Religion & Ignorance

The following brief report from the October 2,2010 issue of The Economist caught my eye:

A survey from the Pew Research Centre that tested Americans' knowledge of world religions found that atheists and agnostics were better informed about religious teachings and religious leaders than were Protestants and Catholics. Evangelicals scored better on questions solely related to Christianity and the Bible.

Draw your own conclusions.

Letting go?

Those of you who have been following my journey these past several years will recall how I struggled with the choice to leave academia. And yet, I still hold on, a bit at least. I still check to see if that post across the sea has been reopened. Will I reapply? Should I? Part of me wants a good reason not to.

I can't quite explain why my recent success is not yet enough cause. Though it's getting close. What is the appeal? Sure, it's a five year fixed term, with the possibility of tenure. That's attractive in itself. I may be entering the realm of two-year contracts, but the sand beneath my feet remains uncertain. The life of an entrepreneur is not known to be secure. But, as RocketMom points out, working for a large university, even as a relatively independent research faculty member, would be worlds different from my current state.

At present, I am in so many ways free. But then... aren't we always? We so often get stuck in our ways, believing ourselves caught in a life, when the choice is most often our own. I believe in large part it's because we wish to have our options limited, since endless possibilities are daunting. They represent, as Douglas Coupland put it (when he was still a good writer), "options paralysis".

I am... afraid. Exhilirated, yes! But afraid nonetheless. I fear that this present mode, this current life, which appears so wonderful, so many scoops of ice cream above the once empty cone that was the sum total of my life after the PhD, is but a phantom, on the verge of vanishing into the ether from which it emerged.

You see, beneath the veneer, I feel pretty much the same on both sides of this door. My old mentor, Tasse Plein, paid me a related compliment, when I recently called on him out of the blue in The City, where he lives and works. He was thrilled for my recent run of success (even before the latest news).

I mentioned that I was so accustomed to disappointment in my professional life, that I was having some difficulty accepting what had every appearance of being success. He kindly put in that he thought I'd manage, that I wasn't the sort of person who would change much from it.

But if I haven't changed all that much, how do I make sense of the world around me changing? And so, I hold on to a bit of the world I knew for so long, the world of academia, as still a possible home, but a home that I wish the freedom to accept or leave. I want that choice, the choice that was denied me for so many years, even if I might choose not to take it.

Listen to Gopnik

Here's an interesting article in yesterday's New York Times on the intelligence of infants and young children, by Alison Gopnik, a specialist in the subject. Lessons to be heeded.

More than a commitment to diplomas

The American Federation of Teachers FACE blog has a recent posting ("Why Faculty Need to Speak Up") about the Obama Administration's commitment to "improving degree attainment rates in higher education." Lost in the fray however is any commitment to restoring learning to education. Without a commitment to increasing the number of faculty and raising the standards of employment for contingent faculty, any commitment to graduation rates is a hollow indulgence, worshiping diplomas for their own sake rather than the education that should underlie it.

Let's put it plainly: the heart of education is the relationship students attain with learning. The most salient models students are exposed to are the classroom faculty they encounter every day. It is those faculty who must be the center of any and every effort to improve the quality and accessibility of education. As the title of that posting suggests: indeed, it is high time faculty speak up. It is high time that contingent faculty walk away from mistreatment. It is high time that tenured or tenure-track faculty make plain their displeasure with the system that shuts out so many promising scholars, because of lack of funding for faculty positions, and the disgraceful overuse and abuse of contingent faculty, with no job security and often no benefits.

Only when we have a powerful collective voice, when we look beyond our own private battles for tenure for instance, or cower under the ridiculous restrictions to free speech that are being demanded by administrators, will we have meaningful and productive change. Hell, if the Iranian people can rise up, so can we!

Am I happy?

Last night, in bed, RocketMom said she was pleased to see me happy, that she was glad so many things are taking off for me and my business. I kept waiting for the "but"... it didn't come. I asked. No buts... just I love yous.

... Hmmm. Am I happy?

I'm one of these people who often whistles to myself, imbuing the space around me with sound. What is that you're whistling? I don't know. It's nothing. I'm just making it up. So many remarks over the years about how happy I must be. I've often wondered at those remarks, not feeling particularly happy in my doings (not sad either, simply being). I guess 1950s musicals trained us to see whistling => happy. Or maybe it's deeper than that? Maybe it's true. Maybe I was just unaware of my own contentment.

Am I happy?

I'm busy, that's for sure. More activity in my life condensed in a month than I've felt for years, YEARS! The post-doc depression (for me, and I'm sure many others) was a sink hole the size of Kansas, the kind of chasm you'd expect from a 1970s era movie on earthquakes, where faultlines disappear into depths below, swallowing cars, houses, people.

I'm no longer in it. I'm not looking behind, to see the devastation. I grieve for Myanmar and Sichuan today. I have a distance from their suffering (theirs is physical, tangible, mine merely emotional--why do we say merely?).

