Digital Libraries and the Idea of Literacy

Brian D. Sadie / Tuesday, 14 May 2013

This abridged version posted at

http://bostinno.streetwise.co/channels/headline-digital-libraries-and-the-idea-of-literacy/

and http://boomwriter.tumblr.com/post/50495788602/digital-libraries-and-the-idea-of-literacy

The Digital Public Library of America launched April 18th with the goal of linking America’s libraries, archives, and museums and making them freely available to everyone. This platform will enable new and transformative uses of our newly-digitized cultural heritage. From an historical standpoint and for preservation and accessibility it’s wonderful, similar to the idea of restoring films and preserving both newly-mastered film and digital copies.

Collecting and scanning all the world’s printed publications is good, not least because it could enable more students, teachers, scholars, and the public to see the change in the meaning of words they think they understand, the shifts in political and legal thought and practice, the development of hard scientific knowledge and the preservation of methods, practices, and tools no longer widely understood. Real democratic availability without restriction is a worthy goal, but it’s only part of the plan.

To help disseminate this store of knowledge and art we need librarians: they are essential guides to the world’s collected literature, books, art, and written knowledge. Truly great librarians have real understanding of multiple languages, cultures, and disciplines and are versed in the methods and notions of knowledge, history, and the ways people catalogue and refer to ideas and information. A great librarian not only can direct a patron almost immediately to precisely where they wish or need to be but can also provide additional, wonderful, and relevant information.

Librarians are sleuths, and not because they’re masters of the arcane: all that I’ve mentioned about libraries and librarians is rudimentarily practical to human society and endeavor. We should digitize the world’s written works but also insure that today’s children and young adults are truly literate. We should teach them the ways of thinking and what things really mean so that, regardless of how they choose to act or think or behave, they’ll at least know the what and maybe even why. The hope is that some of the next generations will know and care enough to continue the preservation and dissemination of knowledge and art and all the rest that is our history.

It is essential to maintain the stores of knowledge and ways of thinking that, in printed form, always, at some point, go out of print and cease to be available. Libraries exist to get and keep editions for reference and preservation. Digitizing the world’s works increases the need for a librarian’s understanding of cataloging, so we should make sure people know how to use libraries. Then the fullness and beauty of the digital project and the works it preserves can be better appreciated.

*

Technology and Teachers: The Human Touch and Understanding

by Brian D. Sadie / Tuesday, 23 April 2013

Many educators and school administrators could learn a valuable lesson from former CIA Director Stansfield Turner and the intelligence world. In 1979, Mr. Turner authorized the elimination of more than 800 operational positions but increased technical and signal intelligence. He, and those who demanded the action, regretted it immediately. Mr. Turner and the world’s intelligence agencies learned then and still admit that enough people, and a variety of them, are necessary for things to work well, even to benefit from increased or improved technology. It’s no surprise that relying too heavily on tech-heavy systems and automation fails: It has been found that people interacting with others and using the tools at hand work best, after all, as much for espionage, analysis, and assessment as for helping and inspiring children and teenagers on their way to intellectual and personal independence. Despite this awareness, both communities still share ardent support for more technology and dependence on it at the expense of key personnel. In the education arena, enough policy-makers and administrators continue to favor extreme Ed Tech evangelism and calls for less teacher-directed formal instruction that educational policy and practice are sorely compromised: with reference to those inchoate notions they even sometimes justify repeated and drastic cuts in public school funding, such as the three-year, forty-five percent suffered in Philadelphia.

The way I see Wendy Kopp’s piece in CNN (Computers can’t replace real teachers, Monday, April 8, 2013 (http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/08/opinion/kopp-kids-real-teachers/index.html?hpt=op_bn7), she feels the human touch is essential for real education. She responded to Sugata Mitra’s notions that self-directed learning, without teachers but lots of computers, works best with children. Ms. Kopp included a Steve Jobs’ remark that computers can’t solve society’s problems: only people can by attacking the source of the problems. Despite Mr. Jobs’ awareness and statement, many still promote the idea that technical development and gadgetry are more important and capable of ending social inequality, injustice, and strife than sympathetic, better-educated people. Ms. Kopp emphasizes something that I also believe and have long insisted: that technological development is cool and helpful but a great teacher makes for great teaching, for engaging students, for awakening in others a sense of wonder and empowerment at pivotal times so that they may better prepare for life with or without new tools or toys.

