Wisdom of Crowds, Part 2

Oh the polls! At this stage of the presidential election there are so many new polls every single day that it's hard to consider any of them that valuable, never mind that the race is so close that the predictions are always conflicting. Most of the time, I'm with Abbie.

Sure, if you care, you can try to generalize across survey results; my preferred tools are this Wall Street Journal site and this New York Times site (you should try them, they're kind of fun really).

Even so, at last today I heard of a measure that might actually be useful. The people in this particular national sample were asked not who they would vote for, but rather who they thought was going to win. President Obama was favored by a margin of 54 to 34 percent, with the others unable or unwilling to hazard a guess.

If you ask me? I think they're on to something. (Especially after this post.)

But only Tuesday will tell.

Watershed

Today may very well have held a defining moment in my social media life. For the first time, I unfriended someone. She was a high school classmate who lately has rounded some sort of bend and entered into a place where it seems reasonable to post rambling rants about creator and country. These screeds are too appalling to ignore and so unhinged that I cannot even agree to disagree with her. I'd post an example, but I can't, and for that I'm glad.

Standards

Part of most teachers' responsibilities is administering standardized tests. In the interest of full disclosure, I must now confess that as a student I looked forward to standardized tests. To me, they were like a day full of puzzles and trivia, and I flew through them gleefully. I liked everything about them, especially the ritual-- the interruption of our daily schedule, the number two pencils, the careful bubbling, the odd minutes assigned for each subtest, the incantation of the proctor reading the directions.

Imagine my thrill, then, the first time it was my voice chanting those magical words, Read the directions to yourself as I read them aloud...

Well, over the years, despite my love of being the sage on the stage, my attitude toward standardized testing has evolved. Interrupting the daily schedule, my students' learning time, no longer seems like such a great idea. I have also learned that not all people are like me, and these assessments are no fun for them. In addition, as an educated educator, I question not only the value of the data we are collecting, but at times, the questions we are asking. (But that's above my pay grade.)

Just today, I was reading the sample question and answers on a language test to a group of very capable students. The task was to look at a sentence and evaluate the sentence structure. Swimming in the river and quacking were the ducks, was the original passage. Odd phrasing, true, but kind of interesting. Then I recited the other options, one of which was, The ducks they were swimming, and in the river they quacked.

My students laughed, but one raised her hand and said, "I kind of like that one."

And I knew just what she meant. It was unusual, but evocative, and technically not incorrect. (For the record, the example was grammatically sound as well.) The rules of standardized test proctoring are clear, however, and I knew how I must respond, despite any collateral damage to my credibility as a writing teacher who encourages creativity.

"Read the question and do the best you can," I said.

Platitudes

I love all the warm and fuzzy positive stuff on facebook. Sometimes I even want to repost or share, but I refrain out of respect for my friends. I trust that they will find their own affirmations. Still, it's tempting. Just tonight I was nearly convinced that I should share this:

We are buried beneath the weight of information, which is being confused with knowledge; quantity is being confused with abundance and wealth with happiness.

We are monkeys with money and guns.”
-Tom Waits

I felt it was a bit complimentary to my last post. Then I read this:

Don't let negative and toxic people rent a space in your head. Raise the rent and kick them out!
-Robert Tew

It seemed kind of relevant to work lately. But then I read this one:

When we dwell on our troubles, in our minds they grow worse than they actually are.
If we magnified blessings as much as we magnify disappointments, we would all be much happier.

And I thought, yes, yes!

But then I tried to fix the dishwasher with the part I ordered and found that it didn't fit, and after 30 minutes of trying to find a work around without success, none of that stuff seemed relevant anymore.

Never mind the money and guns, where are those monkeys with wrenches when you need them? Wine and dominoes anyone?

Pack Your Bags

I read a wonderful article over the last few days about an idyllic place. It was even called, The Island Where People Forgot to Die.

The story it told bordered on mythical. A man, born on a Greek island, forced away from home by war, injured in battle, healed by strangers, and drawn to seek his fortune in the land of opportunity, is struck down by incurable disease in the prime of prosperity. Unwilling to burden his family with the expenses of his illness, he returns home to die quietly, but instead, completely untreated, he slowly regains his health until 30 years later, at the age of 90, he lives on, tending his vineyard and playing dominoes with his nonagenerian friends.

Who wouldn't want to know the secret of this island? Scientists have indeed studied it, but their findings have been illusive. Certainly diet plays a role-- most residents eat very locally, the Mediterranean diet by definition. Most are also active, but not on the treadmill or at the gym. Theirs is physical labor of a different sort-- in pursuit of a crop, or up the hill to worship, or down the road for a glass of wine-- all places worth going.

Time, as we mark it here in the most powerful nation on earth, is almost unknown to them. They rise when they wake, they conduct their business, they nap, and then they spend time with their friends and families until they tire.

Although there is no great wealth, there is no poverty either, and the people there reach the age of 90 at a rate 2 1/2 times that we do in America.

Shoot! They had me at no alarm clocks.

Boo!

It's back to school tomorrow, and although I've enjoyed our unplanned four-day weekend (just slightly more than I'll appreciate the three-day work week), it'll be a treat to see my students and hear their tales of surviving the monster storm.

Embracing the rest of the grind will be tricky, but I guess that's the nature of the day.

Whirlwind Vacation

Or, it's all fun and games until the power goes out.

Which it hasn't, despite howling winds and pelting rains. The trees outside look like a scene from a Gilligan's Island typhoon episode, and then they don't, which makes sense given the bandish nature of such storms as this one.

The worst is supposed to begin in about an hour and last through the night, and so we have spent the day taking advantage of our electricity-- cooking, showering, charging things up-- and thus I remain

optimistic.