1.  Originally stumbled across this via boingboing some time ago.  It’s a brief (but fascinating) account of how one becomes a shaman in Iquitos, Peru, along with a rudimentary recipe for hallucinogenic ayahuasca. Throw in the disconcerting revelation that apparently Peruvian shamans look a lot like out-of-work house painters, and it’s golden.

2.  Less tedious fare:  be careful what you tweet, since two British kids found themselves caged, questioned, and deported this week for hinting that they were coming to “destroy America.”  Evidently, “destroy America” also involved facetiously tweeting their plans to dig up Marilyn Monroe.  I assume that order came from the ghost of bin Laden himself.

3.  I’m sure RIM’s new CEO has many plans to revive the floundering, aging giant.  However, I primarily find myself mesmerized by the fact that he appears to be an elongated, Germanized near-clone of NewsRadio star Dave Foley.

4.  Via challies, a short piece in Wired magazine on the concept of interleaving, which involves studying or practicing multiple related items simultaneously over time, rather than the hyperfocused “cramming”  that many students insist on utilizing.

over time, the sum of these small steps is much greater than the sum of the leaps you would have taken if you’d spent the same amount of time mastering each skill in its turn… [When] information is studied so that it can be interpreted in relation to other things in memory, learning is much more powerful…

This is something I’ve been telling my students for years, and it may also explain why a curriculum like Saxon Math works so freaking well–just do the lesson, and don’t panic if you’re not getting it perfectly correct already–and why people who read widely and nonacademically are still so freaking smart.

5.  Speaking of people who read well:  in 1988, the average 5th grader was reading 4.6 minutes per day outside of school.  5th graders in the 90th percentile read 21.1 minutes per day.  This accounts for an additional 1.6 MILLION words per year.  It turns out that 5th grade reading volume is a pretty doggone good predictor of high school GPA and future standardized test scores.  And what’s a good predictor of 5th grade reading volume?  BOOM.  FIRST GRADE READING ABILITY.  No pressure.  It just looks like if you don’t teach your own kid to read before first grade, you’ve doomed them to live under a bridge and drink rainwater from an old boot.  All of that (minus horrible prophecies) is presented very convincingly and clinically right here.

6.  Here, Clay Shirky argues against the apocalyptic case for internet-induced “digital stupidity” and in favor of the proposition that the internet “restores reading and writing as central activities in our culture.”  I’m inclined to agree.  But then, I love Clay Shirky.  Warning:  this piece is fairly long (but well worth it).

7.  Fantastic analysis by David Friedman which suggests that the murder rate in the US can’t be linked to rates of gun ownership:  rather (by comparing it to Prohibition and doing fancy numerical graphy-type things), he claims that we keep killing each other because of the War on Drugs.  Food for thought, indeed.

… if the objective is to reduce violent crime, there is a presumption… that drug prohibition is an inefficient way of achieving that objective–that one can get a greater reduction at the same cost by targetting [sic] violent crime directly.

8.  Hey…remember that time we accidentally dropped two…TWO(!?)…nuclear bombs on Spain in 1966?

That’s all for today.   If you see me this week, ask me about my experiment in pig ownership.  I’m tempted to make an “EPORK FAIL” joke, but I won’t.

1. Via the inestimable Jason Kottke, an explanation of dubstep music in under three minutes.  I am not sure why I find this fascinating.  But I do.
2. Fascinating story regarding professor Sebastian Thrun’s recent decision to step away from a tenured position at Stanford university, after learning that free online classes just work better.
3. I still very much love my new Kindle Fire.  You should buy one.
4. In honor of the recent Occupy Protests, McSweeney’s offers a thoroughly sarcastically scathing satire here.  Measured in units of giggle-snortage, this one is at least as funny as a very good XKCD.
5. Cory Doctorow at boingboing points us to the greatest 404 page of all time.  I quite agree.
6. I’ve just finished reading How Children Fail by John Holt.  Each book I read takes me one step closer to firmly believing we have to scrap the entire educational system or riot in the streets.
7. And, finally, if you haven’t yet purchased my first book, do. (It’s more like a pamphlet.)  It’s 99 cents.  (I have low self-esteem.)  I’ll mail you four quarters if you hate it.  (I’m lying.  Probably.)  So you could actually make a penny.  (Which means you’d be better off putting your money in a 6-month CD.)  At the Kindle store:    If You Make Me Go Back to Disney, the Livestock Better Be More Polite.

