Regular readers of this blog know that Michael Pollan's book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, changed my life. After reading that book, I dramatically changed what food I bought and where I bought it as part of my ongoing effort to reduce our family's carbon footprint. I think it is an incredibly important book, and I urge everyone to read it in order to understand why our current food choices are not environmentally sustainable.
Pollan followed up that book and his In Defense of Food book with a guideline for what we SHOULD be eating entitled Food Rules:An Eater's Manual. This distills his advice about what foods we should be eating, both for our own health and the health of the planet.
Now animators Marija Jacimovic and Benoit Detalle have created a short video of a talk on Food Rules that Michael Pollan gave. His words are accompanied by a stop animation film using food itself to illustrate his points.....which I think is really kind of great.
So if you haven't read the books, at least start the ball rolling by watching the following video:
We are talking about these kinds of issues in our Healing Oceans Together environmental group/educational coop. But the books themselves raise issues that relate to many different disciplines, including biology, physics, chemistry, economics, political science, history.
I see these books relating to the posts I had last week about imagining the future and issues with STEM education. They raise serious and potentially disasterous questions about our food production system, the breakdown of which could lead to our students' future in competing for food in their own version of a "Hunger Game." However, Pollan remains optimistic about things we could do differently, and does provide do-able suggestions for making better food choices. So, as Maria raised in the comments, it does make our high schoolers aware of potential problems in their future, but gives them reasons to hope and suggestions for things to do to improve the situation.
It is certainly a topic that can make many of these subjects very real to our students.
Are students turning away from pursuing careers in science and math because of books like The Hunger Games? Popular author Neal Stephenson thinks so. Stephenson argues that current science fiction writers depict such a dark and depressing picture of the future--like children being forced to fight to the death for the amusement of the ruling elite and for the subjugation of the laboring masses--that students are not inspired to be part of making that future come to be. If science, engineering, and math is going to create a future society like Panen in The Hunger Games, or the Realm in Incarceron, or post-apocalyptic Chicago in Divergent (gosh, haven't I written up that review? I'll have to do that), or dozens of other popular YA books, movies, and TV shows, why would students want to participate in that?
To Stephenson's mind, it all contributes to our society overarching problem, which is an inability to, in his word, "get big things done." So he has created an effort entitled the Hierarchy Project to convince science fiction writers to create some more optomistic visions of the future that would inspire students back into the world of science and math as a potential solution provider rather than a conveyor belt to our dystopic future. To hear more about his views on this topic, read his article on Innovation Starvation.
Stephenson is not the first person to raise these concerns. Indeed, my first-ever blog post, Are Bella and Edward LITERALLY Warping Your Adolescent's Brain, was about a conference at Cambridge that was examining whether dark themes in current YA literature were physically changing adolescent brains. But I thought it was a good follow-on to my earlier post this week about Neil deGrasse Tyson's concern that we have forgotten how to dream. I do think that perhaps the biggest problem is STEM education is our students lack of desire to pursue it, and I do think that these dark, science-enabled dystopias could be a part of the problem.
It also brings to mind a story about Martin Luther King, Jr. that I described inanother earlier post. Nichelle Nicols, who played the African American communications officer Uhuru in the original television series of Star Trek, told of Dr. King telling her that Star Trek was the most important TV show at that time because it gave people a vision of the future world he was trying to create in his speeches--a place where people of all races (and even different planets) worked together in peace and respect to take on big challenges.
That was the time I was raised in. Star Trek may seem to today's eyes to be cheesy and bombastic, but it was unfailing optomistic about human potential enhanced by technology. Our children are growing up in times where it seems to be preferable to be vampires and werewolfs and zombies and such to becoming a scientist (unless you want to go into murder investigation, since I guess the numerous CSI shows require quite a number of scientist to analyze all that crime evidence the detective amass).
So I hope Stephenson and his Hierarchy Project help to encourage some writers to give our adolescent some less grim scenarios of their future. It may not be the biggest part of the solution to STEM education, but it sure couldn't hurt.
Why aren't US students going into careers in science, engineering, and math? That is a question we've been asking as a society ever since I was working professionally in Washington DC in education policy in the 1980s. There have been many proposed answers to that question, but mostly the blame as been laid on our education system. Our science and math education isn't rigorous enough, or it isn't concrete enough, or it isn't relevent enough, or it isn't hands-on enough, etc. etc. etc. So our latest response has been lots of government and private programs to improve education in what is now called STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics).
