Category: Science

This Day

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

_80896621_159150619We’ve all played the parlor games that go something like this,”What if you were able to go back in time? Where would you go? Whom would you want to see?” Aside from the fact that at least for now it’s impossible to travel back into history, it’s fun to imagine sitting across from a host of interesting characters. It’s often difficult to narrow down the possible choices and to decide what to say when you get there. Do you just take in the times as they were, or do you warn individuals of events that are yet to come? Would it be proper to tell Abraham Lincoln not to go the theater on the night of his assassination? Of course even the smallest hint about the future would have the potential of changing everything, so there would be a certain danger in revealing all that we know. Still, the possibilities are so tempting, making it even more difficult to choose where to go and whom to visit.

On a personal level there is a temptation to go find a favorite loved one or some long lost and mysterious relatives, but then the very idea of being present at the signing of the Declaration of Independence or hearing Jesus give the sermon on the mount is breathtaking. Being an eye witness to history has a dramatic appeal as does actually speaking with heroes from the past. It’s a challenge to choose just one time, place or individual.

I saw a program on PBS in which Stephen Hawking explained that theoretically it might be possible to go back in time, but the real problem lies in getting back home. He explained that the laws of physics appear to preclude advancing into the future, so anyone who went backward in time would find themselves stuck in a cosmic wrinkle. I can’t pretend that I understood a word that he said in describing this phenomenon, but it tells me that we probably won’t have too many takers even if we ever do find a way to travel into the past. Who would be willing to be stuck in a foreign environment until death?

I used to have a very strange theory that Jesus came from an advanced civilization far in the future that is so nearly perfect that it is akin to heaven. Knowing what we would do to ourselves as humans He agreed to go back in time to teach us how we should live. Of course He had no way of returning from whence He had come, so He had to stay here on earth being ultimately tortured and put to death. My theory falls apart upon His death because He rose from leaving an empty tomb. Maybe somebody had finally found a way to get back home by the time of His existence in a world far away in time and place. (My apologies to those who might find my curious thoughts to be a form of blasphemy. I just like to dabble in unusual thinking from time to time. I actually do believe in God but I have always felt that we have never completely figured Him out. Thus I propose strange ideas now and again.)

We humans are so fascinated by the past, but I truly wonder how many of us would be able to survive in days gone by. We tend to fantasize about what things were like, forgetting how difficult daily living was little more than a hundred years ago and all the way back to the beginning of time. Walking with Jesus would be hot and dusty and devoid of any of the conveniences that we take for granted. The dangers that our Founding Fathers faced from being tried and found guilty of treason might overwhelm us. Our romantic visions of ancient Greece would become dashed with the realities of lives quite different and far more brutal from those of our imaginations. I suspect that the truth is that there is no turning back once we have moved forward. I doubt that most of us would even want to retreat to a time as recently as the nineteen fifties.

Our longing for the good old days is most often misplaced. Our advances since bygone days are so spectacular that we would be misfits even in a culture that many of us actually experienced. In the fifties, for example, we’d be looking for our cell phones and wondering why our televisions only had three channels, all in black and white. We would be stunned by overt racism and segregation. We would witness people dying from illnesses for which there are now cures. All in all I suspect that we would be more than ready to return to the present.

I don’t suppose that time travel will ever become a reality and I’m rather certain that it wouldn’t be a good thing even if we somehow found the capability. As humans we slowly but surely evolve and progress. Nothing ever stays exactly the same and that is a good thing. We sometimes feel the rush of change happening too quickly for our taste and the sting of regret creates a desire for second changes, but all in all we are better off looking to the future than clinging to the past. It’s a beautiful thing to know that on the whole we have a tendency to get better and better as time goes by. 

We can learn from our history but there is little need to relive it. Instead our goal should be to make the most of our here and now. It is in how we handle today that our tomorrows may be brighter. Carpe diem is one of the best piece of wisdom by which we may lead our lives. The past may be fascinating but this day is where we become whatever we were meant to be.

A Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Waste

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

agy_rajz_radir-400x200There was an old advertisement that asserted, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.” I’ve often thought of those words as I have seen more and more individuals afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease or dementia. Watching someone who once bore a quick wit slowly but surely become less and less aware is one of the saddest and most difficult aspects of growing older. It is especially hard on the caretakers of those individuals.

I used to possess a photographic memory. I was literally able to recall the exact page number and positioning of a fact from a textbook. I once answered a question on a history test while visualizing the caption under a photograph that contained the information. Back then I took my ability for granted, assuming that I would always be able to pull information from my brain with little or no effort. I have unfortunately learned as I age that I am less and less able to quickly find the information that I need from the recesses of my gray matter.

I’ve read that exercising the brain is as important as keeping the body healthy. Experts claim that performing mental activities regularly helps to keep forgetfulness at bay. That is partly the reason why I write daily and tutor young people in mathematics. Such activities force me to push my mind as much as working out on the elliptical activates the muscles in my legs. Nonetheless I all too often find myself groping for a familiar word or having to review a geometric definition for the umpteenth time. Just as my gait has slowed, so too has my mental acuity.

I don’t generally worry that I will somehow become less able to function with my mind because my genetics seem to be less inclined toward senility and more toward broken bones or gastrointestinal diseases. My grandfather was still reading and discussing lengthy history books at the age of one hundred eight and my mother was sharp and witty until the moment that she drew her last breath. I haven’t seen evidence of diminished brain capacity even among my aunts and uncles. Still I worry simply because I have seen so much of it in the families of my neighbors and friends.

There is a man who lives near me who is my age. He recently began to frighten me a bit because his behavior became erratic and he was making inappropriate comments. I found myself avoiding conversations with him because I truly wasn’t sure that I was safe around him. Soon enough another neighbor revealed that the unfortunate soul was suffering from early onset Alzheimer’s disease. His wife had asked that we not drive him to the store for cigarettes and wine as we had unwittingly been doing.

Not long after hearing the reasons why the neighbor was acting so strangely his wife asked my husband to drive her to the scene of a car accident in which he had been involved. She tearfully recounted how he had stolen her car keys and snuck out of the house in an attempt to run away. He only got a few blocks down the road before he had wrecked the car. He could not remember how to call home but luckily his wallet contained the necessary information to alert his frantic family. As my husband drove her she literally begged for advice as to how to deal with the situation. She has been attempting to work which requires leaving him home alone. She was beginning to realize that he probably was no longer able to fend for himself in her absence.

The plight of those who have brain disorders along with the members of their families are heartbreaking. I have a dear friend who cannot leave her husband without finding a kind soul who will watch him in her absence. Her life has become far more insulated that it should be at her young age. One of my aunt’s lives in a retirement community with a husband in his nineties who is mostly unaware of his surroundings. She and her sister care for him without complaint but I know that they are the kind of women who love getting out and about, a freedom that they rarely enjoy these days.

A woman that I have known for years now lives in Georgia in a small apartment caring for her husband whose mental and physical health has been severely stressed by multiple strokes. Her days are repetitive and she is far away from friends and family. She is very much alone in her labors save for the visiting nurses who come a few times each week to give her an hour or so to herself. I talk with her via Facetime as often as I can but she really needs so much more support and it is not very abundant.

Still another friend visits her ninety something mother at a nursing home multiple times every single day just to be certain that her mom is getting the care that she needs. My longtime friend is a true angel who rarely complains that she must schedule her days to include those regular visitations. When she does have to leave town she has to find people who are willing to perform her duties. Sometimes that means hiring strangers and hoping that they will fulfill the responsibilities properly. In truth her trips are tainted with worry because few people invest the level of loving care into the duties as she does.

None of us ever really know when we or a loved one might begin to slowly lose mental capabilities. There are foods that we might eat and physical and mental exercises that will help, but in many cases the onset is simply inevitable. As more and more baby boomers age the epidemic only grows, impacting so many lives. Paying for care is increasingly expensive and usually results in families spending the victims into poverty. Some care facilities will accept Medicare once the individual is literally dead broke, but others are reluctant to deal with the multitude of paperwork involved. Many of those with brain disorders therefore stay at home, taxing the resources and patience of family members.

