The End of Education

When I was in public school, classes always started after Labor Day.  August was still part of our vacation.  These days, of course, school starts sometimes weeks before the national holiday.  They’d be better off staying on vacation.

I sincerely doubt they are learning much in school.  For starters, for close to a decade, legislators have been imposing standardized tests on the kids as a way of determining the quality of education.  The basic concept behind the testing sees plausible:  make sure that teachers and schools are accountable for their efforts to educate our children.

However, standardized tests hardly do that.  For one reason, some people simply don’t function well on that kind of testing.  I never did.  My scores were invariably low on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT).  Despite that, I graduated magna cum laude from Kent State University.  Standardized testing also assumes similarities in culture.  That’s simply not true.  For example, one of my foreign students in high school could not answer a question about cats on the FCAT, because, in her culture, cats are unclean.  She simply declined even to read the question as soon as she saw the word “cat.”

The tests also are incredibly unbalanced.  Students learning English will naturally score very low, even though they are expected to take the same test as native speakers.

To make matters worse, the tests are being used to determine raises and school finances.  The Florida legislature tried that approach in 2010, and it was vetoed.  The new governor has already said he'll sign the bill, which is being fast-tracked through the state legislature.

That is ridiculous, given the fact that schools with a large percentage of foreign-born students can never do as well as schools filled with natives.  Moreover, a new immigrant who learns a simple English sentence has accomplished a tremendous amount.  However, that seemingly pales when compared to a native who pens a jumbled, barely literate essay.  How can anyone measure such disparate results with the same scale?

Worse, teachers have lost all opportunities for creativity because they are forced to teach to the test to buttress their school’s status and their own salaries.  That’s not education.  It’s a return to the rote instruction of bygone schools, long since recognized as stifling and self-defeating.  As a result, No Child Left Behind legislation has left every child behind.  It remains the worst legacy of the previous administration, which is saying something considering two wars that rage on..

New York State long ago solved the problem with its Regency Tests, which test what students are supposed to know after completing a particular education level.  Teachers’ salaries and school finances are not chained to the results.  Neither are teacher imaginations.

To make matters more complicated, society is changing rapidly while education remains bogged down in a different era.  Students today function in an independent environment: they choose when to turn on their computer, what music to listen to, who to talk to on Facebook and other social networks, and more.  Yet, they come into a classroom and are expected to function as a cohesive unit.  No classroom I ever had in public school as either a student or a teacher had computers or the kind of modern technology that students regularly use.

Naturally, as a result, students are bored and disinterested.  Their attention spans have been shortened by the quick editing that infuses television shows and movies, but they are expected to sit in a classroom for as long as 75 minutes without losing concentration.  

The entire model of education has to change to recognize the reality of today’s world.  The days of lectures are over.  Students must be able to choose what they want to focus.  They can learn to read and write that way.  History becomes relevant within that context.  So does math.  Socialization will occur in the normal way outside of class or by having students with similar interests work together.

Teachers’ roles will not change.  They still must direct students, but they must show wider contexts so a student does not become so focused on the single topic.  As an example, consider horses, a common delight of many students.  For history, a good teacher will help the student understand how horses were used to tame the American West, were part of the Spanish Conquistadors success and were a crucial element in Scythian and other ancient culture’s warfare.  At the same time, horses would be used in math: determining size, speed, feed etc.  In short, the student’s interest becomes the focus of wide-ranging educational opportunities. 

In the regimen, students would eagerly learn all they could about a subject they care about while, at the same time, be happy to share the information with classmates.   They would also be able to shift subjects as their interests changed.  The computer would help them find the information they need and assist teachers as well.  Every student will learn at his own pace with the teacher facilitating and guiding, not following some ironclad format.

This would be a major change in education, but one that would enhance learning while breaking the testing manacles gripping today’s schools.

Besides, it’s not as if schools haven’t changed in the past.  Just look at the calendar.

Bill Lazarus is been a long-time writer and educator.  He started teaching when he was 13 year old and has been rarely out of a classroom since.  He hold an M.A. in communication from Kent State University and is a full-time instructor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.  You can write him via www.williamplazarus.org or this blog.

