Category Archives: Learning

Preserving a More Honest History from Teaching Tolerance.org

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Here’s another great, practical piece from Teaching Tolerance, which I was just reminded is affiliated with the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The big thing that caught my attention and got me excited about this is the suggestion at the end that teachers should consider making their own classrooms historic sites:

Making Your Classroom the Historic Site

Funding, geography or lack of institutional support may prevent educators from taking students to an exemplary historic site—but you can still bring the best practices of historic sites into your classroom.

I think the author here was attempting to include teachers for whom field trips may not be an option, but actually, why shouldn’t ALL teachers make their classrooms historic sites?  It is an invitation to students to think critically about the institution they attend, the curriculum they study, the habits and routines they engage in.  This is actually a great way for teachers to think about their classrooms too– by deconstructing the phenomenon of the “field trip” altogether and engaging students historical minds daily in this fashion.

Source: Preserving a More Honest History

The High School Course Beijing Accuses of Radicalizing Hong Kong (NYTimes.com)

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Pro-Beijing officials say a course that teaches critical thinking has created a generation of rebels. Students and teachers say it has made them more engaged with society.

Source: The High School Course Beijing Accuses of Radicalizing Hong Kong

I am just beginning to dive in to some of the details of this ongoing series of actions in Hong Kong.  But I am excited to have been able to use a bilingual interview with an activist (Agnes Chow Ting) spokesperson for the “Scholarism” group in Hong Kong for one of my English expression classes.  Scholarism eventually merged into the Demosisto group which is I believe at the center of the current actions.  It was a bit of a sensitive issue in class because there is one student who is Chinese in that class and I wasn’t sure how she would react.  Japanese media (and as a result, my students) tend to focus on the unrest as a means to criticize the Chinese government in a kind of superior jingoistic fashion.  And my Chinese student has often But I think I made it clear that the reason why I brought this text into the class was out of respect for the Chinese student activists and their connecting politics with their education in a meaningful and powerful way.

Exactly what is the connection between education and radical politics in this situation is still something I want to investigate.  Obviously the connection that this NYTimes headline suggests of a 1-to-1 process of “radicalization,” doesn’t ring true because it ignores the underlying contexts of that education as it takes place.  Anyway, more soon…

Argument Task 15: Mason City Waterfront (Making an “ASS” out of “U” and “ME”)

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ESSAY PROMPT

In surveys Mason City residents rank water sports (swimming, boating, and fishing) among their favorite recreational activities. The Mason River flowing through the city is rarely used for these pursuits, however, and the city park department devotes little of its budget to maintaining riverside recreational facilities. For years there have been complaints from residents about the quality of the river’s water and the river’s smell. In response, the state has recently announced plans to clean up Mason River. Use of the river for water sports is, therefore, sure to increase. The city government should for that reason devote more money in this year’s budget to riverside recreational facilities.

Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.

 

ESSAY

Mason City Government needs to proceed with a bit more caution as interest in Mason River recreational activity ramps up. Despite the stated facts—the burgeoning popularity of water sports among Mason residents, the complaints about water quality including odor, and the State’s plans to clean up the river. There is still a lot riding on assumption as opposed to fact, data or indeed the reality of the situation in Mason City. As the city government plans to earmark more funding this fiscal year to riverside recreational facilities the following three points ought to be considered for their potential effects on the outcomes of such expenditures. First and foremost, is the Mason River going to be a viable site for marine recreational activities? Second, given the viability of such facilities, would Mason River recreational infrastructure be economically sustainable and competitive with regional waterfront facilities that are already proven more popular among locals? And finally, is opening the riverfront up to water sports really the best use of this valuable city resource? Only after these underlying assumptions have been thoroughly investigated, should Mason City government proceed with their laudable if perhaps overly-ambitious commitment of funding to this development effort.

