The clips of Michio Kaku are taken from his video for The Floating University, which offers free online lectures by leading scholars and thinkers on a wide range of subjects — from astrophysics to political philosophy, from finance to population studies, from linguistics to the psychology of sex. It’s a wonderful online resource and I highly recommend checking it out.
Here’s Kaku’s full lecture:
More Floating University videos on YouTube (via BigThink) here.
It’s been eleven years, and songs like this — and the memories of that day — still bring tears to my eyes. I don’t think I’ll ever be over it.
My daughter is eleven now. She was just four months old on 9/11 and has no memory of that day, only the stories her parents have told her — it’s history for her, just another thing that happened in the world before she became aware of the world. Maybe that’s the way it should be. I wouldn’t wish this quiet grief to haunt her for the rest of her days. Let her acknowledge that day and move on with her life, in sunlight and in joy.
They’re teaching her in middle school to accept — “not just tolerate” — all cultures. I temper it a bit, telling her that all people deserve respect, but not all ideas do. Where cultures have wrong ideas — honor killings, female genital mutilation, the belief in the supremacy of one religion or another — people must speak out against them.
But perhaps the middle school teachers are right to emphasize respect and acceptance first: if respect is the foundation, perhaps it will help kids grow up to remember that whoever they disagree with is a human being too. In the end, after all the many important issues to disagree about, there’s nothing more important than that.
So what’s humanism? I had a go at this question way back when I started this blog, but this video by the British Humanist Association offers a much clearer introduction:
And from the always-lucid British YouTube user QualiaSoup, here’s a very clear presentation on secularism and its views on church/state separation, gay marriage, and education — as relevant (or perhaps even more so) in the US as it is in the UK:
In 1981, Carl Sagan — astronomer and science educator par excellence — was named Humanist of the Year by the American Humanist Association, and delivered his acceptance speech at the association’s annual conference in San Diego. The AHA has now made the audio of the entire speech available online, and if you have 45 minutes, it’s absolutely worth your time. (If not, I’ve transcribed some excerpts below.)
The speech is wonderful for the same reasons that Sagan’s remarks and writings are always wonderful: his gift for eloquent, inspiring — and often humorous — prose; his powerful argument for the fundamental importance of science in our lives; his ability to communicate a clear-eyed and rational view of the cosmos that is yet open to poetry, astonishment, and wonder. But this particular speech is also notable for a couple of specific things. First, Sagan refers early and often to the accomplishments of the woman who introduced him to the audience: the astrophysicist Margaret Burbidge, who, like many female scientists, deserves much more public recognition for her scientific contributions. And second, Sagan takes particular aim at the threat of creationism — 1981 being the year of McLean v. Arkansas and the movement to have “creation science” taught in American public schools, a movement that sadly still has traction today.
I find it fascinating that Sagan’s decades-old speech still feels fresh and relevant today: not just his argument against the creationists, but also his stirringly democratic notion of science as every person’s birthright, and his description of “cosmic evolution” and the deeply intimate connection between humans and the universe — concepts that Neil deGrasse Tyson, considered by many to be Sagan’s heir, has been communicatingto great effect.
Steven Spielberg praises teachers, talks about how he fell into filmmaking, and offers inspirational advice:
When you have a dream, it often doesn’t come at you screaming in your face, “This is who you are, this is who you must be for the rest of your life.” Sometimes a dream almost whispers. And I’ve always said to my kids: the hardest thing to listen to — your instincts, your human personal intuition — always whispers; it never shouts. Very hard to hear. So you have to, every day of your lives, be ready to hear what whispers in your ear. It very rarely shouts. And if you can listen to the whisper, and if it tickles your heart, and it’s something you think you want to do for the rest of your life, then that is going to be what you do for the rest of your life, and we will benefit from everything you do.
A classic performance by the fiery spoken-word poet, teacher, and teachers’ advocate Taylor Mali:
A more recent version, coinciding with the publication of Mali’s book, What Teachers Make:
I love this poem for what it says about teachers’ passion, commitment, and the undervalued importance of their sacred trust to help shape the next generation. But it also seems to present a one-sided version of education: the strict, no-nonsense, sit-down-and-shut-up teacher who needs to whip reluctant and undisciplined students into shape. That’s not a model that will work for everyone; why is there no mention of kindness, encouragement, and the importance of letting students ask questions rather than slapping them down? How do you get kids to love and look forward to learning, rather than view it as medicine that they have to swallow? A wise comment on YouTube (a true rarity!) points out:
I love the message of the video — that teaching is about more than just a salary, but without context, some of the pedagogy in the video is straight up flawed. Encourage group work/ collaborative learning (when appropriate). If students are constantly looking for a way out of the classroom, it’s a good indicator that you need to make your lessons more engaging. Teachers should never strike fear in parents. Parents can be valuable resources. Finally, NEVER tell students they can’t ask questions.
