Dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the curriculum of all noble education; dancing with the feet, with ideas, with words, and, need I add that one must also be able to dance with the pen? ~Friedrich Nietzsche

Knowledge is elusive and volatile; it escapes measurement. That's why the conquering god of that era was Hermes, inventor of all trickery, god of crossroads and thieves. He was also the creator of writing, which is the art of evasion and dissimulation and a navigation that carries us to the end of all boundaries, where everything dissolves into the horizon, where cranes lift stones from the ground and weapons transform life into death, and water pumps make heavy matter float, and philosophy deludes and deceives...

~ Umberto Eco in Foucault's Pendulum

Katherine

I find I must agree with the feelings in this article - quite a good job of pointing out the multiple double standards of Hollyweird.

babies

Behold, children are a gift of the LORD,
The fruit of the womb is a reward.
Like arrows in the hand of a warrior,
So are the children of one's youth.
How blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them;
They will not be ashamed
When they speak with their enemies in the gate.

Psalm 127:3-5 (NASB)

The above passage is often used to explain why it is a Christian duty to procreate, and procreate often. As a recently married woman, I am steeling myself for the inevitable questions about when and how Nathan and I are going to reproduce ourselves.

Now, I like kids. I've had to teach a lot of little kids and big kids in dance and at Sunday School, and most kids are cool once you get to know them (some are spoiled terrors, but that's another post on parenting issues). I see no problem with people having biological children.
However, I know several females whose life goal is essentially to have lots and lots of kids, based largely on the fact that they think it's Biblical.

I regret for once the necessary brevity of blogging, as I could easily start a twenty page, cross-referenced paper on why I feel the above is not true, but I'll settle for a few pertinent examples.

In looking at Psalm 127, one sees it is labeled "A Song of Ascents, of Solomon." It was a song of praise, probably sung in a public parade, for David's favorite son. What father watching a favored son growing up wouldn't feel the more the merrier, especially a king in a patriarchal society? From a more pragmatic viewpoint, a king with strong princes would be in a stronger tactical position against enemies. This is even referenced as "when they speak with their enemies at the gate" - litigation used to be performed at city gates, and the more sons a man had, the more powerful he appeared. I don't see how this is relevant enough to today's society to base one's entire lifestyle around it.

Even more striking than this is all the references to adoption.
In Romans 9:25-26, "As He says also in Hosea, "I will call those who were not my people, 'My people,' And her who was not beloved, 'Beloved.'" "And it shall be that in the place where it was said to them, 'You are not My people,' There they shall be called the sons of the Living God."
Ephesians 1:4-5 - "just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will"

The above is not to say that people shouldn't have children, especially if it is their dream to do so. But I am saying that those people should take a step back and take a hard look at that dream to see if is originating from a God given purpose or from a possibly misguided sense of religiosity.

First of all, why is it so important that you have children? Do you really have something important to pass on, or do you want to play at being a parent for a while? Secondly, if you do honestly feel you are supposed to be a parent, does it have to be biological? I've had people tell me when they find out that I am adopted that they couldn't possibly have loved an adopted child as much as a biological one. Why? Being a parent is not a walk in the park - it doesn't take having kids to realize that. So parenting, biologically or via adoption is a choice that you as a future parent make. You make a choice to love that child whether or not he or she grows up to be a doctor or a football player or a slacker. You make a choice to try and guide that child to the best of your abilities, to fulfill your responsibility as a parent even in the times that you don't like the child (e.g. adolescence).
And if you do decide to have children and are open to the idea of adoption, there are lots of kids out there that need parents.

two quotes

This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of blood
So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thou be conscience-calm’d—see here it is—
I hold it towards you.
~ John Keats

We're married now; we can't get rid of each other.
This is awesome!
~ my husband

Paulo Freire

Authentic thinking, thinking that is concerned about reality, does not take place in ivory tower isolation, but only in communication.
~
The Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Paulo Friere
p64

traveling is now possible

I now have a passport, and the picture looks horrible.
Oh well, I am now free to move around the world. *grin*

traveling

Today I am going to get started on my passport application materials. I've been increasingly hassled by friends about my passport less state. In my defense, I have never really needed one. No study abroad, no relatives in France/Thailand/Mexico, etc... (although I have been and lived throughout southern LA) = a passport not being a necessity. However my recent marriage has resulted in my husband and I talking about all the fun trips we want to take in the future, hence me now needing a passport.