Likely the most significant assumption being made ahead of the city’s investment in riverfront recreational infrastructure has to do with the safety of the riverfront in general. What is known is the history of pollution in the river. This history will not soon be forgotten in the community. And so, the city ought to take a long, hard look at the reality of clean-up measures, as well as advertising and public-relations campaigns that might be necessary to convince locals that that stinky eyesore in their backyards is the next vacation hotspot. Only after a more detailed development plan is mapped out can, the nitty-gritty of the budget for such a project be comprehended with clarity. And the last thing the city needs is to get involved in such an ill-begotten project only to have some poor child be poisoned or otherwise put in danger from exposure to a half-baked tourism boosting scheme.

After safety has been fully contemplated, the actual useage of the riverfront ought to be next under the microscope. As popular as water sports are apparently among the denizens of Mason City, there may well be other sectors with interests in this valuable property. Indeed city tourism may be better served by developing the riverfront as an upscale commercial property rather than a beer-soaked weekend waterhole. Or else, the industries which have up to this point been using the river for waste disposal may indeed have some economic stake in keeping marine sports out. The city is assuming that marine recreation is the best choice for riverside development, which just may not be the case.

Finally, can Mason River really be expected to compete with other facilities in the region, which are already so popular among the locals? This needs to be demonstrated before any development project can reasonably be expected to move forward.

Once these three major underlying assumptions have had the proper exposure to the light of day, with community input and appropriate data gathering and analysis, then and only then may the Mason City government be able to move proceed on its commitment of more funds to developing the waterfront for recreational purposes.

REFLECTION

Wanted to cram one more 30 minute one of these in before bedtime, since tomorrow I have the children all day, and I won’t likely have time to commit to it then.  (Parenting humble-brag?  Yuck!)  Obviously needed to devote a bit more time to re-reading/ double-checking.  I caught a few mistakes on my read through after the timer went off.  Booo!  Hiss!  Possibly a function of it being after 1am when I finished this.  Then again, this light exhaustion/ heavy caffeine state is probably a good simulation of test day state of mind.

GRE Argument Topic 10: Real Estate Development in 3 Tree Counties

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Argument Topic 10

ESSAY PROMPT

The council of Maple County, concerned about the county’s becoming overdeveloped, is debating a proposed measure that would prevent the development of existing farmland in the county. But the council is also concerned that such a restriction, by limiting the supply of new housing, could lead to significant increases in the price of housing in the county. Proponents of the measure note that Chestnut County established a similar measure ten years ago, and its housing prices have increased only modestly since. However, opponents of the measure note that Pine County adopted restrictions on the development of new residential housing fifteen years ago, and its housing prices have since more than doubled. The council currently predicts that the proposed measure, if passed, will result in a significant increase in housing prices in Maple County.

Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the prediction and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the prediction.

 

ESSAY

The underlying argument being made by Maple County government is that its housing development situation is most similar to that of Pine County, where in the span of 15 years since the passage of a new measure limiting development, prices have doubled. This doesn’t preclude some similarities to Chestnut County, where prices have increased only modestly after a similar measure, but it signifies Maple County’s more cautious approach to housing prices. In order to come to evaluate Maple County’s decision effectively, some other factors need to be taken into account, to whit: the rate at Pine County and Chestnut County’s housing prices have increased in the years ensuing since the passage of their respective policy measures, the projected rates of change for housing costs in the future in those communities, and in what ways each communities’ policy measures differed with respect to the amount of development that was allowed. When these factors are taken into account, the Maple County leadership will be able to make a much more clear-eyed decision about the fate of their community.

The most glaring question has to do with the relative similarities of these three Counties. Is Maple more similar to Chestnut or Pine and in what respects? Likewise, how similar are Chestnut and Pine to each other. The time scale on the data presented here is such that Pine and Chestnut Counties’ housing price rates could very well be increasing at identical rates. That is the prices in Pine County may well have increased at only a modest rate in the first 10 years before nearly doubling in the interim between the tenth and fifteenth. In any event, the Maple County real estate mavens have judged that their community is dangerously similar to Pine in the longer term, but more information, on the congruencies of these economies would certainly help fine tune any policy decision.

Another factor that is absolutely begging for further elucidation is the actual rates of development that were allowed for farmland in these three arborial burroughs. The powers that be in Maple would do well in their preliminary studies to tweak the development side of the equation too. In other words, how much farmland was allowed to be developed over time in Chestnut and Pine. Can these development numbers be correlated with the ballooning housing prices there. This more refined speculation might well give the Maple council members a hint about how much farmland development ought to be allowed in an ideal situation.

