory (not the capitalization, indicating a specific political party) was a foregone conclusion. What I meant was more like what Monbiot says in the linked article.

Despite my normal tendency towards optimism, I’m not so sure that he is right that it is sowing the seeds of its own destruction.

Because this sort of debate in the US tends to quickly dissolve into a strict dichotomy between Soviet style state socialism and US style neoliberalism, I will state for the record that I’m not a fan of either. And I don’t think they are the only choices.What I’d really like to hear is imaginative, creative thoughts on where we might go and what a better system might look like, even if we don’t have all the pieces in place or have no idea how we get there from here.

This interesting article in the Globe and Mail wonders why we are still teaching in schools.

But the researcher quoted, Mohamed Ally, director of the Centre for Computing and Information Systems at Athabasca University, is mainly enamored with technology. He is still caught in a paradigm of delivering knowledge/education in the same ways, just using newer technologies than blackboards and textbooks. He is still in thrall to tests. He still thinks schools perform important "social interaction" functions.

Here are two statements that jumped out at me.

Students continue to work together for much-needed social interaction,
but advance according to outcome-based models rather than the age-based
cohorts of Grades 1, 2, 3, etc.

In the classroom, their desks are arranged in clusters to foster
peer-to-peer and group problem-solving through a variety of tools like
Smart Boards and LCD screens.

Neither of these requires the fancy technology. The latter is common practice in British school rooms and works really well with paper based instructional materials. In fact, one of the things Mat was amazed by (having been educated his whole life in Britain) was that kids were in rows in school here.

And we could organize schools so that students did advance on outcome based models, even differentially by subject and still work in groups (age based, or in multi-age groups). That is an organizational issue, NOT a technology issue.

Ally does have one thing right, though.

The biggest wall we have to knock down is the attitude of the teachers and some of the faculty

Not to mention administrators and publishing companies and a whole lot of other folks that have a stake in the system as it is. (I think maybe he needs a few sociologists on his team.)

Edited to add (because I only read this after I’d posted: RedNeck Mother has a summary of a talk Gatto gave at a conference in Texas yesterday that hits some of the key reasons why technology is not the answer.

I submitted that Joan of Arc post to the Carnival of Children’s Literature. Looks like there is a lot of good stuff to read over there. 

Does anyone have any experience with various desk top publishing programs? Tigger is making a book magazine (with reviews, games related to the books reviewed, etc.) to circulate amongst her friends. We’ve laid out this issue in Word but I think it might be a good idea to have something more suited to the purpose. It would need to be something she could learn how to use. And it has to run on a Mac.

Thanks.

Our Eurail passes came today. Along with a guide. Among other things in the guide there is a list of famously scenic train journeys. One of these goes from Koblenz to Trier and that seemed a real possibility for Tigger and I while Mat is toiling in the archives of the Climate Change Secretariat in Bonn. So I looked up Trier in the Lonely Planet guide to Germany and our timing seems to be rather good.

"In 2007 the Luxembourg region, including Trier, will serve as a European Capital of Culture. Local events include a major exhibition held from June to November, on the Roman emperor Constantine the Great (AD 275-337) and his role in European history, to be heald at the city’s leading museums."

I guess it’s a good thing I had already decided to pack the Gombrich.

So while I was trawling around looking for Spanish Flu resources (I’ve updated that last post with a few links), I discovered that the National Library and Archives has a whole exhibition on Canada and WWI (including material on the Spanish Flu epidemic). I think this might be handy.

The links on that site include one to the art in the collection of the War museum. This might provide an interesting link for Tigger between history and art.

The links to the Memory Project were a bit weird but I finally got there.

From the reviews I read, I thought that When Plague Strikes: The Black Death, Smallpox, AIDS by James Cross Giblin might be a good companion to Deborah Ellis In the Company of Fools. I have started reading it and I’m not sure that this particular plan is the right one.

I do like the book, but it really is more history of health and medicine. I think that will be a good thing to look at, and certainly how we compare different events in different historical periods to draw conclusions about big questions like how we deal with epidemics/pandemics is a worthwhile intellectual project. I just don’t think that is what I want to do this autumn.

Gilbin’s writing style is very engaging and the book is probably a middle-school level. There are no photographs or other illustrations and it might need to be combined with other sources that are more visual (though visuals of epidemics are maybe not that enticing).

He also deals well with the way that societies use scapegoats to deal with fear of the unknown. There are important links here to persecution of Jews in the Middle Ages, for example, that might fit into a broader theme around discrimination, racism, etc. Giblin manages to retain the complexity of these issues though, indicating that we cannot generalize about the groups doing the discriminating either.

I’ve only read the beginning part but I think there will also be treatment of the rise of science and the effect of scientific method on medicine.

