Category: Language Arts

Well, what about the Muslims?

First they came for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up, because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me,
and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me.

-Martin Niemöller

I used the Martin Niemöller poem in our lesson on “marking-up” today and, in groping for modern analogies, I ended up asking what if “they” started rounding up Muslims in the name of preventing terrorism. My students voiced the opinion that it would be a violation of their rights and we got into a little discussion about how they could “speak-up”, which was a nice precursor that I’ll have to refer back to when we have our upcoming civil-society/governance projects.

Coincidentally, I ran into an interesting post on anti-Muslim prejudice.

38 percent of Americans in 2006 said they would never vote for a Muslim for president, just about the number who said they would never vote for a gay person. In December of 2004, Cornell released a survey showing that half of Americans consciously told a pollster that they would favor a curtailment of civil rights for Muslims. – Armbinder, 2010 (my emphasis)

(I’m not sure where he gets the 38% from, but Armbinder does cite a Gallup report on the topic.)

I was curious to see what my students thought about the possibility that half of Americans would favor less rights for Muslims. They seemed somewhat surprised. They seemed to think that adults should know better.

Regarding Niemöller poem, Harold Marcuse has an interesting webpage dedicated to the history of the words quoted above. There is some controversy, since Niemöller used different groups at different times, trading out Communists for socialistist or trade unionists for example. This is a nice illustration of the fact that although the words change, the meaning remains the same.

Calvin and Hobbes search engine

The Complete Calvin and Hobbes is a wonderful resource.

Calvin and Hobbes is one of the most deeply interesting and intellectually hilarious comics. It ran from 1985 to 1995 when Bill Watterson decided it was time to stop, so it retained a persistent quality throughout its run. Watterson was very serious about the newspaper comic form and did a lot of experimenting with C&H. His thoughts are nicely documented in the paper collections.

Though I have the books, it’s nice to have archives of the entire series online. Even better, Michael Yingling recently created a Calvin & Hobbes Search Engine that can find key words in the dialogue, so now you can quickly find that more obscure script to brighten up your day.

I really hope that Yingling has finessed the copyright issues because this is a great resource for teachers looking for that little something to spark the imagination. The strips often go into issues at such depth that some of the series make great examples for literature discussions. I find the issues resulting from the transmogrifier/duplicator to have a powerful, though more light hearted, equivalency to the novel Frankenstien. I also am partial to the philosophical world-view of Calvin’s father.

DNAi: History of genetics and manipulating DNA

DNA. (from Wikipedia)

DNA interactive is another great resource for studying the history of genetics and how we manipulate and use it today (recommended by the indispensable Anna Clarke). They have lesson plans and nice pages on the modern techniques used to work with DNA.

Image from the DNAi webpage on gel electrophoresis. Electrophoresis is a bit like chromatography which might make for a good demonstration.

I have not done much with genetic sequencing myself and I found the website interesting and informative. I have, however, written programs to get and work with the GenBank database, which is not that hard since they have some easy tools to work with. I would love to figure out how to get a sample sequenced and then run it through GenBank to identify it. It would so nicely integrate the curriculum, using a practical exercise to solve a problem (like what species are on the nature trail), while using the same tools and resources that scientists use, and tie wonderfully into the short stories in Mirable.

WatchKnow: Educational videos

One of Larry Sanger‘s new projects is WatchKnow, a website that rates online educational videos. It has a nice age filter that, while not very useful right now, may be very useful as the site develops.

The video above is the currently the top rated video (4 out of 5 stars) in the category on the writing process. Its WatchKnow page is here.

Teach.Genetics: Family trees

Handy Family Tree exercise from Teach.Genetics.

Dealing with genetic traits and family trees can be kind of tricky sometimes, particularly with early adolescents who are still learning about personal boundaries and have the potential for sharing too much information. One alternative to delving too deeply into personal family histories is to stress the less invasive traits. Anna Clark has had some success (and the students liked it) using the Handy Family Tree, from the University of Utah’s Teach.Genetics website.

