Things you can live by

Holt . . . "Timetables"--Children are not trains . . .

2005-10-06T01:53:00.001-07:00

Timetables! We act as if children were railroad trains running on a schedule. The railroad man figures that if his train is going to get to Chicago at a certain time then it must arrive on time at every stop along the route. If it is ten minutes late getting into a station, he begins to worry. In the same way, we say that if children are going to know so much when they go to college, then they have to know this at the end of this grade, and that at the end of that grade. If a child doesn’t arrive at one of these intermediate stations when we think he should, we instantly assume that he is going to be late at the finish. But children are not railroad trains. They don’t learn at an even rate. They learn in spurts, and the more interested they are in what they are learning, the faster these spurts are likely to be. Not only that, but they often learn in what seems to us a logical sequence, by which we mean easy things first, hard things later. Being always seekers of meaning, children may first go to the hard things, which have more meaning—are less dissociated from the world—and later from these hard things learn the “easy” ones. Thus children who read well certainly know a lot of “phonics,” but they have probably learned at least as much phonics from words as they have learned words from phonics.
It may be true enough that in learning purely physical skills, such as sports, gymnastics, ballet, or playing musical instruments—though not even these are “purely” physical, nothing is—we generally have to learn easy movements before we learn hard ones. That is how the body works. But it is not how the mind works. What makes things easy or hard for our minds has very little to do with how little or how much information they may contain, and everything to do with how interesting they are and, to say it once again, how much sense they make, how connected they seem to reality.

Holt . . . "Timetables"--Children are not trains . . .

2005-10-06T01:53:00.000-07:00

"Children's speech should be corrected?"

2005-09-29T00:45:00.000-07:00

Most people who write about the troubles of slum children in school claim that slum children speak badly because their parents do not correct their speech. This leads to two conclusions. The first is that any child whose speech is not continually corrected will grow up speaking like a slum child; the second is that all we need to do to cure the speech problems and defects of slum children is correct their speech often enough. Both ideas are nonsense.
Children can, do, and will learn to speak the language that most people speak around them. If a child grows up where most people do not speak what is called standard English, then we will do only harm if we try to make him think there is something wrong with his speech. It will make much more sense, as some schools are beginning to do, to teach standard English as if it were a foreign language, encourage- ing a child to talk and write about things that interest him, in the way that is most natural to him, all the time exposing him to much standard English as possible.
I spoke at a PTA meeting recently, and repeated the story of Lisa giving the name “cows” to a class of animals including cows, horses, and sheep. I explained that we did not correct her because it would be discourteous; because we were too pleased to hear her talk to be worried about “mistakes”; and because, realizing that she had done some bold and powerful thinking, we did not want to do anything to make her doubt its worth or discourage her from doing more such thinking in the future. I also emphasized that correction was in fact not needed, that the child was soon able, by herself, to get her names and classes straightened out.
A certain number of people are always upset by hearing such stories. Soon after this meeting, I got a pleasant but agitated letter from an intelligent and highly trained psychologist who had heard my talk. How, she demanded, could children possibly learn unless we corrected all their mistakes? Wasn’t that our responsibility, our duty? I wrote a long reply, repeating my point and telling still more stories about children correcting their own mistakes. But she seems to be as far from understanding me as ever. It is almost as if she cannot hear what I am saying. This is natural enough. Any one who makes it his life work to help other people may come to believe that they cannot get along without him, and may not want to hear evidence that they can, all too often, stand on their own feet. Many people seem to have built their lives around the notion that they are in some way indispensable to children, and to question this is to attack the very center of their being.

John Holt . . . "Teaching children to speak"

2005-09-11T00:11:00.000-07:00

Bill Hull once said to me, “If we taught children to speak, they’d never learn.” I thought at first he was joking. By now I realize that it was a very important truth. Suppose we decided that we had to “teach” children to speak. How would we go about it? First, some committee of experts would analyze speech and break it down into a number of separate “speech skills.” We would probably say that, since speech is made up of sounds, a child must be taught to make all the sounds of his language before he can be taught to speak the language itself. Doubtless we would list these sounds, easiest and commonest ones first, harder and rarer ones next. Then we would begin to teach infants these words, working our way down the list. Perhaps, in order not to “confuse” the child—“confuse” is an evil word to many educators—we would not let the child hear much ordinary speech, but would only expose him to the sounds we were trying to teach.
Along with our sound list, we would have a syllable list and a word list.
When the child had learned to make all the sounds on the sound list, we would begin to teach him to combine the sounds into syllables. When he could say all the syllables on the syllable list, we would begin to teach him the words on the word list. At the same time, we would teach him the rules of grammar, by means of which he could combine these newly-learned words into sentences. Everything would be planned with nothing left to chance; there would be plenty of drill, review, and tests, to make sure that he had not forgotten anything.
Suppose we tried to do this; what would happen? What would happen, quite simply, is that most children, before they got very far, would become baffled, discouraged, humiliated, and fearful, and would quit trying to do what we asked them. If, outside of our classes, they lived a normal infant’s life, many of them would probably ignore our “teaching” and learn to speak on their own. If not, if our control of their lives was complete (the dream of too many educators), they would take refuge in deliberate failure and silence, as so many of them do when the subject is reading.

