where are we headed?

The way in which appreciation of foundational knowledge is rapidly declining really has me worried. As a result of technology, we no longer feel the need to know how to SPELL (there's spellcheck since no one hand writes anything anymore) or ADD (there's calculators readily available everywhere, even on cell phones), or know ANYTHING really, since the great world wide web can give as all the information we could ever need. Before a test, a student actually said to me, "I don't understand why we have to know any of this by heart; I can always go look it up." In some school districts, they no longer teach geography of the United States(!!); they no longer teach basic rules of grammar (!!) (doubtful to spawn a generation of William Faulkners when the only complete set of vocabulary these children possess is the truncated form of the English language created from text and instant messaging).

What happened to valuing knowledge? To liking to know things just for the sake of knowing? To not wanting to look stupid when you misuse "your" and "you're," "too" and "to?" To realizing that having knowledge gives you a foundation on which to think for yourself? Heading in this direction means we're soon going to entrust computers with telling us what to believe. We'll be surrounded by individuals incapable of decision making or real conversation. We'll be, well at least I'll be, dispirited, dismayed, and dejected, with plenty of time to sit and shake my head as there will be a lack of anyone worth talking to, or anything worth reading.

textbook excitement

Certainly can't recall ever being as exciting about a textbook as I was when I read this:

The old adage "You get out of it only what you put into it" aptly describes a cognitive perspective. Some students approach learning in passive and "shallow" ways, either failing to engage fully or relying heavily on rote memorization. Both cognitive research and our experience as educators tell us that the resultant learning is likely to be both superficial and transitory. In contrast, other students' attempts at learning clearly are aimed at deeper understanding; they relate new information to what they already know, organize it, and regularly check their comprehension.

-Cognitive Psychology and Instruction, by Roger H. Bruning (Author), Gregg J. Schraw (Author), Monica M. Norby (Author), Royce R. Ronning (Author)

out of my mind...

....excited...a bluegrass band is performing on my campus tomorrow!

"Back-to-School with the Squash Blossom Boys

The Squash Blossom Boys, an eclectic bluegrass quintet hailing from Corrales and featuring UNM students, will perform the “back-to-school” UNM Greg Johnston Summer Concert Friday, Aug. 22, from noon – 1 p.m. on the University Honors Plaza.

Photo: The Squash Blossom Boys - 'Promoting Sustainability with a Twang'

The band combines elements of jazz, rock, reggae and traditional roots bluegrass to create a unique sound that explores the roots and boundaries of the musical genre.

Additionally, the band utilizes a carbon neutral solar trailer that uses energy from the sun through photovoltaic cells to power UNM events. Designed by Nate Campbell, a Sustainability Studies student at UNM, the inspirational trailer has the ability to reach a wide variety of audiences while appearing both inviting and professional. It is used as a means of education and networking in sustainability."

http://www.myspace.com/sbb

Picture Tour from UNM Website

But really, please come visit for yourself!

yup.

"A few studies have examined full-time/part-time status and completion rates, but when it comes to actual student learning—basically nothing. This is not a standard of evidence that university professors would tolerate in their own research.

In other words, when it comes to the central enterprise of higher education—teaching students—we don't know if the reigning professional qualification system works, or how many professors we actually need. And this is true for all kinds of other basic elements of college teaching and learning—curricula, training, pedagogy, and much more...

The underlying cause of this remarkable information deficit is pretty clear: Colleges and universities don't really need to know—or want to know—the answers to these questions. They don’t need to know because student learning results are peripheral to the core incentive system in which they operate. University success is measured in terms of dollars raised, high-achieving students recruited, and prestigious scholarship produced—period. Even less selective institutions are highly influenced by these values. They may not have the research mission of the academic giants, but they share organizational models, practices, and ways of thinking, all of which cut against rigorous self-evaluation of teaching and learning."

from Kevin Carey's Where's the Data?

...directionless part two...

"The American Dream is for immigrants. The rest of us are better acquainted with entitlement or boredom than we are with our own survival mechanisms. And when confronted with a fight-or-flight scenario, the latter usually takes precedence. Escape is our action of choice: escape through pharmaceuticals, escape through technology, and plain old running away in search of something else, anything else...

