J-Quote

We're going to have to be patient...

2009-12-11T09:43:00.003+08:00

Change will come slowly, across generations, because old beliefs die hard even when demonstrably false.

Edward O. Wilson (1999) "Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge" New York: Vintage p. 280

E.O. Wilson on Postmodernism vs. the Enlightenment

2009-07-05T19:47:00.003+08:00

All movements tend to extremes, which is approximately where we are today. The exuberant self-realization that ran from romanticism to modernism has given rise now to philosophical postmodernism (often called poststructuralism, especially in its more political and sociological expressions). Postmodernism is the ultimate polar antithesis of the Enlightenment. The difference between the two extremes can be expressed roughly as follows: Enlightenment thinkers believe we can know everything, and radical postmodernists believe we can know nothing.

Edward O. Wilson (1999) "Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge" New York: Vintage pp. 43, 44.

Stop the Madness!

2009-04-10T13:12:00.003+08:00

"Sanity - consciousness - can only come into this world through you. You do not need to wait for the world to become sane, or for somebody else to become conscious, before you can be enlightened. You may wait forever. Do not accuse each other of being unconscious. The moment you start to argue, you have identified with a mental position and are now defending not only that position but also your sense of self. The ego is in charge. You have become unconscious."

Eckhart Tolle (1999) The Power of Now. Vancouver: Namaste. p. 159.

Thoreau on high discipline & infinite leisure

2009-04-08T11:08:00.004+08:00

"It is worth the while to apply what wisdom one has to the conduct of his life surely. I find my self oftenest wise in little things & foolish in great ones. That I may accomplish some particular petty affair well i live my whole life coarsely. A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man's life as in a book. Haste makes waste no less in life than in housekeeping. keep the time -- observe the hours of the universe - not of the cars. What are 3 score years & ten hurriedly & coarsely lived to moments of divine leisure, in which your life in coincident with the life of the Universe. We live too fast & coarsely just as we eat too fast & do not know the true savor of our food. We consult our will & understanding and the expectations of men - not our genius. I can impose upon myself tasks which will crush me for life and prevent all expansion - & this I am but too inclined to do. One moment of life costs many hours, - hours not of business but of preparation and invitation. yet the man who does not betake himself at once & desperately to sawing wood is called a loafer - though he may be knocking at the doors of heaven - all the while which shall surely be opened to him - That aim in life is highest which requires the highest & finest discipline. How much - What infinite leisure it requires - as of a lifetime, to appreciate a single phenomenon! You must camp down beside it as for life - having reaching your land of promise & give yourself wholly to it.

Thoreau, Henry David. [28 December 1852, Journal 5: 412] (1999) "Uncommon Learning: Henry David Thoreau on Education" ed. Martin Bickman. New York: Mariner.

The Flavor of Life

2009-04-08T08:01:00.003+08:00

"Many of our days should be spent, not in vain expectations and lying on our oars, but in carrying out deliberately and faithfully the hundred little purposes which every man's genius must have suggested to him. Let not your life be wholly without object, thought it be only the quality of an insignificant berry that you will have tasted, but the flavor of your life to that extent, and it will be such sauce as no wealth can buy."

Thoreau, Henry David. [Extract from Journal IX: 36-38. 30 August 1856].
1999, New York: Mariner.

When an ism isn't an ism

2009-03-31T13:10:00.004+08:00

Some rather old words from John Dewey could be applied to current arguments for current educational movements such as constructivism:

"Those who are looking ahead to a new movement in education, adapted to the existing need for a new social order, should think in terms of Education itself rather than in terms of some 'ism about education, even such an 'ism as "progressivism." For in spite of itself any movement that thinks and acts in terms of an 'ism becomes so involved in reaction against other 'isms that it is unwittingly controlled by them."

John Dewey (1938) "Experience and Education" New York: Kappa Delta Pi

Exponential Change

2009-01-14T15:46:00.004+08:00

The future is widely misunderstood. Our forebears expected it to be pretty much like their present, which had been pretty much like their past. Exponential trends did not exist one thousand years ago, but they were at that very early stage in which they were so flat and so slow that they looked like no trend at all. As a result, observers' expectation of an unchanged future was fulfilled. Today, we anticipate continuous technological progress and the social repercussions that follow. But the future will be far more surprising than most people realize, because few observers have truly internalized the implications of the fact that the rate of change itself is accelerating.

Kurzweil, Ray. (2005) "The Singularity is Near." London: Penguin. p. 11

Compelled to Share

2008-12-30T19:33:00.004+08:00

We are compelled to share our ideas; that is how they come to life. And when we share ideas they multiply and grow, forming a powerfully reinforcing circle. You are not defined simply by what you own. You are also what you share. That should be our credo for the century to come.

Leadbeater, Charles (2008) "We-Think" London: Profile. p. 239

Outliers: Secrets to Success

2008-12-29T15:29:00.003+08:00

It is not the brightest who succeed... Nor is success simply the sum of the decisions and efforts we make on our own behalf. It is, rather, a gift. Outliers are those who have been given opportunities - and who have had the strength and presence of mind to seize them.

Gladwell, Malcolm. (2008) Outliers. New York: Little, Brown & Company. p. 267

The New Hybrids: Company Meets Community

2008-12-23T12:33:00.004+08:00

We-Think will not spread far nor sustain itself if it is confined to tasks for which people are prepared to volunteer. People must find a way to make their livings from these collaboratives and invest in them. We-think entrepreneurs are consequently desperately searching for viable business models that will allow them to earn some money without turning their backs on community values, while traditional companies are searching for ways to become more open and collaborative. The We-Think gift economy needs to find an accommodation with the market economy in which goods and services have to be paid for. The most exciting business models of the future will be hybrids that blend elements of the company and the community, of commerce and collaboration: open in some respects, closed in others; giving some content away and charging for some services; serving people as consumers and encouraging them, when it is relevant, to become participants.
We -Think will gradually change find fundamental aspects of economic life: how we work, consume, innovate, lead and own productive endeavours.

Leadbeater, Charles (2008) "We-Think" London: Profile. p.91

Personality as self-fulfilling performance

2008-12-15T17:33:00.005+08:00

The best way to achieve the insulational state of numbness is to be swamped by routine activities. The old-fashioned superficiality of routine blends seamlessly with the new superficiality, the surface quality of ubiquitous representation -- and this hybrid accelerates constantly, as you take on more and more. Adult busyness is constituted, as we all know, by innumberable things we "have to do." People we have to be nice to, meetings we have to go to, events we have to attend, and, above all, deadlines we have to meet. And, of course, by little interventions of chance, glitches in the flow that you have to deal with as you move from one thing you have to do to the next thing you have to do. The result is a simulation of reality convincing enough to pass for the original, for most of us, most of the time. It is only when the ultimately real descends upon us in the form of tragic accident, illness, death, or a miraculous recovery, the birth of a child -- only then does that simulation stand revealed for what it is.

Most of us want to be, as the old saying goes, "creatures of habit" -- even though we know that those habits are constructs, we can mostly forget it if the pace is sufficiently demanding and our roles are sufficiently rewarding.

And "roles" now means more than sociology intended, don't forget, more than "mother," "neighbor," "boss," and so on. The term also refers to character and personality, to Method acting -- even though, when you perform yourself out of habit as a busy adult, you can forget that it's a performance in a way you couldn't when you were an adolescent.

Are you a "no-nonsense kinda guy" who is "good in a crisis" and "doesn't suffer fools gladly" but "doesn't hold a grudge" either? Or maybe you are "sort of wacky" and people "never know what you'll say next," but you are "always there" for your friends, and you "really listen" and "give good advice" too? Whatever the particulars, to the extent that you are mediated, your personality becomes an extensive and adaptable tool kit of postures of this kind. As you immerse yourself in the routines of adulthood, they ramify in all directions, in various combinations, depending on settings and likely consequences -- which you assess automatically at all sorts of levels, from the moment-to-moment flicker of expression on the faces of people you are with, to the long-term likelihood of professional advancement. You become an elaborate apparatus of evolving shtick that you deploy improvisationally as circumstances warrant. Because it is all so habitual, and because you are so busy, you can almost forget the underlying reflexivity.

de Zengotita, Thomas. (2005) "Mediated: How the Media Shapes Your World and the Way You Live in It." Bloomsbury, New York. pp. 186-7.

Tools for Conviviality

2008-12-09T10:23:00.004+08:00

In a golden period in the 1970s Illich set about dissecting the failings of modern institutions, the professionals who organise them and the systems they design, in a series of short polemics:
Deschooling Society, Limits to Medicine, Disabling Professions and Tools for Conviviality. He argued that as people become dependent on the expert knowledge of professionals they lose faith in their capacity to act. His solution was that people should spend less time as consumers, more as producers of their own well-being. And for that to be possible they need more convivial, easy-to-use tools.

Illich's most optimistic book, Tools for Conviviality, which inspired Felsenstein and others in the hacker community in the 1970s, put the challenge this way:

I believe a desirable future depends on our deliberately choosing a life of action over a life of consumption, on our engendering a lifestyle which will enable us to be spontaneous, independent, yet related to each other, rather than maintaining a lifestyle which only allows us to produce and consume.

Convivial institutions work through conversation rather than instruction, through co-creation between users and producers, learners and teachers, rather than delivery from professionals to clients; and through mutual support among peers as much as by means of professional service.

Illich, Ivan, Tools for Conviviality (New York: Harper & Row, 1973)
quoted in
Leadbeater, Charles, We-Think(London: Profile, 2008) p.44

Pecha-Kucha Night

2008-06-26T07:45:00.004+08:00

Last night I attend Pecha-Kucha Night at the Powerhouse Arts Centre/Museum in Brisbane. The basic concept is that a series of presenters discuss their topic in the format of 20 slides x 20 seconds each. Last night I saw some joyful kinetic art, the launch of the Park(ing) Space project for Brisbane, a stonemason/architect who creates modern art headstones, a furniture designer who works with bamboo, and a number of other ideas and artists that I most probably wouldn't have been exposed to.

I'm looking forward to checking out these evenings when I get back to Shanghai. Pecha-Kucha nights are held in cities all over the world, and they're a fantastic opportunity to be exposed to creative and innovative thinking and people.

Check out the ever-expanding list of cities/events at the Pecha-Kucha website.

2008-06-20T08:13:00.009+08:00

It's weird when you wake up one morning and realize that your entire adult life is based upon the decision of a teenager.

Stew (Writer/narrator of Passing Strange)

[from a television interview on ABC News]

Death by a Thousand Cuts

2008-06-10T13:13:00.005+08:00

Chin-Ning Chu, author of The Asian Mind Game, offers up some advice on those who'd steal your serenity in Thick Face, Black Heart.

Keep a respectful distance from those who would steal your peace and serenity. In your daily life, you will run into this type of person around every corner. These people are not necessarily cunning or ruthless, nor are they a real threat to your career or personal objectives, but they are eternally annoying.

They operate by thriving on their own inferiority. Their actions and words are very cutting, even though people are nice to them. They also are gutless. On the one hand, they play up to the ruthless and cunning types who treat them like dirt, and yet they are mean to people who are decent and kind to them. These serenity stealers are people to be avoided. Life put them in a place that they resent because they feel it is beneath them. To get even with life, they react by attacking those who are nice to them, while being very agreeable to those who abuse them.

They cannot help themselves; their actions are involuntary. The serenity stealers steal into your heart and confidence with their sweet, charming exteriors. But after you allow them to get close to you, they will snap at you in order to diminish you in their eyes. They try to temporarily elevate their own inner power and feel good for a moment, but are useful remorseful afterward. They can't help themselves, and so the pattern continues.

It is important not to interact with them in a similar manner. If you do, they will make a lifetime career of attacking you. These people are masters of "death by a thousand cuts." You should always keep them at arm's length. They will make a lifetime career of attacking you. Then they will eternally respect you and solicit your friendship. They will then transfer their troublesome energy to someone else.

Chu, Chin-Ning (1995) Thick Face, Black Heart. Allen & Unwin, St. Leonards. p.239.

Productive Procrastination

2008-06-01T23:40:00.004+08:00

Andrew Kibbe's wonderfully useful blog, Tools for Thought, has once again grabbed my attention with Uncommon Sense on Managing Priorities, which suggests that low-priority tasks are not necessarily tasks to be ignored. Aside from the fact that Kibbe reminds us that any task on a to-do list is worthy of attention, I particularly appreciated the idea that 'low priority' tasks can actually function as gateway tasks to get us psychologically primed (ie. motivated) to attack those looming, dreaded high priority tasks that need to be completed.

Try this experiment: the next time you find yourself procrastinating on an important task, find the easiest thing on your list that can be completed in a few minutes, do it, and see if you feel more capable of handling the important task or less. Some people call this productive procrastination. I call it productivity. After all, any action you decide to do is procrastination of everything else that, by default, you’ve decided not to do.

Boy, interrupted. (by teacher)

2008-05-27T10:49:00.009+08:00

Krashen and Brown recently published this research paper in the Singapore Tertiary English Teachers Society journal: What is Academic Language Proficiency? [download PDF]

Their paper flies in the face of current popular pedagogical 'wisdom' that suggests that nearly everything needs to be taught explicitly to students.

Specifically, they suggest that metacognitive strategies (supposedly designed to assist students with creating a deeper understanding of material) may actually be getting in the way of students' learning. They quote the experience of one middle school teacher who had encouraged students to pause at intervals during their reading to create visual associations:

After a few weeks, her students rebelled, and told her that "Metacognition was interfering with the reading zone ... (it) disrupted the flow of a great story; ate up precious hours that could have been devoted to living inside another great story, and wasted their time as readers ... not one student could name a positive effect of the strategies on his or her reading performance".

'Conventional wisdom' usually looks at tools that have the potential to be useful, and advance the implementation of these tools or strategies in day-to-day contexts. However, 'common sense' (which is possibly closer to 'enduring wisdom') might be worth considering when 'useful' tools and strategies are actually creating unnecessary detours from the simple enjoyment of learning. Sometimes spending too much time on the scaffolding may unnecessarily slow down the building process.

...some strategies are teachable and useful to learn. Others are less useful, limited only to conscious language learning and deliberate memorization. Still others, those that all humans naturally possess and use, may be counterproductive to teach.

Ref: Krashen and Brown (2007). STETS Language and Communication Review, Singapore Tertiary English Teachers Society.