The goal of education is to attain understanding and, ideally, hone one’s ability to cope and succeed in life. Basic instruction provides what might be called a technically proficient or merely satisfactory level of learning. As the Oxford dictionary indicates, one learns with awareness and memorization. Learning means that knowledge or skill increases through study, experience, or from being taught.

For example, how important, or influential, as some might prefer, in shaping our world was Henry VIII’s formal separation from the Catholic Church? Learning about his decision is one thing: generally speaking, remembering the blip and relevant dates is often enough to pass and off you go, but understanding that history, or at least appreciating it, requires emotional consideration and intellectual thought, a reflection indicative of fuller cognitive activity that is a significant part of what makes us human. Critical reading and thought are necessary, and articulate discussion certainly helps. Innate intellectual ability notwithstanding, understanding something, the comprehension of thought and things, abstract or not, even the ability to recognize that something remains to be asked and formulate the next question, comes with learning and the inspiration found in quality education.

An holistic approach to learning, one requiring broad and deep knowledge of intellectual and technical fields and methods – for example, fine arts and social sciences as well as mathematics and natural sciences – benefits everyone. Knowing to focus intently on one single thing, knowing why, how, and when to do so, and how to use the question, equation, and answer for an even greater understanding is better than not recognizing or caring that there is more to the question, the problem, or the answer. An inability or unwillingness to demonstrate care, concern, or understanding of underlying issues, overarching principles, and the effects of simplistic, rote decisions and actions by anyone whose role affects others is destructive and unethical. Technical proficiency alone is not enough for the advancement of knowledge or social betterment. When technological innovation occurs as rapidly as it now typically does, greater care and understanding are necessary for appropriate cultural and political integration. Different people, their limitations, strengths, and inclinations, and a variety of approaches to inquiry and work mean that respect and collaboration are called for and, simply put, improve our world. Understanding, being also subject to personal judgment and sympathy, is what ultimately shows our humanity most fully, and it is better served by inspirational, well-rounded people teaching with whatever resources they have to illuminate our shared histories and possible futures.

†

Dignity and Negotiation: Palestine and Peace

by Brian D. Sadie / 21 March 2013

Shortly after the formal end of Gulf War hostilities in 1991, during the Iraqi uprising against Saddam Hussein, I wrote a feature about the US and Middle East. Inspired by discussions with Wahbé Tamari, a naturalized American citizen of Palestinian heritage from Jordan who had lived most of his life in Beirut and Washington, DC, the article examined the ethics and human cost of decision-making and regional policies.

Nearly twenty-two years later the article is still relevant. Why? Not only because the political and negotiation procedures have remained constant since the early twentieth century but also because trauma, deprivation, and other wounds and wrongs leave psychological and socio-economic devastation that requires several generations to overcome. The effects of bad policy and violence are generational: Americans need only think of the Civil War, Civil Rights movement, or Vietnam to comprehend this.

War can reinforce one’s belief in human brotherhood because everyone is subject to suffering, but it can also spark the urge for justice or revenge or a desire for national identity and statehood. The Levantine conflict began about a century ago when European immigrants to Palestine began fighting for a Jewish state on Palestinian soil. Judaism is a religion and Jewish identity a personal choice, but declaring a nation state in another country is something else. When statehood is the goal, international stress and collateral damage typically occurs, and collateral damage is always personal: Where justice fails revenge often applies. More people today seem aware of this and are tired of unethical politics and business that ruins, harms, or kills, so, with political help, positive change might soon occur.

Mr. Obama knows this and reaffirmed on March twenty-first that a Palestinian state is long overdue and necessary for at least regional peace: statehood precedes greater stability that the international community relies upon for more secure borders and beneficial functioning of daily life.

