More substitution considerations

So I did something at work this week that I have not done in 7 years...I used the faculty restroom. I've just been holding it in all these years because I don't like to use restrooms away from home and I already feel uncomfortable in random schools all the time. It was glorious. I had been drinking plenty of water and even though I went several times at home before I had to leave, I had to go at school, too. I grew more uncomfortable as the day went on. On my lunch break, I went for it. I only had one class left after that but it was remarkable how much more comfortable I felt. I could stand or sit or walk around. However, I had two more days of working at the same school so I've proceeded to stop drinking any water because I sure don't want to do that again.

I've been subbing for the same teacher all week. Today's assignment in all classes was for everybody to pair up and have a documented mini debate about women's suffrage. One person had to be for it and one person had to be against it, both using arguments from this time period. From an educational standpoint, this was a fantastic assignment! I saw students immediately engage and behavior problems disappeared.

I did a little research of my own and was shocked to find out that Massachusetts was the first state that tried to pass a measure to allow women to vote and 200 women came out to protest-it never passed. I have always pictured men protesting women voters but much of the early opposition came more from women, at least publicly. For the downside, this assignment posed some ethical questions as the day went on. One reflective student seemed frustrated all during class and said to another student, "This is a dumb assignment. It just pits the boys and girls against each other. No girl today will say women shouldn't vote and no guys are going to bend over backwards to defend women's rights."

I heard other comments such as, "This is just a way to divide us more" and in a few classes, I kept hearing VERY sexist remarks. It was in groups of guys and they'd support and encourage each other. Girls glared or whispered to their girl friends that they hope he never has a wife or daughters but were not very loud about their disgust. I mediated as best I could and found myself saying that I hope a lot of what I was hearing was for the sake of the assignment and would not be a part of life outside of the classroom today.

There were people who broke the molds. There were a few boys during the day that DID battle for women's rights to vote and they were vocal and sometimes challenged some of the sexist remarks that were said. Some girls did take the side against women voting and I heard a lot of different reasons, including, "I don't even care about any of this. I wouldn't put a lot of energy into changing it one way or another." People are certainly entitled to feel that way, men or women. This is just a situation that makes me question where the balance lies. It was an assignment that helped people engage more but was what they were learning helpful? Should there be assignments that focus on gender or do those just divide us more? I'm not sure what the answers are.

The flaws of Darwin

I read the book Groupthink by Christopher Booker. I didn't agree with everything in it but the more I thought about his ideas and my experiences, many of his writings were more accurate than I first wanted to recognize.

He's clearly against organized religion and I belong to one but groupthink does affect our religion, even if that doesn't interfere wholly with the tenets of belief. Groupthink does contribute problems even to religion. It contributes problems to educational institutions as well, no matter how great the ideals one might be founded on are.

One of my favorite parts of the book deals with Darwin's theory of evolution. Darwin himself suggested there were four problems with his theory that could cause him to concede he was wrong. They were: 1. The absence of 'intermediate forms' (Darwin found no fossils that show transitional stages of one form of life evolving into another. Darwin hoped if more fossils were found, this could be laid to rest but this hasn't completely happened, although there are some scientific communities that suggest there ARE more transitional fossils. Different groups are defining transitional fossils with variations that make it hard to draw definite conclusions).

2. Evolutionary leaps or the appearance of complex organs (These are organs in which all the parts must work interdependently for them to function efficiently. Again, Darwin hoped with more fossil discoveries, this could be addressed but it's still questionable if it really has been.),

3. The compound eye as a particular example (Darwin said that "to suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances..could have been formed by natural selection seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree." Darwin thought that he just didn't understand natural selection well enough to explain this.)

and 4. The Cambrian explosion (Darwin can't explain, especially through the gradual process of evolution, how there are only 3 simple animal phyla pre-Cambrian times and then at least 26 animal phyla during the Cambrian period but in the half a billion years since, only 4 more animal phyla have been added. Where did all of the new phyla come from and how did they evolve into the complexities of creatures on the earth? Darwin thought there would be more fossils deeper in the earth that could later explain this but it hasn't happened.).