The week’s challenge:  converse with a fire hydrant.  Make it believable.  Tweet pics to @the36review.

(In this metaphor, “painstakingly culled” means I tooled around Twitter and my RSS feeds for a while.  And I was sitting in a Starbucks.  It’s a Metaphor.  It didn’t actually hurt at all.  It’s not a good metaphor.)

1.  At this year’s CES, Samsung unveiled a “dual-view, dual-sound” television.  This enables couples who spend their evenings staring mutely at a television screen to progress to staring mutely at TWO COMPLETELY DIFFERENT shows.  This way their poorly-communicated marriages can collapse even further, without either of them doing so much as getting up off the couch.

2.  I’ve been obsessed this fortnight with Ivan Illich’s dissection of institutional education.  The style is formal, clinical, and rational–and it is creating immense tension in the life of yours truly, a ten-year teacher and administrator.  Illich asserts that “school prepares for the alienating institutionalization of life by teaching the need to be taught” and proposes that we reorient ourselves “toward personal surprise rather than institutionally engineered values.”  He’s locked on to many of the things I notice in my students–but he noticed them forty years ago, and accurately predicted much of what the intervening years would bring.  Read it online here or buy it at Amazon.

3.  Concise thinking about the benefits of “creative destruction” and the failure of certain GOP candidates (and most whiny people) to understand it can be found by Ross Kaminsky at the American Spectator.  Most of the piece was so well-written I didn’t even cringe at the phrase “the march of progress” until I read it for the second time.  Fun fact:  since Microsoft Office hit the workplace, 33% of the secretaries in the US have found themselves out of a job–but does anybody legitimately believe that Microsoft has caused a net job loss?

4.  Ok, the last two were a little heady.  So, if you’re still reading, be rewarded with this very funny video:  Sh*t Nobody Says has owned YouTube for a couple of days now.  If you happen to know my friends Daniel and Ty, you know they’ve missed their calling.  This is absolutely something they could have come up with.

5.  If you missed my post full of self-proclaimed brilliance regarding Tim Tebow, here’s proof, thanks to Matthew Paul Turner:

There.  That should be enough to burn at least a few hours of your workday.  Of course, if you need to burn more time, you can always buy my first goofy book right here.  If you don’t have a Kindle, comment below and I’ll figure out how to send you a personally crafted hard copy.

1. Boingboing reports that the IRS and Marvel Comics are embroiled in a legal battle over whether or not the X-men are humans or mutants.  I am not making that up.  It is really happening, with profound tax implications that easily stretch into the millions of dollars.  Simple Rule of Thumb:  if your tax code results in court battles over the legal status of Dr. Doom, it’s time to simplify.

2. MIT is doing a super-awesome thing called MITx.  Imagine Khan Academy.  On steroids.  With nuclear weapons.  On a high-protein diet.  Open-source learning, designed for scale, built around the idea of earning merit-based certifications rather than time-based diplomas.  It’s educational theorist heaven.

3.  Four words:  Orangutans skyping via iPads.  The future is happening.  And sometimes, when the future happens, it flings dookie through its cage bars.

4. Tom the Dancing Bug has a infotaining poster regarding recent NDAA legislation that is either a completely necessary and logical step toward ending terrorism, or an apocalyptic abuse of the legislative process that’s a step toward a cryptomilitaristic maniacal corporate dicatorship.

5.  John Scalzi over at Whatever offers the best single sentence on internet etiquette I’ve ever read:

A good rule of thumb is to comment as if the person to whom you are commenting is standing in front of you, is built like a linebacker, and has both a short temper and excellent legal representation.