Ageless in America

My father turned 90 this year in June.  My mother reaches that milestone in May 2010.  Both are in excellent health, and exercise regularly and religiously.  With modern medicine, good genes – my father’s parents both lived into their 90s – and multiple activities, they can look forward to joining the fastest growing element of the American population – people who are more than 100 years old.  

Still, it’s unlikely they’ll match Methuselah who, the Bible reports, lived 969 years.  That lifespan, the longest recorded in the Good Book, did earn a skeptical question in Porgy and Bess, the famed Gershwin musical of the 1930s: “Who calls that livin’ when no gal will give in to no man who’s 900 years?”  Someone didn’t mind when Methuselah was 187.  That’s when his first child was supposedly born.

Noah holds the record in that department.   According to the Bible, he was 500 years old when his first son was born.  Noah would go on to live another 450 years.

Long lives were not unusual for the pre-flood generations.  The average lifespan before the flood was 912 years.   After the deluge, however, people lacked the same kind of stamina.  Their life spans averaged only 222 years, led by Shem, Noah’s son, who enjoyed his 600^th birthday before kicking the bucket. 

Lengthy lives are not limited to Biblical patriarchs.  The ages of ancient Sumerian kings, for example, stretched thousands of centuries.  On monarch,  Alulim of Eridu, endured for 28,800 years.  He was an infant compared to En-Men-Lu-Ana of Bad-Tibira whose life extended for 43,200 years. 

Imagine the size of that last birthday cake to hold all the candles.

The lengthy claims naturally raised questions.  After all, even the Bible (Gen:6:3) notes that the human lifespan is 120 years.

These exercises in hyperbole probably served several functions:

·                They emphasized the importance of often-mythical people.

·                       They pushed back the origin of a country and its religion, giving both added significance. 

Other explanations abound:

·         1. One scholar noted that the Sumerians used base 60.  Later Jewish writers borrowed the lengthy years – they also buried other stories from Sumeria, such as the Garden of Eden – and simply didn’t know the dates needed to be converted to base 10.

·         2. The long years served to bridge the years between the ancient world and the time when the Bible was written.

·         3. The authors simply didn’t know how long anyone lived.  

·         4. The world was different before the flood, so people could live longer.

By the time of King  David around 1000 B.C.E., lifespans had dropped to what would be considered typical: three score and 10.  Even that total surpassed the average lifespan of humans well into the 1900s.  In Classical Greece, the lifespan has been estimated at 20 to 30 years.   That was true for Rome, too.  Even in the early 20^th century, life spans averaged 30 to 40 years.

That doesn’t mean everyone died young.  Early American leaders like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, for example, all lived into their 80s.  However, so many children died young that the numbers were skewed.  Modern medicine has caused a huge jump.  Today, the average life span for an American male is 74 years; women can expect to live until 80.

That is definitely not the limit.  Joice Heth, who was exhibited by showman P.T. Barnum in 1835, was said to be 161 years old.  Actually, she was probably 80.  The oldest document age is 122, recorded by a French woman, Jeanne Calment, who died in 1997.  

That really gives my parents something to shoot for.  I hope I’m around to celebrate with them when they get there.

Bill Lazarus is been a long-time writer, educator and religious historian.  He started teaching when he was 13 year old and has been rarely out of a classroom since.  He hold an M.A. in communication from Kent State University and is a full-time instructor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.  You can write him via this website or www.williamplazarus.com

To Build or Not to Build

At this writing, Muslim leaders in New York are still hoping to build a community center and mosque some two blocks away from Ground Zero, the now-sacred ground that once held the World Trade Center.  The WTC was demolished when Islamic terrorists commandeered planes and flew them into the buildings.  More than 3,000 people died in the horrific attack.  

No one recorded the religion of the victims, but best estimates are that 400 to 500 were Jewish.  Other religions represented included Muslim, Hindu and, of course, Christian.  A Hindu friend of mine worked in the Towers and survived because he was going to his office later than usual that day.  Many of his friends and colleagues did not.

The religion matters because the idea of a mosque next to such a site has enflamed the conservative sector of our society.  The complaints are vicious, laced with anti-Islamic sentiment and downright hatred.  

