Here’s a wonderfully serious piece in the magazine Foreign Policy on what the wizarding world should do to recover and reconcile now that Voldemort has finally been vanquished.
… if history teaches us anything (consider the bitter legacy still lingering from the 17th-century Goblin Wars or the recent experience of American Muggles in Iraq and Afghanistan), it is that the defeat of Voldemort by Harry Potter may have been the easy part. Indeed, one might even say it was child’s play. The hard work of postwar stabilization still lies ahead.
It’s a bit long, but it’s worth reading at least through the first section on, “Transitional Justice and Reconciliation”.
This section points out that, sure, Voldemort’s henchmen need to be prosecuted before the law (and not just detained without charge), but it will be a lot more difficult to deal with the thousands who supported Voldemort in greater or lesser ways. After all, some of these only did what they did under threat. The article recommends a Truth and Reconciliation Commission like in South Africa.
Among their other recommendations are:
the breaking the monopoly of the Daily Prophet on the news media,
a Comprehensive Curse Ban Treaty,
more transparency at the Ministry of Magic,
a Charter on the Rights of Witches and Wizards,
“that the Wizengamot, the high council of Magical Great Britain, be split into separate legislative and judicial bodies,”
and closing Azkaban immediately.
You’ll notice that a number of these recommendations focus on expanding the rights of the individual and build in more checks and balances into government and the media. These, and the overall emphasis on building mechanisms to prevent future conflict, align well with the ideas of peace education. It might also be an interesting focus for a class discussion/Socratic dialogue.
I’d be curious to hear from any Harry Potter fans who might come across this post and have the time to read the article (even though school’s restarted and the homework’s being piled on).
Energy cannot be either created or destroyed, just changed from one form to another. That is one of the fundamental insights into the way the universe works. In physics it’s referred to as the Law of Conservation of Energy, and is the basic starting point for solving a lot of physical problems. One great example is calculating the average temperature of the Earth, based on the balance between the amount of energy it receives from the Sun, versus the amount of energy it radiates into space.
The Temperature of Radiation
Anything with a temperature that’s not at absolute zero is giving off energy. You right now are radiating heat. Since temperature is a way of measuring the amount of energy in an object (it’s part of its internal energy), when you give off heat energy it lowers your body temperature. The equation that links the amount of radiation to the temperature is called the Stefan-Boltzman Law:
where:
ER = energy radiated (W/m-2)
T = temperature (in Kelvin)
s = constant (5.67 x 10-8 W m-2 K-4)
Now if we know the surface area of the Earth (and assume the entire area is radiating energy), we can calculate how much energy is given off if we know the average global temperature (the radius of the Earth = 6371 km ). But the temperature is what we’re trying to find, so instead we’re going to have to figure out the amount of energy the Earth radiates. And for this, fortunately, we have the conservation of energy law.
Energy Balance for the Earth
Simply put, the amount of energy the Earth radiates has to be equal to the amount of energy gets from the Sun. If the Earth got more energy than it radiated the temperature would go up, if it got less the temperature would go down. Seen from space, the average temperature of the Earth from year to year stays about the same; global warming is actually a different issue.
So the energy radiated (ER) must be equal to the energy absorbed (EA) by the Earth.
Now we just have to figure out the amount of solar energy that’s absorbed.
Incoming Solar Radiation
The Sun delivers 1367 Watts of energy for every square meter it hits directly on the Earth (1367 W/m-2). Not all of it is absorbed though, but since the energy in solar radiation can’t just disappear, we can account for it simply:
Some if the light energy just bounces off back into space. On average, the Earth reflects about 30% of the light. The term for the fraction reflected is albedo.
What’s not reflected is absorbed.
So now, if we know how many square meters of sunlight hit the Earth, we can calculate the total energy absorbed by the Earth.
The solar energy absorbed (incoming minus reflected) equals the outgoing radiation.
With this information, some algebra, a little geometry (area of a circle and surface area of a sphere) and the ability to convert units (km to m and celcius to kelvin), a student in high-school physics should be able to calculate the Earth’s average temperature. Students who grow up in non-metric societies might want to convert their final answer into Fahrenheit so they and their peers can get a better feel for the numbers.
