The Founding Fathers didn't do sleepovers.

From "America's Top Parent" (The New Yorker, January 31):

On our bad days, we wonder whether this way of thinking is, as Chua might say, garbage. Last month, the results of the most recent Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA, tests were announced. It was the first time that Chinese students had participated, and children from Shanghai ranked first in every single area. Students from the United States, meanwhile, came in seventeenth in reading, twenty-third in science, and an especially demoralizing thirty-first in math. This last ranking put American kids not just behind the Chinese, the Koreans, and the Singaporeans but also after the French, the Austrians, the Hungarians, the Slovenians, the Estonians, and the Poles.

“I know skeptics will want to argue with the results, but we consider them to be accurate and reliable,” Arne Duncan, the U.S. Secretary of Education, told the Times. “The United States came in twenty-third or twenty-fourth in most subjects. We can quibble, or we can face the brutal truth that we’re being out-educated.”

Why is this? How is it that the richest country in the world can’t teach kids to read or to multiply fractions? Taken as a parable, Chua’s cartoonish narrative about browbeating her daughters acquires a certain disquieting force. Americans have been told always to encourage their kids. This, the theory goes, will improve their self-esteem, and this, in turn, will help them learn.

After a generation or so of applying this theory, we have the results. Just about the only category in which American students outperform the competition is self-regard. Researchers at the Brookings Institution, in one of their frequent studies of education policy, compared students’ assessments of their abilities in math with their scores on a standardized test. Nearly forty per cent of American eighth graders agreed “a lot” with the statement “I usually do well in mathematics,” even though only seven per cent of American students actually got enough correct answers on the test to qualify as advanced. Among Singaporean students, eighteen per cent said they usually did well in math; forty-four per cent qualified as advanced. As the Brookings researchers pointed out, even the least self-confident Singaporean students, on average, outscored the most self-confident Americans. You can say it’s sad that kids in Singapore are so beaten down that they can’t appreciate their own accomplishments. But you’ve got to give them this: at least they get the math right. [Emphasis added.]

"It’s educated language and egalitarian ideas that particularly elicit the accusation of elitism today, and particularly in combination."

Ayup.

A play, some films, a program, and books, of course

Recently attended
■ Short Shakespeare! Macbeth
As I mentioned here, this was actually our second time seeing this version. This go-around, we'd give special props to Patrick Sarb (Macduff) and Mike McNamara (Banquo). I'm compelled to add that my favorite production of Macbeth, to date, was the full-length version LCpl M-mv and I attended in 2009. Absolutely splendid, that.

Recently watched
■ The Social Network
Brilliant script, well delivered. Excellent.

■ Inception
Cool idea, well executed. We're still chatting about it.

■ Catfish
Alternately interesting, disturbing, and toward the end there? Not just a little exploitative.

■ Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole
Derivative tale told with visual sumptuousness.

■ Easy A
Sure, Emma Stone is beguiling, but she attended the Ellen Page School of Acting, right? I mean, I think I've seen this schtick already. And as much as I love (and I do) Patricia Clarkson and Stanley Tucci, I thought the parents they portrayed moved from playfully cool and in-touch in the early scenes to gravely irresponsible by the film's end. Not much to recommend here, really.

■ 2012
I don't mind a little gallows humor in my disaster films, but this was ridiculous.

■ The series finale of "Medium"
I wasn't a faithful fan; I only watched when the air date and time and my couch time coincided. (Read: infrequently.) Still, whenever I caught this program, I thought, For a show that deals with the paranormal, this is one real family. I enjoyed Allison and Joe's relationship, even -- perhaps especially -- when it concerned the seemingly banal. And I thoroughly enjoyed the kids, particularly the middle daughter. It's odd to me that shows like "The Bachelor" and "Minute to Win It" and "Jersey Shore" find audiences, and this underappreciated gem couldn't. Ah, well. Anyway, the finale was bittersweet, blending a bit of "LOST" (of which I am a great fan) and a touch of the The Time Traveler's Wife (of which I am not).