In spite of these flaws, which I have never heard of being discussed in school, people have embraced this theory of evolution so strongly that anybody who disagrees or even asks questions is discredited by the scientific community. In 1993, a group of scientists got together in California (including Dean Kenyon). They had all concluded through their own studies that natural selection could not explain many things about our world. There is evidence of information of a logical structure or some form of intelligence contributing to much of what was occurring. This was considered the early part of 'intelligent design.' It was not relgious. It was entirely science-based. In 1996 the biochemist Michael Behe used the phrase 'irreducible complexity and published supporting information in the book Darwin's Black Box.

This included scientific arguments for intelligent design and some US newspapers gave positive reviews but many others were dismissive and claimed 'intelligent design' was just trying to smuggle in a religious explanation for evolution, although no religious ideas or views were suggested in the book. At this point Darwinians lumped intelligent design ideas in with 'creationism', grouped up with the ACLU to sue to keep this from public schools. The judge said this was a way to teach disguised religion and it should never be taught in schools. The ironic conclusion to these events is that by banning the scientific ideas of intelligent design, calling them religious in nature when they were strictly scientific, now those studying evolution must only come to believe it by taking giant leaps of faith

because that theory as it stood contained huge holes and gaps that could not be explained.

The Theatre Kids

I didn't get involved at all with theatre when I was in school. Sometimes the kids involved were labeled weird or dramatic. None of that really bothered me and I never teased anybody in theatre. It's more that it was just kind of a foreign thing to me. There was nothing that led me in that direction. As an adult, I kind of see the theatre kids with fresh eyes and think that I would have fit in there. It is a warm, welcoming, inviting place for all, free of judgment and bursting with creativity. I substituted a theatre class on Thursday and just want to say that it was AMAZING (emphasis on the zing)!!!

I keep thinking back to all the little things of the day. Each class had different improv exercises they worked on. The last class was doing half-life and a character emerged, Cleveland the Cow. "I'm Cleveland the Cow..." As we rotated through different exercises-onion, freeze, interpreter, hitchhiker and machine, Cleveland the Cow kept having a front and center roll. A plot began to develop. Carter the Caterpillar came on the scene and the two of them had a budding but school-appropriate romance brewing. The students were getting very creative with both the ways they incorporated Cleveland and Carter as well as the unfolding of a story of these creatures. When the student in charge for the day was exasperated about the overuse of Cleveland the Cow, students adapted and started saying, they were calling from Cleveland (in interpreter) or going to Cleveland in hitchhiker. As time went on, the students came up with a plan. First of all they would dress up like their teacher for his return next week. Also, they would refer to Cleveland and Carter but they would act like it's a popular show on TV and they would bring it up and talk about it a lot to see if the teacher catches on and how he responds. They panicked and asked if I was going to be able to keep the secret. Creative students were thinking of constructive and healthy ways to have fun and I had a blooming opportunity to destroy everything...but how does that reward healthy creativity? I thought they had a brilliant plan that endeared me to those students. I wish I could be a fly on the wall in that class on Monday. I would love to see everything unfold. If this is how one day in theatre goes, what would a whole year there look like?

Passion Project Community

I remembered something I had wanted to write about. Last year during an hour & a half long drive in the car, my kids started asking each other this: if you were in charge of creating a world or community, how would you do it? What would the rules be? What would the living arrangements be? What would the consequences be if somebody didn't follow the rules? How would you rehabilitate people with problems? They covered a variety of ideas with this. As somebody would present their ideas, the other kids would ask for more information about certain aspects or reveal how the plan might not go as smoothly as you would think. Based on this, we heard plans get revised and more solutions were considered. Each of our kids had some ideas that were different and some that were the same. It got pretty interesting and I felt like it was a proud mom moment. I LOVED hearing my kids have this discussion unprovoked in the back of the car!

