It occurred to me today that we have a chance to move toward something better.

On Monday, I wrote about the experiences that a friend of mine in college is having with his classmates and their tendencies toward cheating. While I talked about cheating and why I think it will continue to grow as a problem –the further we get into the information age– I wanted to continue that discussion, while also branching out onto a couple of other, related topics.

As an educator, I’ve always had certain, charged feelings about cheating. There have been periods during my career when I hunted cheaters with an avarice beyond scope. For example, I used to administer a research paper in a Senior English class, and the paper was a graduation requirement; I occasionally had to keep my eyes peeled for cheating on that assignment. There have been other classes, here and there, that I’ve taught over the years where cheating flared up, from time to time. The problem with cheaters is that they don’t tend to work any harder at the cheating that they’ve decided to do than they would have needed to work to complete the assignment at hand. As such, their cheating isn’t usually very ingenious or crafty; it usually screams from the page, “I cheated on this assignment.”

These days, though, I am starting to think that it’s time for education to abandon the kinds of assessments and assignments that students are able to cheat on in the first place.

Last week, as this friend of mine and I were discussing cheating, he was very judgmental of his classmates, who would chose to take such actions as to cheat. But, when I suggested to him that his professors ought to be doing a better job of creating materials that tested students on their knowledge and understanding of the course material, without using pre-packaged assessment questions that exist, with their answers, in a dozen different places on the internet, you could tell that the thought hadn’t occurred to him that his teachers were partly responsible for the cheating problem.

If we are truly teaching students content and material in a way that they are understanding and comprehending, there are probably a couple of dozen different ways that we can assess that understanding. Of those approaches, only a small number –the least ingenious of the approaches– can be cheated on in the first place.

* * *

When the pandemic began –in Michigan, this occurred at the end of the school day on Friday, March 13th, 2020– my fellow teachers and I headed to our homes with very little certainty about what was to follow, in the days and weeks ahead. We learned many things, and many of us became better at things that we’d barely even tried before. I remember thinking to myself, on multiple occasions during those days, that I’d been relegated to the role of ‘content creator’.

I felt this because, at the time, I launched into the process of creating videos that my students would be able to watch, to get the basic information-transmission that they needed from me. These videos were shared with my students back in the spring, and I’ll be darned if they weren’t just as successful on the summative assessments, in the units that they were studying, as they would have been had they been in my presence in the classroom. That got me to thinking a lot about my role in the classroom.

If students can get content from a number of different sources these days, then what makes me think that I’m the best source from whom to receive information? Rather, if my job is not to be the ‘sage on the stage’, then my job is something else. Walking alongside my students, and assisting them in the process of understanding what they are able to get from other sources, is probably a more valuable use of my time and talents than ‘being a content creator’.

* * *

What the information age does to education is that it raises the bar by which we might measure an educational experience as being a successful one. Thirty years ago, if a biology teacher instructed students on DNA and taught the students about the four nitrogenous bases –adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine– and then gave a little formative quiz to test them on their understanding, this would have been a win.

These days, that information is readily available on the internet –> I should know, since I just looked it up to be able to write the previous sentence.

Of course, the availability of all this information, many times, leaves us with a significant need for an understanding of what makes for a good source of information. In ‘the business’, we call this “media literacy”. I’ve been teaching media literacy to my students –in ever-increasing levels of intensity, in keeping with the requirements of our increasingly digital society– for many years.

Unfortunately though, I’m afraid that we have an education gap when it comes to the list of people who are consumers of internet-based media, and the much smaller subset of that group, those individuals who understand that you can’t just assume that whatever you read on the internet is true. This disparity is causing the internet to become a place where misinformation is as readily available –maybe even more so– than good quality information is.

So, let me bring this whole big conversation finally around full circle, if I may.

We are each responsible for the information that we believe. The extent to which some people are convinced by the flimsiest of arguments, while others are skeptical unless they are confronted with a preponderance of evidence, is an illustration –many times– of the understanding that some people have, when it comes to that good, ol’ aphorism, “Consider the source.” If I tend to be the kind of person who will believe all manner of craziness from the internet, then I am not considering the source of my information much at all. When it comes to media literacy, doing the necessary research, to see whether or not we have reasons to be skeptical of what we are reading on the internet, is an appropriate first step in getting our minds right.

As the influence of the internet grows in this age of information, and in light of the fact that behavior is usually subsequent to belief, it is not a coincidence that we are noticing behavior in our society spiraling out of control, usually from people who have been drinking the wrong kind of kool-aid from the internet.

 

It occurred to me today that the times, they are a-changin’.

I have, for a few years now, been developing a relationship with my favorite student of all time. As that student moved on to college, with an interest in the computer sciences, he and I stayed in touch, and I’ve even served as his ‘mentor’ during an opportunity that he had, through his college, to set up an internship with an IT professional (even though I’m not sure that I meet that definition). There was even a semester in there where this young man was just volunteering in my school district, to assist me with my duties and to learn from me whatever I might have to offer him as instructions for being an IT professional (even though I’m not sure that I meet that definition).

Then, last month, I was drowning in the start of the school year, which is an annual thing for me, every September, except that this year, the problems all seemed to be significantly more difficult, because of the six-month summer vacation that preceded this fall’s start of school –> courtesy of the coronavirus. I was more stressed last month than in most Septembers in recent memory, and people in the district were noticing my distress. So, the administrators in the Central Office in our school district asked if someone could be hired to assist me in doing the work that I have to do, as the sole proprietor of a single-person IT department.

And now, I work in a two-person IT department. And I recommended, for my coworker, that former student of mine.

* * *

Since I didn’t get his permission to write about him, I’ll call him George, for the duration of this post, not that it will matter much, since most of the people who read this blog are my coworkers (who would know George’s real name) or my close family and friends (who may also know George’s real name). George and I have been, over the course of the last few years, talking about a lot of different things, as we’ve spent so much time working together.

One of the things that George often likes to talk about are his college experiences. While many of them have been good and enriching experiences, George is often wont to lament the experiences that he has had in college that have been disappointing to him. George often tells me that he learns more from working alongside me than he does in his courses in computer science at his college. Late last week, George and I were talking about cheating.