John Wyndham's The Crysalids. (via Powell's Books).

I also discuss some of the thornier issues when we do the John Wyndham book, The Chrysalids. It can be an uncomfortable book, but has the emotional separation of fiction.

Teach.Genetics is a great resource. They have a number of “Teach and Go” exercises like this one, and some interesting interactive applications. I’ll post more as I browse more through their website.

Origin of life lab

ENSI has a set of great labs that can be used all the way from the middle school to the university level. They deal with the nature of science, the origin of life, evolution and genetics/DNA. (Thanks again Anna Clarke for the link.)

Amoeba (image from Wikipedia). This image is part of a neat video of amoeba movement.

I’m thinking that the Creating Coacervates lab, the only one on the origin of life section, might fit into my orientation cycle plans. Coacervates are small, microscopic blobs of fat (lipids) that look like, and have many of the same properties as cells, amoebas in particular. They can be produced with simple chemicals. One of the key things I’d like to start the year with, is the idea that:

complex life-like cell-like structures can be produced naturally from simple materials with simple changes. Flammer, 1999.

These abiotic blobs can be compared to the protozoans in a water droplet sample while we learn how to use the microscopes. It also ties into the Miller–Urey experiments that produced amino acids using electricity and simple compounds: water, methane, ammonia and hydrogen gas. The Miller-Urey experiments will pop up later when we read Frankenstein.

What is life and what is human?

Life has four needs, six characteristics and sixteen patterns, but things only get really interesting with viruses that straddle the line between life and non-life. You can run into similar problems when you ask the question of what makes us human.

Both these questions come up in stories like Pinocchio, and any number of robot books, such as John Sladek’s Roderick. Probably because good books go a lot farther in describing characters rather than appearances, you often start with the question, are they sentient and then backtrack to the question of if they’re alive or not.

Interestingly, many of my students equate the question, are they sentient, with the query, are they human? (A fascinating result given the propensity of humanity to divide into groups based on looks.) Which gives rise to the interesting conundrum, can something/someone be “human” and still not alive? We’ve had some fascinating discussions around that question too.

A great place to encounter these issues is in Mary Shelly’s novel Frankenstein, which also nicely ties-in with the science curriculum since you will probably find it useful to draw out the Frankenstein family tree to keep track of the story. In addition, the historical setting of the book relates to social world issues as the book describes life in the early 19th century, and you realize that the issue of our relationship with technology and science was coming up 200 years ago.

A lighter variant on Frankenstein is Terry Pratchett’s Feet of Clay. It’s a story about golums who are powered only by the words in their head. Unlike Asimov’s three rules of robotics the words are not literal instructions like the programmer’s code, they can be much more metaphorical, like a receipt. Yet, in the end, many of the same questions about life and humanity arise.

Earth Ecology and Terraforming Mars

I’ve been thinking about science fiction, like Mirable and The Chrysalids that tie into the Natural World (science) curriculum. While I’ve not read Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars triology, Red Mars, Blue Mars and Green Mars, they’ve won a number of awards and I’ve heard good things about them.

I’m looking for books that address global ecology, so stories about terraforming Mars would seem to fit. The Mars triology books are also supposed to be fairly rigorous and consistent about the science, something I look for in good science fiction. There are also some good articles discussing the science that can be used for supporting information, like this one by Margarita Miranova (2008) about the actual feasibility of terraforming Mars.

Feature identified by students from Evergreen Middle School. Image from NASA.

Given Mars’ proximity and the fact that space agencies have orbiting satellites and ground rovers makes the idea of colonizing Mars an intriguing one for the more adventurous adolescents. In fact, the recent news that 7th graders discovered a new feature on Mars’ surface might also inspire some interest. The 7th graders’ project was part of the Mars Student Imaging Program (MSIP), which might also be of interest. MSIP actually allows students to use the camera on board the Mars Odyssey satellite, by identifying locations for detailed images.