"Sharks"

2005-09-03T20:29:00.000-07:00

The sharks were cruising their range, as is their habit. They would come upon us, put on the brakes, turn and make a big circle, watching us all the while, and then take off again. No wild creature, except perhaps the cockroach, is an experimental gourmet. Unless the food supply has disappeared, wild things want to eat what they have always eaten. Something that does no look, sound or move like anything that has ever been on their menu is not about to be tasted. It might taste incredible nasty. Why take the risk?
Barracuda would come in quiet groups and hang almost without motion in the clear water, giving us the big eye for an hour at a time. Curiosity, not hunger. All wild creatures especially well adapted to their environment have free time they do not have to use in search for food and shelter, or in fleeing from their enemies. This free time develops the sense of curosity and the sense of play. Porpoises play. Monkeys play. Otters play. Seals play. Young mammals play. Barracuda stand around and watch, like old men at a construction site, until a pang of hunger sends them darting off about their business.
The eerie savage predators of the deep have gotten a very bad press. I met a man who used to don an old-fashioned diving costume and go down into tank in Hollywood and be pursued by a horrid, deadly octopus with arms about nine feet long. Octopi are timid and gentle. Hank would sort of lean way back on his heels and put his hands up in front of him as if to ward off untidy death, and then would walk slowly toward the octopus and it would retreat just as slowly. Then they would run the film backwards

George Orwell

2005-08-31T23:34:00.000-07:00

In prose, the worst thing one can do with words is to surrener to them. When you think of a concrete object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want to describe the thing you have been visualizing you probably hunt about till you find the exact words that seem to fit. The alternative method promises treachery. When you think of something abstract you are more inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense of blurring or even changing your meaning.

"The Seesaw Log . . . William Gibson

2005-08-31T23:32:00.000-07:00

" . . . and when another artist asked what I had against actors, I said writing for them was like painting not in oils but in colored mice; after the painting was finished the mice began running around."

"The Seesaw Log" . . . William Gibson

2005-08-31T23:28:00.000-07:00

" . . . By the end of the week I was growing sick of the sight of these two alert, attractive, intelligent, articulate, tireless hounds of perfection, whose logic was irrefutable; I welcomed it much as a man with abdominal cramps welcomes an enema."

"Looking For Rachel Wallace"

2005-08-30T21:50:00.000-07:00

" . . . I like to get everything in order so when something unpredictable comes along I can concentrate on that."

Conant

2005-08-30T21:48:00.000-07:00

In 1947, Conant said in a lecture to the National War College, "You have to get the past straight before you do much to prepare people for the future."

Perlman & Beethoven

2005-08-30T14:50:00.000-07:00

During a N.Y. Philharmonic concert, Hugh Downs is interviewing Itzhak Perlman, the violinist, about the Beethoven Violin Concerto just performed. He asks Perlman why that concerto is so difficult. Perlman answers, "Its simplicity. There is nothing in the piece that lets the performer hide." He explains that there is not a lot of bravura, a lot of bombast and excitement and fireworks behind which to hide. "It's a very exposed piece. You're just 'out there.'"

"Lawrence of Arabia" . . . Anthony Nutting

2005-08-11T23:53:00.000-07:00

“There was craving to be liked—so strong and nervous that never could I open myself to another. The terror of failure in an effort so important made me shrink from trying. There was a craving to be famous; and a horror of being known to like being known. Contempt for my passion for distinction made me refuse every offered honor. I like the things underneath me and took my adventures and my pleasures downward. There seemed a certainty in degradation, a final safety . . . true, there lurked always that Will uneasily waiting to burst out . . . self-seeking ambitions visited me, but not to stay, since my critical self would make me fastidiously reject their fruits . . . When a thing lay within my reach, I no longer wanted it; my delight lay in the desire. When a desire gained head, I used to strive until I had just to open my hand and take it. Then, I would turn away, content that it had been within my strength. Indeed, the truth was, I did not like the ‘myself’ I could see and hear.”

This story of the conception and birth of the “Seven Pillars of Wisdom” is a characteristic of Lawrence as any other single episode of his life. It symbolizes all the contradictions of his personality and all the hopes and fears, the determination of the will and neurosis of the mind that went to make up his extraordinary character. First, there was the absolute resolve to write the book at no matter what cost in mental and physical strain. Accompanying this was the showman’s desire to achieve a first-class production in terms of writing and illustration. Then, once the task was accomplished, came the desperate fear to submit his product to public scrutiny. Finally, when the success had been achieved, there came the refusal to profit by it.

Henry Ward Beecher

2005-08-11T23:34:00.000-07:00

Thinking cannot be clear till it has had expression. We must write, or speak, or act our thoughts, or they will remain in half torpid form. Our feelings must have expression, or they will be as clouds which, till they descend in rain, will never bring up fruit or flower. Thought is the blossom; language the opening bud; action the fruit behind it.

Holt . . . "The Underachieving School"

2005-06-09T18:34:00.000-07:00

It may be when tests seem to work best that they do the most harm. I have had frequent discussions with my present students--able, successful, on their way to prestige colleges--about testing and grading. It is surprising how fiercely many of them defend a system that they often complain about and rebel against. They say, angrily or anxiously, "But if we're not tested and graded, how can we tell whether we're learning anything, whether we're doing well or poorly?" It makes me sad. I think of the two-and-three-year-olds I have known, continually comparing their own talk to the talk of people around them. I think of the five-and-six-year-olds I have known, teaching themselves to read, figuring out each new word on a page, continually checking what they are doing against what they have done, what they don't know against what they know. Then I think of my fifth graders, handing me arithmetic papers and asking anxiously, "Is it right?" and looking at me as if I were crazy when I said, "What do you think?" What difference did it make what they thought? Rightness has nothing to do with reality, or consistency, or common sense; Right is what the teacher says is Right, and the only way to find out if something is Right is to ask a teacher. Perhaps the greatest of all the wrongs we do children in school is to deprive them of the chance to judge the worth of their own work and thus destroy in them the power to make such judgments, or even the belief that they can.