George would have me believe that he is the only student in his college’s computer science program who doesn’t cheat their way through most of the coursework in the program. Now, whether or not George really is the only person that doesn’t cheat (I’ve never had any reasons to question his honesty in the past, so there’s that), and whether or not George is being hyperbolic when he describes himself thusly, the conversation that we had about cheating and education got me to thinking, as I am often likely to do.

I started out this blog post with the intention of writing on the subject that I am just now getting around to raising, via all of this backstory about George and the associated flotsam. So, without further ado…

* * *

I have been of the opinion, for a number of years now, that education is in a different place than it used to be, and I, fortunately, got a front-row seat to watch the change unfolding right in front of me, over the last couple of decades.

In case you haven’t noticed, we are living in the twenty-first century, and this century –at least, in the industrialized world– puts most people smack dab in the middle of the information age. This information age, inasmuch as it developed inside of the lifetimes of anyone who would call themselves a middle-aged adult, or older, has been something that we’ve grown accustomed to, as the internet has given rise to a wider availability of information to people who would not have been as privileged in days gone by.

What the information age means for educators is that it changes the paradigm that students just need to receive our transmissions of information in class.

Nineteen years ago, I worked alongside a number of seasoned teachers who mentored me in all manner of different aspects of what it means to be an effective teacher. The majority of those teachers, who’ve since gone on to their retirements, would have agreed with the philosophy that education is largely about the teaching of skills and the transmission of critical information from the teacher to the student.

And, while I’ll agree that education still is, and forever shall be, about the teaching of skills, in our current information age, the transmission of any amount of information on any subject can occur through electronic means just as effectively, and probably much more efficiently, than through any antiquated educational endeavor.

Students don’t need teachers to transmit information to them.

I can’t even begin to tell you how many things I’ve learned from watching YouTube videos, as an example.

And, while we’ll never be able to successfully teach children to read, or successfully manage conflict, or manage their own workloads, or learn to think critically, etc., via YouTube videos, we still have –and I’m often guilty of this myself– many teachers who treat classrooms like places to disseminate information.

Today’s students don’t look at things that way. When they want to know something, they go to the internet to find it.

So, what does this mean for George?

Teachers who have problems with students who cheat in their classes, or on their assignments, should take a long look at what they’re assigning as graded work in their classes.

Have you ever seen a student cheat at conflict resolution? No, you haven’t.

When students cheat on an assignment, they are operating under a couple of different understandings that are important to note: 1) the student understands that the work is to be graded, and must therefore be completed, but the student also knows that 2) the work is of little real significance and can therefore be cheated on without any real risk at missing out on anything important.

Additionally, teachers who create assignments that students can cheat on are, more than likely, just creating assignments to check to see whether or not the student received their information-transmission.

While there’s certainly more to be said on this subject, and a couple of related subjects, this might be a good place to take a break. More on this subject on Wednesday, in Part 2.

It occurred to me today that no one wants to pay the bill.

WARNING: THIS IS A LONG ONE, BUT –BOY– IT’S A DOOZY.

I don’t know when it was that we forgot, as a society, that choices have consequences. Granted, I’ve got some theories. Nevertheless, it’s one of my greatest frustrations about American society that we seem to be disconnected from the consequences of our actions, either through systems that protect us from having to fully realize those consequences, or because people enable each other in their poor decision-making. I’m as guilty as the next guy, I’m sure; I complain about things that I had a hand in creating, probably far too often.

But here’s the thing: if you aren’t happy with your obesity, make the changes that are necessary to fix that problem. If you aren’t happy with your occupational situation, make the changes that are necessary to fix that problem. Most of life’s problems aren’t situations that are thrust on us by a cruel universe that wants to watch us squirm; they are beds that we made and then we decided that we didn’t feel like sleeping in them.

Of course, this doesn’t stop people from whining about their lots in life, regardless of whether or not they were self-inflicted wounds. Because whining involves so little of us, it’s the go-to action for countless people who would be better served by shutting their mouths and getting down to the business of cleaning up the milk they spilled.

Somewhere along the way, we’ve become a nation of people who do what they want, with no concern for the price to be paid, and then we complain about the costs.

It’s just foolishness.

* * *

Today, the Superintendents of all of the public school districts in my county issued a joint letter, in coordination with our county’s health department, urging members of the community to continue to follow proper guidelines in public to try to slow the spread of the coronavirus. In the two school districts that I have connections with –the district where I work and the district where my children attend school– the cases that have come through the doors and into the schools are cases that are spreading in the communities in question.

There hasn’t been any spread in the schools.

Because school districts that want to keep their doors open are following the proper guidelines, cases aren’t being transmitted in schools. In the schools, there is a structure that keeps people in line –students and staff members alike– as they are obliged to follow the rules that have been established. In the community, however, where that structure isn’t necessarily present, community spread continues.

Here’s an example. I know that there are people in the community where I teach who are preparing to violate the community’s ban on public gathering during Halloween. I know, not because I am a mole who has infiltrated their secret organizations, or a spy who has been tapping their home telephone lines –> they’ve been posting it on Facebook, for goodness sake.

So, what do events like this cause? An increased risk of the transmission of the coronavirus.

And here’s how that is going to play out:

Several kids will get the virus. Close contacts of those students will end up having to quarantine. Some of those close contacts may happen in the school where I work, several days after Halloween. The outbreak in the district will cause us to have to close our doors to keep the rest of our student population, and the staff, safe.

AND THOSE SAME INDIVIDUALS WHO THOUGHT IT WAS THEIR BRIGHTEST IDEA EVER TO HAVE HALLOWEEN –FOR THE KIDS– WILL BE IN THEIR HOMES, WITH THEIR STUDENTS AT THEIR SIDES, COMPLAINING ABOUT THE SCHOOLS.

Not a single one of them is going to sit down, at the end of one of those hypothetical quarantine evenings, and think to themselves, “Man, it really was a stupid thing for us to have exposed all of those kids with a dumb little Halloween get-together.” Instead, they will get back onto the same Facebook accounts where they got together in the first place to say, “Hey! Screw the man! We are going to have Halloween!”, except a couple of weeks later, they’ll complain, “Hey! Why did the school go into quarantine?!?! They can’t do that! This isn’t fair!”