An Experience of Being Alive

2008-05-25T13:22:00.003+08:00

People say that what we are seeking is a meaning of life. I don't think this is what we're really seeking. I think what we're seeking is an experience of being alive.

Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth.

It's not complicated - it's just emotionally difficult

2008-05-20T20:11:00.004+08:00

Just because something has been a lot of work or consumed a lot of time doesn't make it productive or worthwhile.
Just because you are embarrassed to admit that you're still living the consequences of bad decisions made 5, 10, or 20 years ago shouldn't stop you from making good decisions now. if you let pride stop you, you will hate life 5, 10, and 20 years from now for the same reasons.
...Pride is stupid.
Being able to quit things that don't work is integral to being a winner. Going into a project or job without defining when worthwhile becomes wasteful is like going into a casino without a cap on what you will gamble: dangerous and foolish.
"But you don't understand my situation. It's complicated!" But is it really? Don't confuse the complex with the difficult. Most situations are simple -- many are just emotionally difficult to act upon. The problem and the solution are usually obvious and siimple. it's not that you don't know what to do. Of course you do. you are just terrified that you might end up worse off than you are now.
I'll tell you right now: If you're at this point, you won't be worse off. Revisit fear-setting and cut the cord.

Ferris, Timothy (2007) "The 4-Hour Workweek." Crown, New York. pp. 222, 223.

John Stuart Mill (1869): Active learning through discourse

2008-05-19T19:51:00.003+08:00

A person who derives all his instruction from teachers or books, even if he escape the besetting temptation of contenting himself with cram, is under no compulsion to hear both sides; accordingly it is far from a frequent accomplishment, even among thinkers, to know both sides; and the weakest part of what everybody says in defence of his opinion, is what he intends as a reply to antagonists. It is the fashion of the present time to disparage negative logic - that which points out weaknesses in theory or errors in practice, without establishing positive truths. Such negative criticism would indeed be poor enough as an ultimate result; but as a means to attaining any positive knowledge or conviction worthy the name, it cannot be valued too highly; and until people are again systematically trained to it, there will be few great thinkers, and a low general average of intellect, in any but the mathematical and physical departments of speculation. On any other subject no one's opinions deserve the name of knowledge, except so far as he has either had forced on him by others, or gone through of himself, the same mental process which would have been required of him in carrying on an active controversy with opponents. That, therefore, which when absent, it is so indispensable, but so difficult, to create, how worse than absurd it is to forego, when spontaneously offering itself! If there are any persons who contest a received opinion, or who will do so if law or opinion will let them, let us thank them for it, open our minds and listen to them, and rejoice that there is some one to do for us what we otherwise ought, if we have any regard for either the certainty or vitality of our convictions, to do with much greater labor for ourselves.

John Stuart Mill

"On Liberty" (1869), Chapter 2.

World Community Grid

2008-04-28T04:23:00.000+08:00

New Creativity vs. The Old Guard

2008-04-24T15:58:00.005+08:00

A society that defends the ideals of free culture must preserve precisely the opportunity for new creativity to threaten the old.

Lessig, Lawrence. Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity. New York: Penguin. 005.5
(Quotation/reference from e-book version)

For further information and downloads of Professor Lessig's material click here.

Tools for Thought: A Pattern Language for Productivity

2008-04-21T11:28:00.002+08:00

There are so many down-to-Earth suggestions on the Tools for Thought blog that I won't quote any directly in this space. Rather, I'll just point you in the right direction:

Tools for Thought: Explorations in thinking and doing

The site is the work of Andre Kibbe, and it features concerted focus on simple solutions to the 'complexities' of modern work and productivity. Featured categories include:

A Pattern Language for Productivity
Creativity
GTD (Getting Things Done)
Lifestyle Design
Productivity
Technology
Thinking Operations

Highly recommended.

Stephen Hawking Asks Big Questions About the Universe

2008-04-20T23:23:00.002+08:00

Stephen Hawking logically addresses some of those 'burning questions,' such as "Are we alone in the universe?" and "Should we support manned/personed space travel?"

Language as an evolutionary map

2008-01-22T11:42:00.000+08:00

I love it when fiction merges with non-fiction, and a book that was recently passed on to me by a friend in Beijing is a prime example of this. Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash is a hyperlinked mesh of references to science, mythology and linguistics.

There are two schools: relativists and universalists. As George Steiner summarizes it, relativists tend to believe that language is not the vehicle of thought but its determining medium. It is the framework of cognition. Our perceptions of everything are organized by the flux of sensations passing over that framework. Hence, the study of the evolution of the language is the study of the evolution of the human mind itself.

Stephenson, Neal. (1992) Snow Crash. Bantam Dell: New York. p.275

Information Dieting

2008-01-21T12:08:00.000+08:00

In the spirit of Tim Ferris's bestselling book The 4-Hour Workweek, I'll try to keep this post short, especially for those of you on a low information diet. Keep in mind that Ferris would actually like to disrupt the current trend of information overload, and to terminate our movement toward being an always on culture!

Pareto's Principle (the 80/20 principle):
20% of your actions will produce 80% of your results

Parkinson's Law:
Batching tasks - letting similar tasks accumulate, then batching them, eg. only emailing or responding several times a week.

Ferris's advice for trying to break non-productive cycles of using information technologies? Ask yourself this questions 3 times daily:
"Am I being productive, or am I being busy?"

Zero-sum thinking

2008-01-10T11:45:00.000+08:00

As we spend our time scrambling for that job, salary, spouse, apartment or lifestyle, it's good to be able to shift to a more creative, optimistic perspective of life.

More succinct, evolved thinking from Rich Karlgaard at Forbes:
The World's Worst Disease

The Human-Potential Principle

2008-01-08T14:02:00.000+08:00

A tragedy of humankind today is that most people fall outrageously short of their potential. A principle of a great civilization ought to be that it focuses intensely on how to develop the capability latent in everybody. The more that is done, the more we all benefit from one another.

Today most human beings are trapped in jobs, lifestyles or social conditions in which they develop only a fraction of their potential. Lives can be wasted in so many ways - drudgery work, watching bad television many hours per day, women being denied the potential that men have, a shop-till-you-drop culture or the conceits of high fashion. Most people could be far more creative. The potentials of human capability will become much greater because of the cornucopia of new technology and fundamental changes in the way enterprises are managed. The most important aspects of new technology are those that make people excited about what they do. Human capability that we now regard as brilliant will become widespread because of the amplifying power of technology. Higher forms of brilliance will emerge, and many of those will become commonplace.

The 19th century philosopher John Ruskin preached that machines robbed workers of their nobility, freedom and individuality. The machines of the 21st century will be the opposite. Inability to use them will rob workers of their nobility, freedom and individuality.

In the poorest countries, one can walk among multitudes of malnourished eager-eyed kids who have no hope and know that if any one of them had been adopted as a baby and brought up in a good home in Singapore or Rome, he or she might have been a teacher, musician or scientist. The human-potential principle needs to be pervasive, from the poorest destitute society to the richest high-tech society.

Martin, James (2006) The Meaning of the 21st Century: A Vital Blueprint for ensuring our Future. London: Transworld. (pp. 386, 387).

The Skill/Wisdom Gap

2008-01-04T16:11:00.000+08:00

Deep wisdom about the meaning of the 21st century will be essential. A serious problem of our time is the gap between skill and wisdom. Science and technology are accelerating furiously, but wisdom is not. We are brilliant at creating new technology, but are not wise in learning how to cope with it. To succeed in today's world, people will need intricate skills in narrowly specialized areas. Skills need detailed, narrowly focused study of subjects that are rapidly increasing in complexity, whereas wisdom needs the synthesis of diverse ideas. Wisdom requires judgement, reflection about beliefs and thinking about events in terms of how they might be different.

Today, deep reflection about our future circumstances is eclipsed by a frenzy of ever more complex techniques and gadgets and preoccupation with how to increase shareholder value. The skill/wisdom gap is made greater because skills offer the ways to get wealthy. Society's best brains are saturated with immediate issues that become ever more complex, rather than reflecting on why we are doing this and what the long-term consequences will be.

University education today is much more pressured than when I was at university. The curricula have become overstuffed, the subject matter intensely complex and the examinations frequent and demanding. The student sticks to the curriculum and can deal with little else. The professors stick to their discipline; they are judged by the papers they publish in the professional journal of that discipline. Most areas of education have almost no interdisciplinary scholarship. As disciplines become deeper and more complex, the brilliance expended on them is formidable, but we don't think much about its consequences or what impact it has in other areas. In specialized areas, computers will become vastly more intelligent than people, but such intelligence is not human wisdom. As computers become more intelligent, with intense self-improvement of non-human intelligence, the skill/wisdom gap will widen at a furious rate.

We have vast numbers of experts on how to make the train work better and faster, but almost nobody is concerned with where the train is headed or whether we'll like its destination.

Wisdom is essential and comes from the synthesis of a large amount of knowledge and experience that may take much of a lifetime to acquire. Not everyone can handle such synthesis. We must ask where the broad wisdom about the future will come from. The answer is, we must set out consciously to develop it. Wisdom, like advanced civilization, will come when we learn to relax. Our best brains need to stop chasing the most highly paid careers, the fastest boats and the smartest country clubs. A mature society should exhibit deep respect for deep wisdom.

We need to set out very consciously to foster and nurture the wisdom that the 21st century will require. This should be a task for our greatest universities.

Martin, James (2006) The Meaning of the 21st Century: A Vital Blueprint for ensuring our Future. London: Transworld. (pp. 292, 293).

Header sketch by Jonathan Chambers.

McKinsey: 8 Business Technology Trends to Watch

2007-12-20T17:58:00.000+08:00

The McKinsey Quarterly's latest edition (20 December, 2007) features an article on "emerging trends...transforming many markets and businesses."
Authors: James M. Manyika, Roger P. Roberts, and Kara L. Sprague.

Article links (free registration required):
McKinsey Quarterly article [text]

McKinsey Quarterly article [audio]

Article summary:

Managing relationships
1. Distributing cocreation
2. Using consumers as innovators
3. Tapping into a world of talent
4. Extracting more value from interactions
Managing capital and assets:
5. Expanding the frontiers of automation
6. Unbundling production from delivery
Leveraging information in new ways:
7. Putting more science into management
8. Making business from information

SLA: Formulating an Effective Dual Language Policy

2007-12-19T14:56:00.000+08:00

In decisions about language separation and allocation in a bilingual classroom, there are other ingredients and contexts that must be taken into account before formulating an effective dual language policy.

The aims of the school must be examined carefully, in terms of language preservation and second language competence. School teachers are language planners, even if subconsciously. If the children's minority language is to be preserved, then separation may be a central policy element. When teachers are more enthusiastic about majority (second language) competence, then different practices and outcomes, in terms of language allocation, will be desired. Fewer language boundaries may be maintained, since loosening them helps ensure development of the majority language.

The nature of the students must be considered in any policy regarding language boundaries and concurrent use, with policies and practices adjusted to age and grade level. If language development is still at an early evolutionary stage, boundary setting is more important. With older children, whose languages are relative well developed, the concurrent use of two languages may be more viable and desirable. Older children may have more stability and separation in their language abilities.

Furthermore, this suggests that a static policy with regard to boundaries, and concurrent use within the school is less justifiable than a progressive policy that examines different applications across years and grade levels. Early separation may be very important. Later, in high school, a more concurrent use may encourage conceptual clarity, depth of understanding and cognitive development.

For a progressive policy it is necessary to consider different types of classroom communication. When the teacher speaks more informally and simply to the class, the weaker language may be appropriate. In practical activities, also, where there is context embedded help, the weaker language may serve well. Where the cognitive level is higher in transmitting the curriculum, as with more complex, abstract ideas, either the stronger language or a bilingual approach may be needed. Different types of classroom episodes, such as managerial, instructional and practical activity, constrain or allow comprehensible second language communication and concurrent usage.

Different dimensions of the school need individual discussions related to separation and integration of languages, for example in curriculum, whole school policies, classrooms and lessons. At what level of organization should separation occur? Our earlier discussion of language separation by curriculum material and medium of delivery showed that language separation is not a distinct issue from rational concurrent use, but merges into a consideration of integrated use.

Another important factor in deciding language separation issues is class language balance. If all the children are native speakers of one language, it may be easy to determine a language allocation. With mixed classes there are differing balances of majority and minority languages. Who dominates numerically, linguistically and psychologically? When the balance is tilted against language minority children, a clear separation, with the curriculum balance toward the minority language may be desirable. Whether the student body is language minority in a subtractive or additive situation should also affect language allocation policies.

Where language minority children are the numerical majority, a slow change, rather that a sharp shift from language separation to concurrent use is advisable. The minority language often risks perception as less powerful or useful, and lower in status, as children grow older. Therefore, the minority language must be protected and keep a constant high profile in the school.

School language policy must take into account 'out of school exposure' to the first and second languages. Sometimes, equal time is advocated to each language within the school, half the curriculum in one, half in the other. However, if the child is surrounded by the majority language outside the school, on the street, in shops and through the media, then perhaps the separation balance ought to be adjusted toward the minority language in school. 'Out of school' exposure may also make some teachers hesitant about concurrent usage.

Replication and duplication of content threaten bilingual classroom methodology, since some pupils will not concentrate when the same subject matter is repeated in a different language. However, repetition is sometimes pragmatically necessary. Where there is a considerable variety of different home and preferred language, a teacher and bilingual assistant may need to repeat instruction in different languages. There are some multilingual classrooms, in New York, Toronto and London, with a diversity of home languages among the children. Replication of teaching in two or three languages may be essential for children in the early grades, so that as many as possible can comprehend. This complicates debates about concurrent use and language boundaries. One solution is small group learning, as seen in progressive British and North American primary schools. This may allow establishment of some language boundaries, with different children addressed by bilingual teachers and aides, in their preferred language.

The use of non-repetitive and non-parallel bilingual materials, built in an incremental and well sequenced and structured manner, is valuable, particularly in high schools. However, the production and availability of materials in many minority languages is difficult to achieve, and funding for such materials may be difficult to secure.

In a concurrent and purposeful use of two classroom languages, as advocated by Jacobson (1990), there is the danger of requiring teachers to manage an unnatural, artificial and highly complex language situation. Where teachers are expected to manage concurrent use of two languages in a classroom, they are assumed to have a very high level of management skill, monitoring and reflection. In reality, classrooms are busy, very fluid, often unpredictable places. Teachers must react to the moment, to individuals who don't understand, with many unpredictable and spontaneous situations. Students themselves have an important influence on classroom language uses, needing to share understanding (or lack of it) in the most appropriate way. Classroom management of learning and behavior must be fluent, accepted by students, not abrupt and unpredictable. Classroom language allocation must fit naturally, predictably, fluently and flexibly into curriculum management.