More Miscellaneous

2005-03-23T19:21:00.000-08:00

THE ACT OF CREATION . . .Arthur Koestler . . . MacMillan

The mind likes a strange idea as little as the body lies a strange protein, and resists it with similar energy. If we watch ourselves honestly, we shall often find that we have begun to argue against a new idea even before it has been completely state.

ON WRITING WELL . . . William Zinsser . . . P. 175

This criticism at its best: stylish, illusive, disturbing. It disturbs us--as criticism often should--because it jogs a firmly held et of beliefs and forces us to re-examine them.

DAUGHTER OF TIME . . . Josephine Tey

Its an odd thing but when you tell someone the true facts of a mythical tale they are indignant not with the teller but with you. They don't want to have their idea upset. It rouses some vague uneasiness in them, I think, and they resent it. So they reject it and refuse to think about it. If they were merely indifferent it would be natural and understandable. Bt it is much stronger than that, much more positive. They are annoyed. Very odd, isn't it?

THE STREET WHERE YOU LIVE

2005-03-23T19:13:00.000-08:00

By Alan Jay Lerner . . . W.W. Norton & Co.

In this success-blinded country, anyone who carves out a small measure of it is apt to be regarded as all-wise and omniscient. It is especially true if success brings with it a respectable amount of coin of the realm. It is only since the forties, when hit plays began running for years and there were countless road companies and productions abroad, that authors began entering the higher income brackets. It is not a coincidence that, simultaneously, their status radically rose in the eyes of the public. A long accepted national axiom has been that money equals wisdom. Never mind that some of the most narrow-minded idiots I have ever incountered are successful buninessmen. To the rest of their fellow-men a millionaire is a genius. A misanthropic millionaire is called eccentric. An inventor is only crazy until his invention becomes a household essential . . . It so happens that as it is possible to have a talent for playing the tuba and nothing else, it is also possible to have a talent for making money and nothing else.

Miscellaneous

2005-03-23T19:05:00.000-08:00

They can put electrodes against your skull and trace pictures of your brain waves. If you have nice, big, steep Alpha waves you learn quickly and well. People who smoke a lot have stunted waves. People who live in a high index of air pollution--New York, Los Angeles, Birmaingham--have rotten litle Alpha waves so tiny they are hard to find. No one knows yet why this is so. It may be a big fat waste of everybody's money, time and energy sending kids to school in Los Angeles, Chicago and lately Phoenix.

He was a former editor of the magazine, Flying. Invited for a trip in the newest thing in private planes, he accepted eagerly. The pilot began explaining the latest gadgetry before takeoff and continued his spiel, intent on entertaining his guest with all the recent advances in flight engineering. The guest, mindful of his host's generosity, tried to apear interested, but he could not contain his delight being "up" again. With a little smile on his face he was only absorbed in the clouds above, the mountains, the rivers and the highways below.