When it goes down like that, I won’t even feel prophetic. Do you know why? Because I’ve seen this all before.

And it’s starting to get old.

* * *

The thing about choice in America is that it’s linked up with this concept that everyone is so fired up about ’round here: freedom. If you start to take away people’s freedoms –REGARDLESS OF YOUR REASONS FOR DOING SO– then you run the risk of getting bitten by the vicious masses who would rather you not do anything to impinge on their oh-so-sacred freedom and their Constitutional right to choices.

Let me just drop this right here and I’ll point out the fact that COVID-19 cases have been on the rise in the state of Michigan, pretty much constantly, ever since the state’s executive branch was stripped of some of its executive power by other entities within the state government, representatives of the hordes of people who don’t seem to understand that freedom must be curtailed when those who are free won’t restrict themselves from being reckless.

Would there even need to be any executive orders if everyone just agreed to do the right things because they’re the right things?

It’s the height of hypocrisy when people complain about someone taking away their freedoms by forcing rules upon them, only to turn around and be pro-law-enforcement. You literally have no idea how many people I know that would identify with both of these opinions at the same time. Maybe you’re reading this and you’re thinking, “Hey, I’m one of those people.”

You do all understand that the police enforce rules that are put in place because not everyone is going to do what’s best for the society, just as our political leaders are often put in positions where they have to do things to keep free people from exercising their freedom irresponsibly.

IT’S LITERALLY THE SAME THING!!!!

You know what this boils down to; if you’re as smart as I think you all are, you saw me hinting at it in the previous paragraph –> people like the police when they are stopping the bad guys, but no one wants to be stopped when they’re being the bad guys.

And I’ve got news for you, we’re all the bad guys. When you decide that cops are great because they keep the criminals from breaking into parked cars in your neighborhood, but you don’t like governors telling you what to do because spreading a virus around is your Constitutional right, then all that you’ve done is split a hair.

The truth of the matter is that you’re wrong, and I’m wrong, and he’s wrong, and she’s wrong, and when we’re wrong, our bad choices have consequences.

No one wants to be controlled. Not the criminals, and certainly not the criminals, if you catch my drift.

It occurred to me today that no one has a chance at permanently staying on the horse, come to think of it.

I ran a half-marathon on October 10th, and at the time, I couldn’t remember having ever felt any more excruciating pain in my life. October 10th was my target date, and I’d been working my way through a training program that I’d found on the internet. I started training for the half-marathon during the first week of August, and all along, I was laser-focused on that finish line of finish lines.

The pain during the run was coming from my knees and my hips, and I started to stiffen up in those joints during the ninth mile of the run. The stiffer that I got, the more that it hurt to keep going. Of course, nine miles into a thirteen mile run, at least for me, is this point where you just kind of talk yourself into the fact that there really isn’t that much left, that all you have to do is just continue to endure.

But then, to add insult to injury, I ‘hit the wall’ pretty hard in the eleventh mile of the run, so alongside the pain that I was feeling in my joints, I was exhausted and without the energy to be very impressive during that last mile or two. My pace fell through the floor, which isn’t good when you’re trying to finish a run; when your pace gets worse, it just means that it’s going to take you longer to complete the distance because you are running slower. The last thing that you want at the end of an excruciating run is for it to last any longer than it must.

When I made my distance, 13.1 miles, I was probably still a half-mile from being back at my home. But, I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to make it, so I called my wife and asked her to come to where I was, to pick me up. To my recollection, I’ve never done that before; in all of the runs that I’ve left the house to complete, I’ve never had to call in for the evac chopper to come and fly me out of the warzone.

The worst part of this whole story is that I haven’t run since. It’s been eleven days since my last run.

I think I’ve fallen off of the horse.

I was going to run yesterday, and just call the week previous to yesterday a break after making it to my goal. But, I didn’t really want to run yesterday. Maybe I’ll end the break tomorrow. But, I suspect that I won’t want to run tomorrow, either, when it comes.

I’m going to need to figure out a way to get back on that horse.

I think I over-extended myself, reaching for a goal that I’d been pursuing for a couple of months. If I’m being candid, I knew that, leading up to it, I was probably pushing too hard. I should have given myself more time to make it up to the full distance more gradually. But, I saw the goal and I didn’t want to wait for it.

* * *

Starting on April 22nd, I wrote a daily blog post on this blog of mine, without missing a single day along the way, for about five months. But then, in September, I decided to take a step back so that I could focus on other writing projects that I have going on, and the truth of the matter is that I haven’t been prioritizing that like I said I was going to, when I excused myself from the daily writing duties on my blog.

This thing gets in the way, or that thing does, and the truth of the matter is that I was spoiled by having had a period of time there where it wasn’t too terribly difficult to devote a portion of my day to all of that writing –> I had the time to give. But then, life sneaks back in and we get busy again and, before you know it, what was the priority becomes an after-thought when other, new priorities work their way into the top few positions on the to-do list.

If I’m being honest with myself, the other writing projects that I am working on, the ones that I left the constant blog writing so I could focus on them, those projects are proving to be really hard –> a lot harder than it was for me to crank out a blog post per day. Coupling how hard those other projects are, with my decreased availability of time, and I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

I think I’ve fallen off of the horse.

* * *

So, these two different examples going on in my life right now –examples of me having been knocked off of a couple of different horses– have obvious similarities. But, a couple of their differences seem even more striking to me.

When it comes to the novels that I’m trying to write, it’s obviously just me avoiding hard stuff. I need to buckle down and get about the matter of doing the hard writing, instead of just enjoying this kind of writing –the writing that you’re reading in this blog post. It’s easy, and because it’s easy, I’m not growing from just taking it easy.

The polar extreme of ‘just taking it easy’ is ‘pushing yourself so hard that you end up going off the deep end’. I don’t suppose that it was the brightest thing in the world for me to have pushed myself so hard to achieve that half-marathon distance, especially since now I am feeling a little burnt out on the whole running thing.

