"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

You probably recognize, in the post title, the words of Edmund Burke (1729 - 1797).

He was an Irish statesman and supporter of American independence while a member of the British House of Commons,

The inscription on his statue (Bristol, England) reads: Burke 1774-1780. "I wish to be a member of parliament to have my share of doing good and resisting evil". Speech at Bristol 1780.

This blog is about education, but we're at a point where education and political activism may be running down the same track.

I'm not talking about partisan politics, I'm talking about educators taking their proper places in public life as leaders and persons of good example. We are some of those people Burke is talking about.

By now, the story of the Jena Six should be familiar to edubloggers worldwide. I posted about Lessons From Jena just a few days ago, hoping to remind teachers and administrators to bring some enlightenment about racial tolerance to their students (yes, looking to break or weaken the cycles of prejudice that infest entire families). The fallout from the Jena story makes me wonder if we ever entered the twenty-first century.

Today's New York Times carries a story about the Canarsie High School Principal, Tyona Washington, who received a package yesterday at school with a hate note and a noose. According to the article, "The Canarsie episode was at least the eighth time in the past few weeks that a noose was discovered in the New York area. In one instance, a noose was placed on the doorknob of the office of a black professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College."

The eighth time!?

And here's a story dated two days ago from the Times that deals with incidents that are on-going in Nassau County, where I spent most of my elementary and all my secondary school years. I'll be 63 years old next month, folks, and I assure you that this sort of crap wasn't going on there even in the pre-civil rights legislation days of the 50s and early 60s.

Looks like we need to do the thinking I was talking about on the move, pick the lesson plans well, and get to work now.

This is not something we can put off until our curriculum guides say it's time. The fallout is raining down now, and we have to step up to the plate.

Another reminder of our need to act comes from a poem by Pastor Martin Niemoller (1892–1984) about the failure of German intellectuals and other public figures to respond to Nazi bullying and terrorizing of the German population. Some of you may have seen a famous filmstrip that dramatized the poem.

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn't a Jew.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

Speak out folks, talk about race and racial tolerance. Teach about it.

Not Gonna Happen!

Does it hurt if your brain gets full? We'll never know, because even if we were able to learn 10 or 100 times what we normally learn each day -- even going to school -- none of us will live long enough to find out. Not even close.

Briefly, learning capacity, for the average person, is virtually without limit. The challenge is, how to use our brains more efficiently so we can be more effective in our daily lives.

The really big question for modern educators is, "Why don't we teach students brain-friendly learning techniques?" I'm talking about techniques that were familiar to the ancient Greeks and Romans, the orators and storytellers who had to remember tons of stuff without teleprompters or notes. How come we, as teachers, can't model the mind power of those classical folks we read about in the history books?

I don't know the answer to that question, but I do know that my Dad, who was a high school teacher and a scholar until the day he died, taught me about mnemonics -- techniques for making use of the associative power of memory -- so that I could more easily recall information teachers expected I would learn by rote, that is, repetition, aka banging your head into a brick wall until you make a dent.

The first of what I consider the most important brain-friendly learning techniques is the art and science of mnemonics.

From Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (edited):

Main Entry: mnemonic
Function:adjective
Etymology:Greek, mindful, to remember
Date:1753

1 : assisting or intended to assist memory; also : of or relating to mnemonics
2 : of or relating to memory

Here's how I used to introduce the topic in my brief few minutes with eighth grade parents at Back-to-School Nights (which are happening around our district this forthcoming week)...

After an announcement about where parents could find our curriculum (in the student handbook!), I went on to discuss how I would teach their children to succeed in my class. I barely had time to introduce them to brain-friendly learning techniques and explain "grading for learning," but we alway had fun with mnemonics.

Imagine if you are a parent sitting in Mr. Repairman's eighth grade social studies class (American History through 1877) and he tells you that one of the state's onerous standards requires you to actually know, that is, memorize (for crying out loud) the names of the thirteen British colonies that became the original states.

Then Mr. Repairman says, "I can teach you to remember them flawlessly in five minutes or less, and what's more, you will be able to recite them, not only in the order you learn them, but backwards as well."

Then Mr. Repairman asks, "Now how many of you think I'm full of beans." Along with a few smiles, a few hands go up. Parents are more cautious that kids. When I do it in class during the colonies unit, the whole class raises hands!