MOVE FOR YOUR LIFE

2005-03-10T17:43:00.000-08:00

It happened again. I had been writing for more than an hour and got up to stretch. I groaned. I creaked. I ached. At 84, I felt 184. But I heard that little insistent voice again: Move! MOVE! So I groaned once more, put on shoes and a light sweater, closed the door after me, and went. I live in a nice neighborhood: quiet, safe streets, rare traffic, all dogs on leashes, and a few hills to make thing interesting.
The first two blocks, my left ankle twinged. Forget it. Keep going. The third block, my left knee complained. Never mind. Ten more minutes should do it.
Sure enough, the magic began as usual, slowly but steadily. The legs smoothed into their thankful stride with a pleasant rhythm, my lungs took in the keen air, fresh from its trip across the Pacific. Thirty minutes later I returned feeling, well, maybe still 84, but a lively, invigorated, energized 84.
For starters, walking makes the heart pump better. That's all the heart is anyway: a pump. It pumps blood through 60,000 miles of blood vessels. Blood? Well, blood carries food, transports waste materials, regulates water constancy and body temperature, fights infection, distributes hormones and enzymes, and especially oxygen. Further, it helps bolster patients before operations, cures formerly fatal forms of anemia, heals terrible burns, halts a serious kidney disease which attacks young people, and combats cirrhosis of the liver. Not bad. And walking increases the heart rate, the heart gets bigger and stronger, letting it pump more blood . So far, so good.
Now, arteries carry the blood from the heart (call them garden hoses if you want). And as they wander through the body they become smaller and are called capillaries--like roads leading away from a freeway. The capillaries carry blood everywhere: muscles, spinal cord, brain, organs, lungs. This is called your circulatory system.
Still with me? It gets better.
I said oxygen, didn't I? Where does it come from? Obviously, from the lungs. Where does it go? Into the blood stream. How does it get there? Through the lung's cellular walls. But here's the kicker. As we walk, the blood vessels in the lungs dilate, allowing more oxygen into the blood stream. As we walk, the "hoses" get bigger, including the capillaries, allowing the blood to flow more freely. As we walk, the blood's hemoglobin concentration rises which allows the blood to carry more oxygen than usual. As we walk, the muscles become oiled, as if a vast tide were seeping into the spaces between the muscle walls. And, most amazing of all, as we walk the heart becomes a h-e-a-(r)-t. Walk long enough and "Metabolism's cellular furnaces generate heat, and [interior] furnaces roar with infinite metabolic fires." Whoohee!
Look, if you don't believe me, try it. Forget about those two hour walks you read about. Daunting. Put them out of your mind. Don't even think about them. Instead, put on your shoes, a sweater if you think you need it, and walk to the end of the block and back. That's it. Maybe four minutes total. Three minutes if four is too long. But one more thing: breath as you walk. Count eight steps, but hold your breath for the last two counts (seven and eight) and try to force your breath out through your chest walls and your abdomen. Release your breath slowly during next eight counts. Repeat. How much better will you feel after all this. Maybe not much, but a little (the farther you walk, the better you'll feel).
Okay, so one walk isn't enough, is it. Do it again tomorrow, but this time walk one house further, then return. Try again the next day and go two houses beyond. Then . . . but you knnow what's coming, don't you. You're onto me. So let's talk about the real problem.
"I'm too tired."
Ah, yes.
"Maybe tomorrow."
Yes, I hear you.
Now listen to me. There are two "tireds:" active and sedentary. Which are you? If you've played six sets of tennis or dug ditches for an hour, you're tired. But if you've been at the office all day, or watched an hour or more of television . . . . guess what? Sitting or standing in one position for too long, the used blood in the lower part of the body doesn't get the push it needs to return to the heart. That is why you can experience fatigue or sluggishness after sitting or standing for a long time or after a long car or plane ride. Then, especially then, is when you need to move actively.
"The human body was made to move," says Dr. Bernadine Healy in U.S. News & World Report (March 24, 2003); the longer it stagnates, the weirder things get--like clots forming in the deep veins of the leg . . . With a few hours of immobility, blood clotting is revved up as platelets clump and increase in number . . . compounding this is dehydration, which makes the blood thicker, and swelling of the ankles, which compresses veins . . . Most of the time the body dissolves these clots in the legs with its own chemical genius, [but only] as you start moving . . ."
Think of it this way: I once signed up to teach chss to children. The introduction put me under a teacher for a trial run. The children, about seven to ten years of age, gathered in front of the blackboard for the first half hour, then separated into twosomes for individual games. I wandered among them, checking moves, noticing how pleasantly silent they were--no yelling, no kicking, no fighting , not even whispering. But then I soon became aware of something else: not one of the approximately two dozen children was sitting still; it was all a squirming mass. They looked more like swimmers than chess players, certainly not immobile figures huddled over a board, unblinking and almost pulseless. These twitching, fidgeting creatures would probably, with poor luck, calm down as older teenagers, become too busy as adults, enter their 50's in panic and their sixties with dread.
Frightening!
Author James Michener once said, "A man who drops out of recreation after an active youth is committing slow suicide."
What happens is not merely a misconception but a fatal flaw, developing so insidiously that, like escaping gas or the loss of oxygen in high-flying plane, it becomes unnoticeable until too late. The years go by, often very quickly, in the blink of an eye.
"I'll do it tomorrow."
"I have years ahead of me."
"What, me worry?"
To repeat, man was made to move. To breath, to eat, to sleep . . . and to move. His legs and feet were fashioned for propulsion. He can sit down, he can lay down. But since that latter is his eventual position at the end, it would be better if he stayed vertical and made the most of this luxury.
After all, the old sports axiom applies to life, too: It isn't how you start, its how you finish.

Forget first impressions

2005-03-09T19:17:00.000-08:00

A famous artist tells of attending a public lunch honoring a sculptor who had done work for New York City. She sat down at a table next to a stranger, a sleek youngish man who, as soon as they had exchanged names, turned away from her and began talking to the woman on his other side. The guests were from both the art world and the city government, and he was a politician.
“He was clearly disappointed,” she said, “that someone who looked like me should have sat next to him. I could see him saying, ‘What a waste of a lunch.’ I thought of sitting somewhere else, but decided to stick it out.”
Soon, the woman sitting on her other side asked her name and figured out who she was. Then a couple across the table, also understanding, began talking to her. Eventually, this guy, taking it all in, said, “I didn’t get your name.” When the others told him who she was and what she did, his whole manner changed and he suddenly became very interested.
“But by then,” she said, “he had lost me.”

Quote from Boorstin

2005-03-09T18:45:00.000-08:00

. . . because Americans couldn't face ordinary life, in which the excellent and extraordinary are rare, and most things are difficult, imperfect, disappointing, or boring. Americans needed their experience to be constantly sweetened, like chewing gum, and a whole industry had grown up to provide this artificially enhanced reality.

Quote from Boorstin

2005-03-09T18:39:00.000-08:00

. . . Americans couldn't face ordinary life, in which the excellent and the extraordinary are rare, and most things are difficult, imperfect, disappointing, or boring. Americans needed their experience to be constantly sweetened, like chewing gum, and a whole industry had grown up to provide this artificially enhanced reality . . .

Don't Fear Failure

2005-02-25T19:23:00.000-08:00

FROM U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT . . . Vic Sussman

So here you are, mired in the mud of a stalled career, wondering why success keeps dancing just beyond your fingerips. A chorus of business gurus has the answer. Success eludes you--ready for this?--because you haven't failed enough.

