POST # 300 - SAILBOAT ANALOGY

I'm winding down the final week of my summer classes. I always wax a bit nostalgic as these classes come to a close. I've enjoyed getting to know my students and sharing this time with them. Now they will move on to other things and may or may not give their SOC class a second thought. There is all together too much of intellectual bulimia going on in college....students CRAM information hand over fist into their brains to hold onto it just long enough to pass exams and then purge it all once the class ends in order to make room for the next binge. That makes me sad.

But I like to believe a few of them will have a somewhat enhanced perspective as a result of having studied with me this semester. To try to give them some framing context to take with them as they leave, I always close with the following message to my online students:

When I teach this course in a traditional classroom, on the last day I always wind up with my sailboat analogy. It involves pictures on the board, some interactive exercises, and other things I can't do very well here - but I do want to share the basic idea behind it.

Have you ever been on a sailboat? When I used to watch sailboats when I was little, I assumed that when the wind pushed the sail, the boat would go in whatever direction the wind was blowing. As I got older, I realized that made no sense. If that were true, the captain of the boat would have no control whatsoever of where he or she was going.

Later I learned that sailors use a specific technique of adjusting their sails called "tacking". By pulling on various ropes they move the sails this way and that. Based on the angle of their sails, they can move the boat in just about any direction, so long as there is sufficient wind. It works sort of like playing pool - you can make a cue ball go in different directions depending on which side of the ball and from what angle you strike it. You make the boat go in different directions by changing the angle of the sail.

What does that have to do with Sociology???

SOCIAL FORCES are the wind of our life. We have little or no control over many social conditions such as our culture's attitudes towards race, gender or age. Sometimes events or perceptions will be thrown at us, which are less than ideal. Many times other people in our lives will make choices that have a huge impact.

However, we are NOT completely at the mercy of society or other people's behavior. We are the captains of our ships, and by adjusting our sails, we decide what directions our lives will go. How you present yourself in the world in terms of the vocabulary you use, the way you dress, the way you treat people in relationships, and what attitude you choose to maintain is in YOUR control. And your life will have a very different outcome based on the choices you make.

I had friends in Michigan who sold their house and business, bought a big sailboat and went sailing around the world. They had a 10 yr old son at the time. They simply pulled him out of public school and got a good home school curriculum to take with them. They took an amazing adventure that changed all of their lives. They would write to me from various ports telling stories of how they came through storms, times when the wind stopped for days, and other challenges. Yet they were very much on track, going from land mass to land mass pretty much according to the schedule THEY had planned. The reason they were able to be successful in their journey is that they were very knowledgeable about the currents and wind patterns, and used that knowledge to their advantage.

I believe that as we become more knowledgeable about SOCIOLOGY, we become better equipped to make wise choices in how we relate to others. This expertise empowers us to move forward in the direction we most desire, regardless of some of the barriers that may occur as challenges. There are still lots of things over which we have no control. However, the better we understand the nature and power of social norms, groupthink, bystander effect, racism, sexism, ageism, and all those other things we have studied, the better equipped we become to thrive in what may at times be a very stormy world.

The whole reason I asked you to write the personal and world examples in each of your value summaries is because I honestly believe this stuff matters in your life. I want you to see how it touches you and how it touches the world in which you live. It's not just a bunch of technical terms that you need to memorize in order to gather points on a quiz, never to think of again. These concepts affect your life each and every day. I want you to see how you are a part of your own culture. I want you to see where you fit in the world through the eyes of SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION.

For me, this class is more about shifting the way you THINK and PERCEIVE than it is about filling your heads up with bits of information. I hope that at least a few of you will notice more and analyze deeper as a result of this class. Because even if you never take another SOC class, unless you become a hermit in a cave who never interacts with others, you will be living sociology for the rest of your lives.

There will be storms. There will be calm. Through it all, take care in how you trim your sails. I wish you smooth journey.

(I just noticed as I uploaded this that it is the 300th posting of Mind-Muffins. - feels like a good reason to go bake a cake!)

