This anthropological review of human sexuality theory and history is neatly argued, but still flawed. The basic argument is that we are not evolved for monogamy, a point illustrated by many rebuttals of contradictory “research” throughout recent history, as well as evaluations of sexual practices in the communities of our evolutionary siblings — bonobo monkeys, in particular.
The central flaw in arguing that we should not, according to the authors, expect ourselves to adhere to monogamy, lies in the pure fact that monogamy ideals have grown and flourished in our agricultural, large-scale western societies. (The case is different in isolated tribes in the rest of the world.) Our bodies may not be evolutionarily suited to monogamy, but our emotions and our societal conditioning seem to be. Indeed, this is why so many people in first-world Western countries still have emotional difficulty with cheating partners or, in more liberal circles, the practice of polyamory. The authors of Sex at Dawn seem to recommend the latter, but even professional sex and relationship guru Dan Savage has to counsel polyamorous wannabes to go slow and take baby steps to re-condition their monogamous hearts.
All in all, this book was very thought-provoking, a must-read for any sociology nerd. However, a huge takeaway from it is my new conviction that human beings really need to stop trying to understand why we act the way we do, and just take it a day at a time. Anthropology and psychology are well and good, but at the end of the day, it’s our party and we’ll cry if we want to — or, more accurately, we’ll be monogamous or polygamous if we want to.
I love this melded image of Natalie Portman and Audrey Hepburn, from georgechamoun.tumblr.com (click image for source)
Yes, I love bad plays on words — in this case, “web” and “bibliography.” Here are a few things I’ve been reading about on the web that mean something to me, and the takeaways I gained from them.
MindHacks cites a study from the European Journal of Psychology that found that “physically attractive people are more likely to be psychologically balanced and accepting than the rest of us.” I think this depends on whether “physically attractive people” are universally attractive. From the study itself: “contemporary studies have revealed that people share common views of physical attractiveness regardless of race, age or nationality.” However, I completely disbelieve the study, because the participant sample and “judges” (model recruiters living in London — whose profession is based on completely commercialized ideals, not actual “beauty”) are severely limited. The researchers themselves admit this in the limitations of their paper. Tough luck, “science.”
Sociological Images shows the overcrowding of California prisons, making me grateful to have been raised as a law-abiding citizen in our prison-heavy country.
Lindy West on Jezebel says, “Stop using cavemen as an excuse for your fad diet,” and it’s true. Paleo diets are silly, as are diets of McNuggets and fries. We evolved to eat somewhere in between the two: think whole grains, fresh produce and local animal products in moderation.
The text:“Causons bavardage,” from MAIF, a French insurance provider (translation: “Let’s talk chatter”) The media: blog post/article The thought: Sidetalk or chatter in classrooms is a widespread roadblock to productivity. There are ways to identify and mitigate it. The lesson: Teachers might do better to embrace the learning power of student chattiness, instead of stifling it.
Pourquoi les élèves bavardent-ils ?
Explication qui revient le plus souvent : ” Un élève bavarde d’abord parce qu’il s’ennuie “.
Translation:
Why do students talk so much in class?
The most recurrent explanation: “Students talk in class primarily because they are bored.”
These infuriating, generalized lines tell only half the story. Although I’m hesitant to make generalizations about the entirety of an education system, I did spend time teaching and observing in a public French high school, and I did also read François Bégaudeau’s Entre les murs. A motif common to both of these is teachers’ ongoing struggle to quiet the incessant sidetalk (supposedly) inevitable in all classrooms. Many French teachers, and probably many teachers worldwide, spend a great deal of energy on attaining the (supposed) holy grail of classroom management: a silent class.
Silence is not the natural state of the average student, at any age. Chattiness is a social behavior, and I disagree that it comes primarily from boredom.* A good classroom should not be absolutely silent; instead, there should be enough opportunities for students to chat with each other about the subject matter that they won’t have time to digress into idle chitchat. This permission to chat freely about academic material is sometimes called “buzzing” in American, or at least Californian, school culture.