Many career experts tout failue as the castor oil of success. The idea isn't to fling yourself into certain disaster in order to be mystically rewarded with triumph. Rather, it's a simple recognition that people who willingly risk failure and learn from loss have the best chance of succeding at whatever they try.

"Continuous success builds arrogance and complacency," says multibillionaire industrialist H. Ross Perot. "I want people who love the battlefield, people willing to go to the wall." That includes making honest mistakes. Unsuccessful people, he adds, instinctively avoid risks even when a smart gamble might pay off. "You learn a great deal more from what doesn't work than from what does." Failure, he says, is merely the cost of seeking new challenges.

CHARLES F. KETTERING . . .

Virtually nothing comes out right the first time. Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement. The only time you don't fail is the last time you try something, and it works. One fails forward toward succss.

INVENTORS AT WORK . . . Kenneth A. Brown

One of the big differences between other people and me is stick-to-it-iveness," say Wilson Greatbatch, inventor of the implantable cardiac pacemaker. "I think it's true of many inventors and entrepreneurs. "The most important factor is whether you look at something and wonder, What makes it work? Could I make it better? Inventing takes curiosity; it takes drive; it takes an inability to be discouraged. An inventor is the kind of person who really doesn't get interested in a problem until it looks impossible."

TIME . . . Kanfer & Booth

"People seem to think the muse is a iterary character," says novelist Stephen King, "some cute little pudgy devil who floats around the head of the creative person, sprinkling fairy dust. Well, mine's a guy with a flattop, wearing coveralls, who looks like Jack Webb and says, 'All right, you. Time to get to work.'" King, the ultimate workaholic, obeys the figure in the coveralls every day except for his birthday, the Fourth of July and Christmas.

S.F. CHRONICLE . . .

At any age, it is what Motherwell called "the endless quest" that keeps every one in the group going. "One wonderful thng about creativity is that you're never wholly satisfied with what you're trying to do," he said. "There's always the anguish, the pleasurable challenge." The painter said he had gone several years ago to an engagement reception for his older daughter. "I was startled at how may people asked, 'Have you retired yet?' They explained that they thought so because I'd been well known for so long. Then, the idea of age became very vivid to me. For me, to retire from painting would be to retire from life."

Depends On Who You Are

2005-02-25T19:04:00.000-08:00

I've just seen a televised inteerview by Charlie Rose (PBS) of movie star Samuel L. Jackson, who is, of course, black. At one point, Jackson tells of wanting to learn to fly. He approaches someone sitting in a plane. "Are you an instructor," he asks. He receives a cold stare. Then he introduces himself and finds the situation changing completely.

This parallels a story told by someone famous in the art world who tells of a similar incident. During a public luncheon, she sat down next to a stranger, a sleek, youngish man who, after they had exchanged names, turned away from her and began talking to the woman on the other side of him. The guests at the lunch were from both the art world and the city government, and he was a city politician. "He was clearly disappointed," she said, "that somone who lookd like me should have sat down next to him." She thought of going to another table, but decided to sit it out. Soon the woman on the other side of her asked her name and figured out who she was. Then two people across from her also realized and started talking. And eventually the guy, taking it all in, turned to her, asked her name, was told by the others who she was, and his whole manner changed. "Suddenly he became very interested," she said, "but by then he'd lost me."

Different approaches, Different worlds??

2005-02-21T16:56:00.000-08:00

THE RECKONING . . . David Halberstam . . . PP. 22, 24

Davis tried to be dispassionate in his report, it was difficult, because he felt such enthusiasm for what he had just seen. Pete Estes listened to him patiently, but when Davis was finished, he shook his head.
"When I was at Oldsmobile," he said, "there was something I learned that I've never forgotten. There was an old guy there who was an engineer, and he had been at GM a long time, and he gave me some advice. He told me, whatever you do, don't let GM do it first."
That was it, Davis thought--the Detroit line, the symbol of the protected industry. Don't let GM do it first, let the other guy make the early, expensive mistakes. Right then, he was sure, at Ford and Chrysler, there were people who were also deciding not to do it first because somehow someone else should do it first. It was, he thought, management by default. He knew there were businesses in America, typically smaller ones in various fields of technnology and medical science, that were authentically competitive. There, companies lived on the edge, their survival depending on innovation and technological advantage. But in the auto industry, as in most big industries, it was not like that. It was a protected world, the shares of the market already apportioned, GM big, Ford moderate, and Chrysler small . . . it was not a vibrant industry anymore, he thought, because the top people wre no longer doing things simply because they were the right thing. Those who had the most power had the least passion.

P. 58

"You live and die product, you burn with excitement when you're working on something new, and you were always dealing with a man who did not seem to hear a thing you were saying, and who could only answer in the most rigid numerical formulation," said product planner Erick Reickert, who helped design the Topaz and Tempo cars and then resigned and went to Chrysler. "It was the ultimate frustration."
Hal Sperlich, eventually an enemy, had a similar reaction. "For a long time I thought we simply could not understand each other, that we were from such different backgrounds that we might as well use different languages," he said. "And then later, when it was all over and I was gone, I realized it was more than that. It was a struggle between men for whom a car was an end in itself, an object of passion, and someone for whom a car generated no excitement, but was a means to success and power. It wasn't different languages, it was different businesses."

