The Whimsical Brilliance of the Geography of Genius

It was amusingly in an airport bookstore that I ran across Eric Weiner's engaging book The Geography of Genius. One of the perks of travel - of going new places - is the chance to encounter something unexpected and open up a new pathway to knowledge, insight, even bliss. Weiner's book is about his "search for the world's most creative places, from ancient Athens to Silicon Valley," and he operates from the idea that there are special qualities or factors that led a surge of creative thinking and genius resulting in a "renaissance." It's a good question - why does a renaissance happen with the seemingly fortuitious congregation of great minds and achievements in small locales at specific places in time?

Eric Weiner has the gift of engaging storytelling as his hook, and he has the sharp mind of an astute researcher who can ask the right questions, engage the right people, and spot or synthesize the right trends. Those are the keys to successful educators - which he clearly is - and "ideas gurus" whose writing has become a sub-genre of the non-fiction world. What I enjoyed most about this book are the names and connections that inspire me to seek more information. While we all know a bit about Socrates and the basics of Greek philosophy (or at least about Athens as the epicenter of philosophy and democracy), Weiner's descriptions of the factors and relationships lead a reader to want to know more - to deepen and synthesize our knowledge and understanding of these great men. The chapter on Edinburgh offers a thoughtful introduction to one of the great Age of Reason writers and thinkers that far too many people don't know about - David Hume. It was the Hume story - and all the little connections my mind made to other ideas I knew or wanted to know - which convinced me this book was a keeper. It would be one to go on the shelf as a resource when I was looking for something or someone new to learn about. And it would hopefully inspire my own creativity and my little personal renaissance from time to time.

The insight of this book is best summed up by Weiner in the words of Socrates - "What is honored in a country will be cultivated there." Throughout Weiner's travels - and that's the best part of the book: he visits the places and gets down and dirty with the locals - Weiner identifies various keys to geographical creative flourishes. By visiting the countries/cities/regions of Athens, Hangzhou, Florence, Edinburgh, Calcutta, Vienna, and Silicon Valley, he is able to identify how the chaotic nature of one place or the collaborative quality of another cultivated genius. These places tend to host little hotbeds of discussion or dissent in cafes, botegas, coffeehouses, symposiums, libraries, addas, and more. The places within the places are often the true secret to a renaissance. And in describing who hangs out in these places mulling their ideas, Weiner's book has the added benefit of introducing readers to even more examples of true genuises than they thought they knew - from Thucydides to Hewlett & Packard.

The final insight is a fun one - he places his quest against the one place we know best - our homes - and he encourages all of us to take the lessons of geographical genius and try to cultivate them in our own geography.

Look to Neil Postman and warnings of "Future Schlock"

When I am wondering what I think about something, I generally know I can look to a few contemporary philosophers and social critics to put events in perspective .... even if their conclusions make me a bit dizzy. So, lately I've been looking back over a collection of essays called Conscientious Objections by humanities professor and writer Neil Postman. The subtitle of the work is "Stirring up Trouble about Language, Technology, and Education." Published in 1988, the collection of essays are eerily prescient about the languishing of culture and education at the expense of a convenience-oriented, entertainment-focused, technology-driven society. Two essays in particular - "Amusing Ourselves to Death" and "Future Schlock" - point to the rising tide of anti-intellectualism and distraction which seems so prevalent in a society that is by all accounts living in what should be the "most informed" time in the history of man. Yet, man's "appetite for distraction" is large, and his inclination for over-simplified thinking is equally vast. Postman contextualizes his concerns with references to the seemingly unlikely rise of fascism prior to World War II, and he frames that historical reality with the lessons of two brilliant pieces of pop culture and social satire: The Gods Must be Crazy and Mel Brooks' The Producers.

Me and Bruce - Born to Run in 2016

Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA changed my life and rocked my world as a fourteen-year-old boy growing up in small town southern, Illinois in the early 80s. It would become an anthem for a generation, and while I was undoubtedly a rock-n-roll fan by then, Bruce's songs and stories opened up a whole new world in terms of understanding angst amidst the American Dream. The raw honesty of the story-telling and the rugged power of a rock guitar made sense to me, and the boxed set of the E Street Band I received for my birthday a year later was an early chapter in my American education. Now, as I sit comfortably in middle age, celebrating a slow march nearing the age of fifty, the Boss has once again graced my coming-of-age with a manifesto of "Growing Up."

