An Act of Kindness

A middle school football team has been getting a lot of publicity recently, and for good reason.  The Olivet Eagles have been covered by CBS Evening News "On The Road" about their act of kindness towards one of their team members.

It's nice to see all these warm and fuzzy acts out there.  This is what a team should be; a selfless group of friends there to support each other, whether it be in school, business, family, recreation... this mindset of caring should be everywhere.

Optimization

This week at my school there are "comp" exams, which are basically midterms.  I'm still not exactly sure whether "comp" means "comprehensive" or "competency," but the former sounds much nicer.

And right after, I get to take SAT subject tests!  (throws ticker tape)
It's going to be a long short week...

Anyhoo enough ranting, now for today's featured presentation.
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I'm part of the school's Robotics Club as a programmer.  When I got there and how is a completely different story I'll save for later (I'd say for another rainy day, but it's already raining here this week, and I know I won't be able to get to it this week).

The programming platform that I use is ROBOTC, which, as you can guess, is based on C.  I haven't actually programmed in real C, but only in Java.  There's a bunch of differences between the two, but all I'm pointing out is essentially, C is not my first programming language and I needed help with it.

I needed to find the syntax of how to create an array, which is a list of objects (whether it be text, numbers, true/false statements, etc).  Searching the Internet I stumbled upon a nifty, unrelated related tutorial: "How To Have a Robot Maze Solve."

Two little points I'd like to highlight:

"What are the steps In maze solving?
There are basically 2 steps. The first is to drive through the maze and find the end of it. The second is to optimize that path so your robot can travel back through the maze, but do it perfectly with out going down any dead ends.

How does the robot find the end of the maze?I use a technique called the left hand on the wall. Imagine you are in a maze and you keep your left hand on a the edge of the wall at all times. Doing this would eventually get you out of a non-looping maze. This tutorial will only deal with mazes that do not loop back on themselves."

These made me think: the relationship between a programmer and a robot is like that between a teacher and a student.  No, I'm not saying that students are mindless slaves.  But rather, programmers give robots sets of instructions to carry out tasks.  They need to translate what they know are the right moves to code for the robots.  Isn't this an example of teaching and learning in its most primitive form?

Now, programmers could just stop at giving instructions to move to X and turn to Y to get to Z.  Teachers could just give students the basics: a routine of calculations to memorize, the definition of words they need to understand a book, the recipe for an experiment.
But they don't.
The first goal in learning is to drive through the maze and find the end; to finish the task at hand correctly.  The next goal is to optimize the path that was taken, but do it perfectly; to learn from mistakes.

It seems to many that the main point of school is the first.  Learn how to do something, and get it over with.  But sometimes we miss the second.  Simply put, there is just not enough time in the curriculum to spend on error analysis.  This is not anybody's fault; it just naturally takes up a lot of time.  To remedy that, teachers assign homework to complete that second step; to help you work towards recognizing the dead ends in the maze.  Too often as students we downplay homework as an extension of the first goal; as a repetitive waste of time.

And as teachers, it is difficult to teach optimization.  You could tutor each student one-on-one to catch all of their mistakes, or you could teach students how to catch their own.  In the robotics world, this is the field of artificial intelligence.  It all comes back to this: teaching how to learn.  Catching all the mistakes for your students won't nearly benefit them as much as teaching them how to catch their mistakes.  Next year or in a couple of years, when they revisit the subject you taught, how would they manage if you weren't their teacher?

The difference between students and robots in this context is that if given the "left hand on the wall" technique for solving a looping maze, which cannot be handled by the technique, the students will eventually learn how to adapt that for loops using common sense.  Robots, on the other hand, rely on the programmer's word and are not capable of extrapolating from what was taught.

Optimizing learning takes place outside of the classroom.  To truly learn, you have to experiment with your own ideas--"in this maze, if I keep turning in the same direction too many times, I might be traveling in the same square."  They may or may not be right; take the time to talk over them with your teacher (alliteration!).  Doing so is active learning; the intention of education.

"The History Teacher"

I found an interesting poem in my AP Literature poetry book:

The History Teacher - Billy Collins

Trying to protect his students' innocence
he told them the Ice Age was really just
the Chilly Age, a period of a million years
when everyone had to wear sweaters.

And the Stone Age became the Gravel Age,
named after the long driveways of the time.

The Spanish Inquisition was nothing more
than an outbreak of questions such as
"How far is it from here to Madrid?"
"What do you call the matador's hat?"

The War of the Roses took place in a garden,
and the Enola Gay dropped one tiny atom on Japan.

The children would leave his classroom
for the playground to torment the weak
and the smart,
mussing up their hair and breaking their glasses,

while he gathered up his notes and walked home
past flower beds and white picket fences,
wondering if they would believe that soldiers
in the Boer War told long, rambling stories
designed to make the enemy nod off.

