Since everyone’s angry about something, I thought I’d lay out some rules for writing to one’s member of congress.

• Send email, not snail mail.  Snail mail gets thrown out if it isn’t of vital importance.  Blame it on whomever was putting anthrax in the postal system.
• Make sure your tone isn’t threatening or irrational.  Do you think anyone will take you seriously if you aren’t respectful?  You can be firm, and you can point out inconsistencies in positions, but you cannot expect action if your recipient is scared to meet you in a dark alley.
• Know the issue.  Know the arguments on both sides of the debate.  If you can’t speak intelligently about the issue to your friends, then you’re better off not writing a letter to your member of congress until you’ve gained at least that much knowledge.
• Speak your voice, not somebody else’s.  It’s tempting to copy and paste action items (or, in some cases, pre-written letters) from advocacy organizations.  Resist that temptation.  Most letters go to a secretary, who picks out the most significant messages for perusal by the member of congress.  If the secretary receives 200 letters that have the same text, the secretary will pass along one letter.  If the secretary receives 200 letters making the same point in different language, the secretary will pass along a representative sample–thus ensuring more voices are heard.
• Don’t get longwinded.  Members of congress have extremely busy lives.  Long letters get half-read or, worse, not read at all.
• Remember that members of congress have the freedom to vote as they wish.  They can go against your wishes, whether you are in the majority or the minority.  You elect them to vote their conscience, not to vote your conscience.

Hope this helps!  Now, write away!
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PGE brings up some good points in his recent comment. I agree with some of his points and disagree with others. Such is life.

Quoth PGE,

And that’s why I disapprove entirely of the system of mandatory universal education, of the existence of public education systems, and of the universalizing ethos of the modern ideology of education, *especially* where government gets involved in promoting it.

So, while I don’t think standardized tests are *worthless*, I am compelled to remind my students that they are a game they should play to win–a few buttons to push in order to work the social levers that unlock the doors of opportunity. They are hoops to jump through. Same for grading systems.

It’s not that grading is worthless, or tests are worthless, intrinsically. It is possible to use grades meaningfully. However, they are imbricated in a social landscape that has a consumerist mandate, a universalizing (dare we say totalitarian) ethos, and an innate hostility to education per se. Why? The educated person is a threat to any totalitarian social order, so the ideology of mandatory universal education (just ask John Dewey) is the ideology of conformity to the social order.

Mandatory universal education has as its goal the "education" of "good citizens"–the churning out of products (credentialed persons) that will serve as cogs in the great machine of social order. That is what liberalism is and does; it collectivizes.

I was brought up with a tiny bit of radicalism in my blood, and this idea appeals to me on some levels. I see his point played out most prominently where we in education talk about educating "the whole person." This phrase obviously means different things to different people, but the gist of it (generally) is that educators need to do more than provide data–they need to make their students "better people." At its most benign, the phrase means that educators should strive to improve study skills and critical thinking in students, as well as providing the information the class entails. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that on the surface, but the theory does give  me some pause. I do believe that we’re homogenizing our student population in many ways. Think, for example, of the five-paragraph essay. How many students, when they leave high school, know how to write anything but a five-paragraph essay? Or, for that matter, how many know how to write anything but an expository essay? The trouble is that we’re taught grammar (not often very effectively) early on, and we are only taught the most rudimentary writing forms later in school. I see this problem all the time in my developmental classes–students who simply cannot write an argumentative essay because they were never taught to form their opinions on paper. Much of education in this country is actually very limiting.

At the same time, I’m not so radical as to abolish the free education system. I  still believe it can be of some good, if it were allowed to be made more rigorous. Some basic training (to steal a phrase from PGE) is required to function in our culture, and I don’t see many people out there with that training.

My most emphatic agreement with PGE is on standardized tests; they are a lever the student must pull. The lever metaphor is particularly relevant, because I think of standardized tests as a slot machine. Many students go into these tests without the opportunity to succeed–that is, the tests favor certain students and disfavor others unfairly.* Therefore, I’m actually more radical than PGE on stadardized tests–abolish them entirely. I can understand a year-end test in biology class or math class, but I  do not believe that someone’s graduation from high school or admission into higher education institutions (be they postgraduate, medical, or profession) should be determined by a test that only favors certain students with certain learning types. I am opposed to "No Child Left Behind" with every ounce of my body because I feel it homogenizes students even more than already flawed instructional methods of the past few decades. NCLB acts as if all students are the same, with the same abilities and backgrounds. It attempts to churn out students made in the image and likeness of the test committee; such a process makes students complacent.

Whew. Better get back to writing. Don’t want to get too complacent, after all…

*Different personalities approach standardized tests differently. Some students are better at mind games and memorization than others. As a result, some students have a natural advantage and others have a natural disadvantage. There’s a pretty large group of students in between that can do reasonably well with study and hard work, but it’s unfair to smooth the way for some students and shut the door to others.