Personal note;  this approach works excellently well in real life as well.

6.  And, of course, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal once again explains what it’s like to live inside my head.

Enjoy those.  Have a grand week.  Be careful to dodge rogue platypi.

1.  Inexplicable 13-pound balls of metal are falling out of the sky in Namibia.  And I seem to be more concerned than the Namibians, who are evidently a patient and unflappable people.

Enjoy those.  Have a grand week.  If you see a clown, steal his giant shoes.

Well, here she is.  Originally published on April 13, 2011.

If you find yourself wondering how I didn’t get smitten, consider:  I received a concussion ON THE VERY DAY THAT THIS POST RAN.  From an extremly nice person, who would never undercut me in a basketball game on purpose (I’m looking at you, Sterling).

And somehow, despite the fact that my vertical leap is measured in playing cards (depth, not width or height), I fell far enough to concuss myself.

So…I’m a little nervous about running it again.  If I get gored by a goat, or choke on a spaghetti noodle, or meet my end in some bizarre fashion, please learn from my irreverent lesson.

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As part of my ongoing quest to alienate everyone on the face of the planet, I spent this last Sunday intentionally noting the thoughts that punch my brain during church.

Typically, I just try to pretend I don’t actually think them.  In the interest of honesty, I thought it would be a good exercise to share them.

Or maybe I just needed a reason to move my family to a remote location, far from human contact.

Let’s do this.  (Deep Nervous Breath)

1. How is it possible that I was ready to leave the house at 8 a.m., yet we’re getting here at 8:37, and we live SEVEN MINUTES AND TWO FREAKING TURNS AWAY?!
2. I should not have mentioned that.  Laura has now reminded me of the three children I neglected to help her dress while I was chuckling at a recorded “How I Met Your Mother.”  Apparently I have something to do with their existence, for which I will evidently be held accountable.
3. Praise team practice.  I wonder which song will have the emotionally moving key change today?  And screw sharps and minors; why can’t anything ever just be played in C or G?
4. Donnie Brown is a better guitar player than I will ever be.  Realizing that makes me mad at God, and I haven’t even gotten to Sunday School–I mean, “Life Group,” yet.
5. Am I going to hell because I watch “How I Met Your Mother” before church?
6. Or because I sneak into the office and steal the staff coffee?
7. Coffee is good.  If there were no coffee, I bet I wouldn’t believe in God.
8. Sometimes, old people think the music is too loud because, you know, they’re old.  Not because the music is too loud.
9. I did not like the phrase “Sunday School” because it reminded me of felt boards, generic Kool-Aid, and Avon-smelling old women.  I do not like the phrase “Life Groups” because it sounds like we’re huddled in masses on the surface of an alien planet to better protect each other from tentacled carnivores.  Or living in a George Orwell novel.  What would be wrong with “Coffee Time”?
10. I wonder if coffee addiction is a treatable disease?
11. Is it okay to tell someone in “Life Group” that I in no way agree with their interpretation of the Bible?  No?  I should go with the smile and nod?  Okay.  But I don’t see the point, then.
12. Remember WWJD bracelets?  How stupid were we?
13. No, I do not like eating out with large groups of people, so I will be skipping this “fellowship” as I skip all of them.  If you want to get to know me, do so in some non-churchy way.
14. I will never like Southern Gospel music.  This is not a character flaw.  I don’t think you’re broken because you happen to like it.  I just think we like different things.  I propose a 1:1 ratio of Southern Gospel to Derek Webb / early, pre-atheist David Bazan songs henceforth.
15. It is a terrifically weird feeling to get emotionally caught up  singing a song that you would hate if it occurred out of the context of a corporate worship service.  Does that mean Southern Gospel is redeemable?
16. As always:  MAKE SURE YOU DO NOT TRIP walking down the stage steps.
17. Do I like hanging out with the college students because most adults are boring, or because I’m terrifically immature?  I bet I don’t want to know the answer to that question.
18. Who invented the “special music” time?
19. Wow.  That girl could really sing.  I’m glad whoever invented “special music” time did.  It turns out watching somebody who’s good at what they do is worshipful.
20. Why do we do the offering in the middle of the service?  It seems to be the equivalent of stopping the movie halfway in to buy your ticket.
21. Wait…did my metaphor just assume church existed for my entertainment?  Turns out I might be going to hell after all.
22. There’s no way everybody in here’s giving.  I really, really wish that didn’t bother me so much.
23. Why are God and money so inextricably linked in my head?  Do I think I’m buying my way into heaven?
24. Wouldn’t it be more efficient to print all the verses we’ll discuss on paper or put them up on a slide, instead of waiting on everyone to turn?
25. Ha!  I forgot about those “My Version Only” people!  What a fun crowd they are to converse with!
26. Sweet Moses, this series has taken a long time.
27. Wait.  It’s about being thankful?  I HATE IT when the books I read and the conversations I have and the sermon I hear all coincide.  Why does that happen all the time?  Life would be easier if God would leave me alone, wouldn’t it?
28. That’s it.  I’m definitely going to hell.
29. My pastor just told a bunch of grizzled, rural, exceedingly heterosexual men to practice gratitude by keeping a journal.  This is going to go over well.
30. Wait…I keep a journal.   Do I think I’m effeminate?
31. The KJV calls effeminacy a sin.  Why do I know that?
32. Geez.  I really should be more grateful.  I have a house, a wife, three kids who only sometimes make me want to eat a broken light bulb, and a job that I really, really like to do.
33. Also, I’m pretty sure I’m NOT going to hell.
34. And there’s coffee in the world.