Eventually, my daughter asked me my thoughts on this and I had recently come across beautiful ideas in the book The Cleansing of America by W. Cleon Skousen. Some of the ideas are based on the Founding Fathers, particularly Thomas Jefferson's views. Basically, the first thing is to take inventory of the people. How many families are there? Anybody married is a family. If you're an adult but not yet married, you would be considered part of your parents' family until marriage. (Of course this is where I branch off a litle. I'm okay with adults being counted as part of the parents' family but would also advocate some space and independence for them. Maybe they live on the same property but in their own structure, etc. Putting them together would be for support purposes but they should also be aptly considered viable and independent to the extent they desire.) Figure out how to get good leadership in place. The example here is that every 10 adults pick somebody to represent them. Every 50 adults pick somebody to represent them. Every 100 adults, pick somebody to represent them. Out of 600,000 adults (such as in Moses' time and according to what's understood about this system then), there would be 78,000 representatives. 1 rep per 10= 60,000, 1 rep per 50=12,000 more, 1 rep per 100=6,000 more for a total of 78,000 reps. That really helps represent everybody's true interest. Divide people into communities of 100 adults and allow them as much opportunity as possible to self-govern. Public lands get divided so that every adult has their own adequate and equal space. Each of these communities would develop their own schools, their own militia, their own justice situation, their own welfare program, their own roads, their own police, their own jury selection system, their own town hall and elections. When there is a close-knit group like this and somebody in the community starts to struggle, a lot of care and effort will be put into helping that person. It becomes a situation where everybody is really looking out for everybody else. Thomas Jefferson's version of this is called a ward republic.

Idealistically, this is a beautiful proposal. As you dive in, it gets more complicated. How do you keep this system in place, particularly as communities have children that turn into adults and grow? Do you let the community of 100 turn into whatever it ends up as when everybody there grows up or do you constantly re-figure the communities to max out at 100? There are pros and cons to both ideas. What if people don't comply with the system of representation? What if communities start to compete and/or corrupt themselves or others? This, is of course, the problem with every idea that seems good as an ideal but it seems flawed when put into practice. However, this is the basic idea for a possible way to set up a community that includes local control, good representation, and neighbors really looking out for each other.

Now shift to this week. My daughter and I were out and we got into a discussion about ideal communities again. I brought up the idea of a place where the community let everybody in society pursue what they're passionate about for a year when they turn 20 and supports them. Give everybody reasonable resources to pursue their passion and see how much it would change society. A passion project is a piece of work or an endeavor that someone gets involved in because they love it or feel it is very good and important, not in order to make money. It demonstrates your initiative, creativity, determination, and personal values and interests. It should be something that would inspire and excite you. Some examples include starting a non-profit charity, small business, or blog, building an online community around an issue, doing independent research, writing a book, or making a film. Because of the idea that something is created and it revolves around what matters to somebody, it's likely to contribute to the building up of a society in tangible and intangible ways.

My daughter talked to me about the two ideas that she'd be torn between (making a docu-series that covers social issues she's concerned about or creating a tiny house community that offers up solutions for the current housing crisis). We talked through lots of details and then another idea hit me. What if you could also do another year of pursuing a passion when you turn 50? Sometimes when you're 20, there's a lot about life you don't know about. By 50, you might have learned about things you never even knew existed when you're 20 so you should get another chance to pursue something then. This would keep people's vitality, too, at an age often associated with burnout. Plus, I think many 50 year-olds could do things that would really affect the community for good and this goodness would help the community embrace an older part of society more and realize their value. This is all just ideals, not real day-to-day life but it was fun to think about and fun to talk about.

Little Tidbits

These are some of the things on my mind these days: 1)I'M SURPRISED I HAVE ANY FRIENDS...I try my best to be a kind and friendly person and yet there are times when I see myself in ways that I think others might see me and I'm surprised I have any friends.

Last Friday night, we met up with a bunch of friends from the neighborhood for a somewhat spontaneous get-together. The text had said there might be some volleyball, some card games, some board games. I've never gone to this particular kind of thing before so I interpreted it as you could play volleyball or you could play other things. We showed up and everybody was just playing volleyball and pressuring us to play. My son & hubbie were happy to play. They did great. I DON'T play volleyball. I've tried again and again. I have years of attempts. I played on a church team as a youth. I played in elementary, middle school, and high school (not on the school team, just playing regularly as an activity to do). I played a little after getting married. I have practiced with my boys in the last few years and I would still do that a little because it's meaningful to them but by this point in time, I don't dislike volleyball because I haven't tried enough. I dislike it because I genuinely dislike it and I've had enough experience to know.