I continually revisit the words of some sociologist who I read in college. I think that is was Weber or Durkheim...He believed that the modern mind is determined to expand its repertoire or experiences, and is bent on avoiding any specialization that threatens to interrupt the search for alternatives and novelty. Many people would call that approach to life a crisis, immaturity, or being out of touch with reality. It could also be called the New American Dream. [Screw] the simple pursuit of financial stability. Here's to finding fulfillment in novelty, excitement, adventure, and autonomy."

-Do Travel Writers Go To Hell?, Thomas B Kohnstamm

directionless postcollegiate life

"...With such a character-defining foothold in the career world, I no longer have to make excuses for the life I lead. No longer do I have to explain my directionless postcollegiate life to incredulous eyes and repetitive questions, like: "What are you doing next year?" "Don't you want to do something with your life?" and my favorite, "When are you going to get a real job?" I am no longer just Thomas, the supposed slacker, backpacker bum, or permanent student. I am Thomas, the employee of ________, ________, ________ & _________ LLP, and I am going places.

I make more money than I reasonably should, putting papers into chronological order (chroning, in office-speak). My skill set also includes entering numbers into Excel spreadsheets and working the copier and fax machine. Between those projects, I search for old high school friends' names on Google; play online Jeopardy against my office trivia nemesis, Jerry; and generally while away the hours of my life...

Yes, I know, I really have it pretty good. There are people starving in Africa. And there are plenty of people here in New York who would love the chance to be in a cubicle all day and not have to operate deep-fat fryers, drive garbage trucks... or whatever it is they do. The problem is that I am an ungrateful by-product of a prosperous society -- the offal of opportunity. I am just another liberal arts graduate who bought the idea that life and career would be a fulfilling intellectual journey. Unfortunately, I am performing a glorified version of punching the time clock, and the financial rewards don't come anywhere near filling the emotional void of such diminished expectations."

-Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?, Thomas B Kohnstamm

how to guess?

Is it just me, or would it actually be less work just to LEARN the information on which you are being tested than to memorize these crazy rules for guessing? Probably just me, especially if you are good with the logic behind all of these and its makes sense quickly to you, so that you can memorize it easily...

still crazy...
http://drzeuss.blogspot.com/2008/05/how-to-guess-on-standardized-tests.html

call us crazy idealists but...

what? education's purpose is to LEARN? really?

A Nation at Risk

the history and prediction of falling short

PISA link

wow, very exciting...
fascinating and potentially something I'd like to get into: Programme for International Student Assessment researches, studies, and measures quality, equity, engagement, assessment in education:

International Student Assessment

and guess what? the assessment questions are not all multiple choice


"PISA assesses how far students near the end of compulsory education have acquired some of the knowledge and skills that are essential for full participation in society. In all cycles, the domains of reading, mathematical and scientific literacy are covered not merely in terms of mastery of the school curriculum, but in terms of important knowledge and skills needed in adult life."

oh wow...this too!!!
:"Education Sector is an independent think tank that challenges conventional thinking in education policy. We are a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization committed to achieving real, measurable impact in education, both by improving existing reform initiatives and by developing new, innovative solutions to our nation’s most pressing education problems. The ultimate beneficiaries of our work are students. Our mission is to promote changes in policy and practice that lead to improved student opportunities and outcomes."

who's driving this train?

The other day, at work in the Admissions office of a large public university, a clerical staff worker remarked, "I've never seen so many low SATs come in before this year...these poor kids, what's going on...have they made the test harder?" At the time I joked that it was just our school, which could be simultaneously true, but the fact simply stands that America is getting dumber.

In discussion with a friend about the untextbooked, untaught truths in American history, covered by this book, I realized that the more time that goes by, the more history accumulates, and so many things will have to be glossed over, an unfortunate and inevitable truth of time perhaps, but still scary.

Yet things keep chugging along the status quo railroad with not enough of us realizing how outdated this form of transportation really is, and how we're on our way to derailing ourselves and our progress as individuals and as an advanced, prosperous country.