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I am watching a man in church.  As I’ve admitted previously, I often struggle to focus during the service.

But this isn’t during the service.  This is after the service.

There are a group of teenagers, some of whom attend the school I direct, and they’re in a big, raucous, talkative post-service cluster.

This man–the one that I’m watching–he’s watching them.

And the look on his face–this guy that I’m watching–is not a pleasant one.  He’s regarding this teenaged clump of testosterone the way I look at the FICA line on my paycheck:  like he knows it’s somehow necessary, but he’d give anything for it to be somebody else’s problem.

Which is weird, because it’s not a problem.  It’s a group of kids, in church, obviously enjoying each other’s company.

They’re not defacing the building or writing in hymnals (which anyone under forty who attended a Southern church as a child knows to be the 8th deadly sin, the one God didn’t mention in writing because it was just so OBVIOUSLY wrong).

They’re not shouting swear words. (Although, as regular readers know, I don’t really believe bad words exist.)

They’re not fighting. (And even I think fistfights in the aisles are to be avoided wherever possible.)

They’re not dressed indecently.  Several of them are even in khakis.  (Although one does have on “skinny jeans,” which are clearly forbidden in Levitical Law.)

They’re not really doing much of anything but laughing…which means only one thing:  this guy–the one I’m watching–is somehow offended by the simple fact that they’re enjoying themselves.

Which seems odd, a bit, because doesn’t the Bible specifically tell us to be joyful?  You know, rejoice…always?  Just sort of in general be happy with our lives and our context?  I think it does, yet I’ve noticed over the past five years, as I’ve actually become attached enough to a local church to care about it, that a lot of Christians seem to have a vague distaste for joy.

I mean, we talk about it, mostly when something horrible has happened.  We talk about “having our joy restored” and “joy coming in the morning” when things go wrong.  All our joy is in the future tense.

Here’s why I think that is:

I think a lot of us have been lied to at some point by our churches.  We were promised that if we were good little boys and girls, then life wouldn’t kick us around because God wouldn’t let it, and we failed to read the book of Job  (or the life of Christ, for that matter), and we bought that lie.  Then, when life kicked the crap out of us, we became sad and bitter and jealous of the people (typically the young) who haven’t yet been kicked around too hard by life.

I think our focus on apocalyptic theories about the end of time and heaven and hell have diminished our ability to worry about whether or not we’re happy in THIS life, and whether or not we’re contributing to anyone else’s happiness NOW.