Despite heightened global awareness of the Middle East, many of the underlying issues causing deprivation and violence, especially involving the Levant, remain effectively untended even by international organizations, not least because of the unwillingness of leaders to acknowledge or address the prejudice or purely economic rationale for policies implemented with little understanding of their effects or intended to humiliate and break particular people and their identities. These include illicit settlement building, mismanagement of water, the dismantling of infrastructure, and the separation of individual people and isolation of communities by militarized walls.

To succeed at providing equal access to satisfactory living conditions and protecting generally accepted human rights, those responsible for settlement negotiations and relief actions must heed the human factor. That requires a willingness to curtail the implicit prejudice, often expressed in nuanced language and assumptions, and institutionalized greed and violence that undermine even the most sincere peacemaking and re-building efforts. Hopefully, and despite attempts by those whose malevolence seems unbearable and others who profit from unrest and war, Mr. Obama’s aims, combined with a popular weariness of conflict and desire for normal life, will lead to an honorable peace.

That’s the catch. Those subjugated or otherwise oppressed face the dilemma that forcing an aggressor to negotiate requires dramatic, even violent, action. Regardless of the course taken, those wishing to avoid war or seeking peaceful resolution find that, once diplomatically engaged, much of the world’s political structure and legal process supports a prevalent opinion that to attain binding resolution moral compromise is necessary. Mediators often enforce the notion that there are always two legitimate, ethically right sides in a conflict, thus assuring that negotiations break down or result in untenable conditions. This compromise, of defining fair and unbiased so as to force a victim to accede to an aggressor’s demands, rewards morally corrupt powers. Economics and bureaucracy have long assured this norm, with daily operations maintained by prejudiced, petty officers and the enforcement of ill-formed or unjust law.

Mr. Tamari once said that despite everything he’d been subjected to he still maintained that diplomacy founded on moral rectitude and compassion would eventually lead to a new Palestinian national state. He added, “My heritage is Palestinian, my religion Christian, my nationality American, and I do not support violence. What does that make me? Superman? Now I believe that all the Europeans, Arabs, Africans, and Americans who hold Israeli passports, serve in the Israeli military, or practice Judaism faithfully, can understand those like me when we speak of human dignity. It is to those people that I appeal, and through whom peace will come.”

I hope that Mr. Obama inspires those and others, too, and that he is strong enough to handle more than hecklers at a press conference or speech. How great if the preeminent leader of the world’s identifiable powers facilitated a political resolution initiating a period of sustained normalcy and growth? The entire world would benefit: a nation is accountable in ways that groups living under occupation or in refugee camps aren’t and can’t be. Life in a formally recognized nation helps individuals build, or rebuild, a stable society because family, community, and nation-building are interwoven.

Ultimately, most people want peace. Remove the causes and arguments for terrorist or militia groups by granting statehood and establishing regular social life for these generations and the outliers – those bent on instigating terror – will be more easily seen and more readily stopped. If the adults in charge behave as they ought, then today’s children and teenagers will be able to live without, or at least with less, exceptional cause for prejudice, fear, and rage. Give the young generations the infrastructure every major state assumes or claims is granted and we’ll all have as fine a chance for peaceful living as ever. To do the right thing is the way of a better world, and this world should finally do just that.

†††

See The Economist, 21 March 2013, comment on Barack Obama in Israel: A Corker of a Speech http://www.economist.com/blogs/pomegranate/2013/03/barack-obama-israel http://www.economist.com/comment/1957966#comment-1957966

What Literacy?

What Literacy?

Teaching, or Not, in a Business-Driven Digital Era

by Brian D. Sadie

Cambridge Public Schools underwent yet another misguided shuffle under Superintendent Jeff Young. One school survived fairly well. The others tend to suffer confused administration and poor resource allocation. Foreign language instruction is, without spoken practice, books or audio-visual materials, effectively non-existent. When permitted outside at all, children get ten minutes’ recess. Lunch is equally rushed. But maybe the worst of Mr. Young’s innovations is his enforced method of teaching.

