Smartness from the Sweetness

The Sweetness is also the Smartest. Just the other day, Tina was showing me how she planned to assess the functional English language skills of her sophomores. As she was enumerating, with increasing animation, the many methods she plans to employ in "skinning the cat" I was struck by the utter villainy of one assessment tool. And by utter villainy, I mean it only in the sense used by the great Kevin Sorbo in the underrated The Middleman: it was "sheer elegance in its simplicity". What follows is my poor attempt at trying to follow Tina's glorious brainchild:

Staring Down Math? Try Music!

A couple of years ago, I was a teacher at the University of Asia and the Pacific. Teachers oftentimes get a not-wholly-undeserved rap for not making the content of the subjects that they teach more alive for their students. And while there is a fine line between "dumbing down" the subject matter in order to play to the masses and truly innovative teaching that integrates the theoretical with "real life", I believe that teachers should never stop trying. Even well-meant classroom disasters are better than the apathetic droning of teachers who don't want to invest themselves in their classes.

Regardless of how people feel about the medium with which Lamar Queen communicates the content of his subject, I applaud attempts like these, which try to bridge the gap between languages heretofore alien to students and teachers: mathematics and rap music. Enjoy!

Nerditry! Hamlet and the Christian Perspective

I just read that there will be a new Hamlet movie featuring Emile Hirsch and Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke.

Interestingly enough, in an informal chat with Paul Dumol yesterday, my friends and I discussed Shakespeare's play in terms of its timeless wisdom and unabashedly Christian roots. While most people would not have considered Hamlet a particularly Christian literary work, through patient reading and careful synthesis, we determined that Hamlet may be considered as such for the following reasons:

In Act 1, scene 5, the Ghost declares, almost surreptitiously given the censors of the time, that he had come from Purgatory.

I am thy father's spirit,
Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night,
And for the day confined to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purged away.

There is the constant reference to the sacraments, as may be read in the same scene with the Ghost:

Cut off even the blossoms of my sin,
Unhousel’d, disappointed, unanel’d,
No reckoning made, but sent to my account
With all my imperfections on my head.
O horrible! O horrible! most horrible!

As Marty Barrack wrote in his article on Hamlet, ”Reckoning” is an archaic term for the Sacrament of Confession, “anel’d” for the Sacrament of Anointing of the Sick and Dying, and “housel’d” for the Sacrament of Holy Eucharist.

Furthermore, we have Claudius' penitential prayer in the 2nd scene, where Hamlet withholds taking his uncle's life in order to effect a more encompassing revenge:

O, this is hire and salary, not revenge.
He took my father grossly, full of bread;
With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May;
And how his audit stands who knows save heaven?
But in our circumstance and course of thought,
'Tis heavy with him: and am I then revenged,
To take him in the purging of his soul,
When he is fit and season'd for his passage?
No!

Finally, there is the overt reference to the Gospel according to St. Matthew (Chapter 10, verses 28 onwards) in act 5:

"...there's a special
providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now,
'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be
now; if it be not now, yet it will come..."

While the above reasons are far from complete, the fact that a bunch of fairly literate, dashingly attractive people such as my friends and I chose to spend a great deal of the little time we have to hang out with one another on Hamlet tells me that perhaps a new Hamlet movie is not just inevitable, but appropriate. We just have to prepare ourselves to discuss, with intelligence, humor and grace, yet another interpretation of a classic work of literature.

After all, as the Bard wrote, "the readiness is all". Enjoy!

Advanced nerds may want to check out a snippet of "Try what repentance can": Hamlet, confession, and the extraction of interiority by Paul D. Stegner. Peter Goldman wrote a review of Stephen Greenblatt's Hamlet in Purgatory entitled Hamlet's Ghost: A Review Article, which contains several points of interest regarding the Ghost and the Christian traditions that permeate Hamlet.

Dante and the Cosmos of Illumination

In an interview with the A.V. Club, Roberto Benigni enthused about his current project, TuttoDante, a one-man show about Dante Alighieri and The Divine Comedy. Interestingly enough, despite the fact that he never thought that his show would have an audience other than Dante scholars and 3rd year UA&P students taking Medieval Literature, he found himself playing to audiences of up to 10,000 people. Here are some excerpts from the interview:

Because Dante Alighieri has the most glorious imagination of modern poetry. So it’s talking about us, it’s concerning us. Everything in it conveys sentiment, emotions. He is really the greatest poet ever. So I am really very proud to present the shining pearl of Italian culture around the world. And also because Dante sometimes is very difficult and incomprehensible. But we need to talk sometimes about incomprehensible things. It’s very healthy...