Sweet Tunes

The week long Arts & Cultural festival at my college continues. I just got back from a jazz concert that was surprisingly good. Some of you may recall me writing a while back about one of my GED students, Jordan L. She is now a regular college student here and has been in the choir for a while. She did an outstanding job on her solo work on their rendition of "Stormy Weather". They did several other pieces, ranging from "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" to some Billy Joel tune that were arranged to really compliment this particular choir. They ended with an improv piece that was astonishingly good. They had the whole room of people up on their feet moving.

This afternoon is something called "Socrates' Cafe". The flier says:
"Join together for a time of coffee and philosophical reflections. Socrates challenged the youth of ancient Athens, Greece to explore a wide range of questions about life. He proposed that "the unexamined life is not worth living." Socrates' Cafes are springing up around the world to provide an informal setting to ponder important questions about life..."

So there will be a facilitator with some questions to get the flow going..it will be interesting to see what sort of participation we get.

Yesterday we had a PowWow and salmon feed and I also sat in on a slide show and discussion comparing global inequities in different parts of the word. The day before I listened to a "Transgender Awareness Training" that was pretty interesting. There are so many sessions going on throughout the day it's sometimes hard to pick and choose which ones I can fit into my schedule. After all, I DO still have to get some work done around here.

But over all it has been a good week with lots of energy. Students are flocking to this, and people from the community are dropping in on much of it.

I whine sometimes about the bureaucracy and petty politics of working for a community college, but there are times like this when I feel very blessed to be here. It gets even better. Next week I get to go to a curriculum design & program planning retreat at Eagle Cap Chalet at Wallawa Lake for three days.

I'd say this beats the heck out of turning bolts in a factory (which I've also done).

Kazoos on Steroids

The college where I work is having a week long Arts & Cultural festival with all sorts of workshops and speakers.

As a part of that, this morning I attended a Didgeridoo Workshop. It was great fun.

According to Wikipedia, "The didgeridoo (or didjeridu) is a wind instrument of the Indigenous Australians of northern Australia. It is sometimes described as a natural wooden trumpet or "drone pipe". Musicologists classify it as an aerophone."

While the natural eucalyptus tree Didges are beautiful, with a little work you can get a fairly decent tone out of any sufficiently long tube. For the purpose of this class they had us working with 45" Schedule 40 PVC pipe.

The guy who led the workshop, Dr. Ernest Tutt, has been playing the didgeridoo for nearly a decade. He attended the 2003 Garma Festival of Aboriginal Culture in Gulkunla, NT Australia, where he participated in classes taught by digeridoo masters. He's a remarkable guy and was very patient with us newbies.

I was quite pleased by the sound I was able to produce from my instrument, but I could not sustain it. I just don't have the whole circular breathing thing down. Still, I'm glad I gave it a shot. I don't know that I'll be pulling my PVC pipe out again any time soon for a good blow, but it felt good to explore and experiment some.

Tomorrow there will be Native Drumming, a group from the Nixyaawii Community School will be on campus so I'm very much looking forward to that. Then we'll have an educational pow wow in the evening with Fry bread and salmon dinner. There's a songwriting workshop, poetry readings, Latin & Polynesian dance demonstrations, and a whole host of speakers on a wide variety of topics.

It's a little bit frustrating because there is still work to get done and deadlines to meet, but I'm fitting in as many sessions as I can. This is definitely one of the better perks of working for a college (along with the free tuition). I get opportunities to participate in some great stuff.

Busting my Buttons

DRUM ROLL PLEASE..... I hereby would like to offer HUGE congratulations to a young lady I am extremely proud of. Jordan L. just completed her GED. She has big plans to move on to BYU Hawaii to study music. Look out world Here She COMES!

Jordan was one of my students when I taught GED. She was (and IS) smart, talented, and all around pretty wonderful. Students like this are a true joy to teach. For one reason or another, traditonal high school just didn't click with her. But once she got into my class, she really started to take off.

I only taught the class for one term, so I didn't get to see my students all the way to their graduations. But I just got an e-mail from Jordan tonight letting me know that she finished and thanking me for my part in her success. She said some really kind things.