I saw a seventh-grader’s homework after grading at a Cambridge school in need of competent direction. Twelve of thirteen answers were misspelled, grammatically incorrect, or unclear. None of the errors had been noted, let alone corrected, by the teacher, who had given an A-plus. I marked the paper with notes and corrections and asked the child to return it for checking. The teacher refused.

I looked at more material from that school. Regardless of subject, homework was often poorly-written and unclear: instructions frequently contained egregious errors – more than bad grammar, these included incorrect word use. Having met the administration and teachers at that school, I knew many enunciated poorly but also didn’t speak English correctly or well. The few that did only taught English, part-time, to children with special needs.

I asked the principal about insuring that teachers note and correct all mistakes but he insisted it was not their job to do so. He claimed that teachers are responsible only for noting incorrect answers in their field. For example, he said, math teachers don’t need to write well. When I suggested that one is expected to be competent at writing, providing instruction, and identifying and correcting mistakes, he said again that it wasn’t the teacher’s responsibility but the parents’. He added that grades at his school are based on student effort, anyway.

Literacy is defined as the ability to read and write, and that refers to competence or knowledge, meaning that understanding what is read and knowing how to write correctly and well are necessary to be literate. Unfortunately, many educational administrators, teachers, business folks, and politicians today promote notions heedless of critical thinking, understanding, and clear communication. Theirs is a literacy graded only by pasting web snippets into a PowerPoint report or slapping together an amateur video. Language, both spoken and written, is frequently hackneyed at best, garbled as the lack of thought or comprehension giving rise to it.

Since teachers have a major role in children’s deciding what’s acceptable or right, I’d like to see more of them speak correctly. Vernacular and colloquial use are fine but standard language should be taught so that students know the difference, can articulate complex thoughts and interact better in different situations. Learning can be exhilarating and, after all, knowledge and understanding do facilitate inspiration for creativity throughout life.

Calling children scholars, as they are at that school, does not make them specialists, and the odds of their becoming so are even lower when the school is unable or unwilling to provide instruction and correction. Administrators and teachers who do not correct fail to teach. Their language and, sometimes, inchoate thinking and disinterest are also poor models. Engagement in real schools where people gather for well-directed interaction and education succeeds best not only because of routine but also because inspiration and ah-ha! moments frequently occur during such collegial times without schedule. Effort, behavior, and other social aspects can be noted by teachers, too, but academic learning should not be stunted for fear of hurting a child’s feelings. Poor grades do not mean a person is bad nor do they guarantee that a student won’t eventually master the once difficult. Teachers can be kind and understanding when discussing these things and help as need arises. Meanwhile, children grow and mature, learning to adjust and acclimate.

A sense of place relative to one’s peers, when not perverted, is important and can be helpful throughout life. Grades discretely indicate one’s rank: lowering academic standards to claim administrative and political success cheats everyone and is a particular disservice to those capable of and wishing to excel. Responsible school directors and administrators ought to respect these truths. They should procure high-quality books and other materials for their students while demanding and insuring that teachers correct their students’ mistakes. It’s called instructing, and, since administrators are paid to facilitate school function and teachers are paid to teach, they should do just that.

†††

Sunday, 3 February 2013

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Obama, Romney, and Personal Character

It’s election day. Do you know your candidate? This is to help uncertain voters…

The American economy: Comeback kid (The Economist, July 14th 2012) opened with a funny but useful suggestion of how the candidates might see each other: Romney considers Obama a lefty business-killer, Obama sees Romney as landed gentry getting wealthier by enriching those responsible for the world’s financial destruction. While Mr. Obama has proven better spoken than most and less obviously derisive of political opponents, he just might feel that Mr. Romney is rapacious. Meanwhile, Mr. Romney probably thinks that the President is a left-wing business-killer. But for anyone, even Romney, to believe that those controlling major corporations know more than Mr. Obama about how to improve the lot of humanity through economic practice because they like the system and understand how the so-called private sector works is to ignore history.