One friend wrote that the mosque was no different than building a monument to Adolf Hitler.  I respectfully disagreed.  No one is talking about building a memorial to the Islamic zealots who died in the plane crashes.  In fact, the leader of the moment to build the mosque is renowned for his interfaith efforts and was openly appalled—as were virtually all American Muslims—by the nefarious actions of their co-religionists.

There are compelling reasons to allow the mosque planners to go ahead.

1)      It’s legal.  Even opponents agree there’s nothing wrong with the plans.  How logical is it to defy the law to prevent the construction?  Does one illegal act, however awful, warrant a parallel response?

2)      It falls under constitutional guidelines.  The Puritans who founded Massachusetts came here for religious freedom.  That basic concept helped created Rhode Island, Pennsylvania and Maryland, and is enshrined in the First Amendment to the Constitution.  It is the basic cornerstone of our country and the one thing that separates us from other lands.  We cannot discard it simply because of objections to the murderous actions of some members of a particular faith.  No religious is free of so odious behavior.  You can bet no one would object if the plans called for a church and/or synagogue, despite egregious behavior by some members of each in support of religious beliefs.  Rabbi Meir Kahane was hardly a pacifist, for example.  Neither is the Hutaree, a self-proclaimed Christian terrorist group arrested in March, arrested and charged with plotting to kill police officers around the country in support of their extremist views.

3)      It divides.  Refusing to allow a mosque simply drives a wedge between Muslims and American society.  Ironically, that’s exactly what the terrorists were trying to do: they believe Islam was the superior belief and wanted to rid it of Western influence.  That puts opponents to the mosque on the side of the terrorists. 

Our country has always been inclusive: there’s room for everyone.   The Statue of Liberty proclaims that in the immortal words of Emma Lazarus (no relation): 

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Isolating one element of society in response to this terrible event only undermines our society and encourages anti-Americans.

I’ve heard people compare the events of 9/11 to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.  They do not correspond.  The 1941 bombing was the deliberate act of a nation hoping to undermine America’s ability to wage war.  In contrast, the four hijackings in 2001 were the result of a conspiracy of a small group of terrorists bent on creating as much havoc as possible in misguided defense of their religious ideas.  The only thing the two landmark situations shared was that our country was less vigilant than it could have been, but, other than that, the events have nothing in common.

Unlike our war with Japan, we cannot easily strike back against the 9/11 plotters.  Some died in the crashes.  The rest are in hiding.  They were Pakistani and Saudi Arabian.  In our zeal for revenge, we attacked Iraq and Afghanistan, creating more deaths among innocent people and more animosities.

This has to cease sometime.  There is precedent: Germany and Israel are now allies, less than 70 years after the Holocaust ended.

One way to speed up that eventuality this time and heal the rift between the Muslim community and the rest of American society would be by welcoming the mosque.  Let’s make it a center of peace and understanding, rather than the subject of bitter controversy. 

Bill Lazarus is been a long-time writer, educator and religious historian.  He holds an M.A. in communication from Kent State University and is a full-time instructor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. You can contact him via his website: www.williamplazarus.com or wplazarus@aol.com.

Humor and Culture

A recent letter to the editor mentioned surprise that I had a sense of humor.   Actually, I laugh all the time.  Most of my writing is comedic.  I can’t help it.  It’s part of my Jewish cultural heritage.  

I saw the impact first hand while teaching a class on Jewish humor in Stetson University’s Continuing Education program.  I taught it three times. The first class was composed of almost all Jews.  They laughed from breakfast through bedtime.  The next group was about half filled with Jews.  The Christian portion sat there quietly and watched me; the Jews in the group couldn’t stop laughing and telling jokes.  

The third class was all Christian.  On the first day of class, midway through my opening monologue, I endured what performers call “flop sweat.”  That happens spontaneously when no one responds. They just didn’t get the jokes.  In fact, they didn’t appreciate the humor at all.   

Pity.   Jewish humor has become an integral part of American humor, something worth recalling any time of year.