This is just a part of what she said:

"I read a quote recently and it makes me think of you. Here it is: "We are each one of us angels, with only one wing--- and we can only fly when embracing each other----" I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for lending me your wing and helping me to fly! You told us that we can be whoever we want to be, and I may not know exactly "who" that is yet, but I do know that through Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ anything is possible. And through them I have hope, hope to KNOW that I can someday become the best "me" that I never knew I could be! YOU have helped me realize that hope. Thank you sooo much! You have, and always will have, a special place in my heart."

Man, it doesn't get much better than that.

On top of being very bright, this young lady has a marvelous voice and is very musically talented. Besides that she just has the sweetest spirit. I know she is going to accomplish great things. It's a good feeling to know that I was blessed with the opportunity to be part of her journey. You rock Jordan!

Situational Ethics and the Case for Torture

The essay that I have to analyze this week for my WR 122 class is actually a blog posting. Go figure. The piece in question is "Situational Ethics and the Case for Torture" by McQ over at the Q & O Blog. This posting is printed in my textbook along with a variety of others - Like John Ashcroft's testimony to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary extolling the virtues of the PATRIOT act and a piece on post 9/11 Racial Profiling.

My task for the class, as I've noted before, is NOT to argue the issues at hand, but rather to analyze how well the writers used evidence to make their points or to assess which specific rhetorical devices they use in effort to persuade.

It is an interesting exercise. It definitely helps stretch my capacity for critical thinking. Some weeks it goes smoother than others. This week I am in a "my dog ate my homework" frame of mind. But even when it gets tedious, I'm kinda diggin' the class. It exposes me to writing to think about that I probably would not have seen otherwise.

It terms of what McQ has to say....

Is there EVER a justification for torture? If you could save 5 or 20 or 300 lives by doing something abominable to one or two or three people identified as "terrorists" to elicit critical information, would that make it ok?

It seems to me the whole point of his posting is NOT about terrorism or torture at all. Rather, it is about principles. Do the ends justify the means? If you claim to believe in and support human rights can circumstances justify violating that principle?

The strength of McQÂ’s essay, IMHO, is his ability to clearly focus on issues rather than resorting to emotionally charged attacks, personal criticism or down right name calling which, sadly, seems to be so prevalent in the blogosphere. He shows a respectful engagement with others in dialogue, even when it is clear he disagrees with them.

I was exposed to this guy as a simple homework assignment. I can tell I will want to do more reading over in that direction as time goes by.

WEEK 5

This is the week my Intro Sociology class begins talking about social stratification. It's always interesting to hear what the students have to say about the division of "haves" and "have nots" in our society. Even though I teach the course online and never see their faces, I can get a real sense of them beginning to squirm with some of the discussion posting I read.

These are the questions we're working on this week:

WELFARE - Poverty in America is a serious social problem. Various explanations have been given for why there are so many poor in a nation as rich as ours. One perception is that our government’s welfare system has robbed people of their sense of self-determination, creating a generation of able-bodied people who expect a hand-out rather than being willing to work. Others claim that a just and compassionate government must provide a safety net for its citizens, particularly in light of the shifting economy, which offers so few family-wage jobs. Do you believe our current welfare system is more functional or dysfunctional for our nation? Why?


SOCIAL MOBILITY - To what extent to you believe it is possible for someone from a lower class background to move up in society to become upper class if he or she is determined to do so and works very hard at it? What factors would you consider most important if a person wants to shift his/her position in society? What factors might serve as barriers to such a change?

ABSOLUTE POVERTY VS RELATIVE DEPRIVATION - Because there is such great wealth in the hands of some in the U.S., and a great deal of commercial exposure to the range of material goods available, those who live modestly may feel poor even if all their basic needs are met. Different people have different ideas about what standard of living is “good enough” for them. What has had the greatest impact on how you feel about your own material circumstances in relation to that of your community and/or other family members? What factors do you believe have the greatest impact on whether or not a person will feel satisfied with what they have?


I thought I'd toss out those same questions here and see if any of my blogger buddies might care to venture an opinion.

What's in this stuff?

In the writing class I am currently taking, the assignments are to read various essays each week and then to write an analysis of the arguments presented. I am NOT to get involved in whether I agree or disagree with the arguments themselves. Instead, I merely assess the tactics that were used to present them, then state whether or not they were effective and why.