"But the one idea with the potential to really shake things up and deliver the best results over the long term is not so much practical as it is philosophical: re-establishing excellence as the primary goal of our educational institutions. This is not just a mission statement or a simplistic, meaningless platitude. It basically requires a generational shift in attitudes and policies in education and child development that have come to predominate in American society. These are permissiveness, a persistent diluting of standards and content, and the embrace of egalitarian education, rather than excellence, as the foundation and informing philosophy of schooling. Making the pursuit of excellence the norm will require grass-roots buy-in from teachers, government, and parents.
If the country is to reach this consensus about the philosophical aims of education, we first need to debunk the myth that striving for excellence means leaving kids behind or limiting access..."
-Th!nk, Michael R LeGault

more about testing:

"What kind of objective evidence should one look for to establish the superiority of any curriculum? One thinks almost immediately of tests. But one must be wary of the significance of mathematics tests. Presumably the mathematics courses have taught students to think through problems, to discover results for themselves, and to acquire insight into the concepts and proofs they have learned. Actually tests do not and to a large extent cannot measure such values. The usual tests require that a student answer a fair number of questions in a limited amount of time. If a question really called for thinking through a new type of problem or discovering a new result it would require so much time that average students would not be able to do well in the time allowed. Even if the student made intelligent and significant attempts to answer such questions his failure to reach a positive result would probably mean that he would receive little or no credit.

Hence, mathematics tests usually and almost perforce call for handing back information that has been learned and is merely being reproduced. The ability to memorize is the major faculty that is actually tested. While the acquisition of information is one objective of mathematics education, it is not supposed to be the sole or most important goal. Though most teachers would deny that they are testing memorization, their behavior belies their words. In Chapter 2 we noted that teachers do not permit their students to use their books during tests. But if the tests call for thinking on the part of the student, what vitiation of the tests would result from the use of books?" -this website

cornerstone

For years I've had an internal debate and curiosity as to whether or not schools are "getting it right" when preparing the minds of the future. My concerns lie especially in the test-centered orientation of education in America, and how it could be stifling the student's long-term retention of knowledge.
In my undergraduate Consumer Behavior class, I learned the difference between recognition and recall in product branding. Advertising is obviously more effective when the consumer can recall the brand name, logo, or slogan without any prompting, as opposed to simply recognizing it when reminded in some way. I soon made the connection that this idea also applies to learning.
Around this same time, the business majors at my school were given a national standardized test of what we were supposed to have learned from our business curriculum. While taking this multiple-choice test, I realized there was a lot of material that I remembered learning about, but I could not come up with the answer. Many of the questions I was able to answer only because the answer was displayed in the options below the question. Had the question been open ended, I would not have been able to recall the correct information; I was only able to recognize it. This had to have been one of the most memorably disturbing and eye opening events in my life. I was one of the top students in the program and if I didn't have the knowledge, who did? My test scores ended up being well above average; what did that say about the rest of the people going on to careers in business?
Are we really retaining any knowledge when our testing methods only require recognition? I realized I wanted to study the effects of this on the formation of the brain and effectiveness of learning. For me, this was an exciting brainstorm and new idea that no one in my life had ever discussed with me. At the time, being that I had made this connection on my own, I thought I was onto something new and could make advances in educational research in the future. A few years later, I was enlightened to the fact that all of this has already been researched and studied. Here are quotes from an article I just read on FairTest.org that confirms my long time suspicions and theories. I still want to take it further and get into the actual effects that this type of test-centered learning has on formation of the brain, learning skills, cognition, etc, but for now, these ideas are a supportive start :

Some people claim that multiple-choice tests can be useful for measuring whether students can analyze material...this sort of question short-circuits the thinking process it claims to measure...choosing the wanted answer would be a matter of recall for many students. For students who did not recall the textbook response, no information is provided to actually analyze the question and come up with the wanted answer...A question really asking for critical thinking would have students weigh evidence and defend a position...

[A]s students move toward solving non-routine problems, analyzing, interpreting, and making mathematical arguments, multiple-choice questions are not useful...multiple-choice items are an inexpensive and efficient way to check on factual ("declarative") knowledge and routine procedures. However, they are not useful for assessing critical or higher order thinking in a subject, the ability to write, or the ability to apply knowledge or solve problems...
the test result is not useful for improving instruction for the individual.

A standardized multiple-choice test may point to some broad areas that need improvement...However, the tests do not provide information that will help teachers do a better job of teaching [x] because they do not show why the class generally did not do well...

Relying on multiple-choice tests as a primary method of assessment is educationally dangerous for many reasons: What is easily measurable may not be as important as what is not measurable or is more difficult to measure. A major danger with high stakes multiple-choice and short-answer tests -- tests that have a major impact on curriculum and instruction -- is that only things that are easily measured are taught.
When narrow tests define important learning, instruction often gets reduced to "drill and kill" - - lots of practice on questions that look just like the test. In this case, students often get no chance to read real books, to ask their own questions, to have discussions, to challenge texts, to conduct experiments, to write extended papers, to explore new ideas -- that is, to think about and really learn a subject.