(Source: http://www.billy-collins.com/2005/06/the_history_tea.html)

 Other than being a poem with a contemporary voice in a book full of Shakespeare, Dunne, and Dickinson (not that their work is bad, but really old English gets tiring to read after a while), "The History Teacher" stood out to me as a story about decisions.  The teacher had good intentions and chose to sugar-coat his material to the point that there was no substance left.  And yet, at the same time, the children chose to take his word for granted and bully the other children.  Who is innocent?  Who is at blame?

I do realize this poem may be written at a time before the Internet was created, but applied to the present day, this poem could comment on the children's lack of curiosity.  By this, I mean research; learning outside of the classroom; fortifying the material in the curriculum.  Compared to the days of old where books were on paper, libraries where crucial to education, and the Internet was a far-fetched dream, today we have a plethora of information ready at our fingertips.  There is no excuse for us to not be learning the truth.  A quick search on the Internet could give you access to the thoughts of college professors, philosophers, other teachers, students--a customized patchwork of thousands of truths and lies within seconds.  Had the students looked further into the material outside of the classroom, they would have found out the truth behind history.  The difference between then and now is that now, researching is much easier.  It is a message to us that as students, we should be perpetually curious; never satisfied.  Question everything, and then take the extra step to find the answers to those questions.  Engage your teacher in conversations about what you've learned.  Chances are, they're there to keep learning too.  Simply put, learning does not stop outside of the classroom.

It also talks about how the children bully the others who are "weak and smart."  Learning gives us perspective into the mindsets of others.  It is the most obvious in the arts and humanities, but can also be seen with other subjects with a different tone.  As we collect experiences, viewpoints, attitudes, and thoughts, we can determine what's right, what's wrong, and what's our view.  The most obvious answer to the question "Why do we need to learn history?" is "So we don't repeat the same mistakes."  Another answer could be, "to gain appreciation for those who have come and gone, weigh their decisions, and use them to determine what kind of person we want to be."  Other than being a fancy way of saying "so we don't repeat the same mistakes," the second answer builds upon the first by broadening it to a bigger picture.  Not only can we learn from past failure and success, but we can also understand each other better.  We can hop around in other people's shoes and see life from their point of view.  This is the core weapon against hate and discrimination: being able to understand each other.  Had the students learned about the horrors of war, violence, and ignorance, they would have understood the others.  They still might bully the others, but there would be a lower probability that that decision would have been made.

"10 Things Extraordinary People Say Every Day"

There's an article called "10 Things Extraordinary People Say Every Day" over at Inc.  The content was meant for use in the business world, but I can easily see this being carried over to everyday life.  It's encouraging to hear that stepping forward and saying these little things will brighten someone else's day.  In the long run, you're forming a habit of being selfless, mature, and positive; eventually, it will change your attitude to match.

It's hard to change peoples' nature and attitudes for the better.  But, it is possible.  In my point in life as a wee kiddle I don't exactly know how to catalyze that; what the right words or actions are.  The only successful ways I've seen changes in attitudes happen are through drastic events, like the death of a loved one, a conversion in religion, the birth of a child.  But is there some way to bring a change without such a drastic event?  Constant motivational talk, perhaps?  Setting up a good role model?

How can we teach people to think differently about themselves and other people for the better?  How can we create positive attitudes, selflessness, and maturity?

Redefining "Smart"

Foreword:  I wrote this blog post as I was motivated by the work of a teacher in Florida, Steve McCrea.  His blog is at http://theindependenteducator.blogspot.com/.  He inspired me to write something about the right's and wrong's of education, and being the randomly motivated student I am, I wrote what was below at 3 in the morning.  I assumed that Steve would read it and nod and smile and that was that; maybe he'd even feature it on his blog.  What ended up happening was that the very same day, he gave what I wrote for his students to read.  I was astounded that my work would go that far and from that I felt all warm and fuzzy.  :)  So thank you, Steve, for sharing this with your students.  It makes me glad that I can make even a smidget of a difference outside of my local community.  I feel that if I can keep this blog up, it's going to be the beginning of changing peoples' lives.  Yes, I am quite the optimist.

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I must admit: I am not smart.

For some reason, I’ve gained the odd reputation of being smart, which is not at all true.  Before you strike me down as being modest, I ask that you hear my side first.

What others mean when they are labeling me as “smart” is “academically successful.”  Meaning, I do well in class and have relatively high grades.

Sure, this can mean that I am a diligent worker or a natural at every subject.  But with this version of “smart,” I could be a master of memorization and information regurgitation while not understanding the meaning behind concepts.  I could cheat and copy answers without getting caught, and I could abuse drugs to boost my mental performance.  All of these things would lead to me giving the right answers, doing well in class, and having relatively high grades.  Therefore, if I do these things and get these results, I am smart.

Clearly this is the wrong mentality to have as a student—that to be smart, you have to be academically successful.  You have to get the right results.  This could (and has) led to students resorting to the things I previously mentioned, or giving up altogether if they can’t tell you the answers.

Yet, the student is not mainly at fault.  It is us as a society who is the culprit.  The business world has ingrained a sense of result-based reward and punishment into our lives.  This makes sense in their environment, when everybody has already learned how to work the tools needed. 