...You don’t need also to understand Italian or to know Italian, because when Dante’s writing, when we recite Dante out loud, it explodes a cosmos of illumination like to recite music, a symphony. And it is very modern and ancient at the same time. It’s like a cross between Beethoven and Jimi Hendrix. Bach and Janis Joplin. It’s jazz, Duke Ellington, everybody, Wagner. It’s music.

The idea that The Divine Comedy is one of the finest examples of the ability of poesy to transcend simple apprehension is nothing new. My good friend, Paul Dumol, insists as much whenever he teaches Dante. But Benigni's wonderfully stilted exclamation "...when we recite Dante out loud, it explodes a cosmos of illumination like to recite music, a symphony" is worth reading through the entire interview.

Moving On

I distinctly remember coming to school yesterday with the finest of intentions. Knowing that it would be my last class day, but gleefully anticipating that my students would be blissfully unaware, much like normal students would be, of that eventuality, I prepared a series of painstakingly crafted final day lectures which, in my hubris, I hoped to rival the best of the Last Lecture Series.

Instead, a cold, almost supernaturally lonely walk from Security Bank to the UA&P campus forced me to reevaluate my intentions. I've always believed that my strength as an educator was not as a creator, in the sense that good friends such as Palanca award-winning writers Joachim Antonio and Christian Vallez are, but as a professional appreciator. To make another infuriating late 20th century pop culture reference (an act which I suspect pleases yours truly rather than my hapless students), I've yet to reach the rarefied heights that were scaled by Rob Gordon (though some prefer Rob Fleming) in High Fidelity, either the movie or the excellent book by Nick Hornby.

Thus, in lieu of ending my classes with a whiz-bang lecture of frightfully pretentious proportions, allow me, instead, to share with you a truly inspiring lecture by someone who deserves to be heard for the last time, Professor Randy Pausch:

If the player above takes too long, kindly read Moving On.

Photo Credits:

Picture of High Fidelity comes courtesy of Wikipedia.

iTunes U

I've only recently been introduced to the many different educational possibilities that our brave new, interconnected world has to offer, and I must say, with the odd gloriously brave failure that crops up every once in a while, that thus far, I've yet to be disappointed by the efforts of Apple to push the boundaries of technology. Case in point: iTunes U.

According to Apple, they're simply offering a service that allows higher learning institutions to disseminate audio and video resources to its students through the, by now, intuitive iTunes interface. In the end, these institutions get to supplement classroom instruction by allowing their students to bring substantive content with them wherever they go.

Colleges and universities build their own iTunes U sites. Faculty post content they create for their classes. Students download what they need, and go. Learning isn’t just for the classroom anymore. It’s for anytime and anyplace you’ve got a Mac, a PC, or an iPod.

So far, iTunes looks to be, at the very least, one of the gloriously brave failures that will, eventually, lead to something truly revolutionary. I've been to the iTunes store, and have delighted in the many FREE and varied resources that schools are offering for download.

The video podcasts of Professor Hubert Dreyfus on "Existentialism in Literature and Film" are worth visiting UC Berkeley's section for. Dreyfus is considered one the world's leading analysts of postmodern philosophy from Edmund Husserl to Michel Foucault, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and especially Martin Heidegger.

Stanford is also offering a wonderful series of audio lectures on literature, particularly the classics, courtesy of Professor Susanna Braund, whose analysis of the Aeneid is both lively and comprehensive.

The Web is opening up, and a brave new world emerges. Excuse me while I put on my iPod. I have a class to attend.

Photo Credits:

Picture of iTunes U comes courtesy of Webware.

Acquired Tastes: The Onion Dispatch

Since I'm down to my last couple of papers, and I'm about to send mail informing my students to pick up their corrected papers before rogue waste management specialists recycle them into Lord-knows-what, I thought that I'd kick back and relax with America's Finest News Source. Apparently, today was a good day to rifle through their Education section. To wit:

Freshman Term Paper Discovers Something Totally New About Silas Marner

STORRS, CT-A major contribution to the study of 19th-century literature was made Monday with the handing-in of "Silas Marner: Paper #1" by Lori Durst.

Here, we read that:

According to leading experts on Silas Marner, George Eliot's 1861 fable of cruelty and redemption in the rural English countryside, Durst's three-page work contains a revolutionary insight into a key piece of symbolism in the novel which had previously escaped scholars.

"It's a staggering observation, one that's certain to alter the way we approach this text forever," said Harold Bloom, Yale professor and author of The Western Canon. "On page two, Durst makes a connection between the golden hair of the child left on Marner's doorstep and the misplaced heap of gold coins with which he is obsessed. While it may take decades for the full significance of this 'chromatic objective correlative' to ripple through academia, in my mind it has already opened the door to a rich, fertile, and heretofore virgin soil of Eliotian structural analysis."