The decision to use multiple-choice tests or include multiple-choice items in a test should be based on what the purpose of the test is and the uses that will be made of its results...Students should learn to think and apply knowledge. Facts and procedures are necessary for thinking, but schools should not be driven by multiple-choice testing into minimizing or eliminating thinking and problem-solving. Therefore, classroom assessments and standardized tests should not rely more than a small amount on multiple-choice or short-answer items.

Finding that this had already been extensively studied was initially disappointing to my hopes to make strides in research, but it now excites me to know there is still so much to learn.

Another important thing I learned from this experience: I really feel that it had such an impact on me because it was something I put together on my own, and this amazing feeling led me to realize how powerful it is when the student figures something out by him or herself. This has structured my philosophies on life as well as education going forward. As the author Osho says, "Your own truth, your own finding, is going to liberate you; nothing else can do that for you."

excuses, excuses...

That being said, I still know this:

"according to research done by the tests' manufacturers, class rank and/or high school grades are still both better predictors of college performance than the SAT I."

better yet?

"The U.S is the only economically advanced nation to rely heavily on multiple-choice tests. Other nations use performance based assessment where students are evaluated on the basis of real work such as essays, projects, and activities. Ironically, because these nations do not focus on teaching to multiple-choice tests, they even score higher than U.S. students on those kinds of tests."-from FairTest.org

My whole point is just that we seem to be more and more a society that makes excuses for our shortcomings instead of taking actions to improve ourselves, and taking responsibility to learn from our weaknesses. This is well stated by Michael R LeGault in Th!nk,

"Yet, on a much broader scale, the huge, unprecedented boom in various learning disabilities is in keeping with America's transformation from a self-reliant culture to a culture of dependency...a shift in philosophical values, away from the common acceptance of that view that one's shortcomings are a result of flawed character or lack of initiative and toward the idea of a self in which one's flaws are a product of hardwired maladies and disorders. Thus, peoples excesses--food, gambling, shopping--are not problem behavior caused by lack of self-control, but addictions. One common explanation for poor scores on exams is a type of panic syndrome..."

And its sad enough that this exists in soon to be epidemic proportions, but the implications of this attitude and its exponential growth are what is scary:

"The explosion of the therapy culture, the learning disability industry, and the self-esteem movement can only harm the prospects for improving critical and creative thinking in America. With an educational system chiefly focused on the political aims to maintain the status quo, suppress guilt, modify behavior, and attend to the needs of slow learners, how realistic is it to expect excellent, inspired teaching? If everyone is automatically special, what incentive is there to devote extra time studying to obtain a B instead of a C, or an A rather than a B? Low expectations and mediocrity breed more of the same. If I'm labeled as having a learning disorder, it says right there in black and white, certified, I'M IMPAIRED! THINKING IS A BIG PROBLEM FOR ME.
So perhaps the quickest way out of this mess is to recognize and admit we are all suffering from one learning disorder or another, low self-esteem, or a composite of afflictions. This statement is not intended to be dismissive of the serious effect disorders such as autism, dyslexia, or even ADD-like symptoms can have on learning. Nonetheless, it is true that some of us are better at history than math, or memorizing rather than spatial visualization, or cooking rather than home repair...
The human mind's ability to critically reason is the essence of our self-reliance and, ultimately, freedom. Self-reliance and freedom are universally associated with the American way of life. If we continue to feed the feel-good monster it will very happily and contentedly devour that way of life."

you can count on more to come...

sats

how is it that everyone in the world and their mother is a bad test taker?
are we doing these students a disservice in schools by encouraging that thinking?
much to ponder...looking forward to getting into it on a deeper level if i head of to NM, but for now, if one more student (or even HALF of one mother) says that to me, i will scream.

learning...

"...we must admit that learning plays an integral role in our daily lives. A life without learning is a life groping in the dark. At the same time, learning divorced from life is a empty theory. We must check our knowledge against our own experience, especially if we ourselves are not the source of the knowledge. Somewhere we must make the intuitive leap, shifting our eyes from scant details of immediate familiarity to a more comprehensive picture. It is doubtful how much actual learning could take place through mere restructuring of what we already know. Learning always implies an element of new experience. Other our mental activities are bounded by the limits of memory, never to exceed them. We must keep ourselves open to new explanations and new experience if we are truly to live and learn...
...This is perhaps the greatest paradox: We must relive our experience under changing circumstances in order to really know we have grasped the constant truth of it; we must reexperience things differently to fully fathom why they always happen the same way."
-Makiguchi, Education for Creative Living

media criticism...