So, here I am at the beginning of 2017, reflecting on the past and the dawn of "another year" in front of me. And as I glance back at the past two January 2 posts, I am wondering if this is the year that I just "get on with it" and take a few more steps toward living the life I have imagined. I haven't established the more comprehensive "A Teacher's View" website yet, and I haven't made any progress with the more scholarly writing that I have been planning. And, of course I am certainly not David Brooks or Malcom Gladwell in any professional sense. That said, I did manage to finally complete and publish an up-dated version of my critical work of Douglas Coupland, McJob: Life and Culture in Douglas Coupland's Early Novels, and I think it's even sold a few copies at this point. There will hopefully be some more extensive Generation X writing in the near future, and I hope to increase my academic output with a few more pieces of cultural criticism, and maybe even a conference paper or two.

We'll see. Hoping 2017 and the age of 47 is my "best year yet."

2016 - A Year in Review

"When looking back on the 365 days of 2016 most people will think ... WHAT THE HELL?"

The best and most hilarious part of welcoming a New Year is reading the brilliant Dave Barry's review of the last one.

Dave Barry Year in Review 2016: Trump and the Hideous Monstrosity that was 2016

Some New Year's Thoughts from Great Minds

On New Year's Day 2017, I took a long walk through the neighborhood, and that might be the best way to begin any new beginning - by taking a walk. That bit of insight is not mine, but from America's original original, Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau was a proponent of walking:

No one has made a more compelling case for the bodily and spiritual value of walking — that basic, infinitely rewarding, yet presently endangered human activity — than Henry David Thoreau. In his 1861 treatise Walking, penned seven years after Walden, Thoreau reminds us of how that primal act of mobility connects us with our essential wildness, that spring of spiritual vitality methodically dried up by our sedentary civilization. He makes a special point of differentiating the art of sauntering from the mere act of walking:

This Thoreau-ian insight was collected for us by one of the premier "ideas bloggers" out there, Maria Popova, whose Brainpickings site is one of the best collections of literary and philosophical tidbits found anywhere on the web. Popova is a consumate reader and writer who posts regularly about information that is just too wonderful to keep to herself. For New Year's Day, she collected "fifteen such higher-order resolutions for personal refinement."

Teach Literacy Skills & Content Knowledge

RE-PRINT: Mazenglish, 2012

A somewhat cold and undeclared war seems to be boiling in the English community, specifically, and the education world at large regarding the teaching of literacy.  Basically, the divide is happening between subject knowledge and the practice of basic literacy and the teaching of reading strategies.  While people like Cris Tovani have argued passionately for the teaching of reading strategies all the way through high school, core knowledge people like Dan Willingham have expressed concern that teaching strategies has no impact on actual learning.  The war isn't actually as serious as it has been hyped.  For Tovani's camp is certainly teaching the importance of core knowledge - as one of their foundational strategies is that "effective readers use existing knowledge to make sense of new information."  And from the Willingham/Hirsch side, there is no evidence that they are outright dismissing the teaching of literacy strategies.

Ultimately, the solution is found - not surprisingly - in a balanced approach.

Anthony Palumbo, a literacy professor, examines and explains this idea quite well in a recent piece of commentary published in Education Week.  The key concepts of reading strategies - such as basic phonemic awareness - are the foundation of accessing text.  But they do not automatically lead to comprehension.  A student can pronounce the words in his head, even as he fails to understand what he's seeing.  It's called "fake reading."  And, the data reveals that students' comprehension of complex information is declining, even as schools seem focused on ramping up literacy instruction.  Clearly, the gap is evident at the earliest level, but it becomes a foundational issue by grade four when "schools begin to emphasize the measurement of subject-matter knowledge and de-emphasize the measurement of basic literacy skills."  Schools find this most frustrating in the subject areas outside of English class where the science and social studies text simply baffle many average teenagers.  They shut down and fail to engage with the text.