While I know science and math are tough disciplines--tough to learn and tough to teach (she says, having just completed teaching a hands-on physics class on light and optics that required lugging multiple sets of things for hands-on experiments to an outside classroom for five weeks)--and that we could definitely improve our science and math education, to my mind, that isn't the biggest problem with our current "brain drain" in STEM careers. The data I read indicates that most of "the best and the brightest"are choosing to go into fields other than math and science. That is to say, even if we could wave our magic wands and make our STEM education programs perfect, that isn't going to change the situation if students refuse to go into those programs in the first place.
There are many aspects to why American students aren't studying STEM. But one of the big ones, according to astrophysicist and science writer/media specialist Neil deGrasse Tyson, is that we, as a nation, have stopped dreaming about a better future and the important role science, math, and engineering have in getting us there.
I could say more, but Tyson himself says it so much better in the short video below, entitled "Why We Stopped Dreaming:"
There is no way I can improve on that. Except that I would say that it is not just limited to STEM. I grew up in the Washington DC area, where almost everyone there was employed in what we used to consider "public service." When I was growing up, working in Congress or the White House, the multiple court systems, the many federal agencies, the military complex built around the Pentagon, the related research institutes, the multiple non-profit public interest groups on all sorts of issues--all of those were honorable professions, and even though people found it a financial sacrifice, in terms of making a lower income than they might have had in private industry, it was worth it because they believed they were making a difference or playing a role in making the world safer, smarter, healthier, and better.
Now, after decades of people bashing "the government," our best and brightest don't want to work there either. Looking at the nastiness and frustration among our top politicians--the US Congress and White House--it is no wonder that our students don't want a career in politics. Education is another field where most of the public policy discussion is very negative, constantly highlighting all the perceived failures and rarely lauding the good work done day after day by millions of teachers across our country.
So what is left? Becoming an athlete, rock or rap star, an actor/actress or, even better/easier, becoming a celebrity through so-called "reality" TV?
This is a tough, tough problem, and I don't know how we are going to solve it as a society. But I know one thing. As teachers and as parents, we need to support our students in dreaming again. And I think it is particularly important in this middle school age--when they are old enough to understand and deal with some of the real substantive problems of our culture, but haven't yet experience so much frustration and inability to make a difference that they become cynical and indifferent. In our case, it is why we are so heavily invested in a effort called Healing Oceans Together, where the students wrote the following mission statement for their group:
Healing Oceans Together (H2O) is a non-profit organization dedicated to preservation of the seas, raising public awareness about the oceans, and supporting the community through environmental education. Our organization is largely student-driven and is exceedingly resourceful. We are homeschoolers saving the world one step at a time, because we believe that everybody, working together, can make a difference.
I have to end with quoting (yet AGAIN, for those who know me) from one of my favorite books of 2011, Okay For Now by Gary Schmidt. In this passage from the book, which is set in the 1960s, the junior high science teacher, Mr. Ferris, is talking to a group of incoming students.
"Within a year, possibly by next fall," he was saying, "something that has never before been done, will be done. NASA will be sending men to the moon. Think of that. Men who were once in classrooms like this one will leave their footprints on the lunar surface." He paused. I leaned in close against the wall so I could hear him. "That is why you are sitting here tonight, and why you will be coming here in the months ahead. You come to dream dream. You come to build fantastic castles into the air. And you come to learn how to build the foundations that make those castles real. When the men who will command that mission were boys your age, no one knew that they would walk on another world someday. No one knew. But in a few months, that's what will happen. So, twenty years from now, what will people say of you? 'No one knew then that this kid from Washington Irving Junior High School would grow up to do".....what? What castle will you build?"
With all our focus in education on test scores and STEM initiatives and funding priorities, we are forgetting to encourage our students to dream big dreams. And what kind of a life are preparing them for without dreams? As Langston Hughes said in his poem, Dreams:
Hold fast to dreams For if dreams die Life is a broken-winged bird That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams For when dreams go Life is a barren field Frozen with snow.
Today is Pi Day (March 14, or 3.14). Of course, we celebrated with our traditional Pizza Pi(e)s. But because Google informed me it was also the 101st birthday of Akira Yoshizawa, who is considered the grandfather of origami (see below):
I went searching for origami and circles, and chanced upon this wonderful website, WholeMovement.com. The author, Bradford Hansen-Smith, inspired in part by Buckminster Fuller, has compiled tons of information about all the mathematical and other concepts one can learn by folding circles. It doesn't take fancy equipment--he starts with paper plates and bobby pins--but it can take you deep into mathematical and geometric concepts.