...i tend to agree with or find interesting...

Television

"In the 1960s, George Gerber studied the behavior of heavy television watchers and found that the more TV a person watches, the more restricted and homogenized his opinions, beliefs, and thinking become....called the Cultivation Theory, ultimately implies that TV makes us less and less adaptive to the shifting complexity of real life. Individuality, spontaneity, and creativity diminish...
Television doesn't nurture new ideas or creative and critical thinking, it encourages uniformity and conformity. Television has also evolved into one of the two technological touch points for a lifestyle dedicated to the pursuit of is-ness -- a retreat away from the life of the mind and striving, toward a more or less static comtemplation of the pure sensation of being...neverending stream of passive entertainments, frequently supplied by electronic and digital media...[T]he common practice of watching three hours of television each evening, is simply a side effect of fatigue and stress, some people say. To the extent that elite groups of thinkers and inventors are able to pick up the slack, is-ness may not induce any serious near-term decline in the country's creativity, productivity, or standard of living...But the pursuit of is-ness as an end in itself, as opposed to the pursuit of happiness, is also having an adverse effect on the health of Americans...
Americans expend nine times as many minutes watching television as they do on sports or any other leisure-time physical activity, according to a group of University of California researchers...watching TV is also displacing reading, conversation, and other pursuits needed for the growth of good critical- and creative-thinking skills...Knowledge begets curiosity, interest, and involvement..."

Music and Computers

"The correlation of the growth of computers and sound-producing technology with an apparent decline in the quality of music could simply be the result of kids' preferring to play video games rather than spend weeks mucking around in a van playing one-night stands. On the other hand, the correlation could be coincidental. There could be other factors contributing to decay in musical creativity, for example, fewer venues for young musicians to play gigs. At the least, however, the trend is a cautionary tale about the potential pitfalls of the computer..."We never expected the computer to replace thought."...
...Researchers at the University of Munich surveyed 175,000 fifteen-year-olds from thirty-one countries, discovering that math and reading scores were significantly lower in households with two or more computers, compared to those with one or no computers [somehow I feel that the US could potentially have contradicted this finding?!?]...
I also feel there's no more reason to hector intelligent, self-aware people about spending too much time of the computer than there is to harangue people about watching too much television or drinking too much. It's common sense, really. A little parental (and self-) vigilance and the budding problem(s) vanish immediately...I am as easily distracted to start walking down that cyber highway as anyone. But perhaps I'm fortunate to also have a built-in alarm system, an instinct to seek the yin when I've had to much yang ( ;) )I do not know why I have this particular alarm system, and it is far from perfect in bringing perfection into my life, as I frequently invoke free will to flatly ignore it. I do know when I've been logged on too long, however. I know when I have to talk to people...I definitely do not even want to think about a world without computers...act on the awareness (of the adverse consequences that an obsessively virtual lifestyle will have on critical thinking)."

-Michael LeGault, Th!nk

i finished a book!!

...here are the last couple pages...
(read and insert my 'i told you so...' where applicable)
!!!!!!!!!!!!