The MAIF article goes on to cite widespread disrespect for French teachers by their students, and tells tales of failed classroom management descending into unrecoverable chaos. As a student, I would certainly become bored, yes, and consequently lose respect for my teachers if I were yelled at or sent out of class every time the noise level reached above a whisper.
It’s certainly true that well-behaved students may appear to be the most hardworking and productive. But generalizing the well-behaved learner as the best of all learners is like generalizing a sheep’s follower mentality to be the most effective in the entire animal kingdom. Everyone learns differently, and many of us learn effectively through discussion. The flaw in the reasoning of “Causons bavardage” is in its insistence that talking in class is only ever bad, never good. I shudder to think that an entire country’s educators make the same generalization as MAIF.
The end of the article makes some huge concessions about its initial closed-mindedness, which I’ll translate here unofficially so that they can speak for themselves.
Selon Florence Ehnuel, il est primordial de poser une réflexion sur la façon de gérer la classe. ” D’abord en mettant en place une pédagogie adaptée via des travaux en groupe, des pauses, des activités variées et ensuite en repensant le cours magistral qui ne peut plus aujourd’hui être qu’un outil parmi d’autres ” Yann a entendu parler du co-enseignement, mesure qui consiste à faire intervenir deux enseignants dans une même classe. Ainsi, ces derniers supervisent des activités différentes à des moments distincts. Enfin, tous les témoins de ce dossier insistent lourdement sur la formation du corps enseignant en terme de gestion de groupe, qu’ils estiment très insuffisante et inadaptée à la réalité du terrain.
According to Florence Ehnuel, it is essential to consider methods of classroom management, “first by enacting teaching practices adapted via group work, breaks, and a variety of activities, and then by rethinking the traditional lecture style, which nowadays should only be one tool among many.” Yann [a music teacher] mentions the discussion of co-teaching, a method that consists of introducing two teachers in one class. In this model, the two teachers lead different activities at specific times.
Finally, readers of this report strongly emphasize teacher training in the realm of classroom management, which said readers find very lacking and poorly adjusted to the reality of the field.
*Translation note: not to argue semantics, but it’s also possible that here, d’abord simply means “first of all.” I chose “primarily” for the sake of making my point.
Ender’s Game seems to be on the favorites list of everyone who was once a nerdy pre-teen boy. After seeing it on so many such lists, in fact, I decided to investigate. I asked a lot of now-grown men what exactly drew them to Ender’s Game and left such an impression, but I’m still slightly mystified.
I think the appeal may lie in the endless battle sequences, which may certainly appeal to some — girls, even! — but not to me. I found the pacing of the story incredibly slow: all the talk of an all-out war with the buggers, and not a plotline climax to be seen… until the last thirty pages. The book drags on about Ender’s ascent in rank as soldier, with a few twists and turns, and although I suppose the meat of the overall plot is dynamic enough, I personally didn’t feel connected to any of it. I admit that the ending was a shock, but not enough to excuse the previous 200 pages of unsophisticated jumps forward by years within the span of a paragraph, unromantic narrative, and characters who somehow never became real to me.
The video game simulations seemed contrived and irrelevant to me, and the picture of life at the battle school wasn’t vivid enough for me to find it a worthy place to spend the majority of the book. By the end, I felt almost like each character was a different physical representation of the same boring army type — even Valentine, the “soft” sister character.
Pop culture phenomena certainly interest me, and I’m glad to have finally checked this one out. But it didn’t captivate me enough to make me follow through with the rest of the series. Like The Hunger Games, I feel this book could stand alone just fine, and I was much less enchanted by this one than by The Hunger Games.