So the question occurs to me, “How does one stay on the horse?” “Where is the middle ground between too much and too little?” “How does one push oneself without being overzealous?”

I don’t know why this just happened, but Hold On Loosely, by .38 Special, just jumped into my head. I’ve always loved the advice in that song, which can –at the same time– seem counter-intuitive and right-on-the-money at the same time. How does one even ‘hold on loosely’?

Perhaps, I’ll take it easy in the realm of my distance running, at least for a little while, for I seem to have been overdoing it, as of late. But, the opposite is true in my writing endeavors; I need to put a bit more effort into that particular venture. The growth comes in the struggle.

Now, let’s see if I can get back onto the horse.

It occurred to me today that I sometimes have good reasons, but at other times, I do not.

I’ve got my reasons for believing in the things that I believe in. Some of those reasons –that I have for believing in the things that I believe in– are very good reasons. Some of the things I believe in, I don’t have very good reasons at all for believing in those things.

When we think about why it is that different people believe the different things that they do, everybody has their reasons. I have a hard time believing that there’s anybody who believes in something without having a reason –no matter how insignificant that reason might be– so the question is what makes something a good reason to believe and what makes something a bad reason to believe.

For example, I can believe that the Chicago Bears are the best football team in the NFL. As I’m writing this post, they are beating the Carolina Panthers pretty soundly, but I probably could get a bunch of my friends together and beat the Panthers, so there’s that. Anyway, if I decided to believe that the Chicago Bears are the best team in the NFL, I would have to put up an argument about their record, which is currently 4 wins and 1 loss. Doesn’t sound too bad, right?!?! But, the combined records of all of the teams that the Bears have beaten this season is 4 wins and 15 losses, so someone could very easily argue that winning for the Bears, so far, has been a matter of succeeding over crappier teams, which isn’t necessarily a ringing endorsement of their dominance.

But, I have a different reason for thinking that the Chicago Bears are the best team in the NFL.

When I was in the fifth grade, the Bears won the Super Bowl, and my friends and I played out on the playground, pretending to be the ’85 Chicago Bears. My friend Chad was always Jim McMahon. My other friend Derek usually pretended to be Richard Dent. The rest of us would take turns pretending to be Walter Payton, or Refrigerator Perry, or Mike Singletary, or Jim Covert, or any one of the other players from that team, as we played out on the playground, throwing the football around.

We would do the Super Bowl Shuffle together on that playground.

When I look back on that memory, with all of the fondness that we often have for our childhood memories, it warms my heart; and that’s why I think they’re the best football team in the NFL.

Now, whether or not my emotional experiences, attached to the Bears in 1985, make them the best football team in the NFL, we could put together any interesting debate on either side of the assertion. In the end, though, we have to look at certain reasons for believing certain things as better than other reasons.

* * *

If I went around and told everyone that Doritos are the best snack chip and that no other snack chip can even compare with Doritos, someone would eventually ask me about my reasons for believing in the superiority of Doritos.

If I said that Doritos are the best snack chip because they are purple, and no other snack chip is, that would raise some eyebrows. Why? Because Doritos are not purple.

Believing that Doritos are the best because they are purple is a bad reason for believing in them. It’s not even true.

So, via this example, we’ve illustrated that there are bad reasons for believing in something. That then must mean that there are good reasons for believing something. What reasons could someone have for believing that Doritos are the best snack chip?

What if I told you that more Doritos are sold in the United States, more than any other snack chip? Would that be convincing to you?

Is that even true? How would you know?

I wrote my Master’s Degree thesis on a philosophical movement called relativism, and the effects that relativism is beginning to have in the classrooms of America. Unfortunately, at the time, it wasn’t well received by the university and its faculty in the Education Department, mostly because it tends to be a politically-charged topic. I actually had to argue with that university in order to eventually receive my Master’s Degree.

Relativism, roughly put (according to the philosophers at the University of Stanford), is “the view that truth and falsity, right and wrong, standards of reasoning, and procedures of justification, are products of differing conventions and frameworks of assessment and that their authority is confined to the context giving rise to them.”

In layman’s terms, this means that truth is not absolute. All statements of truth become relative to the person that makes them and the context in which they make them.

In a relativistic society, there are no good reasons for believing, and there are no bad reasons for believing. If the Bears never won another football game, ever again, I could go on believing that they are the best football team in the NFL, because –FOR ME– they are.

Does that sound right to you? Can we agree that there are good reasons for believing and then there are bad reasons for believing?

* * *

The idea that relativism is a plague on our society is a topic that I’ve discussed in previous posts, so I’m not going to continue to beat that particular dead horse.

Rather, I would like to make a final statement about the reasons that we are all choosing to believe the things that we believe.

I don’t know if it’s just me, or if anyone else is realizing this as well, but I’ve had a number of conversations with people who really do believe certain things, for the most ridiculous reasons out there. Whether that tendency is one of the unintended results of relativism, or whether people really think that it’s okay to believe what they do without a leg to stand on, the problem is that beliefs will normally lead to actions. What we decide is true in our hearts will cause us to behave in certain ways; if our beliefs are not properly founded, we end up with actions that are not properly founded, either.

I guess what I’m suggesting is a certain path for our lives. On that path, there are plenty of possible choices that we can all make that keep us on the path, while allowing for a diversity of options. But, when we start believing things without having any good reasons for doing so, what we’ve done is that we’ve purchased lies. Then, those lies affect our behaviors and our actions. Then, we end up off the path.

Check your reasoning, ladies and gentlemen.

It occurred to me today that we’re usually better off when we get it from the horse’s mouth.

So, something interesting happened to me the other day at work. A couple of my coworkers got involved in an argument, and one of them –in an attempt to win the argument– told the other one that I said something that I never actually said.

This story, told by my coworker about me, could be described as a canard. A canard is an unfounded story.

More specifically, Teacher A was using a piece of technology in the school district in an unconventional way, and had been doing so for some time. Teacher B told Teacher A that they ought not be doing that with the technology. When the argument ensued, Teacher B eventually told Teacher A that I’d told Teacher B that what Teacher A was doing was wrong.