SOURCE:

Baker, Colin (2000) The Care and Education of Young Bilinguals: An Introduction for Professionals. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. (pp. 101-103)

REFS:

Edwards, V. (ed.) (1995) Building Bridges: Multilingual Resources for Children. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Edwards, V. (1996) The Other Languages: A Guide to Multilingual Classrooms. Reading: Reading and Language Information Centre.

Jacobson, R. (1990) Allocating two languages as a key feature of a bilingual methodology. In R. Jacobson and C. Faltis (ed.) Language Distribution Issues in Bilingual Schooling. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Wong Fillmore, L. and Valadez, C. (1986) Teaching bilingual learners. In M.C. Wittrock (ed.) Handbook of Research on Teaching (3rd edn). New York: Macmillan.

Funds of Knowledge: Genuine School Communities

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Luis Moll (1992) develops valuable ideas for home-school relationships. He argues for the importance of identifying skills, knowledge, expertise and interests that families own, which can serve everyone in the classroom. Parents, grandparents and other community members can supplement teachers, providing what Moll calls funds of knowledge: 'cultural practices and bodies of knowledge and information that households use to survive, to get ahead or to thrive' (Moll, 1992, p.21). Funds of useful knowledge include agricultural information about flowers, plants and trees, seeds, water distribution and management, animal care and veterinary medicine, ranch economy, car and bicycle mechanics, carpentry, masonry, electrical wiring and appliances, fencing, folk remedies, herbal cures and midwifery, archeology, biology and mathematics.

Compare Moll's ideas with two other traditions of home-school relations. One traditional view is that language minority homes lack the social, cultural and intellectual stimulation and resources to enable children to progress well at school. Thus, teachers may have low expectations for school performance, particularly when students come from working class or materially disadvantaged backgrounds.

Another tradition is that effective teachers visit the home, to discuss particular problems with the parents, to enlist their help in schoolwork, and to request they help children with homework. This traditional view assumes that the school knows best and parents are valuable for encouragement they give children to adopt school norms and values.

Moll's (1992) radically different viewpoint about language minority homes is that parents and communities possess important historically developed, accumulated knowledge, abilities, strategies, ideals, ideas, practices and cultural events. These are regarded within a household and community as important to their functioning and well-being. Whether parents are farmers or construction workers, there are prized skills, knowledge and cultural practices worth sharing in the classroom.

If parents, community leaders, workers and artists are included in the learning experiences of children, home notions of culture are represented, valued, and celebrated. Different forms of worthwhile knowledge, experience and expertise are shared in the classroom, raising the self-esteem of children, the language minority group and the community. Hidden talents, oral histories, household skills and latent abilities are discovered and shared. These social, cultural and intellectual resources become important curricular elements.

SOURCE:

Baker, Colin (2000) The Care and Education of Young Bilinguals: An Introduction for Professionals. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. (pp. 84, 85)

REFS/FURTHER READING:

Delgado-Gaitan, C. (1990) Literacy for Empowerment: The Role of Parents in Children's Education. New York: Falmer.

Moll, L.C. (1992) Bilingual classroom studies and community analysis. Educational Researcher 21 (2). 20-24.

Moll, L.C. et al. (1992) Funds of knowledge for teaching: Using a qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms. Theory into Practice 31 (2), 132-141.

Multilingual Resources for Children Project (1995) Building Bridges, Multilingual Resources for Children. Clevedon; Multilingual Matters.

Bilingualism and Metalinguistic Awareness

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From Colin Baker's The Care and Education of Young Bilinguals:

Young bilinguals sometimes have an enhanced ability to focus on the important content and meaning of language, rather than its external structure or sound. For example, a bilingual child is taught a nursery rhyme. Rather than merely learning the words by rote and concentrating on the rhyme, some young bilingual children seem to focus more (compared with monolinguals) on the meaning and story. Does this mean that bilingual children are less bound by the words, focused more on the core meaning?

An illustration comes from Leopold's famous case study (1939-1949) of the German-English development of his daughter Hildegard. Hildegard accepted very early that a word itself and its meaning were loosely connected, there was no absolute or inevitable link between them. Words were just arbitrary labels given to an object or idea. The name was separate from the object or idea itself. Leopold found that his stories to Hildegard were not repeated word for word. Plenty of substitutions and adjustments were made to relay the central points of the story.

(pp. 70, 71)

In a further experiment, Ianco-Worrall (1972) asked the following types of question: 'Suppose you were making up names for things, could you call a cow "dog" or a dog "cow"?' Bilinguals mostly felt that names could be interchangeable. Monolinguals, in comparison, more often said that names for objects, such as cow and dog, could not be interchanged. For bilinguals, names and objects are separate. This seems to result from owning two languages, which give the bilingual child and adult awareness of the free, non-fixed relationship between objects and their labels.

(p. 71)

...

One of the strongest lines of recent research in bilingual psychology studies the apparent ability of bilinguals to reflect upon the nature and functions of language. Simply stated, it appears that bilinguals have a greater awareness of language. This concept is commonly called metalinguistic awareness.

Metalinguistic awareness is the ability to reflect upon and manipulate spoken and written language. Language is inspected and thought about as a system to understand and produce conversations, rather than simply used. Such language awareness may include reflection on the intended meaning, sensitivity to what is implied rather than stated, and an analytical attitude towards language.

Research indicates that bilinguals, accustomed to owning and processing two languages, are better at analyzing them (Bialystok, 1987, 1988). They seem more able to look inwardly on each language and accumulate knowledge about the language itself, better able to regulate, manage and control their language processing.

One important possible outcome of the bilingual's greater metalinguistic awareness at an early age is earlier reading acquisition. Because bilinguals daily process two languages, they may acquire reading readiness skills faster. When this occurs, earlier reading may also relate to higher levels of academic achievement in various areas of the curriculum.

Not all bilinguals will have such metalinguistic awareness advantages. A study by Galambos and Hakuta (1988) found that such awareness is most developed when both languages are proficient at reasonably high levels. The effect of bilingualism on the processing of errors in Spanish sentences was found to vary depending on the level of bilingualism. The more advanced a child was in development of both languages, the better the performance on the test items.

(pp. 71, 72)

Baker, Colin (2000) The Care and Education of Young Bilinguals: An Introduction for Professionals. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

SLA: Teaching through the Silent Period

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'The good-enough teacher', writes Britzman (1998: 42), 'must also help herself in tolerating the results of her ... own frustration'. That is to say, while some pedagogies may help alleviate silence, and in so doing make the work of the teacher easier, or tolerable, or in some cases possible at all, it is important to remember that alleviating silence may not always be the most useful (or even a possible) immediate objective for the learner. Put differently, when as teachers we consider how best to motivate learners, we must also attend to moments in the learning process when the question of motivation may simply not be relevant - moments that must be worked through. This may be one of the ways in which learner-centred approaches such as those recommended by the learner autonomy model might be useful - if they can help teachers to understand that both speaking and silence belong, ultimately, to the learner.

...

It seems to me that this kind of silence, and more specifically the idea of finding, or deliberately making, this kind of silent period, is a silence that opens up rather than shuts down - a silence that might hint at a way of thinking about learning not only a new language as such, but also other kinds of knowledge. For losses as well as gains area part not only of language learning, but also of the process of acquiring new knowledge or of learning a new theory, either of which can insist upon a psychical movement as well as a conscious intellectual shift into a new theoretical language and the corresponding theoretical milieu. As Eva Hoffman discovered, it is not enough just to learn new words; one must learn the new world as well. And at different times and in different contexts, we all have to do this. Certainly there is a sense in which this book is telling the story of a kind of language learning, for implicit in the work of triangulating several theoretical discourses is the task of making each of them speak to the others. I have attempted to negotiate a kind of conversation between psychoanalytic theory, social theory and SLA research, and in turn to weave that conversation into a dialogue with the narrative texts that seem so compelling - a new theoretical language, a new conversation.

I wonder whether, in this negotiation, this conversation, there might perhaps also be something that hints at some of the larger questions that relate not only to language learning but also to other kinds of learning that may interfere with individuals in profound and even disturbing ways. How do we learn? How do we give voice to our learning? And how do we tolerate learning, what do we do with the problem of articulating learning, when it is just too hard? It is subtle, this kind of educative hint that the concept of silence might provide concerning ways of thinking about learning theory, for example, or about theorising learning. But even so, like the kind of 'education through hinting, about hinting' that Phillips calls psychoanalysis, such hints might act as a hopeful' ...kind of go-between between teaching and seduction, sustaining both a complicity and a difference' (Phillips, 1999: 109) - embodying, in other words, their own conflicts, their own ambivalence, and their own irreconcilable oppositions, but also, as psychoanalysis keeps insisting, their own wishes and desires.

Granger, Colette A. (2004) Silence in Second Language Learning. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. p. 124, 125.

I find it fascinating that Granger finishes with a final arc that wonders whether questions of 'silent periods' should only be asked by language teachers, or whether far broader applications for this kind of theory can be formulated within the education community. In a sense, she has taken us back to the womb/childhood to investigate psychoanalytically, but she has also swung the discussion back to how we absorb and finally synthesize challenging theoretical discourses, even when they're in our native language.

Language can only deal meaningfully with a special, restricted segment of reality. The rest, and it is presumably the much larger part, is silence.

George Steiner.

SLA: Knowing Learners through Autobiography & Memoirs

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How - and what - can educators, specifically second-language teachers, come to know about their students and those students' needs? Perhaps, given the complexity of silence in second language acquisition, and the complexity of desire and ambivalence in learners, and the further complexity of the lives and the work of educators, such direct knowledge is not possible. And this gives rise to other questions. How can we learn to live with this lack of direct knowledge? How can education tolerate the partiality of what it can know?

If I am, perhaps, a little less hopeful than Riley (1999: 10) about the possibility of obtaining 'a clear idea' of the language learner's identity from the learner himself or herself, I am nevertheless convinced that, despite or even through silence, ways can be found into relations between teachers and learners that make both relating and learning possible. We may not have a 'clear idea' about a particular learner, but we do have hints.

Some hints can be taken from memoirs and autobiographical writing of the kind examined in this study, and from interpretations of that writing. The first hint might be a very gentle one, the simple reminder that self-writing gives us of the existence in each individual of a multi-layered inner world, and of the importance of tolerating 'the particular peace its author has made between the individuality of his or her subjectivity and the intersubjective and public character of meaning' (Grumet, 1990: 324). For in the complex daily work of education, with its demands and vicissitudes, and its foregrounding of overtly-manifested and readily-observable learning processes as means to perceptible, tangible, quantifiable products of learning, there is a tendency to abstract the learner's - and the teacher's - less visible, subjective and unconscious experiences. This is simply to say that it is quite a difficult thing to remain mindful of the lives of the persons involved in education, to begin to 'recover human feeling and motivation for studies of education that [have] become anonymous and quantitative' (Grumet, 1990: 322).

A second hint that might be taken, from reading and perhaps also from writing autobiography and memoir, is a kind of intimation of relatedness, different from generalisation, but offering the possibility of thinking about shared aspects of experience among, in this case, second-language learners. Not certainty, we must remember, but possibility: not that one individual's learning must, but it might, be a little like another's. Second-language learners in mid-process may not be able to speak about their experience, and there may be ethical reasons not to demand that they do so, but educators might take hints about those silences from the narratives of others. And those hints, once taken, may give us something to ground our intuition and guide our pedagogy, and allow for the possibility that educators can take care without taking control.

Granger, Colette A. (2004) Silence in Second Language Learning. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. p. 121, 122.

SLA: Parapraxis - no mistakes!

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...what in common parlance might be called 'innocent mistakes'. But for psychoanalysis 'there is nothing innocent about forgetting, slips of the tongue, jokes, indeed all forms of parapraxis - those bungled actions that point elsewhere even as they can be observed as interfering with daily life' (Britzman, 1998: 68). Anna Freud explains:

Examining the small mistakes in the everyday life of human beings, such as forgetting, losing, or misplacing things, misreading or mishearing, psychoanalysis succeeded in demonstrating that such errors are always based on an intent of the person who makes them ... Psychoanalytic investigation established that, generally speaking, we forget nothing except what we wish to forget for some good reason or other, though that reason is usually quite unknown to us. (A. Freud, 1974: 81-82)

And Ehrman and Dornyei expand on this noting that, according to the psychoanalytic principle of psychic determinism, 'behaviour is meaningful and not random or accidental ...' and 'individuals ... [unconsciously] give each other messages about their feelings and wishes' (Ehrman & Dornyei, 1998: 11)

(p. 105)

Granger, Colette A. (2004) Silence in Second Language Learning. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. p. 105.

SLA: Conflict, Emergency & Multiple Identities in Second Language Learning

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Bailey's assessment of this conflict is that Walsleben 'is struggling with the instructor for control of her language-learning experience' (Bailey, 1983: 87). It is unclear who wins this struggle, if indeed it can be said to be 'won' at all. Walsleben is not only exhausted and empty, but she soon becomes silent and absent, bodily as well as linguistically. Ultimately, she leaves the class outright before the end of the course. This struggle between student and teacher takes on some of the colouring of the conflict between inside and outside that, for Freud, emerges from the individual's first judgement: 'I should like to eat this', or 'I should like to spit it out' (Freud, 1925: 439). Here, the 'this' is not only the way the second language is taught, it is the language itself. And the decision of the learner, in this case, is to refuse to eat and to move away from the second-language table, in spite of her previous determination and desire: 'I had spent hours studying Farsi because I want to and was determined to keep progressing ... But suddenly - it do not seem to matter' (Walsleben, 1976: 36; cited in Bailey, 1983: 87).

This conflict between 'taking in' a second language and rejecting it is rooted in the ambivalence of the learner's desire both to learn and to refuse learning that accompanies learning's perpetual state of emergency (Britzman, 1998: 23). It is articulated, within the diary excerpts, in frequent analogies that the diarists make between the relationships of teachers and students and those of parents and children. These analogies also call to mind once again the Freudian concept of the family romance (Freud, 1909), discussed in the previous chapter and entailing, in part, motives of sibling rivalry, among which is a sense in which the child may imagine herself as the product of a clandestine love affair between mother and a man other than her actual father, or alternatively as the only 'legitimate' child among her siblings.