The texts:The battle between your present and future self (Daniel Goldstein, speaker) and Cost of Eating Healthy vs. Unhealthy Part 2 (Lynn of Fit2Fat2Fit), On being wrong (Kathryn Schulz, speaker) The media: TED talk, blog post, TED talk The thought: In finances and health, our present “wrong” decisions strongly affect our future self and outcome. It is hard to satisfy one without sacrificing the well-being of the other. The lesson: [Test your critical literacy by reading this post and finding a lesson of your own! Tell me in the comments. You'll find mine at the end. ]
A friend of mine is in medical school, and whenever we talk, she teaches me many new things that she has learned in her classes there. A lot of them are cautionary tales — when pregnant, you must strike a perfect balance between no vitamin A and too much vitamin A if you don’t want your baby to have this or that vision defect; to avoid the dreaded Dowager’s hump (I just spent way too long looking for the perfect link for “Dowager’s hump”), people under 30 should take calcium three times a day, but that after 30 there’s nothing more you can do (!).
In thinking about these lessons, and relating them to what I’ve seen in our self-diagnosing culture (WebMD, anyone?), I can’t help believing that outside the laboratory/doctor’s office, medical advancements and their propagation in the real world (not to mention the ever-viral internet) are perpetuating paranoia. Here is what I think happens:
making mistakes and getting bad results (or seeing the result of other people’s mistakes) makes us afraid of incurring more mistakes
fear inspires prevention
prevention means
seeking to better inform our choices and avoid mistakes,
only making choices with known, good outcomes, or
blindly depriving ourselves for the sake of a future payoff
How does this flow of fear and future relate to my texts? Well, Daniel Goldstein researches this exact science, and he inspired my above thinking. You can watch his TED talk below, where, among other things, he demonstrates how people can make more economically beneficial decisions for themselves by seeing a simulation of their future self’s emotions in correlation to their present decisions.
This is certainly interesting, and I’m sure I would have benefited financially from these ideas before choosing my undergraduate institution, which has left me with tens of thousands of dollars in debt. But an important aspect of that choice I made, is that I don’t regret it. Goldstein’s projects hinge on people’s readiness to regret their choices. Let’s look at another facet of regret.
At Fit2Fat2Fit.com, Drew, a personal trainer, decided to spend six months gaining weight on a typical American diet and activity lifestyle, then working himself back to health in another six months. His wife, Lynn, recently wrote a reflection on the unforeseen health and financial costs of his “fat” stage. She mentions doctor visits and buying creams for chafing, and the extra costs of dining out — all of which were mostly unexpected or surprising. She counsels others to avoid these by staying healthy, since the long run benefit is so great. That is, like in the case of the dowager’s hump, without knowledge of how we may harm our future selves, we sometimes make poor choices and incur unexpected costs, which causes us to regret our past ignorance (or simple carelessness).
This brings me to “On being wrong,” Kathryn Schulz’s TED talk. You can watch it below; her essential message is that we need to allow ourselves to be unconventional, and to let go of this whole “wrong” thing. I equate the “wrong” thing to that feeling of regret when we find that our choices have led us to “pay”: needing chafing cream or having a dowager’s hump, or simply being embarrassed that our ideas don’t match society’s definition of correct.
There is no time to waste in our lives regretting choices we have already made. If they were “wrong,” then so be it — we’ll simply deal with them the best we can. For my student debt, I am doing my best to understand my finances and pay them off gradually. From fear of dowager humps (which prevails in spite of love for the name), I did start taking calcium, but who knows how long that habit will last. Plus, if my future self is unhealthy, it will probably be a result of a general set of mistakes, not just calcium-related. So I’ll just try to continue being healthy right now, in the best way I know how — running, eating well, drinking water, etc. It’s true that my future self depends heavily on my present self being perfect and omniscient. But how dare my future self demand that of me?
The texts:This is Your Brain on Music, book (Daniel Levitin), various songs (various artists) The media: book, songs The thought: Society has a de facto schema of cultural knowledge that we expect everyone to have — in subjects from literature, music, mathematics and many others. The lesson: It is unreasonable to set standards for wide ranges of material; everyone must set their own and be open to learning about other people’s preferences.
The concept of cultural literacy, or the standards of what we ought to know in our society and culture, is not new. I’m sure there are earlier examples of the movement, but in my introductory education course, we discussed E.D. Hirsch‘s controversial idea that there is a core of essential, non-negotiable knowledge that students must have to be culturally competent. He published a prescriptive list of what ought to be taught, and roused a lot of rabble over the concept of educational standards.