Now, officially, I did not have, nor do I currently have, a problem with what Teacher A was doing. In fact, I’ve known for a few weeks that Teacher A was doing this particular thing with the technology, and I personally thought it was kind of ingenious, what they were doing. Why Teacher B thought it was their business to tell Teacher A what to do, or what not to do, with the technology, is beyond me.

The fact that Teacher B involved my name in this argument that they were having with Teacher A created a couple of different problems for me.

First off, Teacher A felt that, having heard from Teacher B that I had a certain opinion on what Teacher A was doing, it was necessary to come and find me –> to talk to me and to ask whether or not I had a problem with what they were doing.

Which, of course, I didn’t.

So, after the ordeal, Teacher A came to find me. Teacher A pulled me aside and said, “Did you say this?” To which I replied, “Of course not.”

But, I thought I saw something in the eyes of Teacher A that said to me that Teacher A wasn’t quite sure whether or not I was being dishonest, or whether it was Teacher B who’d been dishonest.

Frankly, the whole thing was ridiculous.

Mostly, it angered me.

I was made to look a certain way by someone who cast me in a particular light, in order to win an argument over this other individual. If I’d been misrepresented for a good reason, I may have been less upset, but to use me as a pawn in a petty argument made things even worse.

What Teacher B didn’t count on was that Teacher A and I have a pretty solid relationship. Teacher A knew enough to come straight to me, to get the necessary information from the horse’s mouth.

When we had that conversation, Teacher A didn’t mention the name of Teacher B. Part of me wishes that I knew who it was that was putting words in my mouth. However, when I told Teacher A that everything was fine and that I didn’t have any issues with what was going on, that seemed to be the end of things.

The other problem that this created was that it got me to second-guessing myself. I was thinking, for the rest of the day after this happened, whether or not I’d ever said to anyone, even to Teacher B, anything that could have been construed as disapproval of the actions of Teacher A. I couldn’t remember having done that, at any point, but I also wondered whether or not I’d said something to someone that could have been misunderstood, mistaken for my disapproval.

In short, this incident made me more aware of what I say to people, and how they might interpret what I say.

* * *

What this really got me to thinking about was God, and modern, western hemisphere Christianity, and the human tendency to judge others.

If you want to get something ‘from the horse’s mouth’ in Christianity, you have to go to the Bible. God doesn’t answer questions these days in an audible way –at least not in my experience– so reading the Bible in order to understand what He has to say is very important.

Especially when you have Christians, and others, running around, claiming that God has said certain things that He’s never said.

Why do Christians, and others, do this? To win arguments with other people about what those other people are doing, how they’re behaving.

Sounding familiar, yet?

Many times, Christians, and others, won’t even come close to accurately representing what God has said on a particular subject. They are so far off that anyone with a slight knowledge of the Bible would recognize their inaccuracies. Other times, Christians, and others, misrepresent God by suggesting that His utter focus is on something that the Bible only really mentions in passing. Or worse, they’ll use bits and pieces of the Bible, out of context, when the entire landscape of the Bible says something else entirely.

It’s unfortunately the case that many Christians, and others, are invoking God in their arguments with the people around them in ways that cast God in a light that isn’t very precise.

Anyone without a significant knowledge of the Bible should either 1) just stop trying to use God to win arguments about people’s behavior, or 2) get to a place where their understanding of the Bible is so significant that they can then accurately represent what God has said to others.

Christians, and others, need to stop playing the God card to try to affect the behavior of other people. Why do we do this? Is another person’s behavior, and God’s possible issues with that behavior, any of my business? I don’t know about other Christians, but I have enough of a mountain to climb, dealing with my own behavioral issues.

Aha! Maybe that’s it! Maybe some Christians are so judgmental because it distracts them from the real issues they should be solving… their own!

The other side of this situation is that people who aren’t sure about what God has said on a particular topic do have a place to go. If someone has misrepresented God to you, to try to win an argument with you, just go to the Bible. Read it and understand what there is to know. It’s not nearly as intimidating as you might think. Avoid the King James Version, and you’ll be surprised how approachable God’s Word actually is.

Finally, when I think about how angry I was the other day to hear that I was being misrepresented by someone, to win an argument with someone else, I started thinking to myself that God, who is being misrepresented thousands of times every day, must be furious with those people who are doing this evil work.

What if I’ve done this? What if I’ve tried to get people to behave a certain way by playing the God card on them? What if He’s mad at me for having done so?

Maybe it would be better for all of us if we spent less time condemning the behavior of the people around us, and more time with our mouths shut.

It occurred to me today that we’re going the wrong way.

I posted the first part of this two-parter on Monday morning, but I actually finished writing it Sunday afternoon. Not more than a couple of hours after that, on Sunday evening, my family and I went to our evening church service. During the sermon that evening, the pastor used the term ‘radical’, and I snickered to myself.

But, as I got to thinking about it, I started thinking about the very early church –> Jesus and the disciples and the early converts following The Way. As I was thinking about them, during the church service –totally not paying as much attention to the sermon as I should have been– I realized that the early church probably had a bit of a ‘radical’ feel to it.

Sitting in the church on Sunday evening, I was left to try to reconcile that understanding with what I’d written, with what I’d come to understand, about radicals.

More on that in a moment…

* * *

The voices that we listen to, in the world around us, have a way of convincing us that things are a certain way. When ALL WE LISTEN TO are those certain voices, we lose touch with reality, because reality contains many, many voices — many, many points of view. Radicalization is the process by which people come to adopt extreme positions on political or social issues, and that process usually is the result of the programming that we allow into our minds.

Maybe, it’s talk radio. That used to be a big one, and I suspect that it still is for some people, but even bigger these days is probably social media. I’ve had a hard time with that one, in particular, over the last several months. When it comes to social media, the voices that we hear tend to be the voices of our choosing, and then we end up with slanted points of view that don’t reflect a reality where other perspectives are also valid and logical.

Wherever the voices comes from, and whatever they tend to tell us, we have to understand that they only represent a small section of available opinions on any particular subject. If we aren’t getting information from a variety of different sources, then we end up becoming radicalized. The worst part of this process, I think, is that it is happening to people, all over the world, and they don’t even realize it.