GENE SISKEL . . .
At the time of the release of "Return of the Jedi," I asked George Lucas what he and Steven Spielberg knew about making movies that made them so much more successful than other film makers of their generation, particularly their many imitators. "I think part of it is that we really love the making of a film--the planning, the shooting, the editing, the sound--whereas a lot of people in Hollywood like the trappings of film making--the deal making, the power and the money. We went to film school and have always like physically working with film itself."

N.Y. TIMES . . . by Barbara Somerville

If you want to encourage creativity in other people, offering rewards, making evaluations and fostering compeition may not be the best aproach.
"People are most creative when they feel motivated primarily by the interest, enjoyment, satisfaction and challenge of the work process itself," says psychologist Teresa Amabile of Grandeis University in Waltham, Mass.
Amabile has been studying creativity for ten years; her work pertains especially to teachers trying to get the best out of their students, parents trying to motivate their children, managers trying to spark creativity in their employees and writers trying to overcome writer's block.
She has studied outstanding scientists, well-known creative writers, college students and elementary school children and says creative people report that their creativity is hampered by focusing on what others expect of them.
Even winning a Nobel Prize can hamper future creative production. For example, poet T.S.Eliot became deeply depressed after receiving the Nobel Prize in literature. According to Amabile, a friend said to Eliot, "Congratulations on the prize, old boy. It's high time, I would say." Eliot gloomily replied, "Idt's rather too soon, I would say. The Nobel is a ticket to one's own funeral. No one has ever done anything after he got it."
Amabile says many creative people havea been stunted when they thought their work was motivated primarily by constraints put on them by someone else (extrinsic motivation). They were most creative when they were motivated by their interest in--and enjoyment of--their work (intrinsic motivation). A promise of reward and the expectation of being evaluated undermine a creative person's intrinsic motivation, she says.
Amabile's research shows that people are less creative:
When they focus on how their work will be evaluated.
If they are aware they are being watched while they work.
When they undertake an activity to obtain some contracted-for reward.
If they perceive themselves to be in direct competition with others
When they are restricted by someone else in their choice of how to peform an activity.
While creative people need to feel well-paid and appreciated, Amabile says their work suffers if the goal of each project is a bonus and not the pleasure of doing something well.

Television & Wars

2005-02-15T18:41:00.000-08:00

Copied from some source years ago.

Vietnam is often referred to as "television's war," in the sense that this is the first war that has been brought to the people preponderantly by television. People indeed look at television. They really look at it. They look at Dick Van Dyke and become his friend. They look at thoughtful Chet Huntley and find him thoughful, and at witty David Brinkley and find him witty They look at Vietnam. They look at Vietnam, it seems, as a child kneeling in the corridor, his eye to the keyhole, looks at two grownups arguing in a locked room--the aperture of the keyhole small; the figures shadowy, mostly out of sight; the voices indistinct, isolated threats without meaning; isolated glimpses, part of an elbow, a man's jacket (who is the man?), part of a face, a woman's face. Ah, she is crying. One sees the tears. (The voices continue indistinctly.) One counts the tears. Two tears. Three tears. Two bombing raids. Four seek-and-destroy missions. Six administration pronouncements. Such a fine-looking woman. One searches in vain for the other grownup, but, ah, the keyhole is so small, he is somewhere, never in the line of sight. Look, there is General Ky. Look, there are some planes returning safely to the Ticonderoga.

I wonder sometimes what it is that the people who run television think about the war, because they have given us this keyhole view; we have given them the airwaves, and now at this crucial time, they have given back to us this keyhole view--I wonder if they truly think that those isolated glimpses of elbow, face, a swirl of dress (who is that other person, anyway?) are all that we children can stand to see of what is going on inside the room.

Edmund Burke

2005-02-13T21:14:00.000-08:00

Words of Edmund Burke (1729-1797)

"Nobody ever made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little."

Indira Ghandi

2005-02-13T21:08:00.000-08:00

Letter to a friend:

"I am full of ideas but I haven't the driving force and energy to execute them. One has to fight so much for every little thing. I was born bone lazy, so I have developed a system of dividing things into most important, important, less important, and I fight only for the first, sometimes if I am very fit and energetic for the seond as well.

What complicates life is our entanglement with other people. There is so much inter-dependence and so little understanding . . . I do wish I were more interested in people as such. They amuse me and they irritate me and sometimes I find myself observing them as if I were not of the same species at all. Isn't that an awful thought?

Worry About Your Own Efforts

2005-02-11T18:38:00.001-08:00

When one is emotionally attached to results that he can't control, he tends to become anxious and then try too hard. But one can control the EFFORT he puts into winning. One can always do the best he can at any given moment. Since it is impossible to feel anxiety about an event that one CAN control, the mere awareness that you are using maximum effort to win each point will carry you past the problem of anxiety. Thus, for the player of the Inner Game, it is the moment-by-moment effort to let go and to stay centered in the here-and-now action which offers the real winning and losing, and this game never ends. The Inner Game frees the player from concern about the fruits of victory; he becomes devoted only to the goal of self-knowledge, to the exploration of his true nature as it reveals itself on level after level.