What they should find is that their result is much lower than that actual average surface temperature of the globe of 15 deg. Celcius. That’s because of how the atmosphere traps heat near the surface because of the greenhouse effect. However, if you look at the average global temperature at the top of the atmosphere, it should be very close to your result.
They also should be able to point out a lot of the flaws in the model above, but these all (hopefully) come from the assumptions we make to simplify the problem to make it tractable. Simplifications are what scientists do. This energy balance model is very basic, but it’s the place to start. In fact, these basic principles are at the core of energy balance models of the Earth’s climate system (Budyko, 1969 is an early example). The evolution of today’s more complex models come from the systematic refinement of each of our simplifications.
Advanced Work
If students do all the algebra for this project first, and then plug in the numbers they should end up with an equation relating temperature to a number of things. This is essentially a model of the temperature of the Earth and what scientists would do with a model like this is change the parameters a bit to see what would happen in different scenarios.
Feedback
Global climate change might result in less snow in the polar latitudes, which would decrease the albedo of the earth by a few percent. How would that change the average global temperature?
Alternatively, there could be more snow due to increased evaporation from the oceans, which would mean an increase in albedo …
This would be a good chance to talk about systems and feedback since these two scenarios would result in different types of feedback, one positive and one negative (I’m not saying which is which).
Technology / Programming
Setting up an Excel spreadsheet with all the numbers in it would give practice with Excel, make it easier for the student to see the result of small changes, and even to graph changes. They could try varying albedo or the solar constant by 1% through 5% to see if changes are linear or not (though they should be able to tell this from the equation).
A small program could be written to simulate time. This is a steady-state model, but you could assume a certain percent change per year and see how that unfolds. This would probably be easier as an Excel spreadsheet, but the programming would be useful practice.
Of course this could also be the jumping off point for a lot of research into climate change, but that would be a much bigger project.
References
Yochanan Kushnir has a page/lecture that treats this type of zero-dimesional, energy balance model in a little more detail.
I thought I’d fixed the commenting system, but apparently not. It should be working now. Special thanks to Deb for letting me know, and testing it out.
How do you know if a student has mastered a subject? How do you get students to better understand how they learn and take more control of their education? I’ve been thinking that giving them more control of their grading might be the answer.
Test grades give some information, but experiments can be just as, if not more, informative. Much depends on the learning style of the student and how they express themselves. Verbally oriented might be good at processing written information and putting what they learned on paper. Kinesthetic-oriented students are likely to do better with practical demonstrations and labs that require movement and coordination.
Since there’s some merit to both exams and laboratory experiments – tests are good for checking the understanding of basic facts, while good labs require application of concepts – they have to be somehow added together to determine if and how well as student has mastered the topic.
Usually, the different types of assessment are combined with different weights. 60% of the total grade for a class might come from exam scores, and 40% from labs. But, given the different talents of different students, might it not make more sense to adjust the weights based on the specific student.
In fact, it would probably be even better to have the students decide for themselves on their own personal grading scheme. It could be part of a classroom contract.
Students would have a strong incentive to come up with their own most beneficial grading system, and, if you gave them a little time to understand the exam and lab requirements (say half a semester) before coming up with the weights, they’d have a lot of incentive to really try to understand how they learn best, and how to demonstrate that knowledge.
Once they’d made a decision on grading weights, they could then focus more energy on the parts of the class they find interesting, which, if we’re lucky, make them more motivated to learn the subject. Then they could set out to acquire the same information and concepts from what is to them a more interesting perspective, without having to worry so much about the stress of struggling through those activities they find difficult and tedious.
A student who is good at experiments might learn the facts in the textbook better if they were looking up information for an experiment – a big picture to little picture perspective – while a student who’s read and understands the text might find the experiments a lot easier to deal with (and so perform better) if they’re less worried about getting the perfect grade.
There would probably have to set some limits as to how much they could play with the weights, say plus or minus 15%, but individualized, self-assigned weights could be a very powerful way of tailoring education, especially in a context where grades are necessary.
I’m setting up a new classroom this year. How it’s arranged is very important to me. Montessori classrooms are designed for open movement and having different things going on in different places at the same time. Unlike last year, I won’t have to manage the entire middle school in the same room for the entire day. Instead, middle and high-school students will come in for two-hour periods for math and science.