Yes. Mali says he makes students wonder, but I wish he’d elaborate on that. Kids are born curious and wondering; how do we avoid squashing that, and just get out of the way?
Nevertheless, point taken: Teachers have a difficult and tremendously important job, and should be valued and supported in this country more than they are. I’d add that not only shouldn’t they be judged by how much money they make, but they also can’t be judged by flawedrating systems such as New York City’s — a ludicrous calculation involving “value-added scores” that lets good teachers slip throughthe cracks. William Johnson, supposedly a “bad teacher,” explains:
[T]he reality [is] that teachers care a great deal about our work. At the school where I work today, my “bad” teaching has mostly been very successful. Even so, I leave work most days replaying lessons in my mind, wishing I’d done something differently. This isn’t because my lessons are bad, but because I want to get better at my job. [...]
The truth is, teachers don’t need elected officials to motivate us. If our students are not learning, they let us know. They put their heads down or they pass notes. They raise their hands and ask for clarification. Sometimes, they just stare at us like zombies. Few things are more excruciating for a teacher than leading a class that’s not learning. Good administrators use the evaluation processes to support teachers and help them avoid those painful classroom moments — not to weed out the teachers who don’t produce good test scores or adhere to their pedagogical beliefs.
And an excellent point about the student-teacher relationship:
That said, given all the support in the world, even the best teacher can’t force his students to learn. Students aren’t simply passive vessels, waiting to absorb information from their teachers and regurgitate it through high-stakes assessments. They make choices about what they will and won’t learn. I know I did. When I was a teenager, I often stayed up way too late, talking with friends, listening to music or playing video games. Did this affect my performance on tests? Undoubtedly. Were my teachers responsible for these choices? No.
[W]ith teaching, it’s always hard to know just how much of the results are the result of good teaching. Perhaps it is good parenting, or the work of previous teachers. Sometimes it is just the result of a child maturing and coming into her own.
Still, when a child succeeds in your class for the first time in her academic career, it is one of the rare occasions when you can feel as if you had something to do with it. And you are probably right. There’s a good chance that the relationship that you have with that student has played an important role in her success. But that’s not necessarily a good thing. [...]
Kids who succeed because of us are not kids who have the tools to succeed in the long run.
“Don’t do it for me; care about yourself,” my co-teacher often says to our students [...]
A good relationship can change a child’s year, but it doesn’t usually change her life. For that, we have to change the way that students relate to themselves.
What to make of all this? Perhaps that Taylor Mali is right — that teachers make a goddamn difference — but also that students aren’t automatons, waiting for the right programmer. They’re human individuals, needing encouragement and direction, but ultimately choosing their paths for themselves, as we all do.
Another long-but-absolutely-worth-it video: Neil deGrasse Tyson talks with Stephen Colbert (out of character!) about all things science. If you’re a Tyson junkie like me, you’ve heard much of this before — the Titanic story, Apophis, how he fell in love with the universe, the NASA budget, the importance of letting kids feed their curiosity, the value of being at the frontier of discovery, the poetry of science — but it’s always wonderful to see him make his arguments with such passion and wit, and a joy to see him sparring with Colbert here. (And if you’ve never seen Tyson before, clear your schedule for an hour and a half and watch. You’re welcome.)
Here are a couple of exchanges that particularly interested me, as my family goes through the middle school application process for our daughter and we reexamine our ideas of what education should be for. At around 30 minutes in:
Colbert: If I have a lot of facts in my head, if I can absorb a lot of facts, am I a scientist?
Tyson: No. No, you’re a fact-memorizer. In fact our academic system rewards people who know a lot of stuff, and generally we call those people smart. But at the end of the day, who do you want: the person who can figure stuff out that they’ve never seen before, or the person who can rattle off a bunch of facts? At the end of the day, I want the person who can figure stuff out.
And at around 1:15:
Tyson: In the schools, I don’t have a problem with the fact-memorizing. But don’t equate that with what it is to be wise or what it is to be smart. Smart should be some combination — of that, yes, but also: what is your lens on the world? How do you figure things out? And you promote that by stimulating curiosity. And I don’t see enough stimulating curiosity in this world.
Indeed. Kids should be learning not just what to think, but how to think; and as much as possible they should be encouraged to do so for themselves. And they are not served well by an educational system that emphasizes rigid rules and tests — and stifles innovation and joy as a result.
I also love this (at around 26 minutes, in the middle of a discussion of the most beautiful truths in science):
Tyson: Some of the greatest poetry is revealing to the reader the beauty in something that was so simple you had taken it for granted. That, I think, is the job of the poet. And so the simplicity of the universe [as revealed by Einstein's equation E=mc2] — I think if it doesn’t drive you to poetry, it drives you to bask in the majesty of the cosmos.
