Basketball at Midnight

CONGRATULATIONS JEFF AND NEDA!

To those who are unaware, they are now married.

Sorry for the lack of an update in a while – I’ve been busy.  I’ve had afterschool activities nearly every day, and even on the weekend.  It’s been relatively fun.

On another note, I have become a complete and total super-dork (you probably already knew this).  Remember a few months ago when I said I was going to beta-test Linux (Fedora 9) and try to help the community?  I did, and when the final distribution came out I gave it a go and have been working to get everything working.  I have now found good replacements for most of the applications I used in Windows, and although I’ve spent hardly an hour in Vista for the past two weeks, I have finally drawn the “victory” line yesterday. About two days ago, I ran a clean Windows XP in a window in Linux (using VirtualBox) and played with it enough to be satisfied that I can run Quicken and MediaMonkey in it without any significant slow down (it runs about as fast as my 2004 laptop ran XP and it has virtually no impact on Fedora).  If you have an HP and are playing with Linux, you might check out my Documentation of the Adventure.  It explains how to get around the biggest problems – getting Broadcom networking, the nvidia drivers, and a DVD player to work.  Which reminds me, I still have to make sure I can write DVDs.

For the rest of you who have no idea what I’m talking about up there, keep reading as the rest of the post should be firmly anchored in the physical world.  In addition to my typical array of programs, I’ve been screening applications for English Camp and have been helping students prepare for a couple essay writing contests.

I’ve also been reflecting on the issues in learning that I have found here in Terengganu.  The following will probably be a concrete summary of the things that have irked me all year long.  It’s not to say that I’m feeling bitter this week– I’m still relaxing in the tranquillity of the last few weeks–but as my time left here dwindles, I’m becoming increasingly reflective (and a little sad) at the obstacles to the kids obtaining a “good” education.  For those who think that statement is insensitive, let me clarify: I don’t feel there’s anything wrong the values they teach or much of the content, but their methods of education focus on the “lower levels of the Bloom educational hierarchy.”  For the non pedagogically-literatue, that means it focuses on simple Knowledge retainment (like knowing the year of the Malay riots was 1969 (I think)), Comprehension (being able to understand that John McCain said he will lower your taxes), and Application (being able to grasp that 1 + 1 = 2, 2 + 2 = 4, and this “+” thing works essentially the same for any two numbers that you’re given).  Although this stuff is all important, it is the higher level of the hierarchy that deals with critical thought (understanding that statistics might be skewed or a narrator may not be reliable), problem solving (*note below), or genuine synthesis (using information you know/research to make a relatively new thesis or idea.  Some people consider creativity in this group, although others consider it separate of the hierarchy).  Regardless, the Hierarchy is a Hierarchy because the higher levels are *superior* to the lower levels; the most notable reason for this is that they require you to use the lower levels just to break the ice of the higher levels (see the *note, again).

* note: too long for the parenthesis.  As Harry Chapin said, “Wouldn’t it be great if, the week after Thanksgiving, the principal said on the loudspeaker, I want you all to know that we collected 2184 cans during our food drive and helped nearly 250 families to have a good meal for Thanksgiving. What we’re going to do this week— we’re going to stop all classes and work together and focus on this question: What are these families going to eat this week?’” The lower Bloom levels would lead us to know that “If we give hungry people food, they can eat.” The upper levels ask “How can this be done (regularly, in our society, given a limited supply of food, etc, etc, etc)?”

It often seems that the teachers here are on the level of early high schoolers in the US and that they never really grasp complex thought on the higher order of the hierarchy.  I believe I mentioned the teacher debate competition a few months ago in which one of our English teachers took three weeks off class to prepare and execute a debate that was an exercise in lofty, unsupported statements and lacking of almost all formal argumentation techniques.

The level of the teacher’s writing is also comparable to that of early high school students.  I’m not talking about grammar, which would be understandable, but the complexity of thought.  The drama coach first wrote a play that was a fairy tale presenting a woman as the protagonist.  Don’t get your hopes up that it was really gender challenging; the characters still all conformed to typical gender roles, but the peasant girl helped save the prince before he married her and they lived happily ever after.  The script wholly lacked foreshadowing and the various literary devices that we learned to use throughout our secondary education (I won’t mention the stereotype characters).

She eventually scrapped that drama, and the final drama at least had a somewhat better plot, but equally simple concepts and devices.  In a discussion about what activities we should plan for English Camp, one ETA said, “based on last week’s drama competition, anything involving screaming and little subtlety will go over well” (Haley 2008).

So, if you’re still reading, let me pose the question, “If that is where the teachers are, where are the students?”