My class for this semester was recently dropped, so I now have time to blog.  It’s probably for the best, because I was much too stressed anyway.

I’ve been doing a collaborative training exercise as a "beta tester," so to speak.  It’s gone on for about a month or two, and it’s revealing my disconnect with modern teaching methods.  I think most of us who are old-fashioned lecturers find fault with many of the "new-fangled" ideas out there–non-punitive grading, group assignments, positive reinforcement, etc.–but I also think we have a lot to learn.

Certainly, it’s easy to criticize what’s been going on in education for the last 20 or 30 years.  There have been various attempts to reinvent education to be more "learning-centered," which usually translates into an entitlement attitude on behalf of the student.  In other words, the student feels entitled to decent grades in exchange for tuition and fees, rather than hard work.  The connection between these two ideas is easy enough to see: eliminate grading, puff up the student, downgrade the teacher, and suddenly the student becomes a consumer.  The main problem, in my opinion, is that graduation has replaced learning as the goal of education.

Because learning is no longer the goal of education, though, teachers must change the makeup of higher education.  This change involves rethinking the scholastic university methods, many of which are carry-overs from times when fewer resources were available.  For example, before the printing press, professors had to simply orate the book because the students did not have hard copies to read on their own.  Now, the book is available online and offline in twenty different forms, from twenty different vendors.  Why, then, do some teachers simply rehash what the book says?*  The new teaching methods, I’m finding, include innovative ideas on getting students to read.  Some of these methods include (horror of horrors!) some gentle discipline, such as pop quizzes.

Therefore, I feel I will emerge from this exercise with a foot in both camps.  I cling to the old-fashioned sensibility that demands hard work from the student.  At the same time, I feel that I, too, must work hard on my teaching methods to ensure the best learning environment possible.

 Teachers?  Comments?

*Yes, creating PowerPoint presentations outlining the book’s main points is the same as reading the book to the class during lectures. 

What do I think of it?

• It is certainly an excellent story.  I’ve seen the first four movies, and I therefore knew where the plot was going.  Had I not known, though, I would have been entirely convinced that Snape was behind all the goings-on.  It’s also a fun book to read, and it creates a magical world that envelopes the reader.
• All writers have flaws, and Rowling’s seems to be her lack of technical style.  Although she is most certainly a well-read woman (certainly far more so than I), her prose leaves something to be desired.  I had to re-read several of her sentences and just ignore her constant use of the comma splice and the all-caps exclamation.  Of course, I have only read the first book, so I don’t know if her style improves significantly.
• I cannot tell at present if Rowling’s books will one day be considered great literature, or if she will be placed among the great authors of her generation.  I think we need to wait another 30 or 50 years before we will know how history has judged Rowling and Harry Potter; we may have to wait longer–I don’t think Dickens was canonized (in a literary sense) until the early 20th century.  I also think that her next projects will be far more important than the Harry Potter series in making this determination.  History judges authors by several more or less important indices of greatness: present-day literary influence, prevalance and quality of copycats, stylistic innovations, political and social messages, variety of writings, and future literary influence are a few such indices.  Of these, I think that variety of writings presently handicaps Rowling’s chances at greatness.  There are some authors who achieve greatness by telling the same stories over and over again (How many orphans are there in Dickens’s novels?), but these authors generally compensate in other areas.  Rowling has yet to compensate.  Then again, we have yet to see how far-reaching her influence is; maybe that will be how she compensates.
• I am more baffled than ever at some of the Christian pursuasion who attack Rowling and the Harry Potter novels.   I remember when Nick Thom, who was then filling in for Al Kresta on Ave Maria Radio, said that the Harry Potter books were not great literature and would not last for long enough to inflict any serious harm.  He wondered what the big deal was.*  He was soon flooded with emails demanding his resignation and questioning his fidelity to Catholicism.  I shook my head at the "there’s a devil around every corner" attitude of some people.  I could be wrong, but I didn’t find much objectionable material in the first novel, or, for that matter, in the first four movies.  I could be surprised by what I find in later books, but I sincerely doubt it (No spoilers in the comments, please!).  After all, my other literary influences are much more strident in their pagan influences (read: Neil Gaiman).

Keep in mind that I have formed no solid opinions on Rowling or Harry Potter.  So, Potter fans (my wife wonders, "Would they be called ‘pot-heads?’"), please do not attack me as a doubter. 

 *And Thom would never be considered a liberal.  His position wasn’t too different than the position of conservative apologist Jimmy Akin, who writes,

I am not a fan of the Harry Potter novels. In order to be able to comment apologetically on the Harry Potter phenomenon, I read the first novel and watched the first two movies. I was not at all impressed with them as literature, and I recognize that they can have a harmful spiritual effect on some readers, especially among the young. I also recognize that they are not an apologia for paganism and that a reader who is secure in his faith will not be magically turned into a neo-pagan by reading them.