I have a lot of feelings about standards in schools: on the one hand, I am glad to have had the thorough education I did, thanks to my teachers’ adherence to standards. On the other hand, I think standards often stifle teachers and students alike, and that a freer learning experience can be a significant boon to students. Certainly, most people feel a bit ruffled when other people tell them what to know. Continue reading
Just a little plug for my fellow book nerds. I know not many people are reading this blog (yet!), but I am always looking for other readers to share with on Goodreads, for book suggestions, interesting reviews, and fun stuff I’m sure I haven’t even discovered yet!
The text: Three online articles about computer science education The media: blog, magazine article, news article The thought: Computer science education faces challenges, viz. short student attention span, teaching online safety, and the importance of early CS curriculum necessary for future engineers The lesson: Strangely enough, I am in a position to research and implement these things to a degree.
Allow me to get very meta for a moment while I praise this article at the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) blog: Inspiration. I feel meta in responding to it because the post itself is a response to Generation Wired in Parade. As encouragement for you to read both articles, I offer the comment I made on Myra Deister’s CSTA post.
Thank you for this post! You’ve addressed exactly the issues that concern me about today’s learners – particularly attention span! And the resulting lower levels of concept retention and perseverance that you mentioned. When you think about it, if we want our students to have the focus required for *any* college-level work – not just programming – we should demand that they train themselves to focus. It’s true that this is difficult to do when the rest of the world allows their minds to wander.
I’ve recently started a new job as, essentially, a CS teacher and network admin support, in a K-8 California school, and I feel a bit overwhelmed. Although I am interested in both of those fields, I don’t have formal training in them. I’m part of a hybrid learning pilot, so the standards for my position aren’t quite set. I definitely want to instruct students in online safety and security, but it may initially take a backseat to fundamentals like the parts of a computer and proper typing!
I have thought about using social media as a learning tool; if only it were easily regulated or designed for educational audiences. Sharing is certainly a huge asset for learning, but I hesitate on Facebook, and the Twitter character limit bothers me. There must be social tools out there tailored for classroom use.
My above comment is a bit scatterbrained, because I wanted to respond immediately. (I think critical thought can come second, as long as we are responding to stimuli and getting our brains warmed up first!)
I’ve supplemented these two articles with another, which was also cited elsewhere in the CSTA blog. It concerns a British pilot for introducing more advanced programming concepts to students already solid in their computer literacy: Schoolkids learn coding at GCSE level in curriculum trial. Here is what I’m taking away from my readings:
Today’s students are immersed in technology, and are beyond sufficiently literate in normal usage. Yet their habits are evolving to the instant gratification of this technology.
Students may be adapting to new tech trends by learning differently. Educators need to be aware of this change.
The engineering and science of technology will be one of the most important fields in the years to come, but students may lack the traditional study skills to pursue this kind of knowledge.
Action plan for me: research students’ attention (informally and formally!), gradually introduce computer science topics to my computer literate students. The latter requires research of computer science education… and probably computer science itself. Oh boy.
If nothing else, I will be training myself to focus on my learning the way I want my students to focus!
The text: Daniel Tammet’s TED talk on synesthesia The media: video/lecture The thought: Tammet, a high-functioning autistic with synesthesia, a way of thinking that integrates information, visual/audio properties and feelings, explains the ways in which his mind works. The lesson: A diversity of learning styles can encourage us to see a “richer” world.
I support the concept of this video — schools and, for that matter, citizens of the world, should open their minds to others’ ways of learning and seeing things. But I disapprove somewhat of the way this concept has been treated in the video. I don’t know enough about Daniel Tammet to make generalized comments on his work or perspective, but I think that sometimes singling out savants and people with autism as having this “higher plane” of experiencing life is detrimental. It makes people who have been labeled by society as “normal” learners seem inferior. I don’t see numbers as shapes with colors! they might say to themselves. What a drag… maybe someday I can start to see things the way autistics do.