We hear a great deal about the medical needs of young people which is as it should be, but the stories of the elderly often remain hidden and forgotten secrets. We don’t often think of the individuals like my neighbor who spend their days in a kind of confused state. He was once a rather entertaining fellow who enjoyed attending parties and regaling us with funny stories. Now he barely makes sense as he reaches into the recesses of his mind for words and ideas. He is incredibly healthy aside for his Alzheimer’s. He might otherwise have been out enjoying his retirement with hobbies and trips. Now he is confined to a life so unlike his personality and even our attempts to visit with him seem to fall on a kind of blankness in his mind. It is so difficult to communicate with him on any meaningful level.

As more and more people enter the years when such diseases begin to show their symptoms we need to fund the kind of research that will result in improved memory or even a cure. It is not just the afflicted who suffer but their families and friends as well. Perhaps it is time that we have a month dedicated to learning more about such debilitating diseases. Maybe our sports teams need to wear special uniforms to remind us of those who are suffering. Yes, the mind is indeed a terrible thing to waste and yet somehow we have so many whose essence is being slowly erased and we do so little to talk about what we might do to help.

The Numbers In My Head

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

numbersThis morning I sent birthday greetings to a school friend who turned sixty nine. I’ll be joining her in the last year of my sixties in November. The numbers that I carry in my head just don’t compute. My living aunts are now in their mid to late nineties. My children are well into their forties. I have grandchildren in college. Most of the time I feel much younger than I actually am, but then something happens that sobers me and sends me into a tizzy, like hearing that the son of one of my friends from childhood has died from a heart attack, or that a young woman that I once mentored at work is being treated for cancer.

I am at a somewhat lovely age in that I no longer have to report to work each day. I am free to travel or do whatever pleases me from hour to hour. I still possess almost boundless energy but when I exert myself too much my body reminds me that I am no longer a spring chicken. I’ve got arthritis in my knees and I administer a daily injection of an experimental drug in the hopes of producing stronger bones than the ones left in a lacy swiss cheese condition by my osteoporosis. I act as though I have all of the time in the world to fulfill the goals and dreams that I continue to create for myself, often forgetting that my time on this earth is becoming more and more limited. Those numbers in my head as well as the realities of our human existence talk to me in the dark of night and urge me to seize each day.

I have already lost so many friends with whom I spent my youth. In my mind’s eye I still see them as being vibrant and beautiful. They ran with me and laughed at the clock and thought little of illnesses or endings. It did not occur to me that they would be missing at the very time when we might have had the most fun together, when our labors were done and we were free to roam the earth in search of more adventures. Watching them leave has been difficult and has prompted me to think of my own mortality. Even worse have been the deaths of the children of my peers, the young adults whose passing seems so terribly out of sync with the way things should be. In a perfect world I have the ability to order from least to greatest. In truth occurrences are random in their probabilities.

Mostly I don’t dwell on such things, but there are moments when there is so much suffering around me that it is impossible not to face the facts of life. I realize that if I add multiples of ten to my age I become very old, very quickly. In my mind the nineteen nineties were only yesterday but they actually happened almost thirty years ago. Each day, week, month, year is flying by at warp speed taking me into a future that is more uncertain than any era in which I have so far lived. The dominoes of my life will begin to fall with greater and greater rapidity. I don’t want to think about those things until tomorrow, but they will surely come at a steady pace. The numbers in my head are truth tellers. The math leads to one and only one conclusion, and like J. Alfred Prufrock I rage against the dying of the light.