Recently finished
■ Me: The Other Side of the Island (Allegra Goodman)
A "dystopian eco-fantasy." Well-crafted and thought-provoking. Passing it on to Miss M-mv(ii).

■ Miss M-mv(i): Virals (Kathy Reichs)
Solidly entertaining and even "exciting."

■ Miss M-mv(ii): Matched (Ally Condie)
Not awful but less love story and more dystopia is what this reader prefers. Heh, heh, heh.

Miss M-mv(ii) and I are also consuming home decorating and design books at a rather alarming rate. (More on that another time.) Naturally, the Girls Rule! School read Macbeth before the performance on Saturday, and our book club finished its January selection, A Lantern in Her Hand (Bess Streeter Aldrich), early last week. I read Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (Amy Chua) the day it was released. (More on that soon). Now Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child (Anthony Esolen) is providing moments of synchronicity / serendipity/ synthesis when I consider it in light of Chua's descriptions of parenthood and childhood. (Note: I picked up Ten Ways to participate in the book club over at Ordo Amoris, so at the very least, I'll post a chapbook entry for it.) I'll round up my January reading later this month. Perhaps I can get the Misses to submit some entries, too.

"What are we to make of the renascent birder?"

From "The Birder: The ominous rise of amateur ornithology" (Slate, January 14, 2011):

In fact, the re-emergence of bird-watching in the culture's limelight is an ominous thing—though not because of anything the birder does. The hobby rose to popularity in the unrest of the nuclear era, and it points toward a looming fear of ecological apocalypse. This makes sense. For bird-watchers, who are trying to keep track of the natural world without leaving a trace—to conquer nature without smothering it—the struggle not to uncoil one's strength destructively is constant. Birding is a steam valve for anxiety about nuclear-age strength and habits. Its prominence today can be seen as a measure of quiet alarm.

Semicolon hosts "The Saturday Review of Books." Consider participating this week.

"Live a good life."

"And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count.
It's the life in your years."
~ Abraham Lincoln ~

From the archives......
We're letting go of them from the moment they arrive, but today it felt a little all-at-once to me. A little "Wait! Stop! I want to get off!" A little like watching his back as he loped into the elementary school a little more than a decade ago.

Wait!

Stop!

Come back.

Come back.

It's fine. It's all right. We did well, it seems. He'll be great. Today the cicadas will hum, and the grackles will rob me (again!) of all our good seed. And my daughters will make art and make me laugh. Night will fall, and then tomorrow will be here.

And so it goes.

But, in focusing on the moment I'm in right this second, I realize that sometimes a job well done feels like a terrible loss.

An empty place.

An unheld hand.

Wait. Come back.

Go. Be well. Be good. Be kind. Work hard.

Come back.

"My mysterious European friends"

"I like these people," the narrator tells us at one point in the three-minute video. "I can see us being adventure buddies or something." Funny. After watching this, I find myself thinking, "I like this guy" -- meaning, the narrator, Todd Bieber. The photos are good, sure, but I'm much more interested in endearing voice behind the search for his "mysterious European friends." Could the men in the photos possibly be as compelling as the man who wonders what the photographers will think of him when they find his video?

"Or maybe this will just get lost in a blizzard of YouTube videos."

Related article here.

"In fact, you can get a fine education at a public university; in fact, even better than at many elite schools."

From "An advanced education: What bang do students get for their buck?" (Bellingham Herald, January 20):

After so many years of researching this American Way of Higher Education, we've come to believe that when parents are selecting a college for Jennifer or Jason, their primary target should be a school that permits their child to graduate debt-free. That means thinking creatively and forgoing dreams of luxury or prestige.

Unless the family is wealthy or the youngster can land a full-ticket scholarship that genuinely is that, the elite private institutions are probably best avoided.

Instead, parents might consider the honors college at their in-state public university, or the first two years at a community college, many of which are staffed by dedicated professors who like teaching.

Well, now. Isn't that a familiar song?

■ Paying for college, revisited

■ Community college

■ Paying for college: A rant of modest proportions

■ About college

■ “‘You are in deep doo-doo, little girl.’”