Worry About Your Own Efforts

2005-02-11T18:38:00.000-08:00

John Holt 3

2005-02-11T18:20:00.000-08:00

It may be when tests seem to work best that they do the most harm. I have had frequent discussions with my present students--able, successful, on their way to prestige colleges--about testing and grading. It is surprising how fiercely many of them defend a system that they often complain about and rebel against. They say, angrily or anxiously, "But if we're not tested and graded, how can we tell whether we're learning anything, whether we're doing well or poorly?" It makes me sad. I think of the two-and-three year-olds I have known, continually comparing their own talk to the talk of people around them. I think of the five-and-six-year-olds I have known, teaching themselves to read, figuring out each new word on a page, continually checking what they are doing against what they have done, what they don't know against what they know. Then I think of my fifth graders, handing me arithmetic papers and asking anxiously, "Is it right?" and looking at me as if I were crazy when I said, "What do you think?" What difference did it make what they thought? Rightness has nothing to do with reality, or consistency, or common sense; Right is what the teacher says is Right, and the only way to find out if something is Right is to ask a teacher. Perhaps the greatest of all the wrongs we do children in school is to deprive them of the chance to judge the worth of their own work and thus destroy in them the power to make such judgements, or even the belief that they can.

Pedestrian Problem

2005-02-09T20:09:00.000-08:00

You are in your car and approaching a crosswalk. No other cars are in sight. A pedestrian appears, walking fast. He steps into the crosswalk without breaking stride. You slam on your brakes and your tires squeal. The pedestrian pays no attaention and continues on, looking neither right nor left.

Is there anything wrong with this picture? Of course not. A pedestrian had entered a crosswalk; you had to stop. There it is in black and white: Vehicle Code 21950 (a); "The driver of a vehicle shall yield the right-of-way to a pedestrian crossing the roadway within any marked crosswalk or within any unmarked crosswalk at an intersection." Very clear.

Here comes the sticky part: Over time there has developed an attitude among pedestrians and drivers that once anyone steps into a street to cross it anywhere at all--even in a supermarket parking lot--the automobile driver must give way. He is going to stop. That he is legally bound to stop?? Not true. At a cross-walk? Yes. Anywhere else? No. But the pedestrian does not know this. He is conditioned to cars stopping. He trusts. He feels protected by invisible walls. Cars are supposed to stop. The always do, don't they? And drivers think they have to stop. And so they always do.

But consider two problems: First, there is no pedestrian yet born that has out-weighed an automobile. Second, the automobile is traveling on its own property. So why does it have to stop? Because the driver thinks he must. Because the pedestrian thinks he should. And because the pedestrian cannot wait a few seconds for that car, or several cars, to pass!! Such a simple thing. Just a few seconds wait. If there is mucho traffic, stepping out into it is understandable. But to stop one or two cars when there are not other cars in sight . . . !!

A pedestrian has certain rights. But to crudely paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, Having rights is fine as long as one does not abuse them."

Why A Jewish Problem

2005-02-09T19:41:00.000-08:00

Senator John McCain wrote an article for Reader's Digest entitled "Why Israel?" (Dec. 'o3). One sentence stood out: "The continuing and savage attacks on Israeli civilians shows that the main obstacle to peace is not the Israeli government, but a corrupt Palestinian leadership." Shouldn't the last words of that sentence read " . . . not the Israeli government, but Jewishness itself?"

Centuries of oppression should demonstrate the basic non-acceptance of Jews and Jewishness. For more than a thousand years, Spain, Germany, France, and other nations (including the U.S. during WW II) have turned the Jews away (the Nazis denied them existence itself). England at least attempted a type of acceptance with the Balfour Declaration, though, ironically, through Balfour, Israel is known as a state, not a country.

History will, therefore, always deny peace to the Middle East. Cultures change slowly. Do you see any real change in the last thousand years? Unless, in the search for peace, all involved return to the beginning of time and understand the fantasy-obstacle of Jewishness itself, a resolution is virtually impossible.

(A personal note: For more than sixty years I've heard Jews castigated. Why? Shakespeare's view is exaggerated so I've begun to question friends as to why. Their answers are vague at best, and at worst banal and incoherent. A logical explanation must exist somewhere. Or is this a non-definable mystery, like space itself? Where to look? I wish I knew.)

2005-02-08T20:01:00.000-08:00

Dear Sheryl Gay Stolberg

Your article in the New York Times Magazine about Ritalin has pushed me over the top. Be kind and hear me out.

Let me set the scene. I see an ad for volunteers to teach chess to children. Intrigued, I sign up, am assigned to a regular teacher as a test case, meet him at a grammar school, and watch as he takes over about twenty 9-to-11-year-olds. They sprawl in chairs, on tables, on the floor, restless and ever moving but never taking their eyes from the teacher at the blackboard. Eventually, they separate into twos and begin individual games on the floor. I wander among them, along with the teacher, checking moves, giving advice, enjoying the scene. But gradually, I begin to notice something. I look at each twosome and see a similarity all over the floor: no one is sitting still. I can’t believe it! Chess players are traditionally so immobile that they could be statues. These children are flipping and flopping like newly-caught fish. Further, there is not a whisper among them, nor any physical give-and-take; just a squirming mass, looking like wriggling matter under a microscope.

Scene two: I’m on the ice, teaching skating to a class of about eleven 10-to-12-year-olds. The children are standing at the railing, gazing around, shuffling their feet, whispering to each other—nine girls and two boys. The girls pause in their giggling; the boys, no. They continue pestering the nearest girls, and when the girls complain the boys punch at each other playfully. I separate the boys, sending each to opposite ends of the group. They make faces at each other and continue teasing the girl next to them. I send one boy off the ice for ten minutes, warn the other, and . . .