I want to be prepared for what lies ahead. I want to meet my fate with optimism and courage. I do my best to find happiness even in the darkest hours, but I now understand the fear and the anger that my best friend felt as she understood that her cancer was slowly stealing away her life. I am more open to being sympathetic to the relentless monotony of my aging aunts who are confined to wheelchairs and small rooms. I think of my mother measuring out her days as she grew ever more ill and weak, wanting desperately to leave me with her wisdom. I was confused when my hundred year old grandfather continually spoke of being tired and missing all of his friends and loved ones. I had little patience with the thought of surrendering to fate. I viewed myself as someone who might be dancing jigs right up until my very last breath. That was, of course, before I witnessed people my age being cut down by illnesses that changed them. They had once been warriors like me and it was incongruously difficult to imagine them bedridden and unable to take on the world by storm as they always had. The numbers caught up with them just as they will one day do with me and everyone else that I know, which means that I must begin to focus more and more on what is really important. I have to face the fact that I do not have forever.

People are always more important than things, but things steal our time and energy. When the clock is ticking we have to choose what to push aside. That visit that we speak of making needs to be put on our calendars today, ahead of the cleaning and the repairs of our stuff. Those thoughts that we have wanted to express must be recorded now, not after we take out the trash. The dishes will wait but the call to someone important may come too late if we hesitate. The numbers are there, telling each of us that there is a limit to the count of the days that we each have on this earth. We have to make the best of every single moment before we are no longer able.

I suspect that I may sound a bit morose today. I am thinking of the lost opportunities that I had to celebrate with those who are now gone forever, the moments when I was too preoccupied to really listen to what they had to say. I wrongly believed that there was plenty of time and that I had far more important tasks to perform than lingering just a bit longer with them. Now I see. Now I understand.

My life has been all about numbers. I am a mathematics teacher. I have told my students that the ciphers and algorithms never lie. They link us to both the past and the present. They explain the workings of our world. Now the numbers tell me to embrace the beauty of love and friendships every moment of every day. They remind me of the limits that I am approaching and of the need to prioritize my energies. The numbers will eventually terminate, just as they should. My faith tells me that I will one day find the infinite peace of everlasting life, but until then I must listen to the gentle whispers of the numbers chiding me to live with gusto and an open heart.

  

Science or Art?

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

yam.jpgWhen my grandson runs the 1600 meter race only time determines the winner. It is a feat that is as objective as any measure might possibly be. Unless there is a photo finish or one of the time keepers doesn’t do his/her job properly there is no doubt about the victor. When another grandson performs in a one act play and a panel of judges decide who the best actors were and which troupe gave the finest overall impression, the yardstick is far more subjective. Hundreds of people seeing exactly the same thing will rate it differently depending on the background that they bring to the theater. There will be questions as to the authenticity and fairness of the evaluations, thus leaving the final votes open for criticism. Most of life is more like the later, subject to preferences rather than a set of hard and fast rules.

Each year when the Oscars are awarded I find myself scratching my head in dismay. I truly wonder how it is possible that Casey Affleck won the best acting prize when Denzel Washington was in the same category. I rail at the television and ask no one in particular if he/she was blind. Of course all such determinations are just a matter of opinion rather than fact. So it is with evaluating a teacher, a student or a school.

There are certain guidelines that are universal aspects of a well run classroom but we have not yet even agreed on whether teaching is an art or a science. There are those who maintain that if an individual understands and uses certain best practices, the results will be quite grand. Such beliefs rely on the idea that there is truly a science that leads to being an effective teacher, and there is something to be said for knowledge of pedagogy. Still, after spending decades inside classrooms both as a teacher and an administrator I have learned that there is something quite artistic about the process that elevates an educator to a magical level. Two people using the exact same methods often achieve very different results that can only be explained by noting that one is unimaginative while the other is an artist.

We attempt to measure educational success with numbers found in the scores of students on standardized exams. Of course we intuitively know that hundreds of factors affect the final outcomes of such attempts to quantify the teaching process. The list is so huge that it would be impossible to name all of the possibilities but a few examples might be the health of each student, the amount of rest each has had, the home environment, the presence of testing fears, hunger and so forth. None of these things can be totally controlled by the teacher and when a preponderance of them are affecting the child negatively the test score may be less than stellar. Somehow our society ignores such things in judging the value of our educational system. The numbers are king and yet they only tell a small part of the story and because of this they have a negative impact on everyone in the classroom.

