Posts Tagged Education

There’s a trend out there that I’ve noticed lately where people who are intelligent or who seek to better themselves through higher education and learning are branded as elitists or snobs.

Since when was being smart a bad thing?

I have an excellent education, I’ll admit, and I continually seek to learn new things. In fact, learning is one of my favorite hobbies. I want to know things. So sue me.

But apparently the very fact that I enjoy learning and have sought out that education will cause people to brand me “condescending” or “snobbish” or “elitist” before they even get to know me. This is exactly the tool that is being used by the right-wing to discredit science.  The general gist of the argument is that scientists and/or rational-minded people do not care about the common man because they are smart and look down on everyone else.

That couldn’t be further from the truth. While everyone has their own interests, the most highly educated people I know are all out there working to make things better for everyone.  They’re out there trying to find ways to make things better for the people who are suffering the most.

For my part, one of the most intelligent people I know only has a high-school diploma. There was never any money for anything more, but just because he could never go to college doesn’t mean he just stopped learning at the age of 18. My grandfather continued his education on his own, reading whatever he could get his hands on to read. And nothing about that thirst for learning turned him into an elitist or a snob. He was a farmer and a postman who did a bit of book-keeping on the side for friends and neighbors who weren’t as good with numbers.  He still visits illiterate neighbors to read their mail to them.

Being smart isn’t about how many letters you have behind your name, and being smart doesn’t make someone any sort of elitist or snob, unless they choose to let it.  Most of the time, it does the opposite.  Through learning, you can’t help but become more aware of the world around you.  Turning that education and the brain you were gifted with to trying to help where you can can’t be anything but a good thing.

So tell me, again, when did being smart become bad?

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As mentioned before, I will be participating in this year’s National Novel Writing Month, as I have for several years.  It’s always an event full of fun and craziness and caffeine jitters.  If nothing else, NaNoWriMo has taught me just how many words I can cram into one day, and that it is indeed possible to write a 50,000 word manuscript in 30.  It teaches discipline, something I tend to be sorely in need of.

Once NaNo starts, I’ll put a nice little counter up in the corner of my blog somewhere over there →  where you’ll be able to watch my wordcount (hopefully) tick upwards day-by-day.  I haven’t decided yet if I will post my novel as I write it, but if I do, it’ll be here.

For other WriMos, my NaNo profile is IntellectualBlather, and feel free to list me as a Writing Buddy and let me know, and I’ll list you back! I love having writing buddies to keep me spurred along and provide some friendly competition.  If anyone would like to challenge me to a word-war, I’ll be happy to take you up on that offer!

Just as I did last year, I’ll be asking folks who wish to do so to sponsor me in my quest for those 50,000 words.  The money donated by my sponsors will go to the Office of Letters and Light, the non-profit organization that sponsors NaNo, the Youth Writing Program, and various other writing education programs across the country.  My sponsorship goal this year is $100.

I always like to encourage any people who like to write, whether for fun or profit, to give NaNoWriMo a try at least once. 50,000 words in 30 days isn’t as much as it sounds, once you break it down, and it’s definitely an accomplishment to feel warm and toasty about.

In one of those mind-boggling episodes of backwards and bigoted thinking that tends to run rampant here in the South, a teen attending school at North Cobb County High School was told that he either needed to dress more manly, or consider being home-schooled.

Now, there’s a little secret of the educational system down here: Frequently, drop-outs are instead classified as being “home-schooled” so that the school they dropped out from doesn’t have to count them as dropouts for AYP standards, and risk losing funding.  This child would have no educational resources at home, so for him, being “home schooled” would mean “dropping out.”

So, what the administrators were telling  Jonathan Escobar was that he either had to stop wearing feminine clothes - clothes which, on a girl, would not have been against dress code, and which were in fact a good deal more tasteful and modest than what many teenage girls in attendance wear – or he would have to give up his constitutionally guaranteed right to an education.

The school administrators are blustering and making excuses about being worried about the boy’s safety, but rather than punishing the boy in question for being different, they could have turned this situation into a learning experience for the other children.  Rather than making bigotry into school policy and enforcing that bigotry, any students who were threatening or bullying this student for his difference should have been punished and taught that such behavior is not acceptable.