But does it make sense for us to expect success at the start?  If we give young children fishing rods, show a seasoned fisherman reeling in fish by the bucket load, and help the children learn how to hold the fishing rod, do you expect them to catch half a bucket on the first try?  the second?  the sixteenth?  Some of them will get it on the first try.  It will take a week, a month, a lifetime for others to catch half a bucket of fish.  And some will simply give up after not catching any fish at all.  Are the ones who caught the first fish smart?  What about the ones who didn’t catch any at all?

We need to redefine what it means to be “smart.”  A famous quote from Albert Einstein reads, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”  We are judging our students on how well they climb trees, when some are birds, others are monkeys, others are fish.

Why am I not smart, then?

Pull me aside and ask me how to find the lateral area of a cone.  Ask me why Shay’s Rebellion happened, how to balance an oxidation equation, how lightning is formed, the stages of cell replication.  I know that I have learned all of that, but I couldn’t give you answers.  I do not remember the answers.

I do know, however, how to get to the answer.  If I could get the surface area of the cone and subtract the area of the base, I might get the lateral area.  If I could get a summary of what happened during Shay’s Rebellion, I would be able to explain the causes behind it.  You get the point.

It isn’t efficient to do this though; it’s basically reinventing the wheel over and over.  I am bad at memorization (except strangely with foreign language), so even if I have all the tools I need to work, the ones I need disappear regardless of how strongly I fortify my toolbox.  I have been taught the values of cosine and sine on a unit circle since 8^th grade, but I still cannot remember them off the top of my head.  I only remember how to get there: find the quadrant, see if the value is short, long, or in the middle.  And at times I don’t remember which value is higher, ½ or √3/2.  What I’ve done is practiced how to get there, so I can find the answers quickly enough to catch up to the others who have memorized it.

In the end, the others are “smarter.”  They will do better at their jobs.  They will be faster in their calculations, decisions, everything.  And they deserve to have higher positions because they do their work well, and do it quickly.

But to me, it is more important to quickly be able to find the answer than to quickly memorize it.  Past school, rarely will you have people sitting down and guiding you on how to do things.  It is not because they don’t care (that could also be the case, but I digress), but because they won’t know how.  Someday we will not only be teachers for others, but for ourselves.  At that time there will be nothing to memorize, because it hasn’t been found yet.  You yourself have to get there.

And in getting there, you’ll make mistakes.  You won’t get the right answer.  In doing so, you can’t just stop and quit.  You can’t gloss over them and pretend they don’t exist.  You have to fix them to move forward; you have to adapt yourself to not make that mistake again. 

It is realizing this and learning how to adapt, I feel, which makes people smart.  Being able to get the answers on your own and being mature enough to accept and fix the mistakes made.  From these, you can face any problem.  Nobody is born smart or is naturally smart; they may be more receptive to learning certain skills, but that doesn’t mean they are just magically smart.  We all have to learn how to make ourselves smart.  The best time to do that is while we receive education, before we enter the business world.  At work, if you haven’t learned how to learn, it’s generally too late to deal with the copious mistakes that come with it—it will cost you tenfold in time, money, and other resources than what it would have in school. 

As students, yes, we do need to memorize the basics: the tools in the toolbox and their purpose.  But we shouldn’t rely on the memory of the details of every single procedure where the tool could be used; what if you approach a new type of door you’ve never learned how to fix?  The goal is to be able to figure out how to fix any door, not to continually have to update yourself with the procedures on how to fix the latest door.  Be able to find patterns, understand concepts, question; be your own teacher.

And as teachers, we must teach how to learn.  I use the word “teacher” in a loose fashion, not as one who is professionally employed to teach, but one who is capable of teaching.  Your lesson could be about how to solve an equation for x.  Challenge yourself to teach another subliminal real-life lesson alongside this.  Make taking notes optional for the lesson, and teach your student(s) that taking notes is solely for their benefit after they return to you struggling with practice problems.  Teach that they cannot rely on the stick and the carrot all their lives for motivation; they must motivate themselves to do work, to do what is morally right, to help others.  Teach the birds that although the monkeys are better at climbing the trees, because the point is to get to the top of the tree, they can fly up.  Teach the fish that swimming across the lake is just as monumental as getting to the top of the tree, but if they wanted to touch the top of a tree, they need to get a beaver to cut a tree to fall into the water.  You will never run out of things to teach.

As students (used with an equally loose definition), we must find these “hidden” lessons as well.  Do not come to school only for the academic material.  Come to school to learn, to grow, to mature and adapt.

I myself am still learning how to do that.

Hello World!

Hello!
¡Hola!
System.out.println("Hello World!");
nxtDisplayString(1,"%s","Hello World!");

I've made a blog (a Blogger? a Blogger blog?) and I'm not exactly sure what else should go into a first post, other than triumphantly exclaiming, "I've made a blog!"

It does feel a bit weird to have bits of my thoughts floating on the Internet, but I do hope it inspires someone, makes them smile, or at least stoically nod.  Or shake their head.  It's ok if you don't agree with my points of view; I'm open to different perspectives on things.

But oh well.  I'll be spiffying up this area a bit as I come and go.