"People can be happy in almost any situation. External conditions determine well-being much less than we usually think. Extensive studies have shown that the enjoyment of life is neither a question of age nor of gender. It doesn't depend on your IQ, or on how many children you have, or on the size of your bank account. A craftsman in Bangladesh has different but not fewer opportunities for enjoyment than an office worker in Boston. Both--all of us--have to use the opportunities at hand...
...And neuroscience has shown something else: happiness is more than simply the absence of unhappiness. We have dedicated circuits in our heads for positive feelings, enabling pleasure and enjoyment to thwart negative emotions such as sadness and fear...Our ability to make our lives happier rests on these two basic principles: we can strengthen the circuits for the positive feelings with conscious practice, and we can seek out situations that give us pleasure and enjoyment...
-The well-being of body and the well-being of mind are inseparably linked...Exercise and sex have proven the surest means of raising our spirits.
-Activity makes us happier than doing nothing...Our controls over thoughts, intentions, and feelings are closely connected in the brain, so we worry easily when the brain lacks anything else to keep busy. On the other hand, the brain's expectation system releases a sense of anticipation as soon as we set a goal, and we experience triumph when we reach it. Thus, activity almost always leads to positive feelings.
-An alert mind increases a sense of well-being even when it's only observing. Concentrated perception is often accompanied by feelings of elation...This capacity for enjoyment through attentiveness is something we can learn.
-By giving into negative emotions like anger and sadness, not only do we fail to appease them, but we actually reinforce them...
-Variety gives pleasure...When we change our pleasures more frequently, we avoid taking something for granted. And in learning to value the unexpected and to see from new perspectives, we stoke our vitality.
-When in doubt, it's better to have control over our decisions than to have our wishes fulfilled. The control over our own fate is for most of us an absolute condition for happiness and satisfaction. Helplessness is one of the least bearable of all feelings...When a wish is fulfilled only at the price of dependence (going into debt, for example), one usually does better by choosing freedom.
But what is most important of all for well-being is our relationship to other people. It is no exaggeration to equate happiness with friendship and love. The attention we pay to those close to us redounds to our happiness..
The choice has to be yours.
Therefore, the most important task in the search for happiness is to know yourself. We will all discover our own answers. We are six billion people, and there are six billion paths to happiness."
-The Science of Happiness (Stefan Klein, PhD)

AMEN. (ps I don't have a PhD and I've been saying all this all along!)

300 days of sunshine baby

I'm a lobo, that's right, a lobo.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/casaverdesol/2061791999/in/pool-unmflickr/

http://www.flickr.com/groups/unmflickr

p.s. tao pi zen (and lots of blue moon with a guinness float)

Time to Eternity

"This is our problem, you see. We are not alive. We are not awake. We are not living in the present. Take education. What a hoax. As a child, you are sent to nursery school. In nursery school, they say you are getting ready to go to kindergarten. And then first grade is coming up and second grade and third grade. They say you are gradually climbing the ladder, making progress. And then, when you get to the end of grade school, they say, "You've been getting ready for high school." And then in high school, they tell you you're getting ready for college. And in college you're getting ready to go out into the business world with your suit and your diploma. And you go to your first sales meeting, and they say, "Now get out there and sell this stuff." They say you'll be going on up the ladder in business if you sell it, and maybe you'll get a promotion. And you sell it, and they up your quota. And then, finally at about the age of forty-five, you wake up one morning as vice president of the firm, and you say to yourself, "I've arrived. But I've been cheated. Something is missing. I no longer have a future." "Wrong," says the insurance salesman. "I have a future for you. This policy will enable you to retire in comfort at sixty-five, and now you can look forward to that." And you're delighted. You...retire, thinking that this is the attainment of the goal of life. Except that now you have prostate trouble, false teeth, and wrinkled skin. And you're a materialist. You're a phantom. You are an abstraction. You are nowhere, because you were never told, and you never realized, that eternity is now. There is no time...
...Time is a fantasy. It is a useful fantasy, just as the lines of latitude and longitude are. But they aren't real lines....Time is a convenience...But let us not be fooled by convenience. It is not real...
...People who believe in time and who believe that they are living for the future make plenty of plans. But when the plans mature, the people are not there to enjoy them. They are busy planning for something else...they are never here. They never get there. They are never alive. They are perpetually frustrated...the future is the thing with them. Someday it is going to happen, they think. And because it never does, they feel frantic...They are terrified of death, because death stops the future...
Please wake up.
I'm not saying that you should be improvident, that you shouldn't have an insurance policy, that you shouldn't be concerned about how you are going to send your children to college. Except that there is no point in sending your children to college and providing for their future if you don't know how to live in the present, because all you will do is teach your children how not to live in the present. You will end up dragging yourself through life for the alleged benefit of your own children, who will in turn drag out their lives in a boring way for the alleged benefit of their children...
...In our colleges, we value the record of what has happened more than we value what is happening. The records in the registrar's office are kept in safes under lock and key, but not the books in the library...
...When the record becomes more important than the event, we are really up the creek with no paddle...our education system is pretty abstract. It neglects the absolute fundamentals of life and instead teaches us to be bureaucrats, bank clerks, accountants, and insurance salesmen. It entirely neglects our relationships to the material world of which there are five: farming, cooking, clothing, housing, and lovemaking...
...it is time to get back to reality, to get back from time to eternity, to get back to the eternal now, which is what we have, always have had, and indeed always will have."

-Alan Watts, 'From Time to Eternity'