Language Arts – Page 11 – Montessori Muddle

Sentience = life?

His thought turned to the Ring, but there was no comfort there, only dread and danger. No sooner had he come in sight of Mount Doom, burning far away, than he was aware of a change in his burden. As it drew near the great furnaces where, in the deeps of time, it had been forged, the Ring’s power grew, and it became more fell, untameable save by some mighty will. As Sam stood there, even though the ring was on on him but hanging by its chain about his neck, he felt himself enlarged, as if he were robed in a huge distorted shadow of himself, … – The Return of the King (Tolkien, 1955).

One of the ways students collect seed ideas for writing is by recording significant quotes from things they read in their Writer’s Notebooks; things that resonate with them; things they might want to respond to. I use this blog in a similar way. My notebooks tend to be filled with equations, sketches and diagrams, while anything I can type ends up here….

I’ve been rereading Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings for the xth time (where x is a number too large to recall). As the Ring crosses the mountains into Mordor its power grows and it becomes hard to control. If the ring represents technology and its bearer, at this point Sam, represents the common person, then we see the choices facing the individual in the modern society; either to take the ring and bear the consequences of using complex, powerful technology that you do not understand, or to forgo it and accept the loss of power that entails. Sam faces what we face every day, though usually we’re unconscious of the decision.

This is also, pretty much, the central theme of Jurassic Park (I can see that this post is turning into an intertextual essay, but we’ll see). Crichton expresses the point more explicitly when he has the mathematican, Malcome, diatribe about the lack of humbleness of the creators of Jurassic Park; they build on existing technology without spending the time and effort learning how to use it. Crichton’s character believes that in putting the time and effort in mastering something, we learn to respect it, and give more though to the morals and ethics of how and if to use it. Easy to use, genetic technology is the equivalent of the Ring. It is powerful, too easy to use, and can lead to disastrous consequences.

We’ve been covering the characteristics, patterns and needs of life this last week, and, in discussing what qualifies as alive and what does not, the question of robots and computer viruses came up. Well if software does become sentient, will we have to recognize it as being alive? There’s no end to the number of science fiction books and movies that address all number of aspects of this issue. The self-aware SkyNet in the Terminator is one paranoid end-member example, but I’ve always liked James Luceno’s catholic computers in Big Empty.

However, advances in intelligent computing have not achieved sentience quite yet, and it might be a while. Yet, it would be interesting to consider a world where everyone has a computer on the brink of sentience. Oh what power would we each have then. And if these intelligent computers’ (potential) characters are colored by their interaction with human individuals, the good, the bad and the ugly, what would happen when a billion pieces of software cross the sentience threshold all at once (with the latest and greatest software update ever)?

Reading poetry in the morning

Mrs. Z. donated two small books of poetry, The Best Poems Ever and Poetry Speaks (much thanks). The second comes with an audio cd, where many of the poems are read by the authors. Since some of the authors are adolescents themselves, their reading can be a little halting, but there is a nice authenticity.

The The Best Poems Ever has a lot of the classics. I read William Blake’s The Tiger as an example. The students though my reading was pretty lifeless so I recited it for them with a lot of emphasis and hand motions. They were pretty impressed that I’d memorized the poem so quickly, at least until I told them I’d memorized it years before (probably in middle school actually). I probably should have kept this secret. Sometimes you need the mystique.

We’ve come up with a schedule so someone different will read every morning at the end of community meeting. They’re required to choose their poem ahead of time and have practiced reading it before they present. We also take a little time for comments, the objective is to try to identify the issues and the subtexts. This is how I discovered, with much reasoned explanation, that Edna St. Vincent Millay metaphorically described the asteroid impact theory for the extinction of the dinosaurs over 30 years before scientists came up with the idea.

Edna St. Vincent Millay and the extinction of the dinosaurs

Travel
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

The railroad track is miles away,
And the day is loud with voices speaking,
Yet there isn’t a train goes by all day
But I hear its whistle shrieking.

All night there isn’t a train goes by,
Though the night is still for sleep and dreaming,
But I see its cinders red on the sky,
And hear its engine steaming.

My heart is warm with friends I make,
And better friends I’ll not be knowing;
Yet there isn’t a train I wouldn’t take,
No matter where it’s going.

I discovered today, during our morning poetry reading, that Edna St. Vincent Millay‘s poem Travel is a metaphor for the asteroid collision that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. The train is asteroid bearing down on the Earth, the smoke from the train is the dust and ash kicked up by the impact, while the whistling of the train is the moan of the dying dinosaurs.

Remarkably perceptive of St. Vincent Millay since the asteroid impact theory was posited by the Alverezs’ group decades after her death in 195.

Little Red Riding-hood

And, saying these words, this wicked Wolf fell upon poor Little Red Riding-Hood, and ate her all up. — Perrault, 1922, p. 25..

One of my students chose to do their first writing assignment in the mold of a classic fairy tale. So, as part of the revision process, I suggested they read the original Little Red Riding-hood to get away from the conventional, Disneyfied storylines. The Guttenberg Project, which aims to make available all the books that are now in the public domain as free ebooks, has Charles Perrault’s original book of fairy tales.

The student was somewhat surprised that Little Red Riding-Hood was eaten by the wolf in the end. They shared this with the rest of the class quite loudly.

Desserts and deserters

How are delicious desserts related to military deserters? The Splendid Table explains the common history of the words.

Dessert and deserter by from the Splendid Table – September 4th, 2010.

Jurassic Park: Web of Issues

Well we watched Jurassic Park last night and concluded it with a discussion about the issues underlying the movie, the same way we’ve been studying analyzing the issues underlying texts. Discrimination based on race and obesity came up first (the fat guy and the black people “always” die), but I was able to coax a bit of discussion about the role and responsibility of science and scientists. Our discussion is summarized in the graphic organizer above, but there are many more subtexts to the story that we did not have time to explore.

I like both the movie and the book because, like most good science fiction, they explore some interesting issues that relate quite nicely to the curriculum. Jurassic Park has a nice little introduction to DNA and gene sequencing that is tied to some the history of life on Earth. As works of art in their respective fields, however, I prefer the movie. The novel has a lot of wonderful detail, and the scientist in me loves the detail, but the characters are not as well drawn and the story seldom strays from its main thesis, scientific hubris. What it has to say about that issue is well expressed and well researched so it does capture the interest of the reader. (The follow-up book, “The Lost World”, sails adrift of the science, is logically incoherent and has a proportionate deterioration in the quality of the writing.) I do however recommend the original Jurassic Park book to my students as a personal novel.

Steven Spielberg makes a great movie, extracting empathetic performances from the actors. Since the book’s author, Michael Crichton, also wrote the screenplay, the movie stays true to the core issues in the text. I think its a great example of a successful, dare I say synergistic, collaboration.

Tomorrow, instead of retelling around the issues in writing, my students are going to try to do so in a skit. This could get interesting.

[W]rite it. Without Fear.

Dear Trelles:

How I envy your youth, your tremendous energy, ready to conquer all the possibilities of the world or die in the attempt. Tell me about your novel, but above all write it. Without fear. But in addition, and this may matter, with a humility worthy of San Francisco or at least Giacopone da Todi. With every day that passes, I am more convinced that the act of writing is a conscious act of humility. Well, I await your reply. In the meantime, receive a strong embrace.

Bolaño

The letter above was written by the Chilean novelist Roberto Bolaño to an aspiring writer, Diego Trelles Paz. Found in the magazine n+1 via the Dish.