Rebecca Jones, a student of Indonesian, writes that 'a curious form of sibling rivalry developed among [the students]. Dr. Fox ... functioned in the role of the parent with all of the learners acting as children, competing to achieve recognition and attention ...' (1977: 77). For Deborah Plummer, initially, a similar analogy provides a way to think positively about her experience:

The best way I can describe my psychological state in the class is child-like ... I was expected to bring to the class no previous knowledge of the language ... [The teacher] became very much of a parental figure to me, in whom I could place my trust ... [During] class I was an adult who struggled to talk about elementary concrete objects in the most simple, childlike speech. Instead of being frustrated by such a dichotomy, I found it much easier to adopt a childlike identity in the new language ... [This] new identity helped preserve my adult ego and self-confidence. (Plummer, 1976: 5-6; cited in Bailey, 1983: 90)

But Plummer's childlike state is interrupted. Eventually she notices

an abrupt change from the in-class parental figure. In and out of class [the teacher] was a person I highly respected and from whom I sought recognition and approval - as if she were a parent ... I felt that I had lost her recognition, approval and favour. I lost my self-confidence and most of all I lost my childlike feeling. I was an adult ... responsible for my actions and my L2 errors became deflating and wounding . (Plummer, 1976: 8-9; cited in Bailey, 1983: 91)

Plummer's eventual reporting of the satisfactory resolution of her problem further substantiates this idea of her sense of - and her pleasure and unpleasure in - her teacher as a parental figure. She [the teacher] was more sensitive to [Plummer's] needs in class and her subtle attention, unnoticed by others, was very encouraging' (Plummer, 1976: 8-9; cited in Bailey, 1983: 91)

Granger, Colette A. (2004) Silence in Second Language Learning. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. p. 62.

TEDTalks: Philippe Starck (2007)

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3 Types of Designer:

The cynical designer - designs as a product for marketing
The narcissistic design - who only designs for other fantastic designers
Another kind of designer - tries to make the object for the result, and for the human being who'll use it.

"The big challenge" - lack of production out of "the big image."
Describes as "the supermonkey" and the result of 4.5 billion years of evolution, and that we're at the half-point of this path. "That is our story. That is our beautiful poetry. We are a mutant."
"If we don't integrate the fact that we are a mutant, we completely miss the story. Every generation thinks that we're the final one. We mutate for 4 billion years before, but now, because it's me, we stop!"

The duty of vision: to be in the territory of intelligence. As our angle of vision changes toward our people, the more important you will be important in civilization, and for the story of our mutation.

"God is the answer when we don't know the answer." We see our line of evolution. From far it looks very smooth, but if you take a lens, the [line is very rough]. We have different duties in different parts of the cycle. There are periods of light and shadow, ie. during times of peace a certain type of person can flourish and be acceptable. When barbarians are back forget about [design and art]. You must go back to fight/to battle.

Starck claims that he's ashamed of being a designer during a period of darkness/war.
However, claims that we must finish the story. In perhaps, 50 years, we can leave our children the possibility of creating a new story, a new poetry. He claims that this is why he continues to work, even if it's for a toilet brush.

Silent Period: Liminality in SLA

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It may not be the case that all second-language learners undergo a silent period. Likewise, it may not be that all silences in SLA occur exclusively, or at all, for the reasons I have named. But I offer this possibility: that the silent period in some second-language learners might be a kind of psychical paralysis, a temporary freezing, a complex combination of an inability to articulate and a lowered self-regard. And perhaps this possibility offers us a way to imagine silence as symptomatic of the loss, ambivalence and conflict that accompany a transition between two languages, a psychical suspension between two selves. Silence may thus constitute one response to the encounter between a complicated inside and an incomprehensible and uncomprehending outside.

I conclude... by referring briefly to the concept of liminality, as described by Carolyn Heilbrun in a series of lectures on women figures in English literature. It seems to speak meaningfully to the idea that stands at the heart of this project:

The word 'limen' means 'threshold', and to be in a state of liminality is to be poised upon uncertain ground, to be leaving one condition or country or self and entering upon another. But the most salient sign of liminality is its unsteadiness, its lack of clarity about exactly where one belongs and what one should be doing, or wants to be doing. (Heilbrun, 1999: 3)

The self suspended between languages is a liminal self, living unsteadily in two languages and therefore living fully in neither, for whom silence might be not only a symptom of liminality, but also at least a partial answer to the questions about where the self belongs. Later, when Heilbrun (1999: 37) refers to liminality as a state embodying what Marina Warner (1981: 23) first name 'irreconcilable oppositions' (a quality of ambiguity that allows an individual to 'span opposites'), she might well be speaking of the second-language learner, positioned on the blurred borderline between first and second languages, unable either to turn back and regain the old self or to move forward, unencumbered, into a new one.

Granger, Colette A. (2004) Silence in Second Language Learning. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. p. 62.

Psychical disruption in language learning.

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What if language learning, in the sense that it involves a loss of a former, pre-language self, and by implication second language learning as a transformation from first-language self into second-language self, were considered as a process parallel to those that Freud names mourning and melancholia? In this theoretical model, the lost or disappointing object would be neither a loved person nor an idea as such. Rather, it would be part of an individual's own unconscious - the aspect of the self that is lost either in the transformation from non-speaking to speaking self or, in the case of the shift from first to second language shift, in the movement from one language to the second. Might the learning that provokes the transformation be itself a shattering force? Could the psychical activity of learning (including language learning) insofar as it involves both an encounter between the external and the internal in their various aspects and the consequent loss of some aspect of the internal, invoke a process not unlike mourning and - depending on the degree of the disruption - even approach melancholia?

(p. 50)

What shatters the language learner's relationship with the object that is, or was, the pre-language omnipotent self, or the first language not-quite-omnipotent-but-nevertheless-expressive self, is the learning that a new language, a new means of expression, is called for. But, as Ehrman and Dornyei (1998: 185) point out, individuals may resist learning, and they may do so through silence, because learning 'requires rejection of one's own deficiency'. That is to say that hand in hand with learning that one needs a new language goes the inferences that the old language (or the pre-language state), and therefore the former version of the self, which lived either without language or within the first language, are no longer sufficient - are even, somehow, wrong. This learning - this shattering - echoes an earlier learning, an earlier disruption, namely the realisation of the self's separateness (and the corresponding inadequacy of the unseparated self) from its mother. And further, much as that earlier realisation marked a kind of loss of the previous self (perceived as united with the mother), the acknowledgement of the need to revise the first-language self to include a second language which it now needs to make itself known - even when there is no loss of the mother tongue as such - is a reminder of the loss of the mother as part of the self. Thus the self disappoints itself

(p. 54)

Thus, despite what is gained by acquiring language, the old longing for omnipotence is not completely repressed: it does not die, and furthermore it is re-awakened, or remembered, or even re-experienced, in the acquisition of a second language. This is so not only because of the longing for the omnipotence of the previous, pre-language state, but also because, with respect to the L2 environment and relative to that second language, the self that has not yet acquired it is, in effect, without speech. That is, as the primal unspeaking infant is to the speaking child, so is the self of the first language to its later manifestation as speaker of the second language. Although the stakes are somewhat different in second language acquisition - the self has already sublimated its omnipotence fantasy - what is paralleled is the reluctant relinquishing of a previous linguistic potency. And the disappointment of this later disruption recalls the earlier one

(p. 55)

Granger, Colette A. (2004) Silence in Second Language Learning. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Language and the process of self-objectification

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Ron Harre's work on the importance of discourse in the field of social constructionism begins with a disclaim (Harre, 1993: 3). While not disputing the concept of individual humans as 'artefacts, products of social process', the most important of which are linguistic and otherwise discursive, Harre refuses the assumption that individual action is always and only socially caused. Individuals, according to Harre, 'are built to be capable of autonomous action'. Significantly for this study, that autonomous action includes the social construction of meaning; for Harre 'the meanings of social events are created, not given' (Harre, 1993: 77). Although it is in social contexts that this creative meaning-making takes place, it is individuals who do the creating, and it is through the symbols of language that they do it. Moreover, the symbols could not exist without these individuals - 'there could not be languages and discursive processes unless there were brains buzzing... and vibrations in the air and marks on paper' (Harre, 1993: 204) without the participation of individuals in them.

Standing in partial contrast to Harre is Ian Burkitt (1991), who presents a critique of traditional views that maintain that the individual's self and the world are separate entities in opposition to each other. In Burkitt's conception of the self as social, and of human beings as continually engaged in social relations, there is little space for a view, such as Harre's of the self as autonomous, as capable of acting on the world as well as interacting with it. Burkitt charges Harre with arguing contradictory claims: on one hand, that 'the public and collective order [is] the basis for social and personal being', and on the other hand that 'the social order is...created by the intentional actions of individuals' (Burkitt, 1991: 75).

While he does not suggest that the notion of the individual is altogether false, Burkitt does privilege the claim that individuality is socially based, and that common-sense Western understandings of the individual human being as 'psychological monad' (Burkitt, 1991: 17), whose individuality is established at birth, are erroneous. He further rejects the notion of meaning-making as a function of the individual mind as, at best, incomplete (1991: 84-85), since for him such interpretations fail to take sufficient account of society itself as a creator of meaning. Rather, he holds that personality is created by forces external to the individual, and shaped by power relations, whose' repression [takes] the initiatives and motives for action away from rational control' (1991: 214).

With regard to the question of language as one of these social forces, Burkitt (1991) draws heavily on George Mead's contention (1934) that the means by which we individuals come to know our own experiences is through knowing others' experiences of us, specifically by becoming 'objects to ourselves' - absorbing and adopting others' perceptions of ourselves 'within a social environment or context of experiences and behaviour in which both [we] and they are involved' (Mead, 1934: 138). For Mead, and for Burkitt, it is language - 'communication in the sense of significant symbols... directed not only to others but also to the individual himself' (Mead, 1934: 139) - that permits this process of self-objectification. Burkitt's view of individuality, or the self, as something that develops rather than being present from birth, similarly echoes Mead's contention that 'the self... arises in the process of social experience and activity, that is, develops in the given individuals within that process' (Mead, 1934: 199). Neither Mead nor Burkitt orders subjectivity prior to sociality. On the contrary, the conceptualise communicative acts as forming, and informing, 'the capacity for subjective reflection' that becomes self-consciousness (Burkitt, 1991: 34-35). Similarly, Harre's (1993: 4) view of the self as mutable, socially informed 'location, not a substance or an attribute' that comes into being in contexts in which an individual is 'already treated as [a person] by the others of their family and tribe', is reminiscent of Mead's construction of the self-as-object-to-itself.

Discussion concerning the relationship between language, thought and indentity has also located itself in sociolinguistics since the time of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Edward Sapir's (1929: 162) contention that 'the "real world" is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group' foreshadowed Benjamin Whorf's statement, nearly three decades later, that '... the world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions that have to be organised... largely by the linguistic systems in our minds' (Whorf, 1956: 213). These assertions, like those of Mead (1934) and Harre (1993) relating to the social self modelling for the individual self, harmonise with Lev Vygotsky's understanding of 'the true direction of the development of thining [as moving] not from the individual to the social, but from the social to the individual' (Vygotsky, 1997: 36). Indeed, according to William Frawley and James Lantolf, Vygotsky maintained that 'a human being is from the outset social (i.e. dialogical) and then develops into an individual (ie. monological) entity' (Frawley & Lantolf, 1984: 146). And Lacanian thought, arguably, goes even further with respect to the relationship between language and the self. Lacan's argument, asserts Bruce Fink, is that 'without language there would be no desire as we know it - exhilarating, and yet contorted, contradictory, and loath to be satisfied - nor would there be any subject as such' (Fink, 1996: 76).

Granger, Colette A. (2004) Silence in Second Language Learning. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
(pp. 32-34)

Silence in SLA Research: From Personality to Identity

2007-12-05T22:33:00.000+08:00

SLA research was born of the science of linguistics, nurtured by a psycholinguistic approach primarily concerned with cognition, and more recently step-parented by sociolinguistic perspectives (Ellis, 1996: 1). Initially occupying itself with the characteristics and properties of learner language, it has moved towards including an examination of issues of affect, but in a sense it seems uncertain about how to proceed. And no wonder - the problem of the identity of the subject is both immeasurably problematic to perceive and perceptibly difficult to measure and analyse. And when we combine the problems of identity, perception, measurement and analysis with the idea of studying, not language as such, but rather silence within language, the difficulty becomes more daunting still. What exactly is lacking, and what can be done about it?

(p.28)

Might we perhaps consider silence s more than just a direct and exclusively linguistic consequence of either a concentration on - or a lack of - comprehension, as Dulay et al. (1982) and Gibbons (1985) would have it? Equally, might silence originate in or be a symptom of something other than, or additional to, the problem of incomplete access to the conventions of the target language, as Harder (1980) seems to suggest?

That is, might there be something at stake, more or other than the reduction of a linguistic role per se, in the process of second language acquisition?

Saville-Troike's (1988) discussion about the lack of interest in private speech within first language acquisition research resonates with my own belief that SLA research is, likewise, insufficiently curious about silence as a part of the second language learning process. Following the view of George Miller, articulated in his introduction to Ruth Weir's Language in the Crib (Weir, 1970: 15), Saville-Troike writes that:

the dominant conception of language learning as critically involving responses to the stimuli and reinforcements of a supportive environment had led a focus on mother-child dyadic interaction, and entailed the assumption that nothing 'interesting' was taking place when a child was alone, and in the dark. (Saville-Troike, 1988: 568)

Saville-Troike proceeds to extend this judgement to SLA reseaerch. Her reasoning bears quoting at some length:

While strictly behaviourist theories are no longer in vogue, the now-dominant conception of language learning as critically involving social/interpersonal interaction has left potentially important ... non-interactive phenomena generally out of researchers' awareness. Further, there has been a tendency in the second language learning field to equate overt production with active learning, and lack of overt production with passivity and disengagement. These conceptual perspectives ... have led to an unconscious assumption that nothing of significance was happening unless learners were talking to others. (Saville-Troike, 1988: 568-69)

As I have indicated, it is my view that 'something of significance' is indeed happening, even when learners are silent.