Instead, those students are getting taught the exact opposite: That bigotry is okay, that it’s perfectly alright to beat up, threaten, and bully children who are different because it’s those children who are going to get punished, rather than the bullies.

For those of you who would like to help Jonathan, give him your support and express your opinions on the matter to the North Cobb High School, your letters can be sent to the following addresses:

Principal Philip D. Page
North Cobb High School
3400 Highway 293 North
Kennesaw, Georgia 30144

Principal’s Email: Phillip.Page@cobbk12.org

Cobb County Board of Education: http://www.cobbk12.org/board/

Other Email Addresses: http://www.cobbk12.org/NorthCobb/admin.htm

There’s also a Facebook Group.  If you make a blog post or send a letter, please copy the address, comment, etc. to that group to show your support of Jonathan, and email your post to the school administrators.

This is something that cannot stand.

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The Philadelphia Free Library System is closing its doors.

As a bibliophile and great lover of libraries, this saddens me a great deal.  Libraries have always provided for me a place of refuge and sanctuary, where I can go and quiet my mind and feel at peace.  As fast as I tend to fly through books, the library also offers me an alternative to what would be a huge expense.

It also provides what in some cases can be the only access that the extremely poor can have to books and information.  Libraries are an invaluable educational resource, and should not be looked on as an optional service to the people any more than the right to a public education.

But in the recession, education is one of the areas where the most suffering seems to be occurring. Teacher layoffs, school consolidations, class sizes growing. Educational resources, be it schools or libraries, should be the last cost-cutting option, instead it’s seemed to be the first place that cuts have been made.

Without education, there is no hope that in the future we may be able to pull ourselves out of this monetary hole we’ve found ourselves in.  Education is the  foundation stone of success, and without a quality education, be it of an academic or vocational sort, there is no hope that any person can succeed, much less bring themselves out of poverty.

Libraries, and the books contained therein, are a place where children can learn not to resent being forced to read, but to look on reading as a fulfilling activity.  Libraries tend to be a center of historical and genealogical records for local areas, records that are not available online or via any other resource.

Even were all of the information contained in libraries freely available over the internet, that information would not be accessible by a significant portion of the population who still cannot afford computers, much less a monthly internet fee.  For those people, libraries were also the only place where they could freely access those electronic resources.

By closing the door of a library,  much less the entire library system for a large city such as Philadelphia, you close the door to knowledge for a significant portion of the population, and by doing so, you weaken the population as a whole.

Were Ben Franklin alive to see this, he would be weeping.

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RPGs (either pen-and-paper or online) and fanfiction are hardly the greatest sources of literature available, and have suitable reputations among the literary establishment for being exactly the opposite.  You can easily find some of the worst writing you have ever seen among either community, and without much effort.  The vast majority of role-playing stories, forum roleplay, or fanfiction writing tends to be written by young adolescents playing at writing stories.

There is of course some excellent fanfiction to be found, and a number of authors such as Cassandra Clare and Naomi Novik began as fanfiction writers.  I’m sure there are more that just don’t admit to it. I’ve written my own share of fanfiction here and there and actively roleplay on a number of games.

I’ve always thought that both have a great potential for being good educational resources for aspiring writers: both as a way to practice by dabbling in a universe not your own and without pressure, and as examples of what not to do.

So here’s a few lessons taken from these incredibly humble proving grounds:

• The Character’s the Thing:
  • While a decent plot is essential, a good character is what people will remember first and foremost, and really good characters can keep readers interested even at points when the plot itself may be a bit weak. Good, believable, multi-dimensional characters, much more than plot, can be the foundation-stone of your story and can hold it up on their shoulders when it gets weak.
  • Avoid the dreaded and despised Mary Sue!  A Mary Sue (or sometimes Gary Stu/Marty Stu for male characters) is usually a self-insertion, but a self-insertion of the way the writer wishes he or she really was. Perfect, popular, loved by all of the other characters in the story, capable of solving every problem, and with no faults whatsoever.  Where a good character can carry a weak story, the Mary Sue will send even good stories crashing to the ground.
    • Self insertions can work, if the character is believable and three-dimensional and realistic, but it is generally not advised in any situation.
• There Are No New Stories, only New Tellings of Old Ones:
  • Your characters won’t be the first to fall in love, go to school, have sex.  They won’t be the first to find themselves in the middle of a war, to fight an evil tyrant of whatever mundane or fantastic abilities, or be the first heroes to ever save a life.  Some of the best stories are where the author finds the common thread at the center of those old and over-used plots and twists it. (An excellent example of this is the TV series Dexter, which takes the now cliche and over-done forensic detective series and turns the hero scientist into a serial killer.)
• Sometimes the bad criticism is the best kind:
  • As flattering as it is to get a hundred “OMG I LOVE THIS FIC!” type reviews, they don’t really tell you a whole lot about how you actually did or how good your writing is.   Embrace the bad reviews.  Love them. Whatever you do, don’t ignore them!  Even the most malicious may have at its core some good suggestions for how you may become a better writer.  At the very least, you can use these reviews as an impetus to keep writing and keep getting better to prove that reviewer wrong.

You can learn as much (and possibly more) about writing from reading bad fiction as from reading masterpieces.  Unfortunately, fanfiction, in particular, tends to raise the ire of publishers (less so with most actual authors) due to intellectual property issues.  The fanficcers are generally doing it as a way to dabble in the worlds that they had grown to love and to keep that all-too special magic of a good story  going just a little bit longer, and never get any money from it, but publishers see plagiarists and imitation is only a sincere form of flattery when you’re not going to get sued for it.

I would love to see fanfiction used as a tool in the classroom, as a way to encourage creativity and a way to practice writing skills.  I think it could be a wonderful resource, even if using it just to compare the good writers with the bad and what makes each work or not work.  When a young writer can identify what doesn’t work in someone else’s writing, they’re one step closer to fixing what doesn’t work in their own.

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I know, I know, I’m five days late on my update. It’s been weird weather this week, four days of misty fog just hanging in the air, leaving the area in a perpetual state of twilight for nearly the whole week, and everyone around me seemed to be suffering from a state of “BLAH.” Sun came out this morning and what do you know, folks are chipper again.

Anyway, I got to thinking the other day, listening to the co-worker’s little sister telling her “I don’t have homework, I never have homework” and thinking about education. You see, the “I never have homework” thing was true of me in high school too. I was above average . . . More than above average when it comes to language and literature. Since there is very little to offer “advanced” students around here, this pretty much meant I could be as lazy as I liked and still make high grades. I never had homework…because I could get it all finished during other classes and then go on to write stories in my notebook, or draw, or read, and generally not pay attention to anything.

However, while the educational system leaves a lot to be desired, leaving intelligent students completely unstimulated and lower-level students behind completely, I do occasionally wish that I had taken better advantage of it.

I have such a thirst for learning these days. I have never been able to immerse myself in any activity that doesn’t in some way stimulate my mind: The movies and television shows I prefer tend to be the sort that make you think. Video games, due to their innate interactivity and, in some cases, the ability to create your own stories and characters, provide another mental stimulus beyond the usual mind-numbing, anti-thought entertainments available. I don’t seek to turn my mind off in my entertainments–I seek to wake it up.

I love science, I really wish I’d paid more attention or taken more science courses in college, though they weren’t exactly required for an English degree, and any math beyond basic algebra makes my head hurt. I pick up languages easily, perhaps I could add another couple to the ones I already read well, and speak passably.

Most of what comprised my pre-college “education” was learned outside of the classroom, as I went out and searched for the things that I wanted to know, but wasn’t being taught. However, I always wish that I had paid more attention, and not just flitted from one thing to the next, devouring but not really appreciating what I was gaining, and forgetting most of it.

So I told the kid…yeah, I know that you’re a bit too smart for the classroom you’re in, that the work isn’t challenging or engaging and so easy to do that you’re free to be lazy…but don’t be. Find other things to learn, other things to challenge you.