And that:

Durst, a native of Holmdel, NJ, who plans to major in psychology, said the idea for the essay came to her approximately three weeks ago, when her professor instructed the students to "start thinking about which book we'd want to write our first papers on." Durst said she chose to focus on Silas Marner "because it looked pretty short."

"My friend Lisa did hers on Middlemarch," Durst said, "and I was like, 'Are you crazy?' That thing is like 10 times longer."

Professor Thomas Perkins, who teaches English 140, was unavailable to comment on the paper. But another University of Connecticut English professor, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Perkins and his colleagues were "stunned and somewhat embarrassed" by Durst's 12-point, Chicago-fonted magnum opus.

"You have to understand, many of us have read Silas Marner 10, 20 times," the professor said. "Maybe we had a vague sense that this adorable, golden-tressed waif who comes along to redeem Silas' soul could have something to do with the gold coins that, prior to her arrival, had been the focus of Silas' life. But we, and apparently every reader before Ms. Durst, simply dropped the ball."

While the above account deals with the staggering inability of adults to perceive what's in front of them (and I'm only half-joking), here's one for the youth (and I include myself in this category, for nostalgic reasons):

Nation's Teens Disappointed By Banned Books

WASHINGTON, DC-Huckleberry Finn, Slaughterhouse Five, and The Catcher In The Rye are just a few of the many banned books to which U.S. teens are reacting with disappointment, the American Library Association reported Monday.

Here, we read that:

In a letter sent to the ALA, the American Association Of High-School Students cited its members' other complaints with banned books, including: the monster in John Garner's Grendel isn't scary at all and doesn't even act like a monster; William Golding's Lord Of The Flies is not actually about a mutant insect man who can control the world's flies with his mental powers; and there is no reason to read Stephen King's Cujo when you can see it on cable 24 hours a day; plus, it's not that good, anyway.

"Desensitized to sex and violence from an early age, today's teens simply expect more out of their banned books than previous generations," said Naomi Gould, director of the D.C.-based National Education Consortium. "For the teens of yesteryear, access to novels like Tropic Of Cancer, Portnoy's Complaint, and Lady Chatterley's Lover was an incredible, once-in-a-lifetime thrill. But for teens raised on Cinemax and Def Comedy Jam, it just doesn't cut it."

Matt Kornreich, a sophomore at Hialeah (FL) High School, agreed. "It's just a big tease," he said. "If I want porn, I'll go get some porn. And if I want to, like, be intellectually stimulated... Yeah, right."

Picture above comes from The Onion.

Of Lies and Men (Writing Them, That Is)

I'm still checking papers, and while the general quality of the papers have not really improved, at least I haven't caught anyone trying to pass off other people's ideas as their own. Fellow blogger and academic Brian Belen already discussed plagiarism in the context of the new technologies we use to communicate with other people, and it's worth checking out, if only to click on that link to myself. Ah, vanity! I admit...I have yet to escape your rich, rose scented clutches. At any rate, Brian's observations on academic dishonest are worth revisiting:

Anyone who knows me is well aware that I take a very hard line about plagiarism. If memory serves, in the two years I spent teaching at the University of Asia and the Pacific I caught upwards of twenty cases of plagiarism among my students. Within an academic environment, plagiarism strikes me as a cop-out for laziness rooted in poor values, undoubtedly performed with malice. It doesn't take that much effort to cite a source, and plagiarism belies an intention to deceive, where "submission for submission's sake" or "the need to make the grade" become more important than the learning that underlie such requirements. This is the same point I would try to get across to my students: Have some self-respect. Take pride in your work. And exert the effort to give credit where credit is due.

Brian's remarks on the roots of plagiarism are worth considering to round out Slate's discussion of media ethics in reportage. This article resonated with me not only because of the all-too-real spectre of dishonesty, or the gross disrespect shown one of my favorite essayists, Anne Fadiman, but for the remarkably rational and thoughtful way in which Slate editor Jack Shafer concludes:

Randall's wartime lies remind journalists that if a source's story is too good to be true, it probably isn't. The Sedaris inquiry instructs readers not to become too invested in a personal history that seems too funny, too sad, or too true. And the Schott affair suggests ever so gently that sometimes memory is a liar.

The lesson here, as always, is that honesty is truly the best policy. In the end, the truth will set you free.

I better rest before getting back to checking papers though. The fact that I rattled off two successive clichés doesn't bode well for the quality of my checking.

