Martha Herbert argues that diet and environmental toxins play a significant role in creating autism in an interview with Anne Strainchamps on To the Best Of Our Knowledge.
After much thought, I have come to the formulation that autism may be most comprehensively understood and helped through an inclusive whole-body systems approach, where genes and environment are understood to interplay.
Shaw’s website is full of details about his adventures in foraging, as well as a lot of recipes — including some excellent photographs of the work in progress.
Rowan Kaiser asserts that Mort‘s the best place to start to discover the wonderful novels of Terry Pratchett.
the Discworld books combine silliness, satire, philosophy, and strong characterization to create a unique, often wonderful tone that’s more than capable of supporting a series with so many installments. But the number of installments can seem overwhelming, especially given that while the books have standalone narratives, they also have consistent sets of characters who develop over the course of the series, leading to an apparently complicated web of a few different, occasionally overlapping series-within-a-series.
My recommendation would be one of her runner-up gateways — either Guards! Guards! or Wyrd Sisters — but she makes good points. Her third runner-up, Small Gods, which is one of the stand-alone novels is one of my favorites, and was my first Pratchett book. And it got me hooked.
Pratchett’s work is intelligent fantasy, in that it’s a lot like the hard science fiction I prefer. It sets up the rules of its universe and then follows them to their logical conclusions, no matter how absurd.
I often wonder how these books would appeal to adolescents since there’s a distinct possibility that much of the quite enjoyable satire would pass over their heads. The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents won the Carnegie Medal for children/young adults, but while it retains Pratchett’s characteristic style and humor, it was written for a younger demographic, unlike most of his other books. I did get one student to read Small Gods, and her response, with a grimace was, “It made me think“.
The part of the brain responsible for logic and reasoning is slow to develop compared to the rest during our adolescence. As a result, adolescents are driven way too much by their emotions and instincts. This means that a lot of the time someone else, teachers and parents usually, have to provide that rationality for them, and help them develop those thinking skills for themselves.
That, at least, was my take-home message after reading David Walsh’s excellent book Why Do They Act That Way. He does an excellent job explaining how the brain develops during adolescence, how it affects the way teenagers behave, and some of the best approaches to dealing with it.
There are a lot of excellent details about how brain development interacts with hormones to create many of the behaviors we find typical of teenagers. Since puberty proceeds differently for girls and boys, Walsh also highlights the differences in the timing of development, and the contrasting results of the different hormones released.
Yet, he also recognizes that adolescent behavior is not solely the result of biology. The effects of neurological and hormonal changes are amplified in industrial societies where kids spend less time with parents, and more time with peers, than in non-WIERD cultures (see The Myth of Adolescent Angst) which leads into his approach to dealing with teens.
To address this unfortunate combination of nature and culture, Walsh advocates a structured approach to parenting, where rules are clear, reasonable, and enforced. This, however, needs to be balanced with the need to keep lines of communication open, which is not an easy trick. Teenagers will want to push you away, but it’s necessary to keep connected to them anyway.
He also emphasizes the need for mentoring good behavior and rational thinking, because, as we’ve seen before, while the developing pre-frontal cortex provides the capacity for formal thinking, it needs practice and training to work well. And, after all, two of the key things we ultimately look for in adults are self-control and the ability to think rationally.
This book is an extremely useful read for parents and teachers (though the first chapter is a bit slow for the impatient). It does a great job of explaining how biology affects behavior, and how to deal with them. I particularly like fact that Walsh has found that teens find it useful to know all this biology stuff too, and it affects how they behave.
Sitting innocuously on the clearance table at a Barnes & Noble (in Cedar Rapid, Iowa actually) was a copy of Georg Stehli’s The Microscope and How to Use It.
At 75% off it was less than $3, which is quite a steal for a guide to what I found to be the most fascinating piece of scientific equipment for my middle schoolers. One of their first natural world lessons was on how to use the microscope. In the classroom there was always one sitting on the shelf, protected by its translucent plastic cover, but easily accessible.
And, interestingly enough, my microscopy posts are some of the most popular posts on this blog (the onion cell is regularly in the top ten).
The Microscope and how to use it by Georg Stehli.
Apart from the basics of how to use a microscope, Stehli’s book goes into simple sample preparations and preservation for almost everything you’re likely to encounter in the curriculum, in the classroom, and in the back yard. Though neither crystal structure nor microfossils are covered, the techniques for looking a the hard parts of biological specimens are applicable.