I am thankful that someone finally expressed what I had failed to put into words–that is, Rowling’s novels are not "an apologia for paganism."  I honestly don’t understand those who seem to be sure that Rowling is a satanist.  I think she is simply a secular humanist whose influences are more unorthodox than, say, Tolkien or Lewis.  In other words, she’s not too different than some of my favorite literary figures, including Neil Gaiman and Stephen King (King fans unite!).

Medicine is getting more complicated and, increasingly, more difficult to understand.  Pharmaceutical companies tell us that direct-to-consumer ads are helping health literacy, but few of us know anything about the treatments we’re taking–except for the long lists of side effects.  I believe, however, that anyone (and I do mean anyone) can be reasonably informed about treatments they’ll be undergoing if they follow some simple steps.

• Visit the manufacturer or treatment website to obtain labelling.  The FDA requires drug companies to provide what is called "labelling" free of charge to all customers.  Labelling includes chemical properties, intended uses, side effects, and clinical trial data.  Be sure to ask your doctor for a brochure about the treatment you’re taking, as the brochure will include web addresses.  Go to either the manufacturer website or the treatment website (for example, you can either visit Pfizer’s website or the product website of Lipitor). Keep in mind that labelling can go under several different names, including "patient’s manual" or "prescribing information."  Whatever it is, it should look something like this page.
• Look up both your condition and your treatment at public healthcare "summary" sites. One of the early trends in the internet was the proliferation and popularity of websites that provide basic information on various diseases and treatments. The most popular of these sites is WebMD, and the National Library of Medicine has a similar site called Medline Plus. The advantage of such sites is that they typically present medical information in an understandable manner, while retaining important technical terms and distinctions. The information is edited by MDs but understandable to pretty much everyone. Also, these sites don’t print marketing materials, so you get a balanced view.
• Plug the generic name of your treatment into Entrez Pubmed. Pubmed is the search engine for the NLM, which is the largest medical library in the world. Plugging the generic name (for example, Lipitor is a product name, while atorvastatin calcium is the generic name) for your treatment will gather the most prominent literature published on it. You can read the abstracts for free, and some articles can even be freely downloaded. I would shy away from attempting to understand clinical trials, as they are often too difficult to understand. Focus instead on review articles, which track the literature on a given topic.

When conducting your search, though, you must be prudent to avoid common pitfalls.

• Be aware that pharmaceutical companies are capitalist enterprises. No, they’re not evil–far from it. Pharmaceutical companies are at the forefront of healthcare development and most of the people they employ (surprise!) actually care about the patients they serve. Still, marketing campaigns of any sort tend to overrepresent the product’s effectiveness. Don’t think that any treatment will be a magical cure, as some campaigns seem to suggest; your doctor and your lived experience will tell you if a treatment is right for you.
• Don’t be your own doctor. WebMD is a hypochondriac techie’s dream. Plug in "seizure," and, "Aha! I knew I had epilepsy!" Of course, this imaginary WebMD reader would probably gloss over the statement in this article, "Any normally healthy person can have a single seizure under certain conditions." Only your doctor can diagnose a disease, not a symptom profile on a website.
• Don’t be overexcited or over-alarmed at studies you find on Pubmed. Most scientific studies represent bits of information. To properly understand these studies, you must read them in context of the other studies. That is, each study is a piece of the puzzle. Don’t translate high efficacy rates in one clinical trial into automatic success.  On the other hand, if you see a paper entirely devoted to side effects (or, in clinical trials, "adverse events"), don’t assume the drug is all bad–the paper could be a profile of side effects on a tame and effective treatment.

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I was once an overzealous teaching assistant in a freshman great books course.  My students’ papers were covered with graphite (I would only use pencil to grade papers).  My most common complaint was "Quote the text!"  I couldn’t imagine why there was so much paraphrasing and so little quoting.  The professor tactfully reminded me that, given that said papers had a three-page maximum, it really wasn’t a big deal if the students paraphrased.

Peter’s "A Freshman Studies Hamlet" makes me think that maybe I was on to something.  Quoth Peter,

Hamlet and his uncle both get other people killed to solve their problems, too. Hamlet’s friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern wouldn’t have died if Hamlet hadn’t sent them to England on a ship with a note to the King of England, saying, “Kill these guys.” Hamlet wouldn’t have sent them on the ship if Hamlet’s uncle hadn’t sent Hamlet, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern on a ship to England with a note to the King of England, saying, “Kill Hamlet.” So they both did the same thing, only to different people, which isn’t really different, after all, someone died.

"Kill these guys."

I’ll let that sink in.

If this sort of writing awaits me later in life, I’m applying to Barnes and Noble tomorrow.