Our present system of testing students at virtually every turn has created a totally unnecessary level of stress. We decide the futures of our children and their teachers even as we understand that those exam scores do not tell the whole story. Study after study has shown that most standardized tests favor middle class white males. For whatever reason all other groups do not do as well. It would be a stretch to assume that this is because the middle class white males are more intelligent. In fact, they are not, but they respond to the questions and answers differently because of their life experiences. The test items that are supposed to be neutral are far from that. They are often subject to interpretations that result in responses deemed to be incorrect. When students are given the opportunity to explain their reasons for selecting certain answers, interesting trends appear, including the fact that the questions are often more subjective than the creators imagined they would be. Given the importance that test scores are given in today’s world, it is quite distressing to realize that the element of subjectivity is often present.

As we learn these things it seems logical that we would begin to admit that our efforts to judge our students by the numbers is still rather ineffective, but in truth we appear to be relying on such evaluative measures even more than ever. The three ring circus created by this situation is disturbing to everyone involved including students, teachers and parents and yet it continues unabated. I suspect it has to do with our human tendency to desire easy answers for complex problems. Once we suggest a solution it is often impossible to rid ourselves of it even when it is obviously a mistake. Other than the realization that Prohibition was a stupid idea, we rarely turn back once we have chosen to pursue a certain path. Sadly I think that we will remain hell bent on using tests to quantify progress until we finally realize the magnitude of the damage that is being done to our educational processes.

The acquisition of knowledge should be an adventure and there are certainly gifted teachers who manage to achieve that even with the specter of testing hovering over their heads. Unfortunately far too many educators struggle under the pressure to perform. They are more like drones laboring away in a massive hive of routine. They use the prescribed methods but don’t quite know how to elevate them beyond the ordinary. They may even reach very satisfactory results but the love of learning is missing and their students feel the loss.

We have turned education into a political football. How we design curriculum and provide resources tends to depend more on which ideology is victorious in elections rather than a reasoned appraisal of student needs. If we test children it should not be to determine how rewards and punishments should be meted out but rather what educational designs are needed for each individual situation. Testing should be a positive experience rather than one that strikes fear and loathing into everyone concerned. It should be much like a physical exam at a doctor’s office, providing information on the educational health of each child and then determining what measures are needed to insure growth. We need to halt the practice of using exams as evaluative clubs to beat our children and teachers down.

I return to this topic again and again because it is so important. As citizens we have the power to demand that something be done to change the present system into one that generates a positive experience rather than a negative one. We have to admit that the way we evaluate is all too often flawed. There is a better way to determine how well our students are doing and what the results mean. If we return to the original intent of such tests we will do everyone a service. They were never meant to grade schools or teachers but rather to determine how much progress a student has made from one school year to the next and then to devise a learning plan that best suits each individual. If we manage to do this, we won’t need vouchers or children moving from one school to another. We will finally begin to do the work of educating as it should be done. We will finally enhance classrooms with both science and art.

Electronic Amusement Park

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

electronic_devicesWe clutch our phones tightly, ready to snap a photo if something interesting comes along, waiting to hear the pings that alert us to reminders, messages, news. We carry a library in our pockets, a world of information which may or may not be entirely accurate. At home our DVRs faithfully record the programs that we will watch at our leisure, after we have culled through our email and deleted all of the recordings from solicitors on our answering machines. It is quite a task keeping up with the demands of living in an electronic amusement park. We want to insist that the children join us in conversation after dinner but allowing them to be entertained with the latest computer games provides us with just a bit more time to carry out our own duties. Keeping them mesmerized by millions of pixels flashing on a screen surely can’t be as bad as we imagine. We shrug and tell ourselves that such pursuits are quite harmless, an opportunity to develop hand/eye coordination. Surely the electric world that surrounds us is a good thing, a sign of mankind’s inventiveness, a form of major progress in the grand scheme of human history. 

