Middle and High School … from a Montessori Point of View
NPR reports on the discovery of a 11,500 year old house in Alaska that probably belonged to some of the first people to migrate to the Americas over the Bearing Land Bridge during the last Ice Age. Just 500 years later the Land Bridge was submerged by rising sea levels.
It’s a good article to go to for our discussion of human migration patterns. It also has the added poignancy of the fact that, at the end, the home was turned into a burial crypt for a young member of the family.
NYU scientists have traced the evolution of tomcod fish that’s been driven by pollution in the Hudson River. The NPR article is nice because it really breaks down how fish with the right genes preferentially survived the PCBs and dioxins in the river, and passed their genes on.
It also turns out that the fish “selected” for pollution tolerance end up being more sensitive to other things, like high water temperatures. It really puts, “survival of the fittest” in context. The fish are “fit” for polluted rivers, but not “fit” for warmer water.
Vali Nasr’s interview on NPR’s Morning Edition talks about what it takes to make a successful revolution. Particularly, they focus on the need for a vibrant, educated, middle-class for a successful transition to democracy.
Another key, and I think essential point, is that the Egyptian protesters share the same global-citizenship values that Brazilians, South Koreans, and even Europeans and American, share. That they have these values, from years of communication with the outside world, offers the best chance that this revolution will be successful.
Edmund Burke supported the American Revolution, but opposed the French Revolution because the former was a conservative revolution, the colonists were fighting to regain rights that had lost, while the latter were trying to impose an ideal of democracy and equality that they had no experience with. He was right; the French revolution lead to the Terror then eventually to Napoleon and the restoration of the aristocracy.
NPR had a great article today summarizing what’s been going on in Tunisia.
I played the article this morning. We had a little discussion about the conflicting groups in Tunisia and the possible causes of the revolution. It would be nice to be able to follow the emergence of a democracy in real-time.
“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.
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.
Rheingold’s social-media class did an exercise that changed the way many of his students interact with Facebook.
Each student projected their profile on a screen with everything but their name or picture. Everyone had to guess whose profile was on display. Estela Marie Go, an undergraduate student in the class, says she suddenly realized that she didn’t like the way Facebook forced her to define herself with a list of interests.
—Sydell (2010) on NPR.
A number of my students have Facebook accounts. I have one too, but I think I’ve used it twice in the year that I’ve had it. Part of my problem is about how it accelerates the loss of privacy inherent to living on the net. However, I also have a very big problem with its insular nature, the fact that it is its own walled-off section of the internet. The two times I’ve used it have been when people I knew from inside the wall wanted to share something and I could not get to it from outside. I also find it difficult to give so much personal information, about my history and my habits to a single company.
So I’m always enthused to see other people coming to the same conclusions, like those in NPR’s recently broadcast story about how, “New Networks Target Discomfort With Facebook.”
Consider the startlingly accurate recommendation of Adam Ruben:
Note: I’m a big fan of both Endurance and Eats, Shoots and Leaves not just for grad school, but for middle school as well.
We did poetry in the mornings last year at the end of our community meetings as a substitute for musical appreciation. However, the inestimable Anna Clarke, sent me the link to NPR’s 100 most important American musical works of the 20th century. The 8-13 minute long pieces include excerpts of the music, an interview with someone connected to the music and commentary by the NPR reporter. First on the list is ‘Adagio for Strings’ by Samuel Barber.
I’ve also caught their series on 50 great voices which is a great place to discover some truly iconic voices from around the world that I did not even know about.