Granger, Colette A. (2004) Silence in Second Language Learning. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
(pp. 28-30)

Language and Speech Therapy in a Bilingual Context

2007-12-05T15:09:00.001+08:00

From Colin Baker's The Care and Education of Young Bilinguals

A bilingual situation adds an extra dimension to the work of language and speech therapists, since a proportion of therapy may be carried out through different languages, concurrently where feasible.

When helping young children, many language and speech therapists work with them in their first language or, in the case of children with no speech at all, in the language their parents speak to them (their potential first language). When children make progress in their first language, the work does not usually have to be repeated when the child encounters a second language at school. The language skills acquired in the first language, such as labeling objects or using verbs, transfer to the second.

Learning a second language does not pose any particular problems for a child with general learning disabilities, although the level achieved in both languages may be lower than that of peers. In fact, the stimulus of acquiring another language, with alternate labels for objects and concepts, seems to help the child progress in both languages. The careful grading of language by the teacher, the repetition of key phrases and vocabulary, the use of visual cues and stimuli, the emphasis on learning through activities, all enable the child to make good progress in the second language alongside the peer group.

The instance where there may be difficulty is when a child has a specific language related disorder. A child who has problems 'tuning into' or processing language may find it difficult to cope with a class where the curriculum is delivered through the medium of a second language. It may not be easy to 'pick up' the second language and the child may be shut out of classroom interaction. A preferable option for such a child might be to attend a school where the curriculum is delivered mainly through the medium of the first language, and the second language is presented only in set periods.

One situation which language and speech therapists encounter is minority language parents who speak the majority language to their children. Sometimes when a child has learning difficulties, parents believe two languages are an extra burden and adopt the useful majority language. This can also happen when the child has not particular problem, but the parents decide from the child's birth to promote the majority language to 'get a good start in life'. The result is that the child is excluded from the interaction between parents and other family and community members.

Since the parents are not native majority language speakers, sometimes the model they offer their child is impoverished and deficient. Thus the child grows up, not advantaged but deprived. A child with learning disabilities is further disadvantaged. It seems preferable, wherever possible, for parents to speak their own language to their child. If acquisition of that first language presents problems, language and speech therapy can help. The second language can be built upon the strong foundations of the first.

Many modern language and speech therapists now refute the suggestion that bilingualism is a burden, even for individuals with congenital or acquired language disabilities. Bilingualism is simply a ;dimension in life, to be taken into account when working with people with different kinds of language disabilities. The ability to speak two languages is a privilege and resource that should be denied to no one.

(pp. 128, 129).

SOURCE:
Baker, Colin (2000) The Care and Education of Young Bilinguals: An Introduction for Professionals. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

REF:
Baca, L.M. and Cervantes, H.T. (1998) The Bilingual Special Education Interface (3rd edn). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Bilingualism: Language Delay and Language Disorder

2007-12-05T14:28:00.000+08:00

From Colin Baker's The Care and Education of Young Bilinguals

Language delay illustrates the erroneous link between bilingualism and developmental problems. Language delay occurs when a child is very late in learning to talk or lags well behind peers in language development. Estimates of language delay in young children vary from 5% to 20% of the child population. Such varying estimates reflect the range in delays from brief and hardly noticeable to more severe.

Language delay may have a variety of causes: partial hearing, deafness, autism, severe subnormality, cerebral palsy, cleft palate and other physical problems or psychological disturbance. In approximately half to two-thirds of all cases, the precise reason remains unknown. Medically normal children with no hearing loss, normal IQ and memory, who are not socially deprived or emotionally disturbed, may be delayed in starting to speak, slow in development or may have problems expressing themselves. In such cases, specialist professional help is needed, from speech therapists, clinical and educational psychologists, counselors and/or doctors.

Parents of bilingual children with such problems should not attribute them to bilingualism. Sometimes, well-meaning professionals suggest this diagnosis, when definite causes remain unknown. Raising children bilingually is sometimes believed to cause language delay, though evidence does not support this position. Raising children bilingually neither increases nor reduces the chance of language disorder or delay.

A key consideration for parents is whether removal of one language will improve, worsen, or have no effect upon language development. Since the cause of the problem may be unknown, intuition and guesswork are often substituted for 'science.' Research in this area is still in its infancy. Confronted with the suggestion of concentrating on one language only, if there is a major diagnosed language delay, parents, teachers and professionals run the risk of accenting the perceived importance of the majority language. In the United States, the advice is often to supply a steady diet of English, the language of school and employment. All too frequently, the majority language reduces the home, minority language, with painful outcomes for the child.

When someone has loved, cared for and played with the child in one language, and then suddenly only uses another language, the child's emotional well being may be hurt. The language used to express love and caring disappears. Simultaneously, and by association, the child may feel the love and care also are not as before. Such a language change is often drastic, with negative after-effects and consequences.

Even when parents and professionals accept that bilingualism does not cause a child's problem, some see monolingualism as a remedy. they reason that removing the 'extra demands' of bilingualism will lighten the child's burden. if the child has a language delay problem, simplifying demands may solve or reduce the problem. The apparent complexity of a bilingual life is relieved. Is this right?

There are many cases where changing from bilingualism to monolingualism will have no effect on the problem. If the child is slow to speak, without an obvious cause, or seems low in self-esteem, dropping one language is unlikely to help. On the contrary, the sudden change in family life may exacerbate the problem, since the stability of language life is disrupted. In most cases, this move is inappropriate. However, it is dangerous to make this advice absolute and unequivocal.

To advise only 'stick with bilingualism' is simplistic and unwise. With language delay, for example, there will be a few family situations where maximal experience in one language is preferable. Where one language is much more secure and better developed than the other, it may be sensible to concentrate on developing the stronger language. If the child only hears one language from one parent, and that parent is often absent, a short-term concentration on the stronger language may help in a language delay period.

This does not mean losing the chance of bilingualism forever. If, or when, language delay disappears, the other language can be reintroduced. If a child with emotional problems detests using a particular language, the family may sensibly decide to accede to the child's preference. Again, once problems have been resolved, the language may be reintroduced, as long as it is immediately associated with pleasurable experiences.

Any temporary move from bilingualism to monolingualism should not be judged the only solution needed. Such a focus is naive and dangerous. Emotional problems may require other rearrangements in the family's pattern of relationships, as discussed with a counselor or psychologist. Language delay may require advice from a speech therapist, including about family language interaction. Temporary monolingualism should only be seen as one component in a package of attempted solutions. However, it is important to reiterate that retaining a bilingual approach, in the great majority of cases will not exacerbate the problem of language delay.

Language Disorder

According to Li Wei, Miller and Dodd (1997), around 5% of all children experience some form of language disorder, including: late speech development, very slow development in language competence, speaking less often and less accurately than normal, inability to produce certain sounds or remember new words, and never achieving the same language competence as peers. Bilingual children are neither more nor less likely to show problems. However, when bilinguals are inaccurate in speaking a second language (as they may be on the learning curve) or when sounds are added from one language to the other (often playful and creative), these are not language disorders.

If the child requires professional assessment and help from a psychologist or speech therapist, this professional must understand the child's bilingual background and the nature of childhood bilingualism. Assessment of the child must be completed in both or all languages, using tests normed on bilinguals, and avoiding comparison with monolinguals in phonology, vocabulary, syntax and fluency.

(pp.126-128)

SOURCE:
Baker, Colin (2000) The Care and Education of Young Bilinguals: An Introduction for Professionals. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

REF:
Wei, L., Miller, N. and Dodd, B. (1997) Distinguishing communicative difference from language disorder in bilingual children. Bilingual Family Newsletter 14(1),3-4. (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.)

Bilingualism and Learning Difficulties

2007-12-05T13:40:00.000+08:00

From Colin Baker's The Care and Education of Young Bilinguals

The previous theme disputed the link between bilingualism and under-achievement in school. The failure of some language minority children to achieve satisfactorily was argued to be potentially the result of a complex equation of factors, none of which was directly linked to bilingualism. These include an educational system that devalues the child's home language and culture and does not build on existing abilities in the home language. The social and economic difficulties that many indigenous and immigrant minorities face were shown to be another possible cause of academic under-achievement.

Another unfair assumption made by some people is that bilingualism causes specific learning disabilities. This topic argues that this assumption is usually false. Bilingualism is rarely a cause of learning difficulties.

Bilingual children are often wrongly assessed as having learning difficulties, because basic mistakes are made in assessment and categorization. A child is often tested in the weaker, second language, inaccurately measuring both language and general cognitive development. In Britain and the United States, immigrant students have often been tested through the medium of English, on English proficiency, while their level of competence in Spanish, Bengali, Cantonese or other first language is ignored. This is discussed more fully in 'Assessment and Bilingual Children' (see p. 130)

The result is that, instead of being seen as developing bilinguals, children with a good command of a first language, in the process of acquiring a second, they may be classed as 'of limited English proficiency' (LEP in the United States) or even as having general learning difficulties. Below average test scores in the second language are wrongly define as a 'deficit' or 'disability' that can be remedied by some form of special education.

While learning difficulties occasionally occur within bilingual children, there are a variety of possible causes, almost none of them aligned to bilingualism. Six examples of causes follow, which are similar to the causes of general under-achievement in school.

* Poverty and material deprivation, child neglect and abuse, helplessness and desperation in the home, extended family and community may create personality, attitudinal and learning conditions that render assessment of learning difficulties more probable. Sometimes such assessment will reflect prejudice, misjudgments and misperceptions about the child's home experiences. The learning problem may thus lie in a mismatch between the culture, attitudes, educational expectations and values of the home and school. Different beliefs, culture, knowledge and cognitive approaches may be devalued, with the child labeled as inferior in intelligence, academically incompetent and low in potential.

* The problem may lie in the standard of education, poor teaching methods, non-motivating, even hostile classroom environment, a dearth of suitable teaching materials.

* The school may inhibit or obstruct learning progress. If a child is taught in a second language, while the home language is ignored, then failure and perceived learning difficulties may result. Some Spanish-speaking children in the United States are placed in English-only classrooms on school entry. They must sink or swim in English. Those who sink may be deemed to have a deficiency. When assessed in their weaker second language, rather than their home language, they are labeled as needing special or remedial education. The monolingual school system itself may then be responsible for specific learning difficulties as well as general underachievement. A school that promotes bilingualism would be more likely to ensure learning success for the same child.

* A lack of self-confidence, low self-esteem, fear of failure and high anxiety in the student may lead to apparent learning difficulties.

* Classroom interactions among children cause some failures. When a group of children encourage each other to play around, share a low motivation to succeed, or where there is bullying, hostility and social division rather than cohesion within a classroom, the learning ethos may hinder individual development.

* Failure is also caused by the mismatch between the gradient of learning expected and individual ability. Some children learn to read more slowly than others, still learning well, but after a longer period of time. Less able children can learn two languages within the (unknowable) limits of their ability. Other children experience specific learning difficulties, such as dyslexia, neurological dysfunction, short term memory problems, poor physical coordination, or problems in attention span and motivation. None of these specific learning disabilities are caused by bilingualism. At the same time, bilingual children will not escape being included in this group; bilingual families are no less likely to be affected than other families.

This list, neither exhaustive nor comprehensive, how that there are many possible roots for a child's learning difficulties, while bilingualism has almost nothing to do with any of them, either as a secondary or primary cause. Bilingualism is unlikely to cause learning difficulties.

Almost the only case where bilingualism is associated with learning difficulty is when a bilingual child enters the classroom with neither language sufficiently developed to cope with the higher order language skills demanded by the curriculum. The child has simple conversational skills in two languages, but cannot keep up in either, thus implicating language in learning difficulties. In this case, bilingualism is not the true problem. The problem is insufficient language practice in the home, nursery school and outside world. it is not bilingual deprivation but deprivation in any language. This is a great rarity, but the only genuine connection, though indirect, of bilingualism with learning difficulties.

(pp. 124,125)

Ability Effects

Is it the case that less able children will experience bilingual cognitive advantages, or would such children be better off as monolinguals? Rueda's (1983) research suggests a 'cognitive advantages' link may be found in less able children. Using children of well below average IQ (51-69 IQ points), Rueda compared bilinguals and monolinguals on three tests: a Meaning and Reference Task which examines the stability and meaning of words (the death of a 'flump', an imaginary animal), the Arbitrariness of Language Task (could we call a 'cat' a 'dog'?), and the Non-Physical Nature of Words Task (does the word 'bird' have feathers?). On each task, the bilinguals tended to score significantly higher. Although Rueda found no difference on a Piagetian conservation test, this research indicates that the cognitive advantages linked to bilingualism may not be specific to higher ability children.

If children have below average ability, there is evidence to suggest that they can still acquire two languages within their unknown limits. While well meaning friends, teachers and speech therapists sometimes suggest that only one language should be developed, Canadian research indicates cognitive advantages in bilingualism for these less able students. Just as their development occurs at a slow pace in mathematics, literacy and science, so also with the development of languages. The size of vocabulary and accuracy of grammar may lag behind the average bilingual child. Nevertheless, such children, acquiring two languages early, will usually be able to communicate in both, often as well as they would in one alone.

(p. 126)

SOURCE:
Baker, Colin (2000) The Care and Education of Young Bilinguals: An Introduction for Professionals. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

REFS:

Baca, L.M. and Cervantes, H.T. (1998) The Bilingual Special Education Interface (3rd edn). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Harry, B. (1992) Cultural Diversity, Families and the Special Education System: Communication and Empowerment. New York: Teachers College Press.

Explanations of Under-Achievement in Bilinguals

2007-12-05T12:51:00.000+08:00

From Colin Baker's The Care and Education of Young Bilinguals

What may explain seeming under-achievement by language minority children when and where this occurs? When first, second or third generation immigrant children appear to fail in the classroom, where is blame popularly placed? When guest works' children, indigenous minorities and distinct ethnic groups are shown to leave school earlier, achieve less in examinations or receive lower grades, what is the cause?

The blame may be attributed to the child's bilingualism, often popularly seen as causing cognitive confusion. The bilingual brain is depicted as two engines working at half throttle, while the monolingual's single, well-tuned engine runs at full throttle. Such an explanation is usually incorrect. Where two languages are well developed, then bilingualism is more likely to bring advantages than disadvantages. Only when a child's two languages are both underdeveloped can 'blame' be attributed to bilingualism. Even then, the blame should be on the societal circumstances that occasionally create underdeveloped languages.