Five minutes later, the braver parents are reciting the names of the thirteen colonies as promised. The ones who brought their children enabled a preview for those precocious rascals, most of whom competed at the Back-to-School class with the adults to show that they, too, could do the magic memory exercise, both forward and backward.

The students, for this first exercise, used my mnemonic, but later, when they had to memorize the goals of the US Constitution, for example, they used their own creations and drew their mnemonics as well.

Tomorrow I'll go into a little more detail and cite some references for teachers who want to help their students remember everything from mere facts to complex concepts, almost effortlessly.

By the way, when one of the parents asked another teacher during the same evening why they didn't teach students how to remember stuff more easily, the parent reported back to me that the teacher dismissed Mr. Repairman's mnemonics as "Mere memory tricks. Of no value, whatsoever."

I was probably overgeneralizing when I thought to myself, "What a moron."

The teacher, not the parent. ;-)

Cartoon Copyright 1986 by Gary Larson

Brain-based What?

Over on What It’s Like On the Inside, The Science Goddess is aptly referencing the Broadway musical Young Frankenstein in her discussion of “brain-based learning strategies.” You have to read her post for yourself and pay special attention to her links that will lead you to a short rant about the similarities between brain-based and butt-based learning strategies authored by Professor Plum, who may or may not still be stirring up the edublogosphere.

Maybe the reason I enjoyed her post so much is because I’ve always struggled with what to call my favorite focus (brain potential) on teaching and learning strategies (in addition to “grading for learning”). After all, we weren’t born with brain-use instruction manuals attached to our big toes…

I finally decided, after considerable deliberation over the years, to go my own way, depart from popular education research reporting, and call all the “stuff” under the heading “brain-based” by somewhat different names, to whit, “brain-friendly teaching strategies,” and “brain-friendly learning strategies.” My students could deal with that and so could their parents.

To be perfectly frank, my students and I never put much time into brain physiology, which seems to be an obligatory preface to discussing (and practicing) brain potential for learning, but in the end, useless.

What the brain can do is what lights up my Christmas tree. My students and I had lots of conversations about learning potential being virtually infinite, and old age being no barrier to continued learning (thank you, God). And, at the beginning of the school year, I promised to share with them ways to access this incredible potential.

Tomorrow, I’ll share the difference between the instructional and learning techniques, and some of those techniques that helped my students harness their own brainpower. It’s not your ordinary, everyday classroom stuff. Two of the ideas I’ll highlight helped me get a 4.0 in graduate school, without a brain transplant or any increase in I.Q.

I’ll include some references in case anyone is curious about how to maximize their students’ achievement potential by applying some of these concepts.

Are We Moving Too Fast in the Pursuit of "Rigor"?

While in elementary school, I forgot how to do long division the summer after we learned it. Thanks to my paternal grandmother, a saint in her own right and a 6th grade teacher at PS 199 in Brooklyn, NY, I got the proper brushing up.

As a high schooler, I struggled with algebra, aced geometry, and took "fusion math" in the eleventh grade from a strange duck who one day looked at his well-behaved (really) class of eleven students and said, "I hate you kids. If there was anything I could be doing besides teaching, I'd be out of here." That was my last day in a high school math class. My Dad, also a high school teacher and WWII combat vet, decided that it was neither a healthy environment, nor physically a safe place to be.

And the math struggle goes on.

Today I read that Lehigh Valley (Pennsylvania) math professors are among the many nationwide who complain that rushing through high school algebra and geometry courses, or following an integrated math curriculum, is leaving too many students currently entering college unprepared for college math.

Their concerns -- that students are not developing strong basic math skills because of the rush to move on -- are well-founded, in my opinion, and I'm burning to know how our district sees this news item.

After a full year of college level statistics and studying algebra for the GRE, I lost my math phobia and even begged my principal(s) to assign me to a pre-algebra class where kids were struggling. (They never did take me seriously. I'm not math certified.) So I'm convinced now that although some kids might be somehow more predisposed to either math or verbal high achievement, all students who are well-taught can succeed in math and develop strong skills useful over a lifetime.

A fellow edublogger noted that although we seem to know what to do to achieve pedagogical excellence as measured by high student achievement, we just don't seem to do it. There's a connection here.