I think some of us made horrifically poor life decisions, and now we’re trapped with jobs we can’t stand, or marriages we don’t like, or debts we can’t pay, or thirty-year old children who won’t turn into adults, and we envy those who haven’t yet made the same poor life choices.

I think some of us are just miserable people who get angry when we see genuine happiness because we’ve lost it.

I think a lot of us are really mad at God for things we won’t admit are our own fault, and since God is all invisible and whatnot, we take it out on those around us who are visibly happy.

I think some of us are so damaged by 1000 years of church history that has viewed every cultural development from the printing press to Harry Potter as demonic until proven otherwise that we are genuinely fearful and suspicious of anything that looks like joy or progress, each and every day we’re alive.

I just keep noticing:  for a group of people that pays an awful lot of lip service to joy, we aren’t a particularly happy bunch, and we tend to get awfully nervous around people who are unafraid to express their happiness.

Why is that?

I don’t know, but here’s what I do know.  I am done being suspicious of the laughter of children.  I am done playing the “miserable story” game at church (wherein a group of adults competes to retell the most excruciatingly painful week, under the guise of a prayer request).  I am done honoring what is broken by paying so much freaking attention to it.

Those of you that know me will have to hold me accountable to this, because I am a terrifically cynical person.  But I notice, if I pay attention, just how much I have to be knee-bendingly grateful for, and I would much prefer to honor that by giving it my time and breath.

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Our pediatrician swears.  A lot.  I would estimate that in the last seven years, we’ve been in his office over sixty times.  I can’t remember a single one that would have been G-rated.  It’s not in the hallways or private conversations, either.  In the exam room, right in front of children, he lets fly.  At first, I thought it was because he was confident that our infant couldn’t understand him, and he’d change as she developed a grasp of language.

That was seven years ago and three babies ago…which has led to some interesting conversations in the car on the way home about how we can’t repeat some of the things our doctor said when we get back to school.

Here’s the thing:  he’s an excellent pediatrician, and because my Christian beliefs lead me to the assumption that God is in some way glorified–or at least gladdened–by human excellence, I would assert that what he does in his office each day is God-honoring.  He’s patient, kind, consistent, fair, inquisitive, caring, humble, calm, reasoned…many of which are qualities explicitly identified with the person of Jesus.  But many, many of my fellow believers wouldn’t have lasted past the first visit, because of a certain three-letter monosyllabic string of sounds he uttered.

Where does this come from?  Where did we decide this or that specific set of letters was verboten?  And why?  And what possible Biblical justification could there be for subjecting my child to inferior healthcare on the basis of vocabulary?  In any eternal context worth bothering about, which appears to be more important to God:  caring for the sick, or dodging the Official Protestant List of Swear Words?

And why do I encourage my kids to not repeat these words at school?  Here’s the thing I’ve realized recently:  it has nothing to do with what I believe, because I’m not offended by those words.  I consistently watch movies that contain these words.

And I’d argue that most of you reading this do, too.

An example:  I remember being in the vehicle with my father once, listening to Rush Limbaugh, when he said the word “damn.”  It flipped me out.  My worldview suddenly spun the wrong way on its tiny, tiny axis.  I remember wondering why it was okay for Rush Limbaugh to say it, but it wasn’t okay for me to watch a TV show that said that word or–shudder–say it myself.

And I know what you’re thinking already.  You’re thinking one of two things.  Either it’s–

a)  Of course swearing is wrong, but you have to measure the moral evil of the language against the moral benefit of the message delivered by Rush (or Glenn Beck or Arianna Huffington or Lady Gaga…etc.).  In this view, language becomes part of some bizarre moral algebra we must do as we consume media:  7 points worth of good minus 9 swear words equals negative 2, so we shouldn’t watch that TV show.

Or perhaps you’re thinking–

b) Of course swearing is wrong, but as a reasonable adult, I’m able to filter / handle / process swear words without feeling compelled to imitate them.  However, my children aren’t.  Therefore, I’m able to consume things they aren’t, since I’m able to avoid the temptation to imitate.