The names of Jewish comedians who established what is now known as American humor could fill an encyclopedia:  Jack Benny, George Burns, The Marx Brothers, The Three Stooges, Ed Wynn, Eddie Cantor, Don Rickles, Milton Berle, Gilda Radner, Gene Wilder, Jack E. Leonard, Mort Sahl, Joan Rivers, Billy Crystal, Myron Cohen, Danny Kaye, Adam Sandler, Jerry Lewis and so many more.

Probably without knowing the sources, they simply built on a centuries-old tradition born in the Bible and developed under the cruelest of circumstances.  

To the surprise of many, the Bible is replete with humor.  A sainted teenager in the Middle Ages used to berate Christians for telling jokes because, he pointed out correctly, there’s no humor in the New Testament.  He was right.  That’s not true with the Jewish sacred text.

The humor is often sardonic, even sarcastic.  In Judges, for example, Ehud rescues the Jews from a Canaanite oppressor by stabbing a heavy-set king.  The guards don’t respond despite the resulting smell, because, the text reads, they were used to the stench when the king used the toilet.  That won’t get anyone rolling in the aisle, but raises a wry smile.  So does Haman’s comeuppance versus Mordecai in the book of Esther.  There are also puns, plays on words and much more.

By itself, that did not allow Jewish humor to blossom.  Ghettos were needed.  Isolated in a Christian world, Jews were forced to live in small communities or walled sections of towns.  There, powerless and impotent to fight back, they used the only weapon readily available – their wit.

They created the Polish joke – and entire city of Chelm populated by dimwits.  They turned the spring holiday of Purim into a time for skits and parodies, all new to the entertainment world.  They came up with the funny emcee, a role Berle perfected; the schnorrer, a man who tries to con everyone, like Phil Silvers; the schlemiel, the clumsy oaf, who invariably trips over the schmazzel.  Think the Marx Brothers and the Three Stooges.  All of these concepts infused American culture in time.

Jewish humor traveled here on several currents.  One, of course, was the massive wave of Russian immigration that started around the 1880s.  Emma Lazarus’ famed poem on the Statue of Liberty – “Give me your huddles masses yearning to breathe free” – was originally written to encourage Russian Jews to leave the shtetls of Russia for the United States.  (Note:  I am not related to Emma.)  The Russian Jews brought with them their finely honed humor.  The Broadway show, Fiddler on the Roof, reflects some of those comedic ideas.  

Another avenue was theater.  Abraham Goldfarb, a Russian Jew, took advantage of a thaw in Russian anti-Semitic thinking in the mid-1800s to start a troupe of touring Jewish performers.  Jacob Adler became the most famous of the actors.  They moved eventually to England and then the United States, bringing their uncontrolled, ribald approach to the stage.  In the midst of a play, such as Shakespeare’s King Lear, the cast might break into song or perform other hijinks.  

The concept traveled well in this country.  Singer Al Jolson, for example, became famous for continuing his performance after his allotted time and even inviting the audience to join him after the show.  He would tell them, “You ain’t seen nothing yet” and ignore the pleas of other acts to stop.  He was just following the pattern set by his Russian counterparts.  The Marx Brothers adlibs did that, too.

Finally, the American theater had Jewish stock characters, the Hebe.  Jews who saw the performers decided that if anyone was going to make fun of Jews, they were.  Jewish comedians began to flock to the stage.

Over time, Jewish humor imbued American humor with a robust, unconventional current.  Their influence was so strong that the late comedian Buddy Hackett said he had to act Jewish to become successful in Hollywood.  And Buddy Hackett was Jewish.

On this most American of holidays, the role Jewish humor has played in the United States is something worth celebrating, both for how it has added joy to our lives and for another reason that transcends comedy.  It serves as an almost daily reminder of the influence of foreign cultures and ideas on the growth and development of our country.  And that, thankfully, is no joke.

Long-time religious historian Bill Lazarus regularly writes about religion and religious history.  He also speaks at various religious organizations throughout Florida.  You can reach him at www.williamplazarus.net.  He is the author of the famed Unauthorized Biography of Nostradamus; The Last Testament of Simon Peter; The Gospel Truth: Where Did the Gospel Writers Get Their Information; Noel: The Lore and Tradition of Christmas Carols; and Dummies Guide to Comparative Religion.  His books are available on Amazon.com, Kindle, bookstores and via various publishers.  He can also be followed on Twitter.