The problem often can be traced to the overall lack of "knowledge-based literacy," meaning kids simply do not know enough to access texts on information they don't know.  And, worse, they lack the self-awareness and meta-cognitive abilities to even understand when and why they do or do not understand a text.

And, that is the nature of our burden.

So Much to Read and Do

I'm finally reading a lot of literature again. Truly, I am a bit of an enigma and a contradiction for an English teacher because I don't always read novels regularly, and I really have no desire to teach AP English Literature, as opposed to AP English Lang. Like many men, I am far more interested in non-fiction writing, and that emphasis in Lang is really where I find my calling. That said, I am often a "literature admirer" from afar - there are many books I would like to read or at least have read. For there is so much honesty about the human experience, and that knowledge and insight is truly a part of who I want to be.

So, I've been haunting the library and bookstores again like I used to, and I am pulling more books off the shelves than I could ever read in the time alloted. For example, I am currently working my way through Skios by Michael Frayan - it's a delightful satire of academia and the world of large foundations and their conferences.

And I recently grabbed Madam Picasso by Anne Girard off the shelf. Not sure if I will get around the reading it before it's due and I've finished other books on the desk, but the back page alone was compelling enough - "... the mesmerizing and untold story of Eva Gouel, the unforgettable woman who stole the heart of the greatest artist of our time."

I truly hope I have time to crack open the sci-fi-ish story The Subprimes by Karl Taro Greenfeld. It has a fantastical setting in a future dystopian world where people are known primarily by their credit score. What a fascinating and timely discourse on the dangers of an increasingly finance-driven world, and it reminds me a bit of another great dystopian satire Jennifer Government by Max Barry. 

There are more, of course. My desk and shelf are piled high, as an English teacher's should be. And, I believe I will be reading and writing more.

Loving Where I Live - Go, Colorado

Growing up in a small town in southern Illinois, I couldn't have been happier. Alton is a beautiful little historic town along the Mississippi River, and even as a young adult I referred to it as God's country. However, I couldn't be happier in my adopted home. I was "born in the summer of my [thirty-third] year, coming home to a place I'd never been before."

Retiring Abroad & Paying for Health Care

"So, do you guys plan to be empty nesters in this house?"

That question was posed recently when we had some friends over for wine, food, and games. My teenage son and friends were over playing various board games, and I was showing a friend the newly renovated basement and the desperately-needing-renovation backyard. The response from my wife and me was immediate - "Oh, good god, no. We've got seven to nine years before we get out of here," but we definitely won't be living here when the thirty years of our newly refinanced mortagage expire. The conversation shifted from the when to the where, as our friend thought we might look for a condo in Denver, and was surprised when we talked of heading south. "The Springs?" he asked, surprised.

Colorado Springs? For retirement? Damn, that's worse than the thought of southeast Denver. No, when we talk south, we're thinking the Caribbean, and that's not surprising as "More Americans Choosing to Retire Outside the US." Having lived abroad before, we are certainly not averse to living somewhere other than the United States.

Just under 400,000 American retirees are now living abroad, according to the Social Security Administration. The countries they have chosen most often: Canada, Japan, Mexico, Germany and the United Kingdom. Retirees most often cite the cost of living as the reason for moving elsewhere said Olivia S. Mitchell, director of the Pension Research Council at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.

For some people, the idea of living outside of United States and far away from family is a baffling idea. But for many others, there is no specific lure to living in suburban - or urban - America, and there is just too many inviting things about life abroad. Mexico has become a desired location for many based on the low cost of living, and it's clear that health care costs and spending are another key. Let's face it, the United States is a colossal embarrassment of financial mismanagement when we consider how "The US Spends More on Health Care than other countries," and we're not always sure how much benefit we're getting.

For me, the lure of the islands and the health care systems of places like Great Britain and the Netherlands are certainly reason to start scoping out plans for that bed and breakfast we just may enjoy owning in Aruba or the BVE.