Where under-achievement exists, the reason assigned may be underexposure to the majority language. Failure or below average performance, in the United States and the United Kingdom, is typically attributed to insufficiently developed English language skills for the curriculum. Those who use a minority language at home are sometimes perceived to struggle at school, due to a lack of competence in the dominant tongue. Thus submersion and transitional forms of bilingual education attempt to ensure a fast conversion to the majority language.

However, such a speedy conversion may do more harm than good; it denies the child's home language skills, even denies the child's identity and self-respect. Instead of using existing skills, the 'sink or swim' approach attempts to replace them. The level of English in the curriculum may be too advanced; consequently, the child under-achieves. Further English lessons become the remedy, but not the best solution.

Providing instruction through the medium of the minority language, in two-way, developmental maintenance or heritage language programs may combat under-achievement. When children are allowed to operate in the heritage language in the curriculum, evidence indicates successful results, including fluency in the majority language (Baker, 1996; Cummins, 2000). Thus underexposure to the majority language, though popular, is an incorrect explanation of under-achievement. It fails to note the advantages of instruction in the minority language. It inappropriately seeks an answer in increased majority language instruction, rather than increased minority language education.

Moreover, when bilingual children under-achieve, there may be a mismatch between home and school, based not only on language differences but also dissimilarities in culture, values and beliefs (Delgado-Gaitan & Trueba, 1991). As an extreme, this reflects an assimilationist, imperialist and oppressive majority viewpoint. The child and family are expected to adjust to the school system, rather than expecting a pluralist system to incorporate variety. From such an assimilationist viewpoint, the solution lies in the home adjusting to mainstream language and culture to prepare the child for school. In the past, some educational psychologists and speech therapists advised language minority parents to raise their children in the majority, school language.

Alternatively, where practicable, the school system should be flexible enough to incorporate the home language and culture. A home-school mismatch can be positive addressed by 'strong forms' of bilingual education for minorities. By two-way, developmental maintenance and heritage language programs, by a multicultural classroom approach with respect for the child's value systems, culture and religious beliefs, the inclusion of parents in running the school and in partnership in their child's education, the mismatch can become a merger.

(pp. 120,121)

Section on socioeconomic factors omitted due to my current focus on international school environments.

This raises another issue. Under-achievement is not simply related to one or several causes. The equation of under-achievement is complex, involving a number of factors, which interact in complicated ways. Umbrella labels, such as 'socioeconomic status' must be broken down into more definable predictors of under-achievement, such as the parents' attitude about education. Home factors interact with school factors and provide an enormous number of different routes to varying degrees of school success. The recipes of success and failure are many, with varies, interacting ingredients. However, socioeconomic and sociocultural features are important in most equations of under-achievement.

Part of the equation is the type of school the child atttends. This topic has highlighted the different outcomes in 'strong' forms of bilingual education, compared with 'weak'. The same child will learn more in programs using the heritage language for instruction than in programs which replace the home language as soon as possible. Therefore, under-achievement in a language minority child or group calls for scrutiny of the whole school. A system that suppresses the home language is likely to explain part of individual and ethnic group under-achievement. It tends to deny the language and cognitive achievements of children, their identity and self-esteem.

'Type of school' is a broad heading, under which a range of quality can exist, from poor to superior. Where under-achievement occurs, it is too simple to blame the type of school, rather than digging deeper and locating more specific causes. Baker (1996), Cummins (2000) and Hornberger (1991) have listed attributes that must be examined in assessing the quality of any educational system serving language minority children. Such factors include the supply, ethnic origins and bilingualism of teachers, classroom balance of minority and majority students, use and sequencing of languages across the curriculum over different grades, and reward systems for enriching the minority language and culture.

Under-achievement may be due to real learning difficulties. It is important to make a distinction. Too often, bilingual children are labeled with learning difficulties, while the causes of problems may be less in the child and more in the school or educational system. A subtractive, assimilative system typically creates negative attitudes and low motivation. In the 'sink or swim' approach, 'sinking' reflects an unsympathetic system and insensitive teaching, rather than individual learning problems. Apart from system and school generated problems, there will be children who are bilingual and have genuine learning difficulties (Cummins, 1984). Distinguishing between the real and the apparent, the system-generated and the remediable problems of the individual highlights alternatives. When under-achievement exists, do we blame the victim, blame the teacher and the school, or blame the system? When assessment tests and examinations show relatively low performance of language minority individuals and groups, will prejudices be confirmed or can we use such assessment to reveal deficiencies in the architecture of the school system and curriculum design? Under-achievement tends to be blamed on the child and the language minority group, while the explanation often lies in factors outside the individual.

A particular case of under-achievement is when students drop-out of schools. Stephen Krashen (1999) provides evidence to show that bilingual education is not the cause of dropping-out in United States schools, but it may be the cure. Latino students do have higher dropout rates (e.g. 30% of Latino students are classified as drop-outs compared to 8.6% of non-Latino whites and 12.1% of non-Latino blacks). Krashen's (1999) review of evidence suggest that those who had experienced bilingual education were significantly less likely to drop-out.

There are factors (other than bilingual education) related to dropping-out such as socio-economic class, recency of immigration, family environment, and the presence of print at home. It is estimated that 40% of Latino children are more likely to have parents who did not complete High School. When these factors are controlled statistically, the drop-out rate among Latinos is the same (or virtually the same) as for other groups. Since 'strong' forms of bilingual schooling tend to produce higher standards of academic English and performance across the curriculum, then such schools become part of the cure for dropping-out.

(pp.122,123)

SOURCE:
Baker, Colin (2000) The Care and Education of Young Bilinguals: An Introduction for Professionals. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

REFS:
Baca, L.M. and Cervantes, H.T. (1998) The Bilingual Special Education Interface (3rd edn). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Cummins, J. (1984) Bilingualism and Special Education: Issues in Assessment and Pedagogy. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Harry, B. (1992) Cultural Diversity, Families and the Special Education System: Communication and Empowerment. New York: Teachers College Press.

Krashen, S.D. (1999) Condemned Without a Trial: Bogus Arguments Against Bilingual Education. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

How Wikipedia's Collaborative Systems Work

2007-12-03T12:53:00.000+08:00

TEDTalks: Jimmy Wales, Oxford, July 2005

The goal of Wikipedia/Wikimedia is to get a free encyclopedia to everyone on the planet. At the time of Wales's presentation, Wikipedia amounted to over 2 million articles in a variety of languages. Only around 1/3 of traffic to the site is directed at the English section of the encyclopedia. The foundation only has one paid employee, the lead software developer, and the rest of the work is done by volunteers. The main cost is around $5000/month in bandwidth.

"Why isn't it all rubbish?" (ie. given a completely chaotic model).
"Most people understand the need for neutrality."
"How do we manage the quality control?"
Wales states that social policies and elements of the software contribute to this.

It's a social concept of co-operation... anytime there's a controversial issue, Wikipedia should not take a stand on it, we should merely report what reputable parties have said about it.

Neutral Point of View policy:
* NPOV - Neutral Point of View
* NPOV is a social concept of co-operation, avoids some philosophical issues
* Diverse political, religious, cultural backgrounds
* Kept together by our "NPOV" policy

Real-time peer review: every time a change is made, the changes are fed into IRC and RSS feeds that peers have on their personal 'watch lists.' Therefore, someone will notice the change very quickly, and if it doesn't conform to policy then the page will be reverted.

Edits by anonymous users only account for approximately 18% of the edits on the website. The vast majority of the edits on the website are made by a fairly dedicated, close-knit community of around 600-1000 people who are in constant communication.

The software tools support close monitoring of encyclopedia entries, such as 'page history,' which highlights page modifications in red. A social method that grew up in the community is the "Votes for Deletion" page, which creates a forum for the community to dialogue on issues for clarification.

The wikipedia governance model is a very confusing but workable mix of consensus... we try not to vote on the content of articles, because the majority view is not necessarily neutral; some amount of democracy - all of the administrations - these are the people who have the ability to delete pages - that doesn't mean they have the right to delete pages - they still have to follow all of the rules - but they're elected by the community. Sometimes random trolls on the Internet accuse me of hand-picking the administrators to bias the content of the encyclopedia. I always laugh at this, because I have no idea how they're elected, actually. There's a certain amount of aristocracy... Rick Cave's voice would carry a lot more weight than someone we don't know. And then there's monarchy, and that's my role in the community... I don't like the term 'benevolent dictator'... it isn't appropriate, but there's a need still for a certain amount of monarchy. Sometimes we need to make a decision quick and we don't want to get bogged down too heavily in formal decision making processes... we won't allow our openness and freedom to undermine the quality of the content. So as long as people trust me in my role, then that's a valid place for me. Because of the free licencing, if I do a bad job, the volunteers are more than happy to take and leave - I can't tell anyone what to do.

So the final point here is to understand that we are not fanatical web anarchists. We're very flexible about the social methodology, because ultimately the passion of the community is for the quality of the work, not necessarily for the process that we use to generate it.

During a subsequent Q&A it was suggested to Wales that a lot of biased textbooks are being used in schools, and he was asked whether or not Wikipedia is being employed by teachers and schools.

There's a media storyline about Wikipedia which I think is false. It builds on the storyline of bloggers versus newspapers, and the storyline is that there's this crazy thing, Wikipedia, but academics hate it and teachers hate it, and that turns out to not be true... I think there's going to be huge impacts, and we actually have a project...the Wikibooks projects, which is an effort to create textbooks in all the languages... part of that is to fulfill our mission of giving an encyclopedia to every single person on the planet... I think that we're really going to see... freely licensed textbooks are the next big thing in education.

Smarter fuels for developing nations

2007-12-03T12:17:00.000+08:00

TEDTalks: Amy Smith, Feb 2006

The number one killer of children under the age of 5 is the inhalation from indoor cooking fires. A lot of effort has been put into looking for alternatives to charcoal as cooking fuels. The use of wood charcoal not only creates health risks due to inhalation of heavy smoke, but also leads to environmental degradation, in terms of destabilisation of hillsides due to the heavy use of wood. Smith works through examples of MIT studies in Haiti. Bagas, a waste resource from sugar cane is processed and combined with a sticky paste derived from casava to create brickettes for cooking.

In India the most commonly used cooking fuel is cow dung, which creates very smoky fires (ie. heavy impact on health). The locally available sources of biomass were wheat and rice straw, with small amounts of cow manure as a binder. After studying optimal pressures for compression of the brickettes, a low cost press was developed for use in Haiti.

Thus, the use of agricultural waste as cooking fuels, as opposed to wood, can be not only healthier, but also environmentally sustainable. Another example was the use of corn cobs, which form ready-made charcoal briquettes.

This is also one of the incredibly rare situations where you also have economic benefits. People can make their own cooking fuel from waste products. They can generate income from this. They can save the money they were going to spend on charcoal, and they can produce excess and sell it in the market to people who aren't making their own. It's extremely rare that you don't have trade-offs between health and economics, or environment and economics.

She suggests that people below the poverty line need to be able to make new, genuine 'value' products, and that we need to work with them to give them resources and tools so that they can solve their own problems.

Our (uniquely correct) worldview?

2007-11-22T22:26:00.000+08:00

Regardless of when or where we live, we inevitably perceive ourselves as the Middle Kingdom, and either we smile condescendingly at the mythmaking of other cultures or we go to war with them to force upon them our (uniquely correct) worldview. And if we are better at crafting weapons, we are generally able to persuade those we have physically conquered of the superiority of our myths over theirs.

Glad, John. (2008) "Future Human Evolution: Eugenics in the Twenty-First Century." Hermitage, Schuylkill Haven. p.8

...and although John Glad's book/extended paper on eugenics commences in an innocuous fashion, and gently argues its way around the politics of eugenics, I must explicitly state that there are elements of his book that I don't agree with. Despite the fact that he begins the book with a seemingly sociologically sensitive statement, by the time we reach the final stretch of his argument we read, "Abortion should be actively promoted, since it often serves as the last and even only resort for many low-IQ mothers who fail to practice contraception." (p.79). So much of his argument hinges upon the concept of IQ as a measure of the right to survive. It disturbs me that we still have people who measure intelligence and potential in a number. Read with caution.

Steven Pinker: Race is skin-deep

2007-11-22T21:39:00.000+08:00

Race is, quite literally, skin-deep, but to the extent that perceivers generalize from external to internal differences, nature has duped them into thinking that race is important. The X-ray vision of the molecular geneticist reveals the unity of our species.

And so does the X-ray vision of the cognitive scientist. "Not speaking the same language" is a virtual synonym for incommensurability, but to a psycholinguist, it is a superficial difference. Knowing about the ubiquity of complex language across individuals and cultures and the single mental design underlying them all, no speech seems foreign to me, even when I cannot understand a word. The banter among New Guinean Highlanders in the film of their first contact with the rest of the world, the motions of a sign language interpreter, the prattle of little girls in a Tokyo playground - I imagine seeing through the rhythms to the structures underneath, and sense that we all have the same minds.

Pinker, Steven. (1994) "The Language Instinct." HarperCollins, New York. p. 430

Brains - it's size that counts?

2007-11-20T17:48:00.000+08:00

At the level of the whole brain, the remark that there has been selection for bigger brains is, to be sure, common in writings about human evolution (especially from paleoanthropologists). Given that premise, one might naturally think that all kinds of computational abilities might come as a by-product. But if you think about it for a minute, you should quickly see that the premise has it backwards. Why would evolution ever have selected for sheer bigness of brain, that bulbous, metabolically greedy organ? A large-brained creature is sentenced to a life that combines all the disadvantages of balancing a watermelon on a broomstick, running in place in a down jacket, and, for women, passing a large kidney stone every few years. Any selection on brain size itself would surely have favored the pinhead. Selection for more powerful computational abilities (language, perception, reasoning, and so on) must have given us a big brain as a by-product, not the other way around!

Pinker, Steven. (1994) "The Language Instinct." HarperCollins, New York. p. 363

What kids learn in virtual worlds

2007-11-19T18:36:00.001+08:00

I am drawing these quotes from Doug Thomas, Annenberg School of Communication, who is cited by Stefanie Olsen in a special feature of CNet's news.com:

Knowledge is changing. It (used to be that it) was a set of facts, now it's not so much a 'what' but a 'where,' in which kids learn how to find information," Thomas said. "That's going to be the single most important skill--the ability to adapt to change.

It's strange that we need experts to point this out to us. The ability and willingness to be flexible is much more far-reaching than just this kind of tech-flex, though.

He added: "I wouldn't be worried if they're engaged and playing these games, I'd be more worried if they're not."

