Dan Erwin

So What Does an Eight-Year-Old, Third Grader Think of Remote Learning?

The Times had a number of brief statements from kids of different ages regarding school in the covid-19 era. 

My favorite among the entire bunch was this of Lucas Fonte, 8, of Miami. 

Lucas: I want to go to the school. I don’t like working at home. My mom is not a very good teacher. Last year in second grade, when I didn’t understand something my teacher wasn’t there, and my mom didn’t know how to explain it to me.

I’m going to miss my friends, I liked taking the bus and lunch time. Sometimes they’d give us Doritos or ice cream, stuff my mom wouldn’t pack.

I don’t like doing things on virtual school, like dividing. It’s super hard to understand on virtual school. Last year the teacher would go through all the kids and ask them a question so the other kids, we all had to sit there waiting for our turn. It’s really boring... 

Quotation of the Week: David Brooks

There will always be moral fervor on campus. Right now that moral fervor is structured by those who seek the innocent purity of the vulnerable victim. Another and more mature moral fervor would be structured by the classic ideal of the worldly philosopher, by the desire to confront not hide from what you fear, but to engage the complexity of the world, and to know that sometimes the way to wisdom involves hurt feelings, tolerating difference and facing hard truths.
    --David Brooks, NYTimes, 6/1/2015

Clearly, Brooks has inherited the mantle of national thought leader. Few deal with conflicting ideas as easily, nor make sense...

Quote of the Week: Robert Shiller, Nobel Prize Winner

 It's like having a good friend who is a devout believer in another religion. You can learn a lot from a friend like that, even if you don't pray in his church.
    --Robert Shiller

Shiller's statement is about his friend Eugene Fama of the efficient-market theory, of whom Shiller is a critic.

I'm interested in the truthfulness of the analogy. I've always questioned the Fundamentalist approach to Jesus "only." Although a piece of my background was in an evangelical seminary, I'd studied Islam in the Koran and Judaism. The bias to apologetics, a defensive of the so-called Christian gospel, was pervasive. But from today's perspective, it's clear I didn't really move beyond that stupid bias until June of 1987 when youngest graduated from Barnard College. Like the dutiful "religious" that I was at that time, my wife and I attended the Columbia University baccalaureate service.

I don't remember who spoke, probably a college chaplain. But I do remember the readings by three students. One was a Muslim from the Koran, another a Jew from the Old Testament and the third a Christian from the New Testament. They all read what was essentially the same text with the same message, but from their own scripture.

I wasn't especially surprised, but I saw the similarities of the great faiths laid out in front of me. Growing up in the Detroit area, I was rather open to ethnic diversity, but hadn't stared as closely at religious diversity and had no Muslim friends. Thankfully, the world--and my world--has changed drastically since then. It has become all the more obvious that the trajectory of the biblical tradition is in the direction of inclusion. I celebrate that fact.

So Gene Fama and Bob Shiller have a lot more in common that most might think. "He collects data and he shares it and I use it all the time, and I use many of his theories. Not all of them, of course, but he's a very good guy."

Quotation of the Week: Ellen Goodman

Ellen Goodman is one of the formidable journalists of the past thirty years.  A leading sydicated columnist and Pulitzer winner, Goodman spends more of her time writing about social change in America. Intriguingly, she refuses to call herself a pundit.  The following was from a recent lecture at the Milton Academy in Massachusetts.

Life is not a straight line; you will continually be changing while you prepare yourself at the same time.  We need to remember the way real life works.  You make plans, you have accidents; you move straight ahead, you take a detour; you screw up, you recover; you try hard, you get lucky; you carefully make a five-year plan, you succeed because you improvise.  You keep on proposing and recomposing your life. 

    --Ellen Goodman

Declarations like this are especially useful because they can work to create a fundamental perspective on life.  The Hollywood view that the planned life moves thoughtfully onward without setbacks can be very debilitating.  Yet, again and again I meet people who are stymied because life didn't work out the way they'd hoped.  The actual problem was that they were stymied because they'd developed highly unrealistic expectations and were cornered when life didn't make them possible.

Experience tells me that accepting a reality such as Goodman's won't take place in the lives of a huge majority of people until they are forced to do so.  Yet Goodman's "journey" is both liberating and realistic. Well, I'm probably preaching to the choir. 