So a great way to observe Pi Day (besides eating pie, pizza or otherwise) is to check out his website.
Do you know any teenagers (13-18) working on an awesome science project of their own design? If so, you may want to encourage them to enter it in the Google Science Fair, an international online science competition sponsored by Google in partnership with CERN, LEGO, National Geographic, and Scientific America.
The Google Science Fair follows the same basic rules and procedures as a physical science fair, but students must go the extra step of presenting their work through videos and other digital means (another good skill to be developing). Students from public, private, or home schools around the world can compete in the three age categories of 13-14, 15-16, and 17-18. There will be 15 global finalists who will be flown to a physical competition event at Google headquarters in July. The finalist winners in each age category are awarded a $25,000 scholarship and the opportunity to engage in a high level science research experience, while the Grand Prize winner will get a $50,000 and a National Geographic scientific expedition to the Galapagos. There is also a $50,000 prize for the Science in Action winner, the project that best addresses a social, environmental, or health issue in a way that makes a difference in the lives of a group or community.
For more information or to sign up, visit the Google Science Fair website. However, projects are due by April 1, 2012, so your student scientists will have to submit their work soon.
For an inspirational video Google produced encouraging student science, click below:
And to hear more about the rules of the competition, watch the following video:
Regular readers of this blog know that I am a great fan of TED, which shares "Ideas Worth Spreading" by posting FREE videos of some of the leading thinkers and doers across the world as they give presentations on important topics--all in 10 minutes or less.
Today, TED launched a new initiative called TED-Ed that will bring the TED philosophy to education (although I've used plenty of TED videos in my lessons already). TED-ED is a TED You Tube video channel dedicated specifically to "Lessons Worth Spreading." That is, TED-Ed posts more FREE videos of some exemplary lessons that TED has enhanced by adding appropriate animations or other features (when necessary--some talks are fine on their own).
Right now, TED-Ed has just a handfull of videos, but by next month, they plan to add lesson plans and tools that allow teachers to customized the videos to their own classes (such as embedding questions or comments, etc.). They are also accepting nominations for outstanding educators or animators to use in the project, as well as suggestions for desired lessons.
TED-Ed is geared to the high school level and above, but I think the videos I watched would be appropriate for mature middle school students as well. But check them out and judge for yourself. For example, in honor of my middle schooler who has been enthralled with the deep sea since he was 2 years old, watch the TED-Ed video below on "Deep Ocean Mysteries and Wonders:"
We did such a wonderful activity as part of our Buddhism unit in World Religions. One week we focused on Zen Buddhism, which has a great focus on being in the moment. I wanted the students to have a Zen experience, so we did three activities in a row in complete silence (a total of 30 minutes, which is a LONG time not to talk when you are 12-14).
First, we did a silent Zen meditation that focused completely on the breathing. That lasted for 10 minutes (and felt like a LONG 10 minutes for some of them, although others found it relaxing). We ended up with a 5 minute silent journaling activity, in which they wrote down their experience of the three events.
In between those, however, we did 15 minutes of this wonderful thing called Zentangle®.
We used Zentangle as a drawing meditation. It is an art form created by Maria Thomas and Rick Roberts that is supposed to improve the artist's focus, awareness, feelings of freedom and relaxation, and artistry by creating repetitive patterns on a small (3.5 inches) square of paper. The square is first divided into sections by a few lines, and then each portion of the square is filled with a different pattern. In its purest state, it is supposed to be only black and white, but some add colors as well.
The students and I all LOVED doing this. It was very liberating, because even those who claimed "I can't draw" felt like they could draw lines and "doodle." It does capture your focus and your attention in a very relaxing way, and is mostly spontaneous, and yet repetitive. And it does draw you into kind of a Zen experience. Apparently, people are using it all sorts of way, including doing it before tests to get students into a relaxed and focused way, or as part of the process of addiction recovery and other related theraputic uses.
It's the sort of thing that is hard to explain. But I highly recommend you visit the Zentangle website, or other online resources about this new art form (one of my favorites is Zentangle Patterns), get the basic instructions, and try it yourself!
Below we have the beautiful tiles (as they are called by their creators, Maria and Rick) created by our class. As always, even though everyone was given the same materials and directions, the results turned out to be very different and reflective of the varied personalities in the group.