Who should blame anyone, least of all a President whose job as head of government is to assure the well-being and fair treatment of every citizen, for disliking those responsible for enforcing today’s web of private-sector corporate culture, policy, and law that has resulted in another Gilded Age with massive under- and unemployment?

The private sector that The Economist mentions was designed to permit, legitimize, and protect those profiting most from the system’s innate injustices and inequalities: the recent global depression and unrest resulted from astonishing coercion at every level of society and notable corporate greed. Even Ayn Rand admitted that moral and ethical decency were essential base elements of any sustainable, respectable business system and social construct, and no such decency has been sufficiently evident in big business for anyone to blame Mr. Obama should he feel as suggested. Please also note that Mr. Obama is hardly a left-wing regulator.

As for Mr. Romney, it’s intriguing that the article’s mockery may be right about him: at a private function held by a fellow Bain associate in Florida, Mr. Romney dismissed forty-seven percent of the nation’s people in clearer language and surer tones than in any of his campaign rhetoric intended for a public audience. He has also proven himself a rapacious private-equity man bent on further enriching the very people who caused the mess we’re stuck in. Mr. Romney may even be delusional to boot, a true believer favoring federally-funded shenanigans of Olympian proportions and the firing of many people for no reason other than to make a hefty profit. He has defined making lots of money off other people’s backs and lives as a God-blessed success. Simply put, he thinks he’s right because he’s rich and running for president.

Remember, dear reader, that most of us prefer to be left alone and stay out of others’ affairs. But those pursuing international financial and political prominence are fundamentally different: aggressive businessmen striving for the highest political authority and power over the bodies of others often look to a fiscal bottom line without accepting accountability and considering or caring for the greater human factor.

Although Mr. Obama has not kept his word on several important promises from his first campaign, he remains the only candidate worth electing. The stakes are huge, not least because of coming Supreme Court appointments. We can’t afford another Roberts or Thomas, and we certainly don’t need the simplistic socio-economic beliefs and dehumanizing policies of yore that, since slavery was declared illegal, have relied on underemployment and indentured servitude to keep a financial elite and fuel a consumer economy based largely on menial services and junk.

Not all rich people are ruthless, mean, or selfish, nor is every non-wealthy person trustworthy. Good and bad are everywhere and context can affect assessment. Given the nature of finance and business, being wealthy might have more to do with circumstance, timing, and other factors of luck than with raw intelligence, talent, integrity, or even determination. Fundamentally there is nothing wrong with earning lots of money. But how one gets it, what one does with it, and how one treats others matters. Those controlling the purse are responsible for paying a realistic wage that enables employees to live, not just exist. Those breaking companies apart are responsible for the effects of their decisions, too. So the candidates’ personal beliefs and social notions really are important.

Mr. Romney grew rich by focusing on the interests of a limited number of investors pursuing short-term profits that could be quickly moved elsewhere for similar purposes and equally quick returns regardless of lingering negative effects on the communities involved. His thinking about law and its purpose reflects those ruthless business practices.

Mr. Obama entered office burdened with his predecessor’s historically astonishing mess and has had too little time to effect significant improvement. He once said he wanted to change the culture of how things were done in Washington. Changing that and fixing global disasters won’t happen quickly, especially when half a term in office is spent on campaign politics. Mr. Obama understands economics and business operations just fine, he just doesn’t agree with state-sanctioned rape of the public.

Vote Obama, but push him to follow through as he promised and we intended.

Brian D. Sadie

See http://www.economist.com/node/21558576

Private Thoughts, Public Sphere: Why a Candidate’s Beliefs Matter

Yet again campaign blather inspires a trip to the keyboard for notes about personal things and power and why a candidate’s beliefs matter. The issue of the right to marry again figures.

Most everyone accepts a compromise regarding personal autonomy, particularly in today’s world. But seeking control or limitation of the rights and actions of others in their private lives beyond the essential seems authoritarian. Using law and state resources, such as police, to justify and enforce the effort can be practically totalitarian, as well. Given that, should a Presidential candidate believe, even religiously, that it is right to regulate private life? Does that opinion about governance and power indicate other things about the candidate that one should consider before marking a ballot?