It’s a loss of perspective, really, on such a large scale that it carries us away from relatively moderate viewpoints, to the land of the radical thoughts.

* * *

During the immediate period of time after September 11th, 2001, I remember that we, as a nation, started to learn about the Taliban, and about Al Qaeda,  and about ISIS. In fact, I remember that there were many Muslims –peaceful, patriotic, America-loving Muslims, living in America in the fall of 2001, who were starting to get stereotypically lumped in with these extremist groups, quite unfairly.

I remember feeling badly for those Americans who were being treated unfairly because we, as a country, didn’t understand enough about them. No group of American citizens should ever suffer because of the ignorance of the masses; unfortunately, however, this tends to be a large part of the American historical narrative. 

News coverage of these radical terrorist organizations, during the first decade of the twenty-first century, skyrocketed, as Americans came to understand that these extremist groups were indoctrinating their members, that they were being radicalized, and that such radicalization could lead people to board a plane with the intentions of committing terrible acts of violence against others, and it could lead them to sacrifice their own lives in the process. I remember that it wasn’t too long ago when ISIS was recording the beheadings of American citizens and posting the videos on-line, to the disgust of the U.S. of A., but also for the pleasure of their own extremist membership.

America was outraged when this was happening.

But just look at what’s happened to us.

A decade ago, we were thinking about how horrible it was that these extremists were poisoning our world. Since then, we’ve started growing these extremists, these radicals, right in our own backyard. The difference between the terrorist extremist groups that would attack us from the outside, and the terrorist extremist groups that are now attacking us from within, is NO DIFFERENCE AT ALL.

We should be ashamed of ourselves.

* * *

I’ve often wondered what causes people to become extremists, and I can say that I am sure that part of the equation is the company that we keep. On Monday, I posted about the foiled plot to kidnap the governor of my home state; I am convinced, from what I’ve read, that the members of that particular group were all drinking out of the same pitcher of Kool-Aid, to be sure.

Another dangerous part of this complicated formula is the degree to which societal leaders seem to condone radical and extremist behavior, since these societal leaders tend to have a lot of clout with those members of society who would be easier to radicalize, especially since those same people tend not to have a strong moral compass.

I was reading yesterday that the terrorist group that was planning on kidnapping the governor have received in the past, and are receiving now, support from leaders in different positions of power in this state, and across the nation. When leaders in society appear to condone inappropriate behavior, with their words –or worse– their actions, the underlings of these corrupt societal leaders are left to try to figure out what their leaders are actually approving of.

Without the strong moral compass that I described above, their struggles to make decisions about the appropriateness of their choices are bound to be extremist.

* * *

I started this second post of the series talking about the Sunday sermon, and the mention of the word ‘radical’ in that sermon. In thinking about Jesus and the early church, and the extent to which they would have been considered radicals, it occurred to me that some people are going out on a limb, going to the extremes, for all of the right reasons.

Others, however… not so much.

On Monday, when I discussed the chemical understanding of the term ‘radical’, I didn’t discuss what radicals are capable of producing. As it turns out, radicals are responsible for some of the most important chemical reactions that we are aware of. They are, however, also active in some of the most destructive chemical reactions in the natural world.

Going out on a limb and adopting a radical, extremist position is dangerous inasmuch as there is always the chance that we might be wrong. But, if we are cognizant of our choices, and we measure them against the yard sticks of productivity, and of love, then I’m certain that it’s possible that we could be radicals of the most important kind.

Jesus was most certainly a radical, and His type of extremism is sadly missing from much of the world these days –extreme love– replaced with a radical hate and a radical destructiveness that is tearing our world apart.

It occurred to me today that things seem to be getting a little out of our control.

A plot was foiled this past week to kidnap the governor of Michigan and to violently overthrow the Michigan government.

Michigan. State in the United States of America. Domestic location. ON AMERICAN SOIL.

Some of my friends, people who may be reading this post, are people who have, over the course of the seven months, expressed negative opinions about the governor of Michigan and the job that the governor is doing in leading the state. They are within their rights to express such opinions, just as people who disagree have rights to express opposing opinions.

But, make no mistake: if you condone violence against others, you are off the path. You have become extremist.

The details surrounding the case of this plot, as I read about them earlier in the week, reminded me of a few different things. I’ll discuss these over a couple of different posts.

* * *

In chemistry, a radical is an atom or a molecule that has an odd number of valence electrons, to my lay understanding.

When I realized that I didn’t know enough about the subject to be able to write intelligently, I went to a high school science teacher in my school district, to ask some questions about the details. What followed was a significant philosophical conversation
–since this fellow and I share some common philosophy– and a little bit of a discussion on electrons.

Apparently, because radicals have this odd number of valence electrons, they are in a search for other entities, molecules or atoms, that also have the same condition, with which to connect and ‘bond’. The bond that is formed allows for the radical to relieve its ‘radical-ness’, by pairing with another entity that has an extra electron, as well.

This search is what causes the radical atoms or molecules to be highly ‘reactive’, in comparison to other atoms or molecules with paired electrons. Their reactivity means that they are involved in many different types of chemical reactions, many of which release energy, in the form of heat and/or light.

Maybe, when you hear the word ‘radical’, your first thought does not necessarily go to chemistry. However, there are a couple of interesting similarities here that are worth noting.

If you’ve ever been around someone, who is a little radical in their thinking or in their opinions, you’ve probably noticed the feelings that you tend to have, being around them. When they say things that seem ‘radical’, maybe you are a little disturbed to hear their thoughts, maybe you wonder whether or not they really believe what they are saying, or if they’re just saying them to get a rise out of others. Maybe you want to make a bee-line for the nearest path away from that particular person.

Radical people cause, in you, a reaction.

It’s also interesting to note that the radicals are searching for other radicals, because it is with the other radicals that they are able to make a bond that will complete their electron deficiency. A radical doesn’t bond with a non-radical, because the non-radical isn’t in the same situation as the radical; the non-radical is not missing the valence electron pair. When radicals find other radicals, the bond is formed because they share in a deficiency. It’s a deficiency that non-radicals don’t have.