"[T]reat them like the young adults they are."

Have you followed the news -- and ensuing controversy -- about the expurgated edition of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn? Girl Detective sent me the link to this Bookslut review, in which Michael Schaub responds to Lorrie Moore's NYT editorial:

As for To Kill a Mockingbird -- and again, this hurts -- the book has served as the introduction to serious literature for countless serious readers; it's laughable to suggest otherwise. (And yes, the narrator is "racially naïve." She's a six-year-old girl in Great Depression-era Alabama.) It might do us all some good if we just remember that (a) high school literature teachers are professionals who generally know what they're talking about, and (b) kids aren't as dumb as you might think. Of course they get context; of course they get history. Give them Huck Finn, give them Mockingbird, and treat them like the young adults they are. That's how you get kids to like reading, not by telling them they're too young and naïve to appreciate the literature that is their cultural birthright.

"[I]t's good to lead a monk's existence: Students who study alone and have heavier reading and writing loads do well."

From "Student tracking finds limited learning in college" (Associated Press, January 18, 2011):

A study of more than 2,300 undergraduates found 45 percent of students show no significant improvement in the key measures of critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing by the end of their sophomore years.

Not much is asked of students, either. Half did not take a single course requiring 20 pages of writing during their prior semester, and one-third did not take a single course requiring even 40 pages of reading per week.

The findings are in a new book, "Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses," by sociologists Richard Arum of New York University and Josipa Roksa of the University of Virginia. An accompanying report argues against federal mandates holding schools accountable, a prospect long feared in American higher education.

Related entry
"College is an active experience, not an intellectual amusement park ride where you strap in and see what happens." (9.16.2010)

Parenting: It's all lies and performance.

From "Mothers admit to parenting lies, Netmums survey says" (BBC News, January 16, 2011):

Parenting expert and sociologist Frank Furedi said that parents were under "profound pressures" from society. He said that a culture of parenting "incites parents to lie and to turn child-rearing into a performance."

He added that even with the best intentions, reports such as these increased the pressure on parents: "Parents are always being judged in one way or another - including by this report. The real solution is to lay off parents and publish less reports."

Now I've periodically derided the idea of parenting as performance art since 2004 (and more here), but I'm in a generous mood this morning, so I'll dispense with the derision and concede that many mothers do mistakenly assume parenting is a competition. We need look no further than the professionalization of motherhood (which I first discussed here) to understand why. Prior to becoming parents, many mothers earned a living by tackling projects, meeting goals, and exceeding expectations -- in short, by performing. And this performance-orientation is not only tied to the workplace. Consider the typical classroom: projects, goals, grades -- performance. It's no wonder so many mothers decide to parlay their working world and/or academic skills into mothering "performance" and "success." To folks of this mindset, then, children are projects and the way to meet goals and exceed expectations is through the success and achievements of said children. The pressure must be crushing for such mothers. After all, in Lake Wobegon, all of the children are above average, but in places where professional mothers gather? All of the children are gifted! What if yours isn't? Oh, woe!

Heh, heh, heh.

More from the article:

The website is launching what it calls The Real Parenting Revolution, which encourages parents to accept the reality of how they live, rather than feeling bad about not living up to a myth of perfection.

"It's the imperfections that make us human," Ms Freegard said.

Hmmm. I'd posit that it's not the imperfections that make us human but the ability to define perfection for ourselves, sans all of the looking around the room, playground, or schoolyard to see what everyone else is doing.

Just a thought.

Semicolon hosts "The Saturday Review of Books." Consider participating this week.

Weird sisters and all

Merciful heaven!
What, man! Ne'er pull your hat upon your brows;
Give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak
Whispers the o'er fraught heart, and bids it break.

Ah, there's the omnipresent synchronicity / serendipity/ synthesis at work in the family-centered learning project again.

The Misses were first introduced to Macbeth five years ago. Ever so much more practiced in the art of bardolatry now, they are enjoying the reintroduction immensely.

As am I.

And today I find Malcolm's admonition to the stoic MacDuff alternately bracing and comforting: Give sorrow words.