Two hours is a long time for anyone, so I don’t expect them to be able to sit still for the entire period. In fact, just like in last year’s middle school classroom, I intend that the class devolve into smaller groups for most of that time. Students will need to be able to move around freely and associate freely, so long as they respect each others ability to work. I’m trying to arrange the room to facilitate that.
So how to arrange the furniture?
I need open spaces for students to walk and move. Eric Jensen has an entire chapter of Teaching with the Brain in Mind dedicated to how important movement is to learning. His focus is primarily on the need to save time for recesses and PE in increasingly regimented school days, but he also talks about integrating movement into everyday learning: energizers to wake kids up; stretching for more oxygen; and so on. I certainly know that I do a lot of pacing when I’m trying to think.
David Walsh also sees movement in the classroom as particularly important for boys.
Adolescent boys can have five to seven surges of testosterone every day. … And because testosterone is geared towards quick release, adolescent boys are prone to follow any impulse that might release stress. [p. 62]
…
Some experts think that making students sit still at a desk all day isn’t good for either sex, but girls are better able to tolerate it. Boys are more likely to get frustrated by school and loose interest. [p. 100]
So no rows of desks. Instead, I’ve tried to make different work areas.
There’s one big area with a set of tables along three sides of a rectangle facing the whiteboard; students can be inside or outside of the rectangle depending on their needs.
Another area is centered around the couch, which may seem highly desirable, but I’ll be curious to see how they use it to work.
Toward the back of the room, there’s a solitary, larger-than-normal desk for a larger group that need space from the big set of tables.
I also have a smaller table near the window, that I envision would appeal to smaller, quieter groups, or even individuals sharing the same table.
And, finally, there is a bank of individual work spaces along the back wall.
That’s the plan, anyway. Classes have not started yet, so we’ll see how it holds up when it meets the enemy students. I am always happy to let them rearrange things, but most often they don’t seem to want to spend the time and effort.
I was sorting through my slide collection, while preparing for our recent move, and came across my binder of slides from New York on 9/11. These are actual, physical slides, organized neatly in plastic binder pages, not digital images.
If I remember correctly, I was just visiting the city that day, staying with my grandparents in Brooklyn. The visit was for work, I’d a post-doc lined up at Columbia and I’d lived in the city before, so I’d not thought to bring my camera with me.
So I walked into Manhattan, against the crowds turned out by the silent subways. Edging against the flux of humanity walking across the bridges away from the tragedy.
And I bought a camera, on the afternoon of September 11th, in a small shop somewhere around 32nd Street. The proprietor was sitting behind the glass cases, following what was going on outside on a small television set. Fortunately, the electricity and credit card system were still working. He was happy to sell me a good, used, fully manual Pentax K1000 (just like the one I’d left at home), and enough slide film to get me through the day.
I’ve always had faith in the strength and resiliency of New York. It’s where I’d spent my first four years, as an impressionable teenager, after immigrating to the U.S., but I would not have been able to harbor any doubts about those first, likely naive, impressions after that day. And this was without seeing or even knowing about the heroics at the World Trade Center. All I could see was the calm and matter-of-factness of the people on the street. Though the arteries had clogged, the blood of the city, its people, still flowed.
Nor was I the only one headed towards the dense clouds of smoke, made eerily attractive by the clear sunlight and pellucid skies of that clear September day. I don’t think I would have made it over the bridge if there were not a few other people, hugging against the railing, edging their way across. That infinitesimal trickle turned into a small but steady stream on the streets of Manhattan itself, which was then dammed up by the police line at Canal Street. Being unable to see anything from there, I turned left and joined the crowd this time as took me back across the Manhattan Bridge back into Brooklyn. A flag flies over the Brooklyn Bridge.
I figured the opposite waterfront would be the best place of any for me to get any glimpse of what was going on. So, once across, I looped under the eastern side of the bridge and walked along the roads that edge the shore until I ended up in Brooklyn Bridge Park.
The picture at the top of the post is from the Brooklyn Bridge Park. I managed to get two major icons into the frame that are important personal symbols: a piece of the Brooklyn Bridge is on the right edge and, if you squint, you can see the Statue of Liberty (my favorite landmark) on the left. They’re a good reminder of the history and purpose of this great city. I also like that the picture captures the silhouette of the city dove, a graceful symbol of peace, standing against the roiling clouds of smoke, dust and turmoil.
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.