I know that there have been times in my life when I have held beliefs that were radical, and in believing as I did, I sought out other people to help me to either 1) confirm that my thoughts were extremist and ought to be discarded, or 2) identify others who felt the same as I did. Being radical and alone is uncomfortable, because we don’t have other people to help us to determine whether our views are legitimate.

Additionally, have you ever noticed that people who tend to be ‘radical’ and ‘reactive’ tend to associate with, tend to pal around, tend to be interested in the company of, other radicals? When these individuals get together, the bond that is formed, from the common deficiency that they share, connects them in an amalgam that is significantly strong. It’s almost as if they find a sense of belonging in their shared deficiency.

Radicals.

* * *

In the days and weeks and months that followed the attacks on September 11th, 2001, our nation –to my recollection– was largely unified. Unified in its resolve to find the people responsible for the attacks, and to bring them to justice, unified in our identity as a nation and the degree to which an attack against any of us was an attack against all of us. I would imagine that it also felt like this, in the United States, after Pearl Harbor, not that I was alive at the time, to be able to say one way or the other.

But, the degree to which attacks that come at us from the outside cause us to rally together, this doesn’t seem to be true of the attacks that come from within.

I’m reminded of those family units, maybe just husbands and wives, or maybe entire groups of parents and their children, who will attack each other with a vengeance. But, woe to anyone who would attack them from the outside; a group of people who seemed to be lacking a target found targets in each other –> an outside attacker could become a common target for the members of the family who’ve just been looking for someone to fight.

I’ve heard it said that much of the twentieth century was so productive for the United States because we shared a common enemy. The common enemy –the Nazis or the Soviets or the North Koreans or the Viet Cong or the Iraqis– which Americans could all agree to be the target of our angst and animosity, allowed for us as a nation to not have to stoop to the level of in-fighting and back-stabbing. We knew who the enemy was, and we warred with that enemy. And not with each other.

As I am writing this, there seems to be no end to the division in our United States.

Abraham Lincoln once said that, and I’m paraphrasing here, we as a nation would be the authors of our own destruction, that we could never be taken apart from the outside. Check me on this, if you’d like; he said it in a speech in 1838 that’s come to be known as the Lyceum Address. It’s a great speech by a great orator, and it is very applicable to where we are at today, as a nation.

By the way, Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, the most infamous member of  a group of co-conspirators who put together a plan to kill the President in Ford Theater. Originally, they planned to kidnap Lincoln, but decided to just murder him instead.

Enemies within. Radicals.

It occurred to me today that love is supposed to be messy.

My wife and I, in the late summer of 2009, bought a house built in 1883. Let me tell you how that’s been going, these past eleven years.

On Wednesday night, we decided to rip up some old carpet, because we were wanting to get rid of the old, dingy mess that was in place, and because we were hoping to get at the beautiful hard wood that we believed to be underneath the carpet. We held this belief, that the hard wood was there, because we’d spied it by pulling up some of the corners of the carpet. We looked at each other, realizing that there wasn’t going to be any real discovery without removal, and we set about the work.

* * *

If you’ve ever watched a bit of PBS, especially during the daytime on the weekends, I’ll bet you’ve seen the show. It’s called, This Old House, and it used to be hosted by a couple of guys, Bob Vila and Norm Abrams, back in the beginning of the series. The show usually covered the entire renovation of a single house over the course of multiple episodes, and it was always fun to watch these old, decrepit homes regain their youthful charm and character, at the hands of some truly handy craftsmen.

When I was a kid, I may have wanted to look like David Hasselhoff, and I may have wanted to drive like Bo and Luke Duke, but more than either of these, I wanted to be able to fix things just like Bob Vila. I just checked, and according to Wikipedia, the show’s been on the air for forty-two seasons, which boggles the mind, in and of itself.

There have been many, many times during the course of ownership of this home, over these past eleven years, that I have wished for Bob and Norm to come and help me with all of these problems. Of course, they would swoop in, gather me under their wings, show me how to do a little bit of the work while taking the big responsibilities on their own shoulders. It would be great, and magical, and in the end, I would have solutions to these problems.

Of course, it doesn’t work that way.

In the same way, you can’t be physically fit without the arduous work of exercise. You also can’t be very knowledgeable on something without study and practice. You also can’t be the most talented athlete in the arena without the drill and dedication that puts you among the elite.

Excellence takes work. So does a 137-year-old house.

* * *

So, back to the story of our flooring adventures.

If you’ve never removed carpeting before, there’s really not that much to it. It tends to be held down, at its edges, by tack strips that attach to the sub-flooring at also poke into the carpet above with these little pins. Once you’ve removed the carpet, and the tack strips, you’ll also need to remove the padding, and the staples that were probably used to attach the padding to the sub-flooring.

Did I say there wasn’t much to it?!?!

What we discovered, after the removal of the carpet and the padding could have been worse, but also wasn’t the best. Isn’t that how it always goes? We probably removed about three hundred square feet of carpet, and we discovered that about two-hundred and fifty of those square feet were in pretty decent shape. An eighty-three percent success rate isn’t that bad.

But, we’ve got to figure out some solutions for the other fifty square feet. Ugh.

* * *

It occurred to me, in the midst of all of this; I think love works like this. Love involves discovery, and it is not always the case that the discoveries are good.

Jennie and I have been together for more than a quarter-century, and married for almost two decades. Through those years, I’ve come to discover so many things that I love about her, along with the occasional discovery of something about her that rubs me the wrong way. But, what are you going to do? I’m sure that she didn’t have any idea about some of my least adorable qualities right away, either. But, you commit to the adventure, and for all of the discoveries that come along, most of them end up being enjoyable.

But it’s not just romantic love, either. Think about any person that you have strong feelings of love concerning, and you can probably think of a few things about them that aren’t what you would have them to be. Family members, close friends, they all come with certain drawbacks; love works its way through the negatives because there’s more to love than there is to despise.

Additionally, when it comes down to it, sometimes love means getting messy. But, during those times, when love means rolling up your sleeves and getting dirty, you do it because of the commitment, and because of the value that love has.