No. No, not yet. Someday. Maybe. But not yet.

Rocking with Hawking

From the conclusion of Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time:

Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing? Is the unified theory so compelling that it brings about its own existence? Or does is need a creator, and, if so, does he have any other effect on the universe? And who created him?

[...]

[I]f we do discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason--for then we would know the mind of God.

[Emphasis added.]

Related posts:
■ "I wanted to understand how the universe began." (5.12.2007)

■ I'm an optimist, too. (10.02.2008)

■ Bedtime stories (3.30.2009)

"Sometime in late 2011, according to the UN Population Division, there will be seven billion of us."

From "7 Billion" (National Geographic, January 2011):

For centuries population pessimists have hurled apocalyptic warnings at the congenital optimists, who believe in their bones that humanity will find ways to cope and even improve its lot. History, on the whole, has so far favored the optimists, but history is no certain guide to the future. Neither is science. It cannot predict the outcome of People v. Planet, because all the facts of the case—how many of us there will be and how we will live—depend on choices we have yet to make and ideas we have yet to have.

Semicolon hosts "The Saturday Review of Books." Consider participating this week.

"[T]he superior intelligence of cat owners"

From "Cat owners 'more educated than dog owners'" (The Telegraph, February 6, 2010):

Researchers at the University of Bristol say that the superior intelligence of cat owners is unlikely to be caused by their exposure to the famously cunning and selfish pets.

Rather, more educated people tend to work longer hours and choose a pet to fit their lifestyles. Unlike dogs, cats require no walking and can manage with little human company.

Sorry, folks, but this article just cracked. me. UP!

Link / Think

From "Can You Build a Better Brain?" (Newsweek, January 10 & 17, 2011):

The holy grail of brain training is something that does transfer, and here there are three good candidates. The first is physical exercise. Simple aerobic exercise, such as walking 45 minutes a day three times a week, improves episodic memory and executive-control functions by about 20 percent, finds Art Kramer of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His studies have mostly been done in older adults, so it’s possible the results apply only to people whose brain physiology has begun to deteriorate—except that that happens starting in our 20s. Exercise gooses the creation of new neurons in the region of the hippocampus that files away experiences and new knowledge. It also stimulates the production of neuron fertilizers such as BDNF, as well as of the neurotransmitters that carry brain signals, and of gray matter in the prefrontal cortex. Exercise stimulates the production of new synapses, the connections that constitute functional circuits and whose capacity and efficiency underlie superior intelligence. Kramer finds that a year of exercise can give a 70-year-old the connectivity of a 30-year-old, improving memory, planning, dealing with ambiguity, and multitasking. “You can think of fitness training as changing the molecular and cellular building blocks that underlie many cognitive skills,” he says. “It thus provides more generalizable benefits than specifically training memory or decision making.” [Emphasis added.]

Also see "21 Ways to Be Smarter in 2011" (Newsweek, January 10 & 17, 2011).

"But if you don't have fun doing this thing, my friend, then it will be the dumbest damned thing you have ever done."

From The Philosopher's Diet: How to Lose Weight and Change the World (Richard A. Watson; an RDA on 11.26.2003):

I don't mean taking the weight off and keeping it off, I mean the crucial matter of gaining control of a part of your life. That's what you'd better glory in; otherwise you might as well ask your mother what to do next.

Here's the sticker: you won't know if you enjoy it until you do it. To find out, you have to commit yourself to attaining the goal. You must take what Kierkegaard called a leap of faith.

If you've been an M-mv reader for long, you know that I refuse to yield to the January madness of (often wildly ill-advised) exercise programs, diets, and weight loss goals.

But since December 2009, I have shed about thirty-five pounds and become much leaner, much fitter, than I have been in many years. And I'm pleased about this -- so pleased, in fact, that I do plan to do more of the same things that achieved these results.

1. Ride my bike. Wheeeee!
Our new goal? One thousand miles between Easter Sunday and the day it simply becomes too cold to ride. (Related entries here and here.)