I find it perplexing that in either case, some people believe that it’s perfectly acceptable to CONSUME someone else’s moral wrong, so long as you aren’t the one COMMITTING the moral wrong.  That seems to me to be a sort of pornographic view of Christian morality–I can derive benefit from the wrong of another, so long as I don’t physically commit said wrong.

Here’s where I’ll lose some of you, but it’s true:  as parents, we constantly  consume media that contains vocabulary we won’t allow our children to say.  No matter what we say, we don’t ban these words from the lips of our children because we’re convinced there’s something morally repugnant with the words.  If there were, we’d be morally obligated to forgo the movie or album or book.  Right?   Face it:  the reason we don’t let our kids repeat those words is because WE WANT PEOPLE TO THINK WE’RE GOOD PARENTS, and good parents don’t have children who swear.

I’ve written about this tendency before here, but it still holds true:  we impose our cultural convictions on the Bible much more often than we impose our Biblical convictions on our culture.

You don’t have to agree about this specific issue (and some of you, I have a hunch, really REALLY won’t), but I wonder how much of our moral thinking operates this way, because I swear (heh) I keep coming up with stuff.  Post the ones you’ve noticed below.

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Today, I taught Mark Twain.

Specifically, I read Mark Twain aloud:  ”The Story of the Bad Little Boy Who Didn’t Come to Grief,” from early in his career.

So I’m reading Mark Twain (the hysterical essay is here if you’d like to read it), and when I get done, we laugh a little(less than I’d like) at the churches he’s making fun of, and I run through some quick bio:  born Samuel Clemens in Florida, MO, moved to Hannibal early on, fell in love with the river, etc.  His story is fairly cliché, as far as author’s lives go.

But one fact jumped out at me (as readers of this blog will understand).  Mark Twain was born in 1835.  And in 1847, he was working as a printer’s apprentice and typesetter.  He was…12.  By 1851, he was a typesetter and had begun contributing short pieces and humorous sketches to the newspaper.  He was…16.   By 1857, he had begun work as an apprentice riverboat captain.  He was..22.  By 1859, he was in charge of a riverboat.  He was…24.

He went on to hunt gold, work for the government, report the news, travel to Hawaii, visit Europe, fight in a Civil War, edit newspapers, and own a publishing house.   Somewhere in the middle of all that, he wrote what is widely regarded as the greatest work of literature by an American citizen.

He never went to school after age 11.

Back to my juniors, who, at 17 years old, are already older than Twain was when he had learned and acquired an adult job.  He was already published.  I am in a school teaching 17 year olds about the life and ideas of a man who NEVER WENT TO SCHOOL AFTER HE WAS ELEVEN.

Most of these students will go to college.  By the time they get out, around 21 or 22, they will be as old as Twain was when he decided to try a second career.  If they go to grad school, they’ll get out around the time he was wrapping that career up and heading into his third.

This is why many of them will never produce anything great.

Mark Twain wrote Tom Sawyer when he was 42, drawing heavily upon his youthful experiences on the river.  He honed his craft in his twenties and thirties by writing about his experiences hunting gold, and traveling for the newspaper.  Tom Sawyer could be great because Twain had lived a messy life.

That’s because greatness comes out of the mistakes we make, and the dead ends we walk away from–and compulsory education is designed to make sure we don’t walk into dead ends.  It is a well-meaning, wonderfully-intentioned mistake.

But it is a mistake.

Compulsory education is not a mistake because school is a bad thing. Compulsory education is a mistake because school is a bad thing for some people.   Compulsory education is a mistake because it steals–and I am perfectly aware that “steals” is a strong word–over half a decade of the life of every human in our culture, with neither their input nor consent.

If Mark Twain had been forced to go to an average American high school, a well-intentioned guidance counselor would have ensured that the world never knew his name by pushing him toward a business degree.  His parents (if his dad hadn’t died when he was eleven) would have agreed.  He would have been safe, and anonymous, and miserable for his entire life.