That’s all well and good. I genuinely do see how assessing arguments this way helps hone my critical thinking and will in all likelihood make me more mindful of the sorts of devises I use in my own writing. But what about the ISSUES that are raised about these topics? Where do I go to sort out my thoughts, opinions and feelings about them?

You guessed it…in the paraphrased words of the Big Bad Wolf to Little Red Riding Hood, “why, all the better to blog you with, my dear!”

The one I am currently working on is Biotech Agriculture and the Ethics of Food Production. There are a collection of short essays taking various sides on the question of whether or not genetically engineered food is safe for human consumption, along with the ethical debate over whether or not such foods should be required to be labeled at such so that consumers can make informed choices about what they are eating.

So I raise the question….if you are drinking Soy milk that was made from “Roundup-Ready” soybeans, would you care? Basically “Roundup Ready” means the soybean seeds were tinkered with so that farmers could spray the herbicide roundup on the field to kill all the nasty weeds without hurting the soybeans. That makes it much easier for them to manage problems of all the invasive plants that creep into fields without hurting the cash crop.

Is this important to you?

Now, just to be perfectly clear...I have NO idea whether or not the makers of SILK soymilk or any other brand use transgenic soybeans or not. The brand I buy says "Organic" so my guess would be those do not. My concern is - once the soybeans are harvested, how does one know if they are "natural" or "transgenic"? I'm still learning about the regulations involved. Should soybean growers (or other food producers) have to disclose EVERYTHING that was ever sprayed on their crops? Should they have to disclose certain classes of things only? What about crops that are NOT directly sprayed, but are planted right next door to ones that are? Do I need to worry about drift issues and groundwater?

When I buy produce in a grocery store I don't always pay attention to where my fruit and veggies come from. However, I have noted that there are increasing numbers of crops being imported here from other countries, some of which have far less regulation that we do about what sorts of chemicals can or cannot be used.

In light of the recent California freeze, chances are a lot of the citrus and strawberries we see in shops later on will be coming from South America or Australia rather than here. Should we expect there to be a label telling us if there has been any genetic development in the seed of a plant? (Currently there is none).

How important is this to you?

Testing the Null Hypotheses

This week I took my final exams for the graduate courses I have been taking at a nearby university. For the past 11 weeks I have been deeply immersed in Psychopathology, Advanced Human Development and Probability and Statistics. My brain is SOOOO ready to be done with all that serious reading for a while. Right now all I want to do is pick up some fluff brain candy novel and go soak in a bubble bath.

In the classes that I teach, at the end of every term I talk about the concept of "Intellectual Bulimia"-- referring to the all too common practice of students cramming all the information they can into their brains and then regurgitating it back out for their instructors on final exams. With all the elegance of momma birds yacking up a meal into the beaks of their waiting offspring, these students dump their load in research papers and presentation portfolios, never to think on any of it again. I certainly saw some of that going on with my peers.

For me, however, there were several key concepts that were learned that will be kept and savored. One of those is the whole idea of “testing the Null Hypotheses”. When evaluating data, many times in comparing various averages or trends of numbers, it may APPEAR that there is a particular relationship between different variables. Yet when running the appropriate statistic (whether it be Z scores or T tests or Chi Squares or Anovas) it is possible to show if there is no significant relationship within a certain confidence level. I like that. It’s a way of saying “Liar, Liar Pants on Fire!” to sensational looking numbers that would lead us down the garden path of wrong assumptions.

I’ve heard it said that statistics can be sneaky and misleading. They are sort of like a bikini. What they reveal may be interesting, but what they cover up can be crucial.

So I liked learning more about statistics, how to read them, how to interpret them, etc so that I can assess information that I am exposed to with more critical thought and understanding than before. I had taken stats when I got my master’s degree in Sociology many moons ago. That time I was pretty much jumping through hoops for a grade. This time I was able to apply myself more and study it for real to get a firmer grasp on what it all meant. For a person who used to be downright phobic of anything involving math, I consider it a great achievement that I got as comfortable with the formulas as I did.

I just wish there were some clear statistics for knowing when things matter or don’t matter in LIFE.

