I was surprised how much I enjoyed this class. It made me want to go out and try making rope out of any old random vegetation I might come across. As mentioned in an earlier post, I had thought it was going to be somewhat difficult, but once you got into a rhythm, it was hard to stop. While we were discussing, I did notice that thing Dr. Gerofsky had mentioned, about how chatting flows a little more easily when our hands are busy working away. As I mentioned in class, it was nifty to think of our distant ancestors busy at rope making within their communities. I was surprised to find some people in the class were thinking more so in terms of the more recent north American Indigenous peoples, and I hope my points didn't come off as a "cultural appropriation" kind of thing. In my head, I was thinking about our ancient homo sapien ancestors of 30,000 years ago. In that sense, the act of rope making is something that's part of the same history shared by all humankind. And then aside from all that, I did enjoy the physics aspect of rope making, and I appreciate that this simple technology could be worked into a physics lesson, discussing the opposing friction forces generated from twisting strands around each other in the opposite directions. In general, it was a cool lesson because it engaged many different senses, involved getting in touch with nature and our shared history, and then also had some math and physics ideas surrounding it.
Monday, October 14, 2024
making rope and braid with foraged plant materials
grades
As a student, I never minded being graded. I’m sure there are teachers who grade unfairly, and maybe I’ve been lucky with my teachers growing up, but I can’t remember ever being surprised with a particularly poor grade. That’s not to say I haven’t received them. My point is that I’ve always had a good sense of my own understanding and the quality of my work. If I ever received, say, 60% on a test or assignment, I may have been disappointed, but only with myself. I would have known that I hadn’t done my best work going into it. Conversely, I think some students live in a bit of denial when they complain about poor grades, potentially refusing to either recognize or acknowledge that they didn’t put in the time and energy required to achieve the grades they wanted. But more than anything else, I think that’s more a symptom of grades being implemented poorly. Grades are probably overemphasized in general, and the culture surrounding them, ie good grades = future success, bad grades = impending doom, is a little ridiculous. We should instead be emphasizing students developing a self awareness of their learning progress for their own sake. At the end of the day, I think we want to educate students on how to pursue their own interests, equipping them with skills to self-assess, direct their own personal growth, and “succeed” in areas of their own choosing.
There are certainly students who just see school as needlessly judgemental and super transparent in weaponizing grades as the primary means of forcing conformity (or something along those lines). I think that’s pretty valid. Maybe grades should be an opt-in sort of deal? They do seem to do more harm than good in a lot of cases, promoting a negative opinion of schooling. I definitely bought into school growing up. As a result, grades made sense to me as an objective-seeming measure of my effort. But not everyone has that same relationship with school, and I do think we need to be cognizant of the fact that not all students are going to want to engage with grades in this way. A grading system offers some kind of system with which to measure and monitor student effort, ability, and progress. The way we use grades as a society may certainly be flawed, but I don’t think the idea is inherently flawed. Instead, I think the culture surrounding education needs to change. We need to de-emphasize getting into university to get a “good job.” Folks need to realize education is about supporting personal growth and promoting the interests of unique individuals. I believe that if we can do that effectively, the rest will fall into place. I think there is probably a way to repurpose grades to that end. Again, I think it worked for me. That being said, it definitely depends on teachers, schools, parents, and society in general, having a slightly more enlightened attitude about grades.
Poetry, language, cultural dichotomies
If I can make any comparisons between math and poetry, it would be that they both use some version of language to represent abstractions of reality. In class, we had listed some dichotomies on the board, one of which was rational/irrational. First of all, I don’t think “irrational” is quite the right word. It has a bit of a negative connotation, and doesn’t quite convey an accurate counterpoint to rational thinking. I would say “rationality vs. intuition” is maybe a slightly more complete version of that dichotomy. It doesn’t matter too much, especially since this dichotomy exists in many different forms anyway. You could also pitch it as mind vs. soul, or right brain vs left brain, or science vs spirituality, or logic vs. emotion, or maybe even male vs female (if you’re thinking about cultural stereotypes). Getting back to math and poetry however… The standard (narrow minded) way of thinking is that math is more cold and rational, while something like poetry is more expressive and emotional. By the way, I think you could basically substitute poetry for any other fine art and still have a similar discussion. At the end of the day, poetry, music, painting, and even math, are all just modes of self expression. I won’t deny that math is more successful at expressing rational thinking, and poetry is more effective at expressing emotional thinking. My point would be that it’s much more of a yin and yang situation than people give it credit for. There’s a substantial intuitive component to maths, and similarly, there’s a substantial rational component to any of the fine arts. For example, a lot of the super fundamental ideas in mathematics are born out of intuition. You will hear some people say that math is all just “made up.” You also hear people talk more along the lines of math having been “discovered.” In either case, and whether or not folks admit to it, I believe these are essentially tacit admissions of the fact that mathematics really does appeal to our intuition. It just makes “sense.” On the other hand, I think truly excellent poetry is only truly excellent because it has a really well thought-out structure and careful formulation, mindful of the multitude of connotations which would be inferred from in-depth analysis.