I would have loved to have had a copy of this last year when I was trying to figure out which were the best dyes to use for some of the odder samples my students came up with, and how to make them into permanent slides. It’s not easy to find this kind of broad reference online.
Inspired by the author’s participation in the Allied bombing of the monastery at Monte Cassino during World War II, the novel is considered a masterpiece by literary critics. It has been compared favorably with the works of Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, and Walker Percy, and its themes of religion, recurrence, and church versus state have generated a significant body of scholarly research.
Describes Harlow and Deci‘s original studies that came up with the idea of intrinsic motivation. Note: Maslow (of Hierarchy of Needs fame) was Harlow’s student.
Three basic types of motivation (drives):
Motivation 1.0: Biological (need for food, drink, sex)
Motivation 2.0: Extrinsic (e.g. getting paid)
Motivation 3.0: Intrinsic
Chapter 1: Extrinsic versus Intrinsic Motivation
1. Wikipedia: a success almost entirely because contributors are willing to invest their time and energy for no reward; the very definition of intrinsic motivation.
Note: Despite my own challenges with students using Wikipedia as a reliable source, we use our own classroom Wiki extensively. Giving students projects with a clear goal in mind, but great freedom in execution (like the choose your own adventure stories), seems to tap into the same spirit that motivates the Wikipedia contributors.
2. Social operating systems: the basic, often invisible, assumption on which society runs.
Note: Good metaphor, but he explains it as if the development of our understanding of motivation paralleled human evolution/development. Pre-social humans were driven primarily by the biological imperative, like large animals still are, he claims. I am very uneasy about this sort of lazy extrapolation given how much we’re learning that differences between humans and animals are no where near where we thought they’d be, particularly given the social organization of many animals. He also ignores cross-cultural differences: different societies value self-actualization and other intrinsic motivation characteristics much differently than the WIERD one he seems to be describing.
3. Introduces behavioral economics (mentions Ariely): Humans are not anywhere near to being ideal, rational economic agents.
4. During the industrial revolution, work was mostly algorithmic (a worker could follow a clearly defined set of steps to get their job done), while now it’s mostly heuristic (workers have to come up with new things).
algorithmic work is being replaced by software and outsourced really fast (that’s globalization for you)
p. 30 – U.S. job growth – 30% algorithmic, 70% heuristic.
Note: Pink claims that heuristic work can’t be outsourced “generally”. He apparently wrote a book about it: A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future. I may have to get that one, because, while I can see automation eliminating most algorithmic work, I don’t know why heuristic work is so difficult to outsource. Certainly there are local, cultural issues that would make things like advertising campaigns difficult for outsiders (and teaching would probably be hard to outsource too because most people don’t want to send their kids overseas for school), but a lot of other stuff is not that difficult for some creative person somewhere else to do; the world is, after all, Flat. Heuristic jobs are still going to be more abundant than algorithmic, but going heuristic no magic bullet: global competition is still going to be a major factor in the future.
Chapter 2
Baseline rewards: the basics people need in a job that earns them a living. Salary, a few perks, some benefits etc.
Below baseline rewards there is little motivation.
Above baseline rewards extrinsic rewards can be counterproductive.
Work vs. Play: Mark Twain: “Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.”
When rewards don’t work:
When they are expected (see also post on Praise and Rewards) (called contingent rewards). If you do this, you’ll get this, does not work.
Deci et al., 1999: “tangible rewards tend to have a substantially negative effect on intrinsic motivation.”
“On average we found that each of us carries two or three mutations that could cause one of these severe childhood diseases.”
–Stephen Kingsmore, physician, Children’s Mercy Hospital in Greenfieldboyce (2010), New Genetic Test Screens Would-Be Parents.
NPR’s All Things Considered had two related articles on last night that deal with the specific topics we’re covering this week: genetic disease and recessive alleles.
The first one is about the latest in genetic screening technology, for determining if potential parents have recessive alleles that could combine to produce children with genetic diseases. Recent research has made this much easier.
The second touches on the ethical consequences of genetic screening. It could lead to an increase in abortion rates and leads us along the slippery slope of eugenics.
What if we engineered for intelligence?
This second story would make an interesting basis for a Socratic dialogue. As would, I think, the movie Gattica, which deals with the consequences of genetic screening and genetic customizations. I see it’s PG-13 so we may be able to screen it. Similarly, I may recommend Brian Stableford’s War Games to my eight graders who might like a military science fiction book that deals with genetic optimization. Alternatively, Nancy Kress’ Beggars in Spain might offer another interesting perspective on this issue.