Sage on the Stage to Guide on the Side

Adapted from Mazenglish, 2012

While I am not generally a fan of "education-ese," I've reached the point in the year when I feel the need to step aside from the direct instruction and encourage my students to begin owning their own educational process. As we head into second semester, the classroom needs to be less a place where "kids come to watch adults work." To often the students are willing to be the "happy little troopers" and do exactly what they are told to get the grade they need. However, that's not always the best way to cultivate skill and knowledge - in fact, we've all been in classes where we simply want to be told what we need to know. For now in AP English Lang, I am feeling a more "workshop-like approach" will be the best avenue for them to cultivate writing skills.

When I was teaching freshman English, I always took this approach with one of the last literary works of the year. In my Honors English 9 class, I would tell them it is time they leave the nest.  After being the "Sage on the Stage" through numerous novels and units during the year in which I taught them "how to read literature" at the high school level, I turned the study of the last novel over to them. They were pretty much "on their own" (but actually encouraged to collaborate in pairs and small groups) to work their way through Hemingway's classic The Old Man and the Sea. After teaching them all year about heroes - tragic, epic, and existential code - as well as allusions, allegory, symbolism, motifs, and all the other components of a general survey lit course, I expected them to apply their knowledge to a scholarly analysis of the novel.  They worked in groups, they lead the discussion, they interpreted the text.  And, hopefully, I told them, all the information they gleaned from their study would coincidentally be all the information that I "put on the test."

It's always an exciting time - as they head off on this quest.  And it is always fruitful.  They never fail to disappoint me.  And by the end of the unit they are quite proud to be experts on this work of literature.  They are on their way to becoming "people on whom nothing is lost."

Beverly Clearly still rules YA fiction

RE-PRINT: Mazenglish, 2012

If you want to kick start a love of reading among young children, you can still do what parents, teachers, and librarians have been doing for sixty-two years now - hand the kids a copy of anything by Beverly Cleary.  The young adult/junior fiction raconteur has been weaving entertaining and readable stories for children for decades, and her stories still ring true with young people.  For narrative content to remain fresh and engaging for decades, it has to be something truly magical.  And magical - with deference to JK Rowling - is what Beverly Clearly has been for a long, long time.

My two children are ages seven and ten, and both are avid readers who are as entertained with the stories of Henry Huggins, Beezus and Ramona, Ellen Tebbits, and more as I was thirty-five years ago.  In fact, I am still amazed and amused by the staying power of these stories of children who lived in a truly different era.  How can such simple stories of growing up in an era before pop culture and technological explosion still resonate?  It's because they are stories of the "human condition" which makes them nearly timeless.  Cleary has said she sought to write the types of stories that she would want to read if she were scanning the library shelves.  And in her words, they were simply "funny stories about her neighborhood and the sort of children she knew."

If you are an educator - or a parent with an educational interest - Beverly Cleary's website is a great resource for ideas about how to use her books in the classroom.  Beyond that, the entire site can be a fun and safe source of online information for kids who are fans of the books.  Beverly Cleary's books represent childhood in all its splendor - from the struggle and uncertainty of coming of age to the magic and joy in simply being a child.

2016 Christmukkah Holiday Gift Highlights

The winter holidays of 2016 have coincided in a wonderful synergy of holiday spirit, and thus we have the gift of celebrating Christmukkah this weekend. Christmas Eve consisted of lighting the menorrah for the first night and following our tradition of honoring some person, group, or idea for each night. This year we began by honoring the good "people of non-profits," who do so much heroic and often un-sung work of altruism. The world can certainly use some Goodwill about now, and we wanted to remind ourselves of that.

This year in the Mazenko home, we had a nice simple round of gift-giving. Here are some of the highlights:

• A donation to Freedom Service Dogs  

• A donation to the national MATHCOUNTS organization 

• How not to Be Wrong: Power of Mathematical Thinking - Jordan Ellenberg

• The soundtrack to the hit Broadway musical Hamilton 

• An excellent wine bottle opener 

• Sandra Boynton's wonderfully useful Mom's Family Wall Calendar