You can enroll in his on-line class, Comparative Religion for Dummies, at http://www.udemy.com/comparative-religion-for-dummies/?promote=1

Muslims Through Other Eyes

Recently, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University hosted a speaker talking about the role of women in Islam.  Many of my students went to hear Dr. Jim Shoopman talk about the difference between public perception in this country of Islam women and reality.  He said that, e pointed that, in the Arab world, the position of women varies from country to country.  In Saudi Arabia, for example, women cannot drive; in Kuwait or the United Arab Emirates, they can and do. They also hold many rights not available in other less-enlightened countries, including the right to own and run businesses. He also pointed out how many Americans hold preconceived notions about women and Islam that are difficult to change.

Shoopman could have been talking about a lot more than women and Islam.  False impressions invariably seem to dominate our thinking. 

Take the hubbub in November over President Obama’s recent children’s book, which identified a handful of famous Americans.  He included Sitting Bull, to the consternation of those who argued that the Lakota Indian chief helped massacre Gen. George Custer and his men in 1876. That’s true, of course, but completely ignores other facts.

1.  Sitting Bull was defending sacred Indian lands stolen by gold-hungry American settlers despite a legally binding agreement between the tribe and the government.  In fact, he was standing up for human rights, a noble cause in any situation.

·                      
2. Sitting Bull joined “Buffalo” Bill Cody’s Wild West Show, which toured this country and Europe just nine years after Custer’s Last Stand, a fact that apparently didn’t bother Cody or the thousands who turned out to see the entertainment.

3, Cody and Sitting Bull became friends.   In his autobiography, the famed Indian scout wrote, "Of all the Indians I encountered in my years on the Plains, the most resourceful and intelligent... were the Sioux.... The greatest of all the Sioux in my time, or any time for that matter, was that wonderful old fighting man, Sitting Bull."

Reality is never cut and dry.  George Washington was a patriotic American.  To the British, he was a traitor.  Robert E. Lee lost his family estate – now Arlington Cemetery – but he didn’t lose his reputation or go to jail for leading the Southern states in a rebellion against the U.S. Government.  Neither, for that matter, did Confederate President Jefferson Davis, who retained public affection in the South for decades after his great counterpart, Abraham Lincoln, was assassinated.

Confederate battle flags today are not uncommon, often dressing up trucks owned by patriotic Americans who would never dream of attacking their own country.

The list is endless.  We all tend to see reality as black and white.  We can put a political party, a person, an event or an idea into a neat box.  We can careful homogenize everything.  It’s easier that way.  It’s also often wrong.

Take American history.  While studying for a doctorate in American Studies, I read about Andrew Jackson, the Indian fighter and general who went on to be president.  My high school history book talked about the Jacksonian Age and his impact on American life.  In college, I discovered that most Americans then didn’t know who the president was or cared.  Based on voting records, Jackson had virtually no effect on anyone.

Or famed lawman Wyatt Earp, who has been the subject of multiple books, movies and the like.  He was actually a saloon owner and gambler who did little of what he was renowned for.  A later newsman, Stuart Lake, created a fictional biography of him that has been the basis of the movies.

The idea here is not to demolish heroes.  Nor am I trying to prove that reality is a lot messier than people would like to believe.  I suspect most people are well aware of that.  Rather, I would like to suggest we always keep an open mind and look at as many of the facts as possible before making decisions. 

Maybe then, we can resolve our many problems without being hampered by preconceived and little understood solutions, whether we are talking about the Islamic world, wars, political differences, taxes or any other topic on a local, state, national or international level.

There are two sides to everything – sometimes even many more than that.

Bill Lazarus teaches writing and communication courses at international students attending Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.  Recent books include Comparative Religion for Dummies (Wiley, 2009); The Unauthorized Biography of Nostradamus (Halifax Press, 2010) and Noel, The Tradition and History of Christmas Carols (Halifax Press, 2010).  His books are available on Amazon or by going to his website, www.williamplazarus.com.