2. Walk daily.
Sometimes all my schedule allows is twenty minutes in the morning with an exercise DVD and two three-pound weights, but the benefits are measurable: weight loss, an increase in lean muscle mass, the elimination of insomnia, and more.

3. Drink water, coffee, green tea, and 100% cranberry juice.
And that's pretty much it. I know: This sounds like a "wildly ill-advised" diet plan, but it's not. It's just my way of saying, "No soda. Limited fruit juice (most of which is sugar-filled and pretty hard on the middle-aged stomach, anyway). A cup or two of skim milk. And that's pretty much it."

4. Eat well but don't forget to indulge.
In other words, view food mostly as fuel, but don't overlook its value as one of life's pleasures.

5. Sleep more, not less.
These days, I need 7.5 hours to feel adequate, eight to feel well rested, and 8.5 to feel queenly. True, I feel queenly primarily on weekends and holidays, but well rested is a good thing. How does sleep tie into weight loss? Check this out:

Getting too little sleep could prevent dieters from losing body fat, according to a study published today in the Annals of Internal Medicine. Researchers observed 10 overweight men and women ages 35 to 49 who slept in a sleep lab for two separate two-week periods; participants logged 5.5 nightly hours in one of the trials and 8.5 nightly hours in the other. The dieters lost the same amount of weight during each trial, but when they were sleeping fewer hours, they lost muscle, rather than fat. Sleeping 8.5 hours a night, meanwhile, was associated with losing mostly fat.

______________________________

And that's my not-so-secret formula.

Let's be clear, though: The change in my appearance was -- is -- slow. My family cheers and praises the results regularly, but the first time someone outside my circle said, "What have you been doing? You look great!" was in May, nearly six months after I had implemented some of the changes outlined above. There were a flurry of compliments in the weeks that followed. And then nothing. And that must be okay, folks. It took years to get out of shape, after all, and life is not a reality show. It will take time -- perhaps years -- to reshape, tone, and change.

By the way, the next time someone said, "Have you been losing weight? You look good!" was October, nearly six months after the first compliment from someone outside my family. Another flurry of compliments followed. And then nothing. Again, you must reconcile yourself to finding a sense of accomplishment from within -- within yourself, within your family -- because the rest of the world just isn't paying that much attention. Besides, any changes you've made aren't for the rest of the world. They're for you and for your family. Resolve to achieve health goals slowly, then, and you will make meaningful changes, changes that are, in fact, built to last the rest of your life.

What remains unsaid

One year ago today:

Only two days, nine hours until he leaves for boot camp.

In that post, I thanked you for thinking of us and asked that you continue to keep us in your thoughts.

And please keep the parents of the two young men who will ship with Master in your thoughts, too.

Today I thank you again -- for your kind words and for respecting our privacy. Both acts have comforted us. Today I ask again that you keep us in your thoughts. And please keep the parents of the young men who trained with LCpl M-mv in your thoughts, too.

What remains unsaid
For a while -- too long, some will say; not long enough, will others -- we stopped all the clocks, cut off the telephone, and prevented the dog from barking with a juicy bone. *

But that's not, in the end, how we process life and all of its joys and upheavals and sorrows. Not for long, anyway.

It would, I suppose, be different if there were regrets or misunderstandings, words unspoken or love unexpressed.

But there were not.

So now Mr. M-mv, the Misses, and I are going about the business of what I have labeled "the new normal."

Clocks tick.
Phones ring.
Dogs bark.

Life, though not as we knew it, does go on, although for a while there, I would not have been able to tell you how. And now all I can say is that it just does.

One math lesson,
one book,
one piano etude,
one deadline,
one basket of laundry,
one car repair,
one argument,
one tender word,
one bird,
one hug,
one swim practice,
one bowl of oatmeal,
one utility bill.

One day at a time. It goes on. Wish us luck.




* Added later: An allusion to W.H. Auden's poem "Funeral Blues"

The Saturday Review of Books: New Year's Day Edition

Semicolon is hosting a special "book-list-only" Saturday Review of Books today. Stop by, post a link to your list(s), and/or peruse the lists of other participants.