A final point I want to raise here, would be in reference to Kimmerer’s introductory chapter, Standing Stones. People are so obsessed with names and labels. Don’t get me wrong, I do get it. There’s a lot of cultural context associated with the names of people/animals/plants/what-have-you. But as Kimmerer points out, scientific names of mosses for example, really don’t capture their entire essence. And I don’t think that indigenous names of those mosses fully capture their spirit either. A name is not an identity. Names, labels, dichotomies, and language in general, only have as much power and meaning as we all collectively decide. I’m not smart enough to dissect that whole can of worms, but I do want to tie it back to the labels and dichotomies we associate with math and poetry. We connect these with so much else, both positive and negative connotations, based solely on the language surrounding them. But much like Kimmerer in her circle of standing stones, I think we would all be much better off trying to experience these subjects for what they are, tuning in to their essence, without all of the confused dichotomous associations we’ve made over the course of a mess of human history.
Thursday, October 10, 2024
Colors, arms, shadows, and gardening
A few weeks ago, we had a fun and interactive day in the garden. It involved connecting with the outdoors in a variety of ways. Matching color swatches to the colors of the garden was an interesting exercise, using our sense of looking around to connect the colors of glossy color swatches to the naturally vibrant colors of the garden. I was reminded of how technology is really no replacement for what we find in nature. Even a single pine needle has so much variation in its color and texture, and when you look at an entire branch or tree, it’s really impossible to condense that into a single swatch. Also, I just assumed that we were pretty much only going to be able to find shades of green, but I was super impressed with everyone’s ability to track down a wide range of colors.
We also used our bodies (not sexually) to interact with the sun. We were shown how to predict the path of the sun throughout the today, as well as using our own shadows to tell the time. Both of these activities highlighted that we don’t necessarily need numbers or calculations to analyze the world around us. In particular, I thought it was pretty cool thinking of our arms as a sort of unit of measurement. And then using them to trace the path of the sun through the sky was a really interesting way to connect with the sun, as if the sun itself was teaching us - like a magnificent father! So anyway, that was nifty - a kind of mind body and spirit moment, born out of trying to understand the world around us.
Thursday, October 3, 2024
Terms and Indiginization
My take on math/scientific terminology is that it's important insofar that it allows us to easily have discussions about specific subjects. Generally speaking, I would encourage students not to get hung up on terminology. Its only a tool to help us develop our thoughts. I strongly believe that a lot of our "thinking" is done outside of language. I know some people seem to think that they don't have a "thought" unless they're able to put it into words, but I would argue this is a shortsighted view on how all of our minds operate in reality. Language is a tool. The ways in which we think and feel are, more often than not, actually impossible to articulate with even close-to-perfect accuracy. I suppose Robin Wall Kimmerer feels similar, and she does a lovely job of hinting at this idea with a nice story of her own experiences with language. I do think that language and culture are inextricably linked, and language does indeed shape the ways in which we think. We are all guilty of falling into the trap of believing our thought processes are limited by our language. If I were smarter and had all the time in the world, I would learn as many languages as possible. I believe that would essentially expand my repertoire of patterns of thinking. More realistically though, I think its good to simply be mindful of the limitations of any language. As far as Indiginizing my own classroom... I'm not entirely sure what that means. But I am a strong supporter of the way Kimmerer describes thinking about inanimate objects. I would extend this beyond the natural world however. For instance, I consider my water bottle to be an old friend. We've been through so much together, and I would be so dehydrated without it. Like Kimmerer mentions, I think this is actually a really natural way for people to think, but it gets conditioned out of them. Another good example is shoes. I hate throwing out an old pair of shoes. It's just sad to me to let them go, and I often feel they need a proper burial ceremony or something (at least more effort on my part to fix them up). I suppose that along those lines, I would be open with my students about how I feel about things like water bottles and shoes.