Picture comes courtesy of Glatt Plagiarism Services, Inc..

Acquired Tastes: The Onion Dispatch

I apologize for the lack of recent activity on this blog. Checking papers is an art which demands nothing less than one's very soul, if only out of respect for the amount of work that my students put in. And still, my workload looms like Mount Parnassus itself. Sigh. At any rate, here's a little something that tided me over when I was despairing at either my inability to teach, my students' seeming inability to learn, and sometimes, even both:

Child-Safety Experts Call For Restrictions On Childhood Imagination

WASHINGTON, DC—"By constantly reminding kids that they're human children with no magical skills, you ensure that they will live a prolonged life," child-safety expert Kenneth McMillan said.

Despite the fact that the article above represents the very antithesis of what I aspire to as a teacher, the following excerpts made me chuckle, just a bit:

"If your children are allowed to unlock their imaginations, anything from a backyard swing set to a child's own bedroom can be transformed into a dangerous undersea castle or dragon's lair," McMillan said. "But by encouraging your kids to think linearly and literally, and constantly reminding them they can never be anything but human children with no extraordinary characteristics, you can better ensure that they will lead prolonged lives."

As well as the dénouement:

Unfortunately, removing everything from a child's field of view that could stimulate his active young mind is extremely time-consuming, and infeasible as a long-term solution, McMillan acknowledges. "To truly protect your children, you must go to great lengths to completely eliminate their curiosity, crush their spirit of amazement, and eradicate their childlike glee. Watch for the danger signs: faraway expressions, giggle fits, and a general air of carefree contentment."

Added McMillan: "Remember, if you see a single sparkle of excitement in their eyes, you haven't done enough."

Hopefully, the rigor with which I check papers will somehow translate into helping kids rediscover a sense of wonder, that if they try hard enough, they will experience the many joys implicit in producing quality work. I know, it's a stretch. But even we teachers can dream...

Acquired Tastes: The Onion Dispatch

It's that time of the semester again, where teachers have to dig deep into themselves, to somehow uncurdle the milk of human kindness, so that the papers that they have to check are graded fairly objectively. To fortify myself for the arduous task of helping raw sentence fragments and non-sequiturs grow into elegantly balanced sentences and genuinely insightful papers characterized by wit and clarity of thought, I came upon the following, which I hope you will enjoy.

Girl Moved To Tears By Of Mice And Men Cliffs Notes

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA—A visibly shaken Grace Weaver said she never wanted the synopsis to end.

Choice excerpts:

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA—In what she described as "the most emotional moment" of her academic life, University of Virginia sophomore communications major Grace Weaver sobbed openly upon concluding Steinbeck's seminal work of American fiction Of Mice And Men's Cliffs Notes early last week.

"This book has changed me in a way that only great literature summaries can," said Weaver, who was so shaken by the experience that she requested an extension on her English 229 essay. "The humanity displayed in the Character Flowchart really stirred something in me. And Lennie's childlike innocence was beautifully captured through the simple, ranch-hand slang words like 'mentally handicapped' and 'retarded.'"

Added Weaver: "I never wanted the synopsis to end."

Heroic Computer Dies To Save World From Master's Thesis

Professors lauded the laptop for taking the literary atrocity with it into oblivion.

Choice excerpts:

WALTHAM, MA—A courageous young notebook computer committed a fatal, self-inflicted execution error late Sunday night, selflessly giving its own life so that professors, academic advisors, classmates, and even future generations of college students would never have to read Jill Samoskevich's 227-page master's thesis, sources close to the Brandeis University English graduate student reported Monday.

The brave laptop, even after fulfilling its mission, steadfastly resists a technician's data-recovery attempts.

"This fearless little machine saved me from unspoken hours of exasperated head-scratching and eyestrain, as well as years of agonizing self-doubt over my decision to devote my life to teaching," said professor John Rebson, who had already read through three drafts of Samoskevich's sprawling, 38,000-word dissertation, titled A Hermeneutical Exploration Of Onomatopoeia In The Works Of William Carlos Williams As It May Or May Not Relate To Post-Agrarian Appalachia. "It was an incredible act of bravery. This laptop sacrificed itself in order to put an end to Jill's senseless rambling."

If the humor is lost on any students reading this post (specifically, those who are busy trying to complete the final requirements for my classes), read these again in a couple of weeks. Till then, hang in there. Enjoy!

Geeks Bearing Gifts

Allow me to share something that my wife stumbled on while checking her students' papers on classical literature.

On the one hand, consider the movie Helen of Troy, an Emmy-nominated television series with surprisingly good reviews.