Again, it's stating the obvious, but we need voices like Thomas's to state what seems to be so broadly missed by so many: exclusion leads to lack of competence in a broad set of social skills. When we look at any kind of media literacy, isn't it safer and more socially responsible to actively get involved and teach kids how to be literate within these media? This is not just "digital literacy" in terms of being able to functionally navigate software, but the deeper literacy of being able to deconstruct texts at a philosophical and psychological level.

If you're a parent, I would be much less concerned about things like online predators or violence, then I would be about the conflation between consumption and consumerism and citizenship (in virtual worlds).

I predict that this last statement may raise the ire of some advocates, but it's being extreme in order to make a point. On the one hand we fear the issues that the popular media makes so blatant and so explicit, however, the popular media is quite often not so interested in making us wise, responsible consumers and citizens, because then the shareholders couldn't exploit us as much. Consumption of new media has a profound effect on molding the citizenry. Access to, and knowledge of, specific digital resources could become components of caste and class in this century.

Link to source article

A Martian's-eye-view of language

2007-11-19T10:42:00.001+08:00

Chomsky's claim that from a Martian's-eye-view all humans speak a single language is based on the discovery that the same symbol-manipulating machinery, without exception, underlies the world's languages. Linguists have long known that the basic design features of language are found everywhere. Many were documented in 1960 by the non-Chomskyan linguist C. F. Hockett in a comparison between human languages and animal communication systems (Hockett was not acquainted with Martian). Languages use the mouth-to-ear channel as long as the users have intact hearing (manual and facial gestures, of course, are the substitute channel used by the deaf). A common grammatical code, neutral between production and comprehension, allows speakers to produce any linguistic message they can understand, and vice versa. Words have stable meanings, linked to them by arbitrary convention. Speech sounds are treated discontinuously; a sound that is acoustically halfway between bat and pat does not meaning something halfway between batting and patting. Languages can convey meanings that are abstract and remote in time or space from the speaker. Linguistic forms are infinite in number, because they are created by a discrete combinatorial system. Languages all show a duality of patterning in which one rule system is used to order phonemes within morphemes, independent of meaning, and another is used to order morphemes within words and phrases, specifying their meaning.

Pinker, Steven. (1994) "The Language Instinct." HarperCollins, New York. p. 237

Hobbes: What it is to lay down a right

2007-11-19T08:29:00.000+08:00

What it is to lay down a Right
To Lay Downe a mans Right to any thing, is to Devest himselfe
of the Liberty, of hindring another of the benefit of his own
Right to the same. For he that renounceth, or passeth away his Right,
giveth not to any other man a Right which he had not before;
because there is nothing to which every man had not Right by Nature:
but onely standeth out of his way, that he may enjoy his own
originall Right, without hindrance from him; not without hindrance
from another. So that the effect which redoundeth to one man,
by another mans defect of Right, is but so much diminution of
impediments to the use of his own Right originall.

Thomas Hobbes, "The Leviathan." Chapter XIV

Learning is caused by complexity in the mind

2007-11-13T10:58:00.000+08:00

From Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct:

The idea that the human mind is designed to use abstract variables and data structures used to be, and in some circles still is, a shocking and revolutionary claim, because the structures have no direct counterpart in the child's experience. Some of the organization of grammar would have to be there from the start, part of the language-learning mechanism that allows children to make sense out of all of the noises they hear from their parents. The details of syntax have figured prominently in the history of psychology, because they are a case where complexity in the mind is not caused by learning; learning is caused by complexity in the mind. And that was real news.

Pinker, Steven (1994) "The Language Instinct." Harper Collins, New York. p.125

TEDTalks: Ross Lovegrove - Organic, "fat-free" design

2007-11-01T02:31:00.000+08:00

I think instead of quoting anything directly from Lovegrove's talk I'll just embed this one, because the visual support material is so important. Lovegrove was already an inspirational figure - from the Walkman to the iMac (Frog Design), but this presentation genuinely grabbed me. Despite a somewhat nervous, awkward style, he discusses stripping back designs to what's timeless and essential - sentiments that sound like they're coming directly out of the mouth of Jonathan Ive, but Lovegrove seems to bring a more organic approach to his design philosophy.

All hail "Captain Organic!" - what an inspiration for design that's ecologically/environmentally/socially responsible.

John Ralston Saul - Positive Nationalism

2007-10-30T14:27:00.000+08:00

If people who know each other well serve the welfare of their fellow citizens, they may learn something unexpected about each other, perhaps about how different they are. If people who do not know each other well, perhaps because they come from different cultures, serve the welfare of their fellow citizens, they may well discover how similar their values are.

In both cases, this would be the process of positive nationalism.

Ralston Saul, John. (2005) "The Collapse of Globalism." New York: Penguin. p. 280

Nibbled to Death by Ducks

2007-10-30T12:51:00.000+08:00

...you can see the destructive effect of managerial dominance in the gradual growth of detail as the mainstay of the employee's life. The effect of new technology has been to draw even senior managers into minutiae. People paid to think and lead now spend much of their time typing and responding to or sending an endless stream of unnecessary messages, simply because communications technology invades every second and every corner of their lives. This bureaucratization of both the leadership and the creative process makes thought seem irresponsible and clear action seem unprofessional. It provides a sensation of activity while creating a broader sense of powerlessness. This is what used to be called being nibbled to death by ducks.

Ralston Saul, John. (2005) "The Collapse of Globalism." New York: Penguin. p. 230

John Ralston Saul: "The End of Belief"

2007-10-30T10:40:00.000+08:00

Ideologies resemble not very good theatre of the romantic sort. That is why Coleridge's formula - the willing suspension of disbelief - applies so neatly to the natural life of any ideology. In defence of the poet, he had in mind a far nobler use of the human ability to choose to suspend our disbelief -- a nobler idea of theatre and of the romantic ideal. but you could argue that the more flimsy the theatrical device -- a romance novel, a Schwarzenegger adventure -- the greater the demonstration of our ability to suspend our critical faculties.

How we arrive at the decision to suspend our disbelief when it comes to ideologies is mysterious. Historians and social scientists spend their lives trying to explain the phenomenon. Creative writers usually do a better job at explaining this sort of politics, because in a curious way they are in the same business as the ideologues. Both are dealing with the human heart.

Less mysterious is how we decide to drop our suspension. The inevitable -- and here the word is accurate -- failures of any ideology gradually build up. A growing number of people notice. The propaganda of triumph evolves into one of denial. Language that was once enthusiastically received by the public is increasingly treated as the equivalent of elevator music, then as an actively annoying noise, and finally as inadvertent comedy. When the voice of power is heard by the public with irony, skepticism and, at last, as if from a farce, our willingness to suspend our disbelief has seeped fully away. The ideology may go on for a time because its advocates hold so many of the mechanisms of power. But this is simply power.

While the true believers continue to insist -- sometimes enthusiastically, but more often angrily these days -- on global inevitabilities, you will hear, if you listen carefully, a rising babble of contradictory sounds. A growing number of nation-state leaders, along with the more interesting businessmen, have changed their vocabulary, gradually weeding out the global assumptions. The new discourse is more complex, sibylline, less grandiose. Much of it is built around the idea of citizens and society. On the other hand, some of it suggests an accelerating political meltdown matched by rising levels of disorder. There is a growing incidence of old-style nationalist violence. Our memory has changed again.

Ralston Saul, John. (2005) "The Collapse of Globalism." Penguin, New York. pp.171,172

TEDTalks: Helen Fisher (2006) Biochemical foundations of Love and Lust

2007-10-18T11:22:00.000+08:00

2 biggest social trends in the next century?

1. Women moving back into the job market
2. The aging population

fMRI scanning of people in various states of love (or being out of love)

Main characteristics of romatic love: craving, motivation and obsession.

She claims that romantic love is not an emotion but a drive, ie, motivation or craving. "I think it's more powerful than the sex drive."

3 basic brain systems that have developed as a result of evolutionary/reproductive cycles: sex drive; romantic love; attachment (sense of calm and security).

These 3 systems translate as Lust, romantic love and deep attachment to a partner.

As woman are moving back into the job market in many cultures, they're acquiring the status that that had in earlier human societies.

Differences between male/female brains - woman have greater verbal ability (people skills, long term planning, putting ideas into more complex patterns, holistic thinking); men tend to get rid of what they consider as extraneous so they can focus.

Moving towards a collaborative society where the talents of both sexes are valued and employed together.

Return to an ancient form of marriage equality. "The symmetrical marriage"; "The peer marriage" whereby partners are equal.

SECOND TREND: The aging population. Trend - the older you get, the less likely you are to get divorced.

The 3 brain systems aren't always connected to each other, eg. you may feel deep attachment to someone while you feel sexual attraction to someone else.

"I don't think honestly we're an animal that was built to be happy - we were built to reproduce."

Fisher is worried about antidepressants (eg. serotonin enhancing). Serotonin enhancing drugs supress dopamine, therefore suppressing sex drive. Therefore, if you tamper with one system you tamper with other systems.

TEDTalks: Ken Robinson (2006) - Creativity in Education

2007-10-17T16:41:00.000+08:00

It's funny - I've seen this before, but I decided to watch it again and take some notes.

Robinson begins by claiming one of ideas we need to grapple with is that we don't know what future holds or what it's going to look like, so how do we educate today's children?

"Creativity is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status."
"If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original."

He comments that by the time we're adults we stigmatize mistakes, "We're educating people out of their creative capacities."

"We don't grow into creativity - we grow out of it. Or rather, we get educated out of it."

Robinson is hilarious, and makes some great jokes imagining Shakespeare as a 7 year old in an English class.

"Every education system on Earth has the same hierarchy of subjects... At the top are mathematics and languages, then the humanities, and at the bottom are the arts. Everywhere on Earth. And in pretty much every system, too, there's a hierarchy within the arts: art and music are usually given a higher status in schools than drama and dance. There isn't an education system on the planet that teaches dance ever day to children the way we teach them mathematics. Why? Why not? I think this is rather important."

"As children grow older we start to progressively educate them from the waist up. And then we focus on their heads - and slightly to one side."

Robinson claims that the people who come out at the top of this kind of system are the people who wind up as university professors, but typically those are the kinds of people who are disembodied and live in their heads. "They look at their body as a form of transport for their heads." (ha!)

"The education system is predicated on the idea of academic ability, and there's a reason... There were no public systems of education before the 19th century. They all came into being to meet the needs of industrialism. So the hierarchy is based on two ideas: (1) The most useful subjects for work are at the top, so you were probably steered benignly away from things when you were a kid - things you liked - on the grounds that you would never get a job doing that...
Benign advice - now profoundly mistaken. The whole world's engulfed in a revolution.
And the second is: (2) Academic ability, which has really come to dominate our view of intelligence, because the universities designed the system in their image. If you think of it, the whole systsem of public education around the world is a protracted process of university entrance. And the consequence is that many highly talented, brilliant, creative people think they're not.
Because the thing they were good at at school wasn't valued or was actually stigmatized."

"In the next 30 years, according to UNESCO, more people will be graduating through public education than since the beginning of history....
Suddenly, degrees aren't worth anything." (ie. now you may need an MA to get a job - "the process of academic inflation."
"We know three things about intelligence:
(1) It's diverse. We think about the world in all of the ways that we experience it - we think visually, we think in sound, we think kinesthetically; we think in abstract terms; we think in movement.
(2) Intelligence is dynamic. If you look at all of the interactions of the brain...intelligence is wonderfully interactive."
Creativity = the process of having original ideas that have value
Creativity, more often than not, comes from different disciplines and ways of seeing things.
(3) Intelligence is distinct.

"I believe our only hope for the future is to adopt a new conception of human ecology. One in which we start to reconstitute our conception of the richness of human capacity. Our education system has mined our minds in the way that we stripmine the Earth for a particular commodity, and for the future it won't service. We have to rethink the fundamental principles upon which we're educating our children."

"Our task is to educate their whole being."

Hobbes on Want of Understanding

2007-10-13T23:16:00.000+08:00

Ignorance of the signification of words; which is, want of
understanding, disposeth men to take on trust, not onely the
truth they know not; but also the errors; and which is more,
the non-sense of them they trust: For neither Error, nor non-sense,
can without a perfect understanding of words, be detected.

(p.61) Hobbes "Leviathan"

This seems like such a patently obvious statement, but failure to understand this follows us around for entire lifetimes. Essentially, we trust nonsense.

Hobbes on lack of timely resolution

2007-10-13T22:51:00.000+08:00

Timely Resolution, or determination of what a man is to do,
is Honourable; as being the contempt of small difficulties, and dangers.
And Irresolution, Dishonourable; as a signe of too much valuing of
little impediments, and little advantages: For when a man has weighed
things as long as the time permits, and resolves not, the difference
of weight is but little; and therefore if he resolve not,
he overvalues little things, which is Pusillanimity.

Hobbes: Leviathan (1651), p.55 of my version of the Gutenberg e-text.
Chapter X: "Of Power, Worth, Dignity, Honour and Worthiness"

Lack of timely resolution is a sign of too much focus on little impediments and little advantages. Hobbes claims that lack of courage or determination lies at the core of this inaction. Hobbes repeats this idea in Chapter XI:

Irresolution, From Too Great Valuing Of Small Matters
Pusillanimity disposeth men to Irresolution, and consequently
to lose the occasions, and fittest opportunities of action.
For after men have been in deliberation till the time of
action approach, if it be not then manifest what is best to be done,
tis a signe, the difference of Motives, the one way and the other,
are not great: Therefore not to resolve then, is to lose the occasion
by weighing of trifles; which is pusillanimity.

John Ralston Saul on Trade vs. Wellbeing of People

2007-10-13T21:47:00.000+08:00

"There is one free trade issue that is rarely mentioned in the context of Cobden and the great movement. During the eighteenth century, the British, followed by the French and the Americans, wanted to buy high-quality Chinese goods - tea, silk, porcelain. The West could not produce these goods, or at any rate could not match the Chinese level of excellence. The problem was the the Chinese didn't want any Western goods. There being no two-way trade, the West had to pay cash. The British used silver they received in trade with Spain. In 1781 there was no silver, so Warren Hastings, the first governor-general of India, sent off Indian opium to be sold in China to pay for British imports. This eventually led to two Opium Wars in which the West - pretending to be at war over the treatment of their traders - fought China to force the country to go on importing opium, thus addicting its citizens. By 1830 this trade was probably the largest single commodity business in the world. The same House of Commons, so enthusiastic about the moral virtues of free trade, defeated motions to ban the opium trade in 1870, 1875, 1886 and 1889. The trade ended in 1913 as part of the winding down of the first free trade experiment.