A ski book written by two instructors gives a bit of advice to other instructors: Adults taking lessons can stand in the snow listening to a lecture for half an hour without moving; children will last no more than two minutes without causing havoc.

Children are like quicksilver. Sometimes they seem like cats, especially in their teenage years. And adults look on, helpless, as youth races to the sunrise. Their mystification is total, leading them to confuse childhood with adulthood and turn childlike into childish. Historian Barbara Tuchman, in her Practicing History, says, “When I was a young parent a series of books appeared on child behavior by Dr. Arnold Gesell and his associates of the Yale Clinic in which one discovered that the most aberrant, disturbing, or apparently psychotic behavior of one’s own child turned out to be the common age pattern of the group innocently disporting itself behind Dr. Gesell’s one-way observation screen.”

Teaching children to read

2005-02-05T10:54:00.000-08:00

Joyous . . . "The state of being while teaching children to read . . . or while teaching anything!"
An institute studying this subject chose to test two groups of mothers and seperated them into two categories. The first, a smaller group, was composed of highly intellectual, highly educated, very calm, very quiet, and generally, but not invariably, intelligent mothers. This group was called "the intellectuals."
The second group, much larger, were inclined to be less intellectual and a good deal more enthusiastic than the first. This group was called "the dizzy blondes," but only reflecting their enthusiasm rather than the color of their hair or their intelligence.
It was predicted that the first group, "the intellectuals," would enjoy more success than "the dizzy blondes." The first results that came in were exactly the opposite, and the dizzier the mother the better the result. An examination proved the following: the quiet, serious, mother would ask the child to read a word or a sentence and if done well she would say, "That's splendid, Mary, now what comes next?" But "the dizzy blondes" were inclined to exclaim "Great! Wonderful! You did it!"

John Holt two

2005-02-05T10:47:00.000-08:00

In the POLITICS OF EXPERIENCE he pointed out that most conventional treatment of the people we call "mentally ill" is based on what he calls "the invalidation of their experience." This is a phrase he uses many times. By it he means that in effect we say to the mentally ill that their ways of perceiving and experiencing the world, their ways of reacting to it and communicating about it, are crazy and have to be cancelled, wiped out, done away with. Instead, they have to perceive, experience, respond, and communicate more or less as we do. Until then, they stay locked up. In one place he says that many people leave institutions only because "they have decided once again to play at being sane."

John Holt

2005-02-04T16:53:00.000-08:00

Schools, teachers, parents all believe that their job is to make learning happen in children, and that if it happens it is only because they made it happen. I have known parents who became anxious and angry whenever I told them about something that their children had done on their own initiative and for their own reasons. These people, like many teachers, had to believe that anything good the child did or that was in him came and could only come from them. It is as if we all see in print, someday, a statement by some famous person that all he is he owes to us. Perhaps, having despaired of putting much meaning into our own lives, having given up on ourselves as worthless material, we have to work our miracles and justify our lives through someone else. I cannot make anything of myself, but I can and will (if it kills you) make something of you.

Winston Churchill

2005-02-04T16:45:00.000-08:00

The human story does not always unfold like a mathematical calculation on the principle that two and two make four. Sometimes in life they make five or minus three; and sometimes the blackboard topples down in the middle of the sum and leaves the class in disorder and the pedagogue with a black eye.

2005-02-04T10:53:00.000-08:00

There are an estimated 60 million legal pistols in American homes--probably only one third of the total private armory. There is a pistol for every two homes; one for every four citizens.

Americans killed by pistols in the commission of crimes, in suicides and accidents, total 22,000 a year. More Americans have been killed by pistols than have died in all the wars of the 20th century.

At least four youngsters, aged 19 or younger, are killed every day by pistols. Firearms are the second leading cause of injury death in children under 19 and they are the leading method of teen suicide. This year, 3,000 will use a gun to take their own lives.

Nine out of ten pistol deaths are caused by people who are angry, drunk, or careless or depresssed. Only one out of ten is caused by criminals in commission of a crime.

Handgun proponents argue that guns don't kill, people do. Opponents say guns don't die, people do.

2005-01-27T18:29:00.000-08:00

It’s 3:20 PM on this January 27, 2005, and I hereby offer this first blog to begin what I hope is a pleasant relationship with blogging.

I’ve just seen a televised interview by Charlie Rose (PBS) of movie star Samuel L. Jackson, who is, of course black. In one segment, Jackson, wanting to learn to fly, tells of approaching someone sitting in a plane and asks if he is an instructor. He receives a stare of cold appraisal. The stare turns into one of blissful adulation when the movie star label is revealed and remained so all during the first lessons.

This parallels a story told by someone famous in the art world who tells of a similar incident that occurred during a public lunch. She sat down next to a stranger, a sleek, youngish man who, after they had exchanged names, turned away from her and began talking to the woman on the other side of him. The guests at the lunch were from both the art world and the city government, and he was a city politician.
“He was clearly disappointed,” she said, “that someone who looked like me should have sat down next to him.”
She thought of going to another table, but decided to sit it out. Soon the woman on the other side of her asked her name and figured out who she was. Then two people across from her also realized and started talking. And eventually the guy, taking it all in, turned to her, asked her name, was told by the others who she was, and his whole manner changed. “Suddenly he became very interested,” she said, “but by then he’d lost me.”