Yes.
Want more? You can watch a couple other Tyson talks here and here.
…and he wouldn’t be who he is if the G.I. Bill didn’t play a big part in his musical education. From an interview on NPR:
I had very good training. I was in the service [...] in the Second World War. And when I came out under the GI Bill of Rights, they gave us the best teachers. Zolinski was secretary to Stanislavski, the Method acting teacher, of Russia; performed with him on the stage. Pietro diAngeo was my bel canto teacher to keep my voice in top shape. And Mimi Spear was right on 52nd Street and she told me, “Never imitate another singer. Just listen to musicians and find out how they phrase and how they feel about a song, and imitate them.” [...] Very good advice.
(The transcription is mine, and I’m not entirely sure about those name spellings.)
Also interesting: in the same interview, Scott Simon hands him the perfect opportunity to do the “God’s creation is wonderful” boilerplate, but Bennett doesn’t take it. Instead he talks about nature and the universe, sans any hint of religion:
I love life. I wish I could communicate to the whole planet what a gift it is to be alive. [...] I paint every day, and I keep learning that the master, as Rembrandt said, is Nature. And you keep looking at it and you keep trying to understand it; you can’t comprehend the height of creativeness that Nature has. What a gift it is to be part of the whole universe.
I’d always assumed that Bennett, as an Italian-American of his generation, was likely a conventionally religious man; and perhaps he is, and merely keeps his faith private — nothing wrong with that. But could he be a secular humanist? It’s not impossible; in a statement clarifying remarks he made about 9/11, he says this:
My life experiences — ranging from the Battle of the Bulge to marching with Martin Luther King — made me a life-long humanist and pacifist, and reinforced my belief that violence begets violence and that war is the lowest form of human behavior. I am sorry if my statements suggested anything other than an expression of my love for my country, my hope for humanity and my desire for peace throughout the world.
Who knows if he means “humanist” with a capital H; but I can’t help remembering that self-declared, bona-fide humanist Asa Philip Randolph alsomarched with King, and I wonder if Bennett is intentionally making that association.
In any case, I’m just having fun speculating; it doesn’t really matter to me whether Bennett is a man of quiet faith or of no faith at all. What a joy it is simply to hear him sing, and to know that he shares a deep sense of human solidarity and of connection with the universe in the here-and-now. Perhaps for him — certainly for me — that’s enough.
My mind has been on education a lot these days, as we take our fifth-grade daughter to visit middle school after middle school, analyzing and comparing notes, trying to decide which ones to apply to next year. It’s funny — though not all that surprising, I suppose — to see how all these presentations and open houses and tours help you refine in your mind what you think education is for. And so it was interesting to be in that frame of mind when I came across Adam Gopnik’s meditation on the fifty-year-old classic The Phantom Tollbooth (which I’d read to my daughter last year) and realized how Norton Juster was slyly writing about the point of learning itself, without ever saying that’s what he was up to:
As with every classic of children’s literature, its real subject is education. The distinctive quality of modern civilization, after all, is that children are subjected to year after year after year of schooling. In the best-loved kids’ books, the choice is often between the true education presented in the book — say, Arthur’s through animals at the hands of Merlyn, in “The Sword in the Stone” — and the false education of the world and school. The child being read to (and the adult reading) is persuaded that self-reliance is a better model for learning than slavish obedience. [...]
[Milo's] epiphany is that math and reading and even spelling are themselves subjects of adventure, if seen from the right angle. The point of “The Phantom Tollbooth” is not that there’s more to life than school; it’s that normal school subjects can be wonderful if you don’t have to experience them as normal schooling. [...]
For “The Phantom Tollbooth” is not just a manifesto for learning; it is a manifesto for the liberal arts, for a liberal education, and even for the liberal-arts college. [...] What Milo discovers is that math and literature, Dictionopolis and Digitopolis, should assume their places not under the pentagon of Purpose and Power but under the presidency of Rhyme and Reason. Learning isn’t a set of things that we know but a world that we enter.
Juster was writing a comic hymn to the value of the liberal arts at a moment of their renaissance [...] In “The Phantom Tollbooth,” the real moral sin is knowing too much about one thing: the Mathemagician who obsesses over quantities; the unabridged Azaz who lives off his own words. Against those who worried that the liberal arts could not help us “win the future,” Juster argued for the love of knowledge, and against narrow specialization. “The Phantom Tollbooth” was for learning, against usefulness. “Many of the things I’m supposed to know seem so useless that I can’t see the purpose in learning them at all,” Milo complains to Rhyme and Reason. They don’t tell him to listen to his inner spirit, or trust the Force. Instead, Reason says, “You may not see it now, but whatever we learn has a purpose and whatever we do affects everything and everyone else. . . . Whenever you learn something new, the whole world becomes that much richer.”