On a grander scale, grander than just this one journey involving some hardwood floors and some carpet removal, I’ve been ‘loving’ this house for the past eleven years. Loving, as in enjoying time on the front porch watching the cars goes by, as in laying in my hammock in the back yard, as in sitting around a fire in the fire pit near the bench swing. I love our upstairs bedrooms, and I love our location in town. I could probably continue to go on, but you get the idea. There’s a lot to love, to go along with the issues that need to be addressed and/or tolerated.

Now that I’ve come to think of it, building a love, whether it’s with a lover or a friend or a family member, or whether it’s with a house, is a process by which we work and we get dirty and we have to solve problems, on occasion. But, hopefully more often, we enjoy and we benefit and we find comfort and solace.

I wonder what Bob Vila and Norm Abrams would think of that.

It occurred to me today that a change might not always “do you good.”

WARNING: THIS ONE IS A LITTLE LONG.

Sheryl Crow, great singer and song-writer, has been writing wonderful music for many, many years; she wrote a number of very notable songs, especially in the nineties and early oughts, and if you were really into music during those years, then you probably know a number of them. The song that I’m thinking of, as I’m starting to write this blog, is probably in her top ten or top fifteen, depending on which list you are looking at. It’s called A Change Will Do You Good, and it was catchy and fun, in its own particular way. I just listened to it again, for the first time in years, and I was transported back to the last decade of the twentieth century, as much fun as that was for me.

Despite how I might receive this song when I hear it, or how much it takes me back to a pleasant past, I must disagree with Sheryl Crow.

Sometimes, change is not appropriate.

* * *

I’m a teacher, and in education, we seem to be particularly susceptible to the ‘flavor of the week’ syndrome, whereby we will try this thing and that thing and the other thing to try to help us in our work in reaching young minds.

Every couple years, or few years at the most, there comes along a new theory in the world of education that is begging to be tried. Rather than sticking to our guns and riding a particular theory out for long enough to discover whether or not the approach might have any legitimacy, we change our approaches and our methods so often as to beg the question, “Is it just the case that we are having problems being effective because we can’t stick with a singular approach for more than twenty-five seconds?”

This doesn’t just happen in education, but rather, I think it’s a symptom of a disease that is eating away at our nation. We tend not to be very good at committing to things, so we try something for a moment or two, and when it doesn’t work, we change our approach.

I saw a meme on Pinterest a while back about a person who has worked on their physical fitness for two weeks and is disappointed with the results that they’re not seeing. I wish that it only took two weeks to get back in shape, believe me. Instead, it is an arduous journey that probably has as many steps in it that there were in the journey that I took to get ‘out of shape’.

The sad truth of the matter is that we have usually further to go than we wish we had, in order to get where we want to be, and usually less stamina than what is required.

* * *

We live in a neighborhood with a rental property; who doesn’t these days, am I right? The thing about a rental property is that tenants come and tenants go. Whenever a change in residency comes to this house across the way, my wife and children and I become significantly more interested in the situation than we are when there is someone living there who happens to be a known entity.

A few years back, the situation was not good in the house across the way.

The man who was living there with his girlfriend, the two of them were in a bad way. He had a bit of a rage issue, and a fellow neighbor and I were responsible, it seemed, for keeping an eye on this property, and the goings-on, from different sides of the street. The cops were called on multiple occasions, and that man was not nice to his girlfriend, for sure. For the few short years that the situation across the street was problematic, we were certainly looking for a change to take place.

And the good news for us was that the change eventually came. The previous tenants moved out, and the new tenants have been much more enjoyable.

The particular property that I’m speaking of is owned by a friend of mine who rents his property out through a management agency, and has done so for almost as many years as we’ve lived across the way from his house. But, come to find out, this summer my friend decided that he was done with the rental property process and is deciding to sell the place.

So, it seems like we are going to be getting some new arrivals in the neighborhood soon (again). The problem with this is that, I liked these last tenants. I don’t want a change, because I recognize that there are situations in which change could lead to something worse than what you have now.

But, truth be told, I’m pretty sure that this is always true.

* * *

I saw that a coworker of mine, a fellow teacher, posted on social media their support for a particular candidate for the school board where we work. In this coworker’s post, I noticed the phrase, “It’s time for a change.”

Now, considering that the person, that this coworker of mine is suggesting for the school board, is not a person that I think would be a good school board member, maybe it’s the case that I’m just being disagreeable. But, when I look at the way that things are going for my school district right now, we are finally starting to get to the place where things are going well, where we are starting to fire on all cylinders. I would imagine that this coworker of mine, who is a bright young educator, must not be in agreement with me; otherwise, why would they want to change a good thing.

As often as anyone has ever used the phrase, “It’s time for a change”, I suspect that there have been other people who’ve disagreed. This fellow coworker of mine is probably thinking that the candidate for the school board that they are condoning will bring some of that positive change.

Just remember, not all change is progress, just as not all steps are forward steps.

* * *

Try to think of a situation in which you believed that change was necessary. Maybe you’ve been opposed to a person in a position of leadership (perhaps political) over you or the people of your particular municipality, and you thought that it was time for a change. Maybe your favorite sports team, who has been starting that certain player over and over, despite the fact that THEY SUCK, and you thought that it was probably time for the team to head in a different direction. Maybe you’ve become tired of the vehicle that you’re driving, and you thought that “a change would do you good.”

The problem with this line of thinking is that the people who are normally in the mood to feel this way have become desperate, and their desperation has convinced them that things are currently so bad that there really isn’t much of a chance that things could be worse.

Trust me, things could always be worse.

In Michigan, at this present time, everyone in the state is of one of two possible opinions: you either like our current governor, or you don’t. For the people in the state who don’t like her, they’d just as soon have her ousted as ever look at her again. As a matter of fact, come to think of it, the current political landscape in America is one of polar entrenchments everywhere you look –> you either like the governor, or you don’t; you either like the President, or you don’t; you either like a certain political party, or you don’t.

What I’m afraid that people are loosing sight of is this: don’t you think that a move for a change is necessarily a dangerous move? Who’s to say that, when we get rid of something that is unpleasant, we aren’t just opening ourselves up for something more unpleasant?

Maybe, what we really need to change, is our minds.