Two Chinese students need operation to remove microphones they used to cheat on a test

The article is in Spanish and the title is Operan a dos estudiantes chinos para sacarles micrófonos que usaron en un examen. If you can’t read Spanish, here’s the gist of it:

Two students in China used miniature microphones that they placed in their ears to cheat on an English exam. Normally, they said, you use a tiny magnet to remove the microphones afterward, but that didn’t work, so they ended up having to go to the hospital. According to them, this practice is very common among their peers.

How ridiculous is that? Wouldn’t studying be preferable? It might take longer, but then they’d end up with useful skills rather than ear aches.

 

Memorization

It’s late, so of course this just crossed my mind.

Today, scientists (?)/old-school educators complain that students aren’t asked to memorize anything anymore. I was thinking about one of my professors who has so much poetry memorized, and yet so old, that one day when he’s gone (which I hope is in the far distant future), all that knowledge he has will be gone with him. So, God forbid, if something were to happen to our society, and the young and tough survived, what kind of knowledge would they have? Surely, most poetry would be lost.

This is why I propose turning every last good poem into a popular pop song. Or making every popular pop song a good poem. I think the former is more likely. Don’t you?

Or even a hip-hop/R&B song. Imagine grinding to Invictus. Yeah. That would probably be the only way for our generation to remember all this poetry. And I bet it would work. Hey, I learned about Jesus from listening to Chop Suey and memorizing songs from Jesus Christ Superstar. Why can’t we salvage what little knowledge we can this way?

It’s like in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. They go back and see Socrates, and what does Ted tell him? We’re just “dust in the wind.”

Note: I thought about it, and I think that maybe this article in The New York Times subconsciously cued this entry.

 

“Who’s Malcolm X?”

I went to Barnes and Noble today. I don’t know whether to feel good or bad about that. They’re selling some nice, cheap compilations of books like Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide books and the Chronicles of Narnia. Lovely. But it only costs…NOTHING…to borrow those from my town library.

Anyway, as I was scanning over the books in the Summer Reading section – and marveling at the Newbery Award Winners that my classmates and I used to always flock to (but I never liked Number the Stars despite that nice cover and reading it twice) – I noticed two things: (1) I am too old to be looking at those books, even if it is for professional purposes (come on, if I wanna write, I gotta get a feel for the market) (2) Some people – not all, just some – are…stupid? Ignorant? Sheltered? Just not interested? I think the right word falls somewhere between stupid and innocent, no matter how cruel that might sound. Yet – granted – I may have misinterpreted this situation completely.

So, I moved away from the Summer Reading table when I noticed that a mom and her son (who was probably 3 feet tall) were looking at them. Earth to me – I’m too old to hang around there. So I moved to the next table over to check out the slightly more sophisticated YA books (which I am not too old for, I hope). The mom and her son followed, and as they checked out some books, he asked her, “Mom, who’s Malcolm X?” – And she said, “I’m not sure.”

Now, there are a few possibilities I can think of for this answer:
1) She knew who Malcolm X was but didn’t feel like going into it. Not likely – because they weren’t talking about anything else and weren’t exactly in a rush to buy books and leave. They were definitely taking their time looking.
2) She wanted to shield her son from the truth. After all, Malcolm X is associated with a hard period in American history – the civil rights movement. And violence, and assassination. But, what’s wrong with just giving a simple answer, like he was trying to work for equality for blacks?
3) She actually WASN’T SURE who Malcolm X was.

This woman was probably in her thirties, late thirties, I would say, and being non-white, she might have been an immigrant (my parents, as immigrants, didn’t know about Malcolm X until after they had lived here for a while, since he was before their time). But her English was perfect, as was her son’s, and I gotta say – how can you live in the US and be non-white and not know who Malcolm X was?

I’ll tell you how. From personal experience anyway. When I was in school, the Civil Rights movement was always crammed into the end of the year – I don’t think my class ever got much further than Nixon when we studied the presidents – everything after him was a bit of a review. The most I remember about Malcolm X were a few paragraphs in our textbook and nothing else. Of course, they always have you learn about Martin Luther King, Jr., in school, but never Malcolm X. Who’s making it this way? Teachers, who don’t want to put “violent” ideas in children’s heads? Politicians, who don’t want children to see every facet of history? Maybe it’s something to do with the Jesus figure that King is made out to be in schools. I’m not saying he wasn’t great, because I whole-heartedly agree with the nonviolent take he had on civil rights, but no mention is ever made of his extramarital affairs, or of the FBI’s heinous attempts to discredit him by investigating his personal life. I guess Malcolm X would have fit even less easily into the savior mold. But that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t teach students about him…

And, anyway, this isn’t just about not knowing who Malcolm X is. It’s about not knowing a lot of things. Not knowing the difference between Sunnis and Shiites, for example (which the Daily Show once hilariously…and helpfully…covered). Not knowing that the Vice President is part of the executive branch. Or pretending not to know, as this mother I overheard might have been doing. Which is worse?

 

Ace That!

Having standardized tests: Good when they occasionally measure achievement. Not good when:
Teachers teach to the test
The tests are administered BEFORE the end of the school year, making teachers rush through material (how much does it suck to take the AP exams in early MAY?)
Also, psychologically-speaking, students should have intrinsic motivation to learn; they should want to learn for its own sake. Standardized tests create external motivation, motivating students to learn in order to do well on the standardized tests. So what happens once they graduate and there are no more standardized tests?