In my browsing online today, I was nudged again when looking at this most fabulous academic travel opportunity. Now, I do have quite a lot of time before I could even think of applying to this academic month in Rome (one of the requirements for writers is a sample of a published book), but it's fun to anticipate, even so far in advance.

More realistically the passport will be used for a quick vacation. Panama anyone?

I was looking over the last few months worth of blog posts, and the paucity struck me as rendering my blog somewhat ineffectual, which is kind of silly since I didn't have a direct effect in mind when creating Mind Splotch. However, one's presence on the web is measured in posts/responses/im's, so I will attempt to briefly explain my seemingly sporadic postings.

1. I was married to a wonderful man just over one week ago. Even with a very small wedding, there's a lot of planning that goes into such an event. I'm mainly glad I ordered enough food.

2. A few weeks before said wedding, I quit my job. Now, I hate typing this, because I feel very slackerish in my unemployed state (although planning a wedding did preclude normal job searching). The main reason I write this is because I should not have waited so long to end what had turned into a horrible interpersonal situation between my boss and I. I love what I do for a living (teaching in and for various formats, styles), but in the end I was dreading going into work not because of my students but because of the other nasty politics flying around.
A weight was verily lifted off of my shoulders once I had made the decision to leave. So don't be like me! If you are in a job that is suffocating your soul and destroying the love you once had for your work, the inspiration for all that you do, then leave.

Life is now good. I have a new husband and a much better mindset for a summer job search.

As of this afternoon,

Nathan and I are going to be married!

tech in the classroom

The article on this page describes what happens when students run amok in an experimental online classroom/chat room. The theory is that by involving technologies that are viewed in conjunction with "leisure" activities, effective learning is castrated. The authors of this study do have some pertinent points, but it does seem as though some gray area has been blacked out rather heavily.

Essentially, after the students logged on, the male students in the classroom started cracking homophobic jokes, jokes that the females largely ignored. According to the authors,

The early interventions by two male students set the framework and modality for the majority of their fellow online contributors. The usual power dynamics of a seminar setting, facilitated by the lecturer, were immediately transgressed and became impossible to re-establish.

How did it become impossible to re-establish boundaries? Another thing that is troubling about the article is that the reader is not given a sense of what boundaries were set into place before the students entered the online classroom. Did the teachers, perhaps with the notion that students obsessed with Facebook would immediately grasp the idea of an online classroom, give minimal instruction and expect the students to just "get it"?

Another section of the paper that is troubling reads as follows

The greatest gift that a
life of the mind provides is awareness that we are
responsible for our own failures, inadequacies and laziness. The greatest gift that chat rooms, blogs and Facebook provide is the construction of endless cycles of displacement where others – writers, teachers, politicians, boyfriends, girlfriends, (ex)best friends and mothers – can block the knowledge that we are accountable for the decisions we make in our lives. Homophobia is not a legitimate strategy or method for creating an empowered identity.

Where does the jump happen that allows the implicit comparison of homophobia with using online technologies? Instead of using the experience and searching out other possibilities with students using technology, the authors seem to have given up, tarring online discussion with the brush of homophobia and laziness forever. It did seem as though a chat room was too closely related to "leisure-based platforms" to be useful for ongoing class discussion, but it would be interesting to see the class layout reworked to see if a chat room can be a viable tool. What if the students didn't know each other and were given completely anonymous, gender neutral pseudonyms? Would that remove some of the gender based insults, or would that merely leave everyone open for flaming? What if the students were actually in seperate locations instead of packed together in a classroom where they could still talk to one another face to face?

What feels most important that the authors have failed to realize, or at least account for in their article, is that the online world has the same people that the real world does. The students that speak up in class are still going to speak up online. Unfortunately, if one is a slacker/homophobe in one's day to day interactions, those nasty traits do not disappear just because of a computer screen. The only difference is the words are in pixels instead of in sound waves. Such students need to learn to moderate their communication style in order to more fully deal with the learning issues at hand. And this needs to happen with some sort of online technology given how prolifically everyone uses it. Perhaps blogging instead of chatting, giving the students more time to process their thoughts while removing the ability to react as informally as in regular conversation?