This is certainly not an exhaustive list of further factors for study. Starting and ending housing prices in each community would be more than pertinent….

REFLECTION

This is the second one of these I wrote this morning.  Not at all confident about it.  But it was a good stamina check.  I happened to pick 2 very similar topics– both dealing with small community economic policies.  Need to make certain I don’t let my ideology get the best of me and start leaking out into my writing in the form of irrelevant off-topic palavering.

Next to Last Issue Topic on the List

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Issue Topic 39

ESSAY PROMPT

 

The following appeared as part of an article in a Dillton newspaper.

“In an effort to bring new jobs to Dillton and stimulate the city’s flagging economy, Dillton’s city council voted last year to lower the city’s corporate tax rate by 15 percent; at the same time, the city began offering generous relocation grants to any company that would move to Dillton. Since these changes went into effect, two new factories have opened in Dillton. Although the two factories employ more than 1,000 people, the unemployment rate in Dillton remains unchanged. The only clear explanation for this is that the new factories are staffed with out-of-town workers rather than Dillton residents.”

Write a response in which you discuss one or more alternative explanations that could rival the proposed explanation and explain how your explanation(s) can plausibly account for the facts presented in the argument.

ESSAY

Apart from the possibility that the factories are employing workers from out of town, there are several other plausible explanations for the unchanging employment rate in Dillton despite the relocation of two new factories there. This issue illustrates that in tackling public policy problems communities must necessarily take the broadest possible view of possible effects and outcomes both positive and negative. For instance, lowering the corporate tax rate by a sweeping 15% is a broad-brush measure that likely has many unintended effects on the economy of the region. This paired with new expenditures on relocation grants while for companies, ignores the important role that labor plays in this delicate public policy equation. Clearly Dillton has not done enough to ensure that their community is a desirable place for workers to live. And future economic policy initiatives would serve the community well to do so.

It is common for a community’s most successful entrepreneurs to become involved in local government. These individuals are the most well-connected, most powerful members of that community and they arguably have the greatest stake in the long-term health of the community. However, these individuals are by no means the perfect geniuses of economics that their biographers would make them out to be. When such individuals are empowered to steer the governance of a community, they bring their particular biases and political connections and prior commitments with them. It would seem that the leaders of Dillton are no exception to this all-too-common common scenario. Their decision to offer companies a tax boost likely reflect their professional experience as executives and the prior ideological and social commitments therein. Dillton’s City Council in seeking to solve the unemployment problem in their town have ironically failed to take into account the perspectives of the common workers.

A more thorough explanation of the failure of Dillton’s new policy to provide work for the people, would need take into account the living conditions in that community. If reasonably priced housing, schools, access to healthcare and recreational facilities are absent, or the people the community are otherwise disincentivised from staying or moving there for work, then the overall employment situation will suffer. Indeed, any gains made from the tax and grants policies may even be offset by the flight of workers who, despite new employment opportunities, have only meager desire to stay in town.

The quality of jobs available to workers as a result of these policies is also another potential roadblock to the improvement of the unemployment situation there. In other words, if the workers skill sets don’t match the jobs available, then the town’s economy is back to square-one in terms of the unemployment puzzle. The Dillton city council owes its citizens and resident workers to be more attentive to their living conditions, their educations and training levels, and to the factors which will satisfy their needs.

REFLECTION

Started going off the rails a bit in the second paragraph.  Is it necessary for me to be making a sort of overarching argument about the failings of the bourgeois city council in general?  Is it worth trying to organize my essay in this way, or am I just creating a pitfall for myself…  I dunno.  In this case, since I was able to kind of pull things back together in the final paragraph, I think it works.  My second essay this morning was not so successful that way.

 

How Can We Build Anti-Racist White Educators?

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One teacher reflects on what he and other white educators need to understand as they work to build anti-racist practices and identities.

Source: How Can We Build Anti-Racist White Educators?