Quotation of the Week: Paul Krugman

Today's column by Krugman was all about Paul Ryan's Republican response to Obama's State of the Union.  Rather, it was really about Mr. Ryan's errors.  Since Ryan did his best to make his audience believe that under Obama the US is heading for a Greek, Irish, UK and the rest of Europe's financial catastrophe.  Thus, Mr. Krugman's statement about what really happened to Ireland.

The lesson of Ireland doesn't say "cut spending nor, or bad things will happen"; it says that balanced budgets won't protect you from crisis if you don't effectively regulate your banks--a point made in the newly released report of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which concludes that "30 years of deregulation and reliance on self-regulation" helped create our own catastrophe.

        Paul Krugman, NYTimes, January 28, 2011

Quotation of the Day: Paul Gewirtz, Yale Law School

Joe Klein had an insightful article in the January 24, Time, on the subject of arms and the unbalanced. Klein inveighed against the excesses of gun control.  I could only cynically muse, doesn't he know that the arms business (the umbrella industry for guns) is highly profitable?  And what right-minded capitalist would inveigh against a highly profitable business?  FYI: Statistics from 2006 indicate that the arms business of the top 100 arms producing companies amounted to $316 billion.  It is part of what President Eisenhower called the military-industrial-congressional complex.

Looking at that issue and a number of others from a more intelligent perspective, here's one law prof's take on the matter.

    Our various legal rules, taken together, may be producing a society in which liberty is bordering on disorder.

As Klein points out, the libertarian tendency (a focus on the individual's rights) goes back all the way to the Whiskey Rebellion in the 1790s--that excise tax forced on farmers by East Coast elites.  It's also obvious that our liberties must be balanced against any civilized society's need fro behavioral constraints, all agreed upon by the consent of the government.  I think there's little doubt that not only the shootings, but also the verbal violence of the media point in the same direction. Sounds to me like it's time to reassess the excessive liberties we've granted ourselves in the past 25 years.

Quotation of the Week: Javier Bardem

Javier Bardem, the "hot" Spanish actor of "Eat, Pray, Love," comes from an acting family.  He is, as Sunday's NYTimes says, an actor who builds his roles.  

To get to the art, one must work very hard.  Art doesn't exist just as talent.  It exists as effort, work and judgment.

        --Javier Bardem, NYTimes, in The Actor as Architect of a Role, by Larry Rohter

Rohter's fascinating essay takes the perspective of actors as architects.  The comparison is intriguing, emphasizing the process of thoughtful, detailed and systematic development.  What's more intriguing is that growing up as the son of a great actress, he learned the value of deliberate practice from his mother at an early age.  When his mother was learning a character, Bardem would read the other characters to her.  He was fascinated listening to her.  She'd begin to speak, thenstop and correct herself.  Go back to the beginning, and go over and over the same process until she had control of the role, and then "she would fly." 

Bardem creates the character like an architect builds a building: drawing the plans, laying the foundation, and gradually building up.  Once this is complete, Bardem says, then you decide on the walls, the materials and the colors.  Bardem, in spite of his great success, continues to work with an acting coach, gaining the insight and feedback that are necessary for expertise.

How Bardem creates a character and architects build buildings is identical to what all expertise requires.  In a number of blogs on deliberate practice, I emphasize the same details.  In my blog, on changing your personality, deliberate practice includes five phases:

• Crystallization of discontent
• Extensive practice,  practice, practice
• Mentoring and coaching
• Adaptation to feedback
• Integration of behaviors

Sounds just like Bardem?  The model works for all of us.

 

Quotation of the Week: Dmitri Medvedev

There are people in America who are sympathetic to the 'reset' (of the New Start Treaty).  There are others who shudder at the thought of it and think all evil is concentrated in the Russian Federation.  This is just democracy at work.  Still, I think American society and its establishment will have enough tact and self-control to continue this path.             

            Russian President, Dmitri Medvedev

Russia's President called the New Start treaty a cornerstone of security, speaking warmly of President Obama and the just ratified treaty.  