On the other, consider the movie Troy, which was nominated for The Teen Choice Awards, and is burdened by, charitably, mixed reviews.

Now let us consider the efforts of forum users Cup of Jabba, Mithrandir, crevette, and MetalMan713, where they discuss, in true geek fashion, the merits of one over the other. To wit:


Troy had good parts.... Those being all the men wearing short skirts, leather and a fine layer of sweat and grime.

May angels sing Wolfgang Peterson to his sleep every night for keeping the women clothed and having the men strip at a moment's notice. Praise be to whatever closeted homo-erotic urges he was losing the fight with on this movie. Hosannah in the highest to whomever he hired to keep the men oiled and shiny. They did a bang up job.

It's worth wasting time on. Trust me. Always make time for forums with a plethora of user names inspired by Star Wars, Tolkien, or anime.

Acquired Tastes: Not David Caruso!

As my last class didn't end quite the way I expected it to, not quite the definition of tragedy, but definitely somewhere along the definition for exasperation, I decided to post a quickie. So soon after my parenthetical reference to the cheesy acting machine that is David Caruso, here comes an unconfirmed anecdote courtesy of Wikipedia:

"On an episode of the Late Show with David Letterman that aired on March 8, 2007 comedian Jim Carey satirically impersonated Caruso. Carey asked for an 'intense close up' from the camera, spoke in a deep voice and put sunglasses on. Paul Schaffer and the Late Night Band played the CSI: Miami theme and Carey ran off screen."

Is there a hammier actor than David Caruso? He isn't even a cool, one-trick, pop culture phenomenon like the wonderful William Shatner, his almost corpulence Alec Baldwin, or even the German pop sensation David Hasselhoff. He's just an annoying one-trick pony, whose distinguishing characteristic is an inability to stop acting for an Emmy while delivering unforgettable lines such as "Miami style", or while gathering epithelials.

Annoying!

Oh well. That felt good. Cathartic, even. Thanks, David Caruso!

Picture of David Caruso comes courtesy of The fame and glory of David Caruso: a fan page. Is there a more stinging indictment of the mediocrity that is David Caruso? Just check out the fan page above. Fantastically bitter stuff here. I swear...

Equatorials 2007: A Batch Full of Poems

I apologize for the lack of activity in my blog last week, but I would like to state, in my defense, that I had a full plate. First, I helped out with Love, Lunacy, and Poetry, the Literature Department's culminating event for the school year. While my wife Tina was giddy with delight at having to entertain noted poet Dr. Gemino Abad (her unabashed admiration of the esteemed poet leads me to wonder why my son Manuel shares his ears, but that's a topic for another time), I had an equally, if not quite as self-serving duty myself: to bring Ol' Blue Eyes to the affair, by way of cool event music.

Next, I had to attend the Equatorial Celebrations for this year's Junior Batch in UA&P, if only because they mistakenly selected me as Batch Ninong yet again. Frankly, I'm surprised they're not sick of my dated antics, because I am. Still, the event in itself was truly an occasion for joy if only for Dr. Elizabeth Urgel's Batch Ninang address, Sam Macagba's tearful response on the part of the Junior Batch, and a surprise appearance by poet laureate Pablo Neruda, by way of his poem Tu Risa (Your Laughter), which I read to the Junior Batch in lieu of boring them with a metaphysical reflection on the nature of free will and sharing. Here's an excerpt (translated by Donald Walsh):

Take the bread from me, if you want
take the air from me, but
do not take from me your laughter

Do not take away the rose,
the lanceflower that you pluck,
the water that suddenly
bursts forth in your joy,
the sudden wave
of silver born in you.

My struggle is harsh and I come back
with eyes tired
at times from having seen
the unchanging earth,
but when your laughter enters
it rises to the sky seeking me
and it opens for me all
the doors of life.

Congratulations, Juniors! Some of you might never grow up to be poets of note, but by the sincere, irrepressible joy with which you engage life, never doubt that you are all poems worthy of being enshrined in the hallowed halls of classic poetry. Enjoy!

Acquired Tastes: The Onion Dispatch

Longtime readers of this blog would know that I love reading ESPN Page2 columnist Bill Simmons. Simmons might not always be astute in sporting matters, but he is always entertaining. Eerily enough, here's another sign that the Apocalypse is upon us: Bill Simmons, meet The Onion.

Confused Bill Simmons Picks The Departed To Win Super Bowl

Inner-City Teacher Inspires Students To Stab Him

And for all those people who were subjected to the dreary dreck that lazy inspirational teacher movies have degenerated into, here's one for the books. Enjoy!