Put bluntly, Britain in particular and the West in general asked themselves whether the moral principle of fair trade trumped the well-being of a people. They answered that it did.

This is a question valid for all time; even if we refused to raise it at appropriate moments, history will, when the time comes to describe our actions for future generations. In what possible context could a question relevant to the opium trade be raised today? What about the pharmaceuticals essential to combat AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis in the developing world and the way in which their prices are artificially kept high by the Trade-Related aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) regime in the WTO? Or what about Western industrial agriculture and its effect on gragile societies? Or the destructive effect of unregulated financial markets on weaker economies?"

p.43,44 John Ralston Saul, "The Collapse of Globalism." (2005) Penguin, New York.

TEDTalks: Richard Branson (2007)

2007-10-11T19:09:00.000+08:00

When asked a question about how he manages to start up and manage so many companies, he responds that if you can run one company then you can run many
- running companies is about finding good people and then bringing out their best.
- previews the interior design of the Virgin Galactic craft.
- discusses the fact that he's dyslexic and left school at the age of 15.
- "capitalist philanthropy" - alludes to the fact that in a capitalist system extreme wealth ends up in the hands of a few people, and that responsibility goes with that wealth, and that it's important for those individuals to use that money to create jobs or to tackle issues, eg. global warming/alternative fuels; social problems in Africa (including AIDS)

TEDTalks: "Uncertainty" Peter Donnelly (2005)

2007-10-11T18:29:00.000+08:00

Peter Donnelly: How juries are fooled by statistics

Discusses probability theory in relation to genetics (ie. the patterning of G/A/T/C).
Human Genome Project - attempting to understand how differences make people susceptible to diseases.

Currently studying thousands of individuals with different diseases to look for genetic correlations.

Discusses the idea that if a person is tested as 'positive' with a disease then not only the accuracy of the test is in question, but also the frequency/proportion of the population with the disease. As a result, false positives can be frequent.

"We are not good at reasoning with uncertainty."
Errors are very frequently made in terms of grappling with statistics and arguments of (false) logic. In the early days of DNA profiling evidence was misrepresented, (ie. "the chance that this guy is innocent is one in 73,000,000" - was frequently incorrect).

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/67

What will a brain theory look like? (Jeff Hawkins)

2007-09-21T20:58:00.000+08:00

TED Talks (2003) Jeff Hawkins
Notes from PowerPoint on suggestions for what Brain Theory will look like:

- Memory system (for high dimension patterns)
- Memories are stored and recalled as a sequence of patterns
- Sequences are auto-associatively recalled
- Predication of future patterns is the desired output

- Biologically accurate, testable, buildable

Being proactive in life...

2007-09-21T13:55:00.000+08:00

"People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who look for the circumstances they want, and if they can't find them, make them."

George Bernard Shaw, as quoted
p.149 "Drop the Pink Elephant." Bill McFarlan.

Giving and accepting gratitude

2007-09-21T12:03:00.000+08:00

1. Saying 'thank you and well done' demonstrates your appreciation. It raises your self-confidence and that of the person you're thanking.

2. It builds loyalty, while lack of recognition builds indifference.

3. When someone thanks you, accept his or her gratitude with good grace. Put it in the bank and watch your confidence grow.

McFarlan, Bill. "Drop the Pink Elephant." (2004) Capstone, West Sussex.

Viral Interaction

2007-09-20T20:04:00.000+08:00

"Vitality arises from sheer human contact, especially from loving connections. The people we care about most are an elixir of sorts, an ever-renewing source of energy. The neural exchange between a parent and child, a grandparent and a toddler, between lovers or a satisfied couple, or among good friends, has palpable virtues.

Now that neuroscience can put numbers to that raw buzz of fellow feeling, quantifying its benefits, we must pay attention to the biological impact of social life. The hidden links among our relationships, our brain function, and our very health and well-being are stunning in their implications.

We must reconsider the pat assumption that we are immune to toxic social encounters. Save for the passing stormy mood, we often suppose, our interactions matter little to us at any biological level. But this turns out to be a comforting illusion. Just as we catch a virus from someone else, we may also "catch" an emotional funk that makes us more vulnerable to that same virus or otherwise undermines our well-being.

From this perspective, strong, distressing states like disgust, contempt, and explosive anger are the emotional equivalent of second-hand smoke that quietly damages the lungs of others who breathe it in. The interpersonal equivalent of health-boosting would be adding positive emotions to our surroundings.

In this sense, social responsibility begins here and now, when we act in ways that help optimal states in others, from those we encounter casually to those we love and care about most dearly. In accord with Whitman, one scientist who studies the survival value of sociability says the practical lesson for us all comes down to "Nourish your social connections."

Goleman, Daniel. "Social Intelligence" (2006). Arrow, New York. pp.318, 319.

Prejudice & Stereotypes

2007-09-20T14:53:00.000+08:00

"We confront the challenges of living in a global civilization with a brain that primally attaches us to our home tribe. As a psychiatrist who grew up amid the ethnic turmoil of Cyprus put it, groups that are so much alike move from Us to Them via the "narcissism of minor differences," seizing on small features that set the groups apart while ignoring their vast human similarities. Once the others are set at a psychological distance, they can become a target for hostility.

This process is a corruption of a normal congnitive function: categorization. The human mind depends on categories to give order and meaning to the world around us. By assuming that the next entity we encounter in a given category has the same main features as the last, we navigate our way through an ever-changing environment.

But once negative bias begins, our lenses become clouded. We tend to seize on whatever seems to confirm the bias and ignore what does not. Prejudice, in this sense, is a hypothesis desperately trying to prove itself to us. And so when we encounter someone to whom the prejudice might apply, the bias skews our perception, making it impossible to test whether the stereotype actually fits. Openly hostile stereotypes about a group - to the extent they rest on untested assumptions - are mental categories gone awry."

Goleman, Daniel. "Social Intelligence" (2006). Arrow, New York. pp.299,300.

McKinsey - Management Practices that Work

2007-09-19T06:08:00.000+08:00

What makes companies perform well? To find this holy grail of management studies, a McKinsey team analyzed upward of 100,000 questionnaires to uncover the practices of 400 business units in 230 companies around the world. The team eventually arrived at one winning combination: clear roles for employees (accountability), a compelling vision of change (direction), and an environment that encourages openness, trust, and challenge (culture). Nothing else came close in improving organizational performance.

View on the Web: http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/newsletters/chartfocus/2007_09.htm
The McKinsey Quarterly Chart Focus Newsletter
September 2007 | Member Edition

Social Intelligence - Daniel Goleman

2007-09-18T16:49:00.000+08:00

"As Cohen told me, "The most striking finding on relationships and physical health is that socially integrated people -- those who are married, have close family and friends, belong to social and relgious groups, and participate widely in these networks -- recover more quickly from disease and live longer. Roughly eighteen studies show a strong connection between social connectivity and mortality."

Devoting more time and energy to being with people in our lives whom we find most nourishing, Cohen says, has health benefits. he also urges patients, to the extent possible, to reduce the number of emotionally toxic interactions in their day, while increasing the nourishing ones."

Social Intelligence (2006), p. 247.

Paulo Coelho's "The Alchemist"

2007-08-30T18:45:00.000+08:00

"Because it's not love to be static like the desert, nor is it love to roam the world like the wind. And it's not love to see everything from a distance, like you do. Love is the force that transforms and improves the Soul of the World. When I first reached through to it, I thought the Soul of the World was perfect. But later, I could see that it was like other aspects of creation, and had its own passions and wars. It is we who nourish the Soul of the World, and the world we live in will be either better or worse, depending on whether we become better or worse. And that's where the power of love comes in. Because when we love, we always strive to become better than we are."

Descartes' 3rd Maxim: "Conquer Yourself"

2007-08-30T11:47:00.001+08:00

"My third maxim was to endeavor always to conquer myself rather than fortune, and change my desires rather than the order of the world, and in general, accustom myself to the persuasion that, except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power; so that when we have done our best in things external to us, all wherein we fail of success is to be held, as regards us, absolutely impossible: and this single principle seemed to me sufficient to prevent me from desiring for the future anything which I could not obtain, and thus render me contented; for since our will naturally seeks those objects alone which the understanding represents as in some way possible of attainment, it is plain, that if we consider all external goods as equally beyond our power, we shall no more regret the absence of such goods as seem due to our birth, when deprived of them without any fault of ours, than our not possessing the kingdoms of China or Mexico, and thus making, so to speak, a virtue of necessity, we shall no more desire health in disease, or freedom in imprisonment, than we now do bodies incorruptible as diamonds, or the wings of birds to fly with. But I confess there is need of prolonged discipline and frequently repeated meditation to accustom the mind to view all objects in this light; and I believe that in this chiefly consisted the secret of the power of such philosophers as in former times were enabled to rise superior to the influence of fortune, and, amid suffering and poverty, enjoy a happiness which their gods might have envied. For, occupied incessantly with the consideration of the limits prescribed to their power by nature, they became so entirely convinced that nothing was at their disposal except their own thoughts, that this conviction was of itself sufficient to prevent their entertaining any desire of other objects; and over their thoughts they acquired a sway so absolute, that they had some ground on this account for esteeming themselves more rich and more powerful, more free and more happy, than other men who, whatever be the favors heaped on them by nature and fortune, if destitute of this philosophy, can never command the realization of all their desires."

Rene Descartes, "Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason, and Seeking Truth in the Sciences."

Descarte's 2nd Maxim: Be firm & resolute in actions and decisions

2007-08-30T11:44:00.000+08:00

"My second maxim was to be as firm and resolute in my actions as I was able, and not to adhere less steadfastly to the most doubtful opinions, when once adopted, than if they had been highly certain; imitating in this the example of travelers who, when they have lost their way in a forest, ought not to wander from side to side, far less remain in one place, but proceed constantly towards the same side in as straight a line as possible, without changing their direction for slight reasons, although perhaps it might be chance alone which at first determined the selection; for in this way, if they do not exactly reach the point they desire, they will come at least in the end to some place that will probably be preferable to the middle of a forest. In the same way, since in action it frequently happens that no delay is permissible, it is very certain that, when it is not in our power to determine what is true, we ought to act according to what is most probable; and even although we should not remark a greater probability in one opinion than in another, we ought notwithstanding to choose one or the other, and afterwards consider it, in so far as it relates to practice, as no longer dubious, but manifestly true and certain, since the reason by which our choice has been determined is itself possessed of these qualities. This principle was sufficient thenceforward to rid me of all those repentings and pangs of remorse that usually disturb the consciences of such feeble and uncertain minds as, destitute of any clear and determinate principle of choice, allow themselves one day to adopt a course of action as the best, which they abandon the next, as the opposite."
Rene Descartes, "Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason, and Seeking Truth in the Sciences."

The Descent of Agriculture [Jared Diamond]

2007-08-29T17:54:00.000+08:00

“Hunter-gatherers practised the most successful and long-persistent lifestyle in the career of our species. In contrast, we are still struggling with the problems into which we descended with agriculture, and it is unclear whether we can solve them. Suppose that an archaeologist who had visited us from outer space were trying to explain human history to his fellow spacelings. The visitor might illustrate the results of his digs by a twenty-four-hour clock on which one hour of clock-time represents 100,000 years of real past time. If the history of the human race began at midnight, then we would now be almost at the end of our first day. We lived as hunter-gatherers for nearly the whole of that day, from midnight through dawn, noon, and sunset. Finally, at 11:54 pm we adopted agriculture. In retrospect, the decision was inevitable, and there is now no question of turning back. But as our second midnight approaches, will the present plight of African peasants gradually spread to engulf all of us? Or, will we somehow achieve those seductive blessings that we imagine behind agriculture’s glittering facade, and that have so far eluded us except in mixed form?”

Jared Diamond, “The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee.” (1991) Vintage, London. p. 172.

In search of stimuli

2007-08-28T11:23:00.000+08:00

"If the brain were unable to fill in gaps and bet on meagre evidence, activity as a whole would come to a halt in the absence of sensory inputs. In fact we may slow down and act with action in the dark, or in unfamiliar surroundings, but life goes on and we are not powerless to act. Of course we are more likely to make mistakes ... but this is a small price to pay for gaining freedom from immediate stimuli determining behavior, as in simple animals which are helpless in unfamiliar surroundings. A frog may starve to death surrounded by dead flies; for behavior ceases when imagination cannot replace absent stimuli."

Richard L. Gregory, "Eye and Brain" (4th edition)
quoted in Rita Carter, "Mapping the Mind" (1998) Orion, London. pp. 194, 195.

Jose Saramago - Blindness

2007-08-18T13:54:00.000+08:00

"On their way to the home of the girl with dark glasses, they crossed a large square with groups of blind people who were listening to speeches from other blind people, at first sight, neither one nor the other group seemed blind, the speakers turned their heads excitedly towards their listeners, the listeners turned their heads attentively to the speakers. They were proclaiming the end of the world, redemption through penitence, the visions of the seventh day, the advent of the angel, cosmic collisions, the death of the sun, the tribal spirit, the sap of the mandrake, tiger ointment, the virtue of the sign, the discipline of the wind, the perfume of the moon, the revindication of darkness, the power of exorcism, the sign of the heel, the crucifixion of the rose, the purity of the lymph, the blood of the black cat, the sleep of the shadow, the rising of the seas, the logic of anthropopagy, painless castration, divine tattoos, voluntary blindness, convex thoughts, or concave, or horizontal or vertical, or sloping, or concentrated, or dispersed, or fleeting, the weakening of the vocal cords, the death of the word, Here noboy is speaking of organisation, said the doctor's wife, Perhaps organisation is in another square, he replied."
(p. 298)

Alvin Toffler - The Third Wave

2007-08-18T13:46:00.000+08:00

"Today I believe we stand on the edge of a new age of synthesis. In all intellectual fields, from the hard sciences to sociology, psychology, and economics - especially economics - we are likely to see a return to large-scale thinking, to general theory, to the putting of the pieces back together again. For it is beginning to dawn on us that our obsessive emphasis on quantified detail without context, on progressively finer and finer measurement of smaller and smaller problems, leaves us knowing more and more about less and less."
(p. 130)