Again, this is a good book. I plan to use it. But it does not suit my present purposes. There seem to be copies available from Book Closeouts though (who ship from a Canadian warehouse) so I might purchase a copy anyway.

When I get thinking about how I’ll use it, I will also check out An American Plague by Jim Murphy, which talks about the Yellow Fever epidemic in the US in 1793. I wonder if that has interesting links to the American Revolution/War of Independence?

I might also look around and see if there is anything about the Spanish flu epidemic immediately following WWI. The latter has some interesting characteristics, including hitting the healthiest people hardest (most infectious diseases disproportionately affect the very young, the very old, and the immuno-suppressed).

Edited to add: I have discovered this lesson plan on the flu which has a good reading list on it. I need to keep the link so I can investigate those books later. The Aronson is my public library system. But I am also glad to see a Karen Hesse book as we have enjoyed 2 of her historical novels (Out of the Dust and Stowaway). If anyone knows of a specifically Canadian book for this age group, I’d love to hear about it.

I found one. If I Die Before I Wake in the Dear Canada series.

Another book I picked up was In the Trenches in World War I by Adam Hibbert. This is from a series called On the Front Line published by Raintree. It is an excellent book particularly for visual learners. There are lots of visuals as well as marginal notes that define important terms. The book covers life as a soldier, the main events of WWI, through to the treaty. It does not cover over the nasty bits (this is war, and there was chemical warfare), but it doesn’t exaggerate or glorify, either. It includes a timeline, a book list for further reading, organizations that might have useful information, and a glossary.

One real advantage of this book is that while published by an American publisher, it doesn’t focus solely on the American role in the war. In particular, significant attention is given to Australian involvement. Some attention is paid to the Eastern front. Southern Hemisphere folks might want to look at this one.

I’ve decided not to use this book at the moment, though we might look at it when we return. I have a couple of books that we will use for our study of WWI and I actually want to focus on the significance for Canadian history. Neither of us is much interested in military history as such. But we will probably return to the topic in future, and being able to set it in a wider context is also important.

I have taken out some of those books I found to have a look at them. I thought I’d write down my thoughts now so that I can find them when I need them. If this is also of use to others, that’s an added bonus.

Something Out of Nothing: Marie Curie and Radium by Carla Kllough McClafferty looks like a potentially useful book. It is a detailed biography of Marie’s life that also encompasses a history of the uses of radium. The text is fine for Tigger (and is probably a middle-school level, to the extent that I can judge these things). There are some photos but it is rather text heavy. This is probably not Tigger’s preference for style of book but it would probably be a good accompaniment to another source with more visuals.

In that sense it is like the biography of van Gogh that we read some of but not all of. I’m not sure how interested Tigger is in the early life material and maybe focusing on the chapters that directly engage with the science will be how we use it.

It is not something I think we want to take with us for the Europe trip. I do want to keep it in mind for future use, especially since history is a good way to engage Tigger in new topics.

A couple of years ago, at my uncle’s 80th birthday party, I discovered that even the drag queens in my family don’t wear high heels if they can help it. The phrase "women in sensible shoes" is obviously made for us. As far as I know there is only one drag queen in my family (and he may be getting enough proper acting jobs nowadays and not doing that). But those friends of mine who have tried to tempt me with more "feminine" footwear laughed about this.

This year, when I went for my mother’s 80th, I got my aunt to teach me how to can peaches. I figure it makes sense to can them where they grow and then transport them. She cans them the same way my grandmother did them. Basically, scald the peaches, peel and pit (cut up, cut out any bad spots, etc.). Boil up sugar syrup (my aunt did 1 cup sugar to 4 cups water; clearly we are not from the South). Put peaches in syrup, return to the boil. Meanwhile, have the jars and lids bubbling away in a pot of water. When the peaches are ready fill the jars (she wore rubber gloves and just picked up the jars out of the boiling water, scooping peaches and juice in with a 1 cup measure), use an ordinary dinner knife to get the bubbles out, top up with syrup. Put the lids on tight. Wipe and turn upside down on the counter. She had an aluminum pie plate to set the jar in while filling and all the excess syrup got poured back into the pan.

You’ll note we didn’t put the filled jars back in boiling water. My grandmother did this for years. My aunt is now 85. I am not aware of any cases of botulism so I’m taking that as enough evidence that this is good enough.

My aunt used to make chili sauce (a misnomer since it doesn’t have chili in it. It’s a tomato relish.). She says she didn’t even sterilize the jars, just swish them with boiling water and fill. She figured the vinegar would deal with any bugs. Again, no evidence to the contrary.

Clearly the USDA and probably whatever the Canadian equivalent is are going nuts at the thought. But I’m kind of happy to know that my instincts are not way off the map.

Also, I made chutney yesterday and both sterilized the jars and put the filled jars in boiling water for about 10 minutes afterwards.