This is a great, short piece from a periodical that I subscribe to online called Teaching Tolerance.  The title is a little misleading– or maybe it’s kind of a bait-and-switch. That is, I think the editors went with the word ‘tolerance’ because this more passe term gives you alliteration with ‘teaching.’  But don’t fooled, the contents is a much more robust anti-racism than the title would suggest.  However, the articles and hands-on, project-based, deeply reflective pieces in Teach Tolerance make it accessible across a broad spectrum of teachers, including those who may not be as well versed with the latest radical jargon etc., but teachers who are committed to making their teaching more just.

Also, this piece reminded me how much I really need to read more deeply in James Baldwin’s oeuvre.

Argument Task 6: Arctic Deer or Correlation Isn’t Causation or Data Shouldn’t Be Construed as Evidence Like This Probably

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Argument Topic 6

 

ESSAY PROMPT

Arctic deer live on islands in Canada’s arctic regions. They search for food by moving over ice from island to island during the course of the year. Their habitat is limited to areas warm enough to sustain the plants on which they feed and cold enough, at least some of the year, for the ice to cover the sea separating the islands, allowing the deer to travel over it. Unfortunately, according to reports from local hunters, the deer populations are declining. Since these reports coincide with recent global warming trends that have caused the sea ice to melt, we can conclude that the purported decline in deer populations is the result of the deer’s being unable to follow their age-old migration patterns across the frozen sea.

 

Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.

 

ESSAY

 

It may be impossible to discover the root cause of the decline in artic deer populations in this scenario, and while the likelihood of its link to global warming seems high given the dramatic change in this species’ habitat as described in the prompt, this linkage cannot be taken for granted. Indeed, as the prompt states, the reports of declines in population merely coincide with global warming trends. Nevertheless global warming should not be taken lightly, and it has undoubtedly had some effect on the deer communities in arctic Canada.

I am not an expert in the field of ecology or mammalian biology, but there would appear to be at least some intermediate points of investigation that might reveal the true nature of the deer’s decline in population. First, we learn that the deer rely on very limited amount of vegetation for their sustenance—vegetation that is also sensitive to temperature. So, some evidence of this vegetation’s thriving or lack thereof might shed some light on the subject. If the rising average temperatures in the deer’s habitat is too warm for the deer’s food to grow and thrive, those deer are going to be in trouble for lack of food. Granted, this contingency seems unlikely since, the prompt seems to suggest that these arctic vegetables grow well in the warm weather, but barring evidence to this effect, no firm conclusion is possible.

Likewise, the deer may be becoming stranded or otherwise isolated by the greater degree of ice-melt brought on by rising temperatures. It is possible, and here again the prompt seems to suggest that the deer may be unable to mate and reproduce on account of decreased mobility. Some evidence of the deer’s reproduction levels might be just the bit of data required to crack this case. The hunters, whose reports of lower deer populations represent the core recipients of human downstream consequences of the those fluctuating populations, could be tapped for reports or counts of deer offspring. And this might give some clue as to the fertility of the animals and shed a bit more light on the problem. But here again, even if a definitive change in deer fertility could be proved, this evidence would remain correlative, and the search ought to continue in order to flesh out this story with greater detail and more accurate and robust data.

All in all, there are any number of factors which might be leading to the reported decline in arctic deer populations. Indeed, even these reports ought to be corroborated by some evidence other than the reports of the hunters—not to call their judgement into question, simply to be as thorough and scientific as time and resources allow. Ultimately, I believe pinning a causal relationship on such a massive global phenomenon as climate change is foolish. Such a huge background effect is bound to have consequences across a broad swath of possible substrates for scientific evidence—the pH of the water in the ecosystem, changes in weather patterns, even the quality of the air, and the susceptibility of these islands landmasses to erosion. But all of these areas would be ripe for a search for evidence.

 

REFLECTION– went about a minute long on this one as I pieced the final paragraph together.  I felt like I may have been a little too snooty about the correlation is not causation thing.  But if I could be critical for a moment of the question prompt, it seems to be making conflating ecological data with the sort of evidence that you might find in a court case.  Science is never so pat– never so cut and dried– as evidence in a court of law purports to be.