I said, "Oh, I'm here to be a cheerleader" and tried to say no graciously. Some neighbors accepted that and went about their way but some were VERY pressuring. As I overthought this later (which I'm great at by the way), I realized that over the years, this isn't the first thing I've hesitated to participate in with some of these neighbors. There are some games I have offered to observe instead of play over the years at their homes or on campouts and things like that. I feel like I do willingly participate in most things but there are several games that came to my mind that I have hesitated to engage in. I can see how that could seem annoying to them. How do I still have any friends? I realized the root of it though. My family used to play games growing up and we were all expected to play. Most of us were happy to do it. However, if we didn't play in a way that was acceptable to my dad, he would yell at us, berate us, and sometimes throw things. It was scary and it didn't feel good. I think deep down, I do have a little bit of performance anxiety when it comes to playing games with people. I don't feel good enough at volleyball to want to reveal my weaknesses to the neighbors so I just don't want to play around them. Other games that I hesitate with are things that I feel afraid I won't be able to pick up or that I will do something humiliating during and I'm afraid of how people will react. This is a new epiphany for me so I don't know if this can get better or not but I can finally begin to understand why I hesitate. Most people have only played games for fun and even though I'm sure everybody has experienced things going awry, I hope most people have had a little less trauma from making mistakes at games. ************************************************************************************************ Next topic: I just finished the thesis for my master's degree and it's 42,827 words. What I've learned doing it is exponentially more, although wording all the things I've learned is hard to do. I love learning so deeply. I admit this has become an obsession for me and I don't yet know if it's a healthy obsession.

********************************************************************************* Finally, I had many things I wanted to write about but now that I'm sitting here doing it, the thoughts are gone for the most part. I guess this is it for today. It feels good to say I'm out of words for now.

Data Much

I think I've been subtly thinking this for a while but it became very concrete today that there is SO much data! How are there so many people getting jobs collecting, organizing, distributing and presenting data?! Who is using this data? Educators go CRAZY using data! Teachers in general (with some exceptions) just eat up the numbers they're fed and try to act on them. They get them from administrators and presenters and curriculum developers and they pass them along to students and parents and the community in general. Sometimes good educators do this because they care. They hear about the rise in teen suicides and statistics about the increase and the contributing factors and the ways to help these numbers come back down and they care enough to act. Some stop to ask how credible the statistics are but they are often labeled as uncaring or unhelpful, even if it might be a good idea to pause for a moment and demand logic before responding with emotion. Shouldn't we have the right to ask if the statistics we're getting are credible? Validating them doesn't mean you care less. Politicians are honestly statistic whores but all the data is SO manipulated!!! People on every side of every issue find data to support their views. How can data be helpful if EVERY viewpoint can be supported with data? I read an oldie but a goodie: How to Lie With Statistics.

Statistics are just tools for manipulation. I've been virtually attending a social workers conference and it's statistic overload. Educators have presented and mental health professionals and motivational speakers and most presenters really dive into statistics. I don't know the exact stats-ha ha-but I'm guessing by the 12th statistic you get in a day, your mind just can't keep processing and adding relevance to any more data. In the 1800s, the country involved so much farming. For the last half of the 1800s, the number of farms tripled and the number of people living on farms doubled (ah! more data!). The point is that if we strip down our modern world and look at the country's earlier history, people were working to survive. Did their job produce food? Perfect! That was useful. Did their job provide a place to live? Yep, farming gave you space to build a dwelling. That was useful! Could you teach children values and hard work and family connectedness on a farm? Yep. That was useful to both the quality of life as well as preparing offspring for the future. Did people find purpose and meaning? Um, yeah. You literally worked to live.

The work life balance meant did you work enough to live? If so, you found the balance. If not, work more or suffer and/or die. If we strip back to farming times, which were not so long ago, how did statistics fit into the picture? Overall, data would have been useless. Hearing how many children are formally educated wouldn't help cows produce more milk. It wouldn't yield more crops. It wouldn't even mean you were able to send your kids to school if they were needed on the farm to contribute to the family's survival. If you wanted to go into the field of data, you were going to starve to death. Could data be useful? Of course! Maybe people started learning ways to keep pest control effective and they could tell their other farmer friends, "Hey, we did this thing and yielded twice as many crops." That's useful data! The motivation for the data was simply to improve lives. It wasn't to persuade or to increase your political standing or to change people's mindset about life overall. It was ONLY used to improve life and it was a small amount of information. How is it that less than 200 years later more people are involved somehow in data than in farming? We still need food and animals to survive but statistics have never been LESS useful in helping us live. Yet, farmers are being increasingly driven away from the industry and data professionals are being increasingly recruited. Food consumption has NOT gone down, yet people who know how to master growing and harvesting food is dwindling...isn't it obvious that this is so clearly about control?