The problem, as is often the case with champions of diversity, is that this kind of hierarchical value system on types of learners is the complete opposite of what diversity should be! To me, diversity in itself means the appreciation of everyone as a unique individual. However, there are many traits on which most humans converge. This is ok. We are still unique, and we can still do great things. Just because we don’t think in pictures (Temple Grandin shou-out) or see colors when we hear music, doesn’t necessarily mean we should try to, but that is essentially what Tammet is preaching in his talk.
Now, I won’t tear him down for this; more open-mindedness is always welcome and I’m glad this concept has been brought to light. But let’s look critically at this: his audience is, primarily, upper-middle class, educated folks who thirst for newness and knowledge. They get exactly that from his talk, but what I think is missing is a more actionable takeaway: a suggestion of how to see other people with the same variety of perspectives. Our society is particularly ignorant of the disconnect between language dialect and intelligence, to take a rather tangential example. Unfortunately, the same goes for race/socioeconomic status. This intellectual hegemony is a dividing force, and lionizing people like Daniel Tammet when everyone deserves that respect for their intellect, seems backwards to me.
My point is that we don’t need to prove we see the world in unconventional ways to be appreciated. Open-mindedness and acceptance should be the default. I hope viewers of this video understand that!
The text: Sunday, October 30th, 2011: chat with my friend J. The media: instant message conversation The thought: Retaining what we read and what we think about is a different process for everyone. How can we translate input to intellectual gain? The lesson: “Reading empiricists” do what works for them — experiencing what they read, writing about it, discussing it, making connections to reality that will hold the new knowledge in their consciousness.
I will tell you a brief story about the name of this blog. I’ve always had a keen interest in wordplay, word puzzles and sound symbolism, and I would spend hours listing clever, lyrical names for story characters, websites, pets, children and my own online screen names. At first glance, Readtainment may appear to be a simple portmanteau of “read” and “entertainment.” This is partly true, but it also plays on the word “retain,” because through this project I want to better retain the things I read, the entertainment I consume.
Here’s an excerpt of the conversation I had about knowledge retention with my friend J, one who has always impressed me with her sharp memory, ability to learn efficiently and connect her diverse knowledge across fields.
me: i’m curious – how do you normally treat your reading? is it more of an entertainment pursuit, or is the nonfiction something you try to retain for academic/intellectual purposes? J: i guess impulsively, i just read books that i open and want to keep reading haha J: hmm. i think pretty much everything i encounter goes into my brain for real unless i intentionally spit it back out, like transformers 3 me: that’s a good skill, being able to retain things me: how do you make sure they stay there – do you use it all later somehow? in conversation or something like that? J: well, i definitely forget stuff… J: yes, i do use most of it in conversation, but the second thing is that if something i read really affects me i try to experience it in my life as well J: i’m like a reading empiricist … i have to try stuff! me: interesting – examples? J: well i guess like, i’m not content to just read about meditation, i want to actually try meditation, for example… but it really just affects everything, i think it’s like when i was a kid and i would eg read ‘bridge to teribithia,’ in which characters enjoyed racing at lunch time, and then spend the whole summer ‘racing’ in my backyard. i just didn’t grow out of that, so… J: or like, senior year, i was super into korean literature and history suddenly and read everything in our library, and then i went to korea
The reason I stress the importance of retaining what we read and learn is that I worry about the state of education in many modern countries. High values on rote memorization and statistics, rather than the process of learning, internalizing and synthesizing, often lead students down a path of one-time memorization, also causing teachers to “teach to the test.” Government education standards, although surely well-meaning at their core, enable this skewed emphasis on formulaic “learning.” Many neoliberal education movements defy this oligarchic approach; see this ZenHabits.net post on “unschooling.”
The more I think about it, the more I believe learning sticks much better when students follow their own interests, investigating topics and creating their own “final projects,” so to speak. True, maybe trend-obsessed youngsters aren’t the best designers of their own academic pursuits. But The Linguist agrees with me: self-study beats the classroom.
Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality by Christopher Ryan
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