Mark Twain, had he come through the modern American high school, would have chosen a lucrative, safe job that made him miserable five days a week so he could enjoy himself on the other two.

Because that’s how most of the people our system has produced live their lives–in the “quiet desperation” that Henry David Thoreau (another guy who did a little unconventional living) so aptly named.

So in the comments below, tell me why we do this, or how it could be different.

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My son can work the remote control.  He is four years old.

I’d like you to think about that for a moment.
Since he can operate the remote, I have to assume that he’s grasped a massive accumulation of concepts, ranging from the fairly simple to the almost ludicrously abstract.  Here’s a short, off-the-cuff list of those concepts:

1. He understands cause and effect, and expects the universe to be a consistent and logical place, since certain buttons always bring about certain outcomes.
2. He knows his numbers, since 298 is Noggin.
3. He knows his letters, and is on the way to reading independently, since yesterday he found “Indian in the Cupboard” in the DVR queue.
4. He reasons, since his rationale for finding “Indian in the Cupboard” was that he knew it started with I (“I-I-Indian”), and there was only one show there that started with I.
5. He recognizes that a single device performs multiple functions, since he knows the difference between live TV and recorded TV
6. He is capable of memorizing a fairly complex sequence, since he can make a single remote operate both the TV and the DVR.
7. He understands that the universe is subject to invisible forces that are nonetheless rational, since there’s no concrete physical link between the remote and the TV.
8. He’s at least aware of the second law of thermodynamics, since he asks for new batteries when the remote doesn’t work, rather than assuming it’s the remote that’s broken.
9. He is capable of making entertainment choices, since he decides whether he’s in the mood for “GI Joe” or “Phineas and Ferb”

Think about that list for a moment, and think about how analogous it is to many of the skills that are routinely demanded of high schoolers:  can you do this list of steps to find x, which poem do you like more and why, what’s the next number in this sequence, why did World War II happen…

I’m not saying Jack Tyler could elucidate the things he understands; I’m merely observing that, on some level, he gets these things or is somehow aware of their existence.

And my son is not brilliant; he may be one day, but right now, I’d say he’s a fairly average, reasonably inquisitive child.  And this fairly average human (like many, many others) has learned a device that routinely frustrates my wife.

That’s the “what.”  We now have to consider the “how” and the “why.”

The “how” is easy, as anyone with children knows.  He learned by doing four things:

1. watching other people do it.
2. asking questions.
3. giving it a shot
4. asking more questions when something didn’t work

It turns out, whether you’re a four-year old trying to watch “Phineas and Ferb” or an intern trying to repair intracranial blood vessels, those are the steps–THE ONLY FOUR STEPS–to learning anything at all.

Notice that the gap between steps three and four assumes that something went wrong.  Failure, it turns out, is perhaps the most critical and memorable part of the learning process.  This is why I refuse to obsess over my daughter’s grades:  a kid who never fails at anything, by definition, hasn’t learned very much.  They’ve just figured out how to do school.

In fact, I just asked Jack how he learned to work the remote.  Here’s his answer:
“Ummm…I mashed the buttons and I figured it out.”

So, I asked him, if you couldn’t make the remote do what you wanted, what did you do?
“Ummm…I went and got somebody to show me.”

So how about the “why?”

Simple:  he wanted to.  Jack Tyler learned to work the remote because he didn’t like relying on his big sister; it turns out, when she works the remote, we watch a lot of “iCarly,” which he hates.  It is ludicrously, stupidly simple.  I don’t know how to change a transmission or train a sled dog.  You know why?
It doesn’t seem like any fun to me.

So the job of American education, then, seems much simpler than anyone ever told me about in teacher college:

Step One:  let kids learn the things they want to learn.

Step Two:  try to figure out how to make them want to learn the things you think are important.  It should be noted that step two is optional.

There is no step three.  There is no backup plan.  They are going to learn what they want to learn, and nothing else.

Your thoughts?