Still there is a little itch in the far reaches of our brains that worries us. We wonder if all of our modern inventions have filled our world with unintended consequences. We know how wonderful it is to have a smartphone that guides us as we drive to places that we have never been. We feel so much more secure knowing that in an emergency we have a means of summoning help. The reminders and alarms keep us on task. Our dinner slowly cooks at home while we go about our work far away from our kitchens. The Roomba cleans the floor whether we are present or not. The Echo Dot turns on lights and monitors cameras that send images to our phones assuring us that all is well back in our little castles. The irrigation pipes care for our plants, the many different security systems warn us if there is trouble. Our lives are more carefree, less subject to worries…and yet…

We have a president who reacts to incidents without much forethought, tweeting comments that might better have been left unsaid. If we are honest we have to admit that many of us are not much better. We become embroiled in Facebook rants, Twitter trolls, email disagreements. We find ourselves wanting to take back comments that linger forever in the universe of the great social network. We cringe at the ugliness of the words that are so blithely typed in a moment of indiscretion. Our actions put us into camps of “them versus us.” It unnerves us and yet like our president we find ourselves taking argumentative bait as we tell ourselves that such habits must surely stop. Even when we attempt to serve as peacemakers we are often misunderstood. We know better and yet we try again and again to set things right in an electronic world that appears to have gone mad.

There are so many posers who want us to believe that they are keepers of the truth, fonts of wisdom. We have to be careful of the sources that we use to make decisions. Facts are twisted into opinions quite cleverly. Comments are taken out of context. Information is contorted to support ideologies. Finding out what is real is a confounding proposition, and we worry lest we become a world of lemmings blindly following clever power brokers who prey on our emotions and fears. We must look beyond the sound bites and edited images to know what is really happening. Ironically it is far more difficult to ferret out the truth in the present state of proliferated information that it has ever been before.

We see our children languishing in almost zombie like states as they spend hours upon hours in front of screens filled with games that appear to lead nowhere. They play long distance matches with people that we do not know. It all appears harmless until we realize that so many of them have lost the art of conversation and creative play. We know that there are youngsters in our neighborhoods but we rarely see them. The days of impromptu ballgames or fort building or gazing at the world from the branches of trees appear to be of a bygone era, replaced by playdates and organized outings. It is eerily quiet in the great outdoors.

I have a good friend who has rebelled. She owns the least expensive phone that Walmart provides. She eschews cable television in favor of a seven dollars and change subscription to Netflix. She doesn’t have a gaming system in her home, nor any kind of alarm other than one to warn of fire. She recycles and finds ways to make do. She enjoys the freedom that comes from turning off the madness. It gives her time to take walks or just sit outside waving at her neighbors. She reads from books that she finds at thrift stores and then passes them on to friends. She has rid herself of excesses of any kind. She only keeps what she needs and her wants are minimal. She has found a kind of peace and happiness that is all too often absent for so many of us even with all of our devices that were supposed to make our lives better.

I suspect that we are still attempting to understand how to find balance in the wondrous electronic playground that surrounds us. We have not yet learned how to keep the best aspects of our inventiveness while avoiding the unexpected pitfalls of our modern ways. We allow our machines to become more important than our humanity. We are sometimes so addicted to our devices that they become the focus of our daily routines. They make demands on our time, our talents and our personalities and sometimes imprison us in a vacuous wasteland if we are not careful. We have to learn how to take back control and impose limits on how much we allow ourselves to be negatively affected by the very devices that should be making us happier and more free to experience the delights of the world around us. We must begin to wean ourselves away from our dependence on machines rather than people, easy answers rather than careful thoughts.

Our world is wondrous and I would never suggest that we go back in time. There is still so much that we have yet to discover. The possibilities and dreams are exciting, and the tools that we have will surely move us closer and closer to better lifestyles for everyone. We simply have to pause long enough now and again to assess the ways in which we interact with people around us and to consider whether or not we are using our tools for betterment or out of boredom. Our phones, computers, televisions, and other machines need to know who is in charge. It’s time that we begin the process of reflecting on how we might use them more wisely.