Medvedev's awareness of the American political scene cannot be but helpful to us.  On the one hand, we should be grateful for knowledgeable statement such as this.  On the other hand, the differences between that world and its government need not blind us.  Smart policy, such as the New Start treaty, is clearly a step forward.  Astute congressional members are aware that moves in the direction of Russian rapprochement need not imply naivete, no matter what the history of relationships.

Quotation of the Week: What the Top Ten Movies Reveal About Us

Sunday's Times had a listing of the top ten movies of 2010, but all under the rubric of what these movies reveal about us.  The quote which summarizes much of the article is this:

"Inside Job," a comprehensive investigation into the causes of the 2008 financial crisis, leaves you with the uncomfortable realization that greed, when allowed to run rampant, triumphs every other human trait. . . . Several power brokers who agreed to appear in the film are actually offended when asked about their possible culpability. 

Thankfully, not all of the so-called top ten films of 2010 are about greed.  Here's the list for your perusal.

1. The social network
2. Inside job
3. Inception
4. Carlos
5. Another year
6. Vincere
7. White material
8. The kids are all right
9. True grit
10. My dog tulip

Well, what do you think? 

Quotation of the Week: On Julian Assange and WikiLeaks

Given the recent WikiLeaks, I want to surface a realistic understanding of the relationship between diplomacy and transparency with a quote from a 17th century British ambassador to Venice:

    A diplomat is an honest man sent abroad to lie for his country.

In a Washington Post op/ed, Throw the Book at WikiLeaks, Charles Krauthammer does an excellent job of explaining the damage done by WikiLeaks.  He calls the leak sabotage, arguing from a number of perspectives.  He points out that WikiLeaks damage our war-fighting capacity, are a blow to our ability to collect information, and make the U.S. look very bad.

You can almost sort levels of journalistic responsibility by how the various members of the media reported on the WikiLeaks.  Washington Post, NY Times, LA Times and the DesMoines Register, among our truly great newspapers, took a far more nuanced perspective.  Ha'aretz, the leading Israeli news media, was unsurprisingly cautious.  Even the Wall Street Journal was very careful in its writing, although the Journal's sister medium, Fox News, took the Leaks as an opportunity to badmouth government and the Democrats. 

My suspicion is that WikiLeaks may well be the nail in the coffin of transparency.  Thirty years ago when I was a faculty member at a theological seminary, transparency in psychological training was viewed as an absolute necessity in human relations.  But just a couple years ago, I had a drink with a former psych colleague of mine, and he referred to transparency as the "naivete" which he espoused early in his career.

Secrecy and deception are an inevitable, if not an occasional necessity, in all human relations.  And not just in diplomacy or negotiation.  No serious political compromise, corporate merger, complicated legal settlement, negotiation or even healthy human relationship could ever be managed without a reliable level of confidentiality and secrecy.  Even in the most intimate of human relationships, complete transparency is not always the best long term strategy for a healthy relationship.  Now that my beloved wife is beset with Alzheimer's, her occasional defensiveness becomes obvious, and our daughters and I chuckle about it openly, which reflects the acknowledged admission of its existence.  It's clear that our daughters and I have been aware of that defensiveness for years, but no longer need to keep it confidential.  My own attitude is that openly discussing that defensiveness was not especially useful in relations with my kids prior to her illness.  Much of our intimate relations are like that.  And that's a strength.  Besides, there's intriguing research that indicates that the best marriages survive because of the male's deference to his spouse.  I've followed that rule for years and found deference, confidentiality and secrecy, even though obvious, very useful strategies for a rich relationship. 

After all, as research has shown, lying is ubiquitous in the brain.  Max Bazerman and his Harvard colleagues' research has made clear that we all lie.  And though they believe it not to be especially so, they admit to its occasional usefulness.  So there are plenty of occasions in which transparency is not a useful strategy.  My own attitude is that the huge majority of the time truth-telling is the route to go.  For example, I despise sucking up and distrust those who do.  I've worked diligently to gain my reputation as a straight shooter.  But white lies, protective lying, and diplomatic lying are not only useful strategies, but can be a form of highly liberating street smarts.

Yeah.  I've pushed the envelope on this.  But largely to make the point that transparecy can be destructive.  The rest of the time, you'll get kudos for authenticity. And never forget that deception and lying require a lot of energy.  Energy that sometimes can be better used.