In chapter 9 of the book FDR's Folly, we learn that farmers supporting FDR greatly contributed to his win in 1932. He promised them they’d make more money with him in charge. Farmers overproduced for a while and Roosevelt thought limiting their supply might help boost prices. The Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) raised tariffs, unloaded excesses on the world market (known as dumping), and regulated how much of each crop farmers were allowed to plant in order to limit supply. By this method, perhaps farmers would make more money but everybody else was in worse condition. Farming affects the national food supply. By the time all of this was sorted out, crops had already been planted so the government paid cotton farmers $100 million to plow up 10 million acres of farmland. This did force up prices. More destruction occurred. 6 million baby pigs were slaughtered. (This is the most bothersome part to me and it shows a monsterous side to Franklin Roosevelt. His policies spread destruction and hardship but killing living things for no real reason is indefensible.) 12,000 acres of tobacco were plowed. California peaches were allowed to rot in the orchard. The government kept importing the very things they were destroying so it was a very confusing chain of actions. The government told the people there was a failure to produce enough food. Reduced farm acreage had a devastating effect on the poorest farmers, who were sharecroppers. Their cash income went from $735 in 1929 down to $216 in 1933. FDR didn’t care because most of them didn’t vote so he figured however he treated them wouldn’t affect his future elections. Farm foreclosures more than doubled. The supreme court declared AAA unconstitutional in January 1936. In February 1936, FDR signed the Soil Conservation and Preservation Act, which kept government control on farmers. In June 1937, FDR signed the Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act, which savaged parts of AAA. 80% of the farmers were worse off! This is a very concrete example of how getting the government involved in a “solution” just magnifies problems for everybody. It also demonstrates how the government's control with farms affects the whole nation. They will go to any lengths to be in charge at everybody's expense.

I see the irony here. I talk about how I can't believe how many statistics float around and then I support an idea with statistics. What can I say? I have grown-up in a statistic-laden society. Even though I would like to cut down on stats, I am used to using them to back up my ideas, because I've been taught to do that. I'm trying to see past that but yet habits are hard to break. We can take out the stats though and just say the basics: FDR destroyed crops, farmlands, and pigs to control food supplies and food prices in our country. He was willing to destroy anything to maintain control of the American people. When we see that this was the pattern set almost 100 years ago, we can start to see that it's still in play today. Whoever controls the food controls lives. We all know that government contols a WHOLE lot of land and the food supply related to it. Also, Bill Gates has a pretty alarming amount of land. Shouldn't more people be concerned about this? If it's NOT about control, why feverishly buy up so much land and pass so much legislation concerning farms? I'm getting a little off topic because I get passionate about sidebar topics. When people's livelihood related to life, we had far less problems. People were too tired from a hard day on the farm to sit around worrying about what percentage of Republicans did this or how many Democrats did that. They didn't switch careers willy-nilly because they weren't feeling fulfilled. They didn't have public identity crises. They didn't consume excessively. That was probably partly because they were too tired to shop more than necessary and I would imagine the value of every dollar is really driven home when your hands literally manage (through livestock and crops) every cent you can generate. When you are so involved personally in providing for yourself, it would be harder to just blow through all that hard work on a spending spree.

Ultimately, the big point is that I just can't believe how many jobs are not directly necessary to live and thrive as people. Data is one field where this seems like a clear break-off but there are many jobs and industries like this. Sometimes it just blows my mind how we got here from there in a relatively quick amount of time. Life is weird.

Disappointment

Maybe I'm just being a negative Nancy today but I feel like if I had to pick a theme of my life, it might be disappointment. There seems to be a pattern of me hoping for things only to be disappointed.

I've had those self-reflections where I think, "Maybe my hopes aren't realistic" and "maybe the problem is me." I start working on myself and realistic expectations and starting small with hope and increasing positive energy. I try to brace myself, too, keeping a sprinkling of hope there because of how much I hear "never give up hope" but planning to emotionally handle another let-down. Yeah, I don't know.

I don't have enough oomph to go into details. I'm just writing for therapy. Sometime I would like to take a break from the pattern of disappointment.