To some extent, I'm not ready to pause and revel in my happiness, because there is no stopping point just yet. I've a house again. For that I'm glad. My family is receiving state aid (a hand-up as I see it, not a hand-out).

I'm edging closer and closer to accomplishing practical applications of these ideas which have swirled for years in my head. They begin to congeal, clearly and concisely on paper. I'm attending meetings, and workshops, and seminars, and talks. I'm working on proposals. I'm discussing state funding for various projects. (If it were my own money, how would I spend it?) I'm talking to lawyers about protecting my intellectual property. (What can I patent? Is it the right moment? Do I risk losing patent rights, if I submit grant proposals before patent protection?)

When that first check arrives, I will surely celebrate. Happiness is an attitude, not so much a state. Am I happy is not the right question. Do I admit to my happiness? (To quote Dr. Lanning from the movie I, Robot): "That, is the right question."

Community vs. Home

I've been struggling with a post, which keeps becoming longer and more complicated than I'd like.

Here is the essence: Which is more important community or home?

Here's what I mean: our current first pick locale leads in part because of the prospect to become part of the local Jewish community there. I've never been an active member of a synagogue before. But I'd like to pass along to my boys a sense of my heritage, which in today's America seems impossible without such a connection. (When public schools send children home with countdown chains for Christmas, teach them to sing "the Lord is come" in the winter pageant, have them write letters to Santa, and insist that Christmas is a secular holiday, how is a child not to become confused?)

But I fear we may be forced to choose between being near such a community or finding a place that satisfies our housing requirements. Which is more important? If I'm to be working at home, and Rocket has no work outside the house for a time, that leads me to think those requirements are more stringent.

Community is hypothetical, potential. A home is where we'll spend our lives, but for the few spare hours each day or week that we go elsewhere. The point is, doesn't it seem where and how we spend most of our time should weigh most heavily on our decisions?

If the choice is between being near a possible community and having a home that fulfills our expectations (sufficient land for a garden and running around space for the boys, a sizable kitchen, space enough for a reasonable home office, and costs that allow us to survive for 2-3 years), I think I lean toward the latter.

Assuming I succeed in turning these ideas into self-sustaining support, we can always move nearer to community then, eh?

Super what?

It is possible to lead a fulfilling life without the least concern as to the plight of sweaty, oversized, overpaid, overhyped athletes.

I am thoroughly ignorant of what it's all about, and perfectly content in that state. Really, there are so many other things for me to get excited or agitated about.

Enough said!

Time in slow motion

Our Honda Odyssey has a rather annoying feature. If one makes the mistake of trying to open the sliding side doors while locked, rather than what might be most useful and expected (simply not opening, which for any reasonable human being would be enough to indicate the possible need to unlock) they rather first attempt to open, then beep three times, then force a delay of another couple seconds while the system resets. Whatever the reasoning behind this, the nuisance factor far outweighs any imaginable benefit.

And so it is with the waiting in our lives. The decision is made, the effort has been initiated, and now we listen to the beeping of time, and realize there will yet be another inevitable delay following. Because my heart has departed from Lemon, I find myself dreading even more than usual the grading, which I ploddingly get through. Am I just whining?

I complain about my 72 students (ostensibly tended during a laughably fictitious 16-hour workweek). And I hear of friends with far more students. Of course, they are full-time, tenure-track, reasonably compensated, with benefits, and an office, and... But, I believe they are overloaded as well. Both friends I think of teach at state schools, and have 100 or more students in 3, 4, 5 classes per term. I wonder if "learning centered" isn't simply a euphemism for "we really don't care about the students or faculty, so long as we can cram a whole load of them into the same classroom." But I digress.

I have been reading more on the website about Miwla College. Small class sizes, full commitment to interdisciplinarity, and international education (40% of the graduates have spent a term or a year overseas, and their goal is to exceed 50%). It sounds like a great place for me. I don't think I'm whining so much, as I come to hold a clearer understanding of my expectations and my tolerances. I love to teach, but not if it means teaching more than 60 students per term. I've simply set a cap. I love my research also, and... my family.

Rocket has been looking over possible photographer websites, thinking she might like to get a nice pregnancy portrait done. One site, whose images we like, presents a comment on finding a photographer that self-congratulatorily indicates that "She has spent the necessary 16 hour days, 7 days a week learning and refining her craft." Ha!

Necessary! I wonder at this absurdity that somehow true love of a profession requires sacrifice of self. Why should teachers be praised for spending 60 or 80 hours a week on task? It's an odd praise. As someone who has worked 16 hour days at one point in my life. It doesn't make you better at your task. It wears you out. It reduces your productivity and concentration, and often compromises the quality of your results. There is no necessity in suffering. And, while many of us do get through, there's no reason to suspect that we wouldn't have accomplished as much if we spent less, but perhaps more concentrated, time on the effort.

I think I'll begin an occasional series of posts on unexamined assumptions.