For example: This afternoon on my lunch hour I ran to the store to pick up some pictures I had developed and get something to eat. When I came out, I discovered a note on my windshield saying “The wind blew my door open and hit your car. Call me if there are any damages.” Huh? So I got out to take a look. Sure enough, there is a rather noticeable dent in the right side panel. This is not some little pit door ding. This is a bona fide DENT. Ouch.

Now, here is my problem. Part of me thinks, “so what?” After all, it makes no difference whatsoever in the drivability of the vehicle. Caring about that dent feels awfully superficial. I cringe at the idea of spending a chunk of resources on getting it fixed, even if they are not my resources. There are so many better ways for resources to be spent in this world. It feels vain and shallow to have them directed to repairing a cosmetic problem on my car. So what if it is someone else who may have to pay. Is it even worth worrying about it??

Except I sort of do care. It’s my car and I don’t want it to be damaged. After many years of driving around in old beaters, I’m finally driving a car that I like and I try to take very good care of it. It’s not a FANCY car. But it is barely over a year old and is a good looking car. Now it is a good looking car with a dent. Also there is the whole consideration of re-sale value should I ever decide to move on to something else. So I’m pretty sure I’ll take it in and see about getting it fixed.

Yet I’ve been second guessing myself all afternoon about whether I’m ok with my own values on this… playing devil’s advocate till the cows come home.

In talking to other people here at work about it I’ve gotten the whole gambit of opinions, ranging from ABSOLUTELY get it fixed to who cares, it’s not all that bad. I don’t know what I think. I wish there was a simple statistic I could run that would tell me if this matters. Sadly, life is not that simple.

Activity and Spacial Cognition

I'm working on mastering several different theories of human development. Right now I'm focusing on the Environmental / Ecological Theories. One of the ones I've found pretty interesting is the whole idea that "an individual's mobilty affects the type of his or her experiences by modifying the frequency, expansiveness, pleasure, and purpose of the activity" (Cohen & Cohen, 1985 as quoted in R. Murray Thomas's "Recent Theories of Human Development, p. 87) Basically what this is saying is that if I WALK someplace I will notice things that are different than if I DRIVE there, and if I drive I will notice things different than if I ride as a passenger. If I ride a horse or a motorcycle or rollerskate someplace I will have an entirely different sort of experience. Then the theory goes on to explain things about how and why people perceive the connection between models or maps of territories and the actual places that those symbolic representations depict. It also addresses how people think and behave differently in settings experienced as crowded versus empty, quiet versus noisy, constricted versus expansive, and public versus personal. There is all this detailed technical stuff about how we all make sense of our environments, and then some discussion about whether or not reality is something tangible and concrete that can be deciphered by its component parts or the alternate view that reality is socially constructed...created by the definitions, interpretations and behavior-setting programs that are the patterns of action routinely performed within an environment.

Lions and Tigers and Bears, OH MY! Lots of stuff. My brain is full. I think I need a break for a hot cup of herbal tea and a toasted slice of zuccini bread.

Old Lady Co-Ed

So I'm trying to get myself acclimated to being a student again after a dozen years of being a teacher. The day I started classes just happened to be my YOUNGEST son's 30th birthday. So, my classmates aren't just younger than me. The are younger than my baby. Ouch.

As a decidedly "non-traditional" student navigating the graduate school mountain again I'm finding my perceptions are quite different than when I went at it the first time around.

For one thing - I used to be thrilled when the teachers would excuse the class early. Now I'm not. Granted we're all tired and our brains ache with overload. But dammit I paid about $4K in tuition, I want the full measure! If I bought a gallon of milk and came home with a cup missing, I'd feel gyped and ripped off. I chafe when my classes let out more than 15 minutes before they are scheduled to.

Then there are other things... how much we do or don't use the very expensive books I had to buy, the degree or lack of formality between students and professors, the endless seemingly arbitrary hoops that must be jumped through, etc etc. I have a steep climb ahead of me to find my way through it all.

Maybe if I keep reading Kirstie's descriptions of her linguistic work and make time for the occasional forays to her pappy pig's
words of wisdom I'll be able to stay motivated and keep my sense of humor