As for the voting public: Why do so many people bother with the private lives of others not seeking power? Why should strangers care about who others marry or interfere in their efforts to do so? If life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are truly accepted as the basis of this nation’s declaration for being, then individuals have the right to do as they please so long as they do not attempt to harm or interfere with the rights and private lives of others.

For many individuals, marriage is a means to publicly proclaim devotion and love for their chosen partner. They may also have a personal and even religious conviction to enhance the social ritual, but ultimately marriage, according to law and the state, is a legal matter, limited to questions of benefits, inheritance, and administration of estates, including political titles and distribution of property according to birthright and will. So what’s the problem with the US allowing the most basic right of individuals to marry? Sexual preference? Surely you jest…

Marriage is a civil right, a human right, a personal affair. State regulation or recognition of it shouldn’t compromise the personal moral realm. Legal recognition of marriage should not be prohibited because of individual religious faith or belief, either, because belief and practice rightly fall under personal, too. So, even though social ethics have inspired some good law, no political measure or law should now prevent marriage.

This nation ought to acknowledge what a nation is and how one operates. Every state is a part of the country and, as such, is obligated to behave according to human rights laws and notions, particularly about privacy. This includes civil rights, too, where such individual choices as marriage and abortion are concerned. The Federal Government trumps all lesser government, including corporate – at least, it is supposed to and it would be nice it if actually did. Mr. Obama has demonstrated an intellectual and moral integrity on the issue of marriage but now needs political spine to insure such a social ethic as one’s right to marry and hand down property as desired is encased in national legal doctrine and assured by consistent practice that is true to the purpose and intent of the law throughout the country.

Efforts to control such personal matters by law and governance are nothing if not authoritarian. I’d expect Americans to oppose such policing and coercion. The right of like-minded people to congregate in enclaves and live according to their wishes – as long as their actions do not interfere with the rights and safety of others – will enable opponents of equal access to state-sanctioned and recognised marriage to avoid fuller, more frequent social contact with the rest of us, so those opposing this civil right ought to acknowledge and respect the rights of others to practice according to their beliefs.

Our understanding of freedom in American society is based on these notions, so voters should investigate and think long, hard, and well about the candidates’ personal histories, remarks, and self-proclaimed beliefs about privacy, religious and social practice, and the meeting of the public and private spheres of life.

That’s all for now. Good reading and good day.

Brian  D. Sadie

One Nation or Many? A Voting Law for Every State

I’ve just been listening to some forth-and-back about voting regulations and laws and people being kept from voting, even in their home towns. It seems that considerable energy, ink, and money has been devoted to the issue. The problem is a good illustration of the American sense, or lack of it, of national law. Doesn’t every citizen have the right to vote in national elections and every citizen have the right to vote in elections for their state of residence? When did the worst of law become the norm? When did bad policy, bad lawyering, corrupt judgment, and greasy money so easily affect intelligence and prevent this simple right?

Preventing people from voting is for thugs and scum. One person, one vote, that’s it, and identification rules should not be used to prevent people from voting. Clear Federal regulation should eliminate all manipulation of the issue so that all citizens, regardless of their socio-economic standing, are permitted to cast their votes. In other words, any attempt to corrupt the process, even at the corporate level, should be rewarded with a public trial and some damned hard time to everybody involved. The manufacturers of the voting machines and administrators of the systems used to tally, distribute, and store the results should be known and watched.

It’s not just any election season, it’s the big one. Presidential elections are not just about one thing, not only about ending or initiating a war or any other single thing. They are often as much about the person as anything else: what the candidates represent, what they choose to stand for, and who and what is behind them. And given all that Mr. Romney represents, professes belief in, and the major powers that gather behind him, and not just that Mr. Romney and his friends would likely throw us into a war with Iran if they occupied the Oval Office, it’s that Mr. Romney is the wrong choice.

Vote for President Obama. It’s the intelligent and right choice.

Good reading and good day!

Brian D. Sadie