Also, I deserve a pat on the back for sticking to doing 1 of these a day this week!  W00t!

Also, I tend to overuse commas. :\

It’s after midnight, which is affecting my ability to judge, but I’m not sure I answered the prompt in the way the test-makers wanted me to.  Is it wise to attempt to point out flaws in the construction of a test question in the context of answering it on a given test?  Write a response in which you discuss…

GRE Practice Argument Topic 5: Balmer Island Mopeds

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ESSAY PROMPT

The following appeared in a letter to the editor of the Balmer Island Gazette.

“On Balmer Island, where mopeds serve as a popular form of transportation, the population increases to 100,000 during the summer months. To reduce the number of accidents involving mopeds and pedestrians, the town council of Balmer Island should limit the number of mopeds rented by the island’s moped rental companies from 50 per day to 25 per day during the summer season. By limiting the number of rentals, the town council will attain the 50 percent annual reduction in moped accidents that was achieved last year on the neighboring island of Seaville, when Seaville’s town council enforced similar limits on moped rentals.”

Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation is likely to have the predicted result. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.

ESSAY

The introduction of a strict daily limit on moped rentals from 50 to just 25 per day on Balmer Island in order to achieve a 50% reduction in moped accidents is a policy that raises a number of important questions from both the point of view of economic viability and feasibility given the specific features of the Balmer Island community and its potential differences from its model neighbor, Seaville. There are also a number of specific concerns with regard to the efficacy of such a policy implementation across both communities.

First of all, there is the question of population. Balmer Island’s population during the summer months balloons to 100,000. But what percentage increase does this represent with respect to that community’s population during the off-season? And how does that compare with Seaville’s population? On the topic of demographics, the average age of moped users would be another useful factor to come to take into account since it is common knowledge that younger drivers are more predisposed to traffic accidents.

In addition to these demographic concerns, such infrastructure issues as the quality of each community’s roads and multi-modal transportation infrastructure might also come into play. For instance, a high rate of bus or taxi usage in Seaville may have tacitly contributed to or helped catalyze the effects of that town’s moped policy. Plus, the sheer quality of roads and bridges may have accounted for some of the accidents on Balmer Island. That is, it might be pertinent to know the relative age of these two communities’ roadways and their relative levels of maintenance.

Beyond these concerns, it would certainly be helpful to know precisely what sort of policy Seaville implemented that saw such a drastic decrease in the number of accidents from one year to the next. We are told that it was similar to the one under consideration on Balmer Island, but in what respects is it different? And how was it enforced? Were any fines issued to rental companies? Were there any costs associated with increased levels of vigilance or policing? What was the reaction to the policy by all the relevant stakeholders? In the prompt, Seaville’s moped policy measure seems to be viewed as a positive or strived-for model by the denizens of Balmer Island, but policy makers would do well to investigate the longer-term effects of the policy both on public safety as well as the local tourist economy. How was it successful apart from the reduction of accidents? Limiting transportation options for visitors may indeed decrease noise levels and add to the overall beauty of the island, but what unintended negative consequences might there have been?

Most obviously, I can’t imagine that the moped rental sector of the town’s industry was very enthusiastic about the mandated cuts. Then again, this may have allowed for price cuts. So, one final, crucial line of questioning would go to the core of the matter itself—what were the effects on the rental companies? Were Seaville moped rental services able to charge more for their newly scarce commodity? Or on the contrary, were their businesses undercut by new public awareness of the environmental nuisance of the bikes?

These are some of the centrally important questions that Balmer town council would need to address in their deliberations over this policy.

REFLECTION

I wrote this essay after watching 2 episodes of Breaking Bad.  It’s not clear how this timing affected my writing.  But I feel more confident about this ESSAY than about yesterday’s “ISSUE TOPIC.”  I just asked myself, “What would Gus Fring do in this situation?”  And the answer came tapping from the tips of my fingers: poison Don Eladio, take your revenge on the Cartel, and score a 6 on the open-ended section of the test.  So, that’s probably what I did.

But don’t take my word for it!