Urgency is not Agency

I have a lot of students. For some reason, they wait until their assignments are almost due, and then they consult me. They seem to feel that unless there is urgency, there is no emergency. They forget that 'emerge' in its original sense implies the rise of that which is submerged, and the deeper it is submerged, the longer it takes to emerge.

It's for that reason that I must remind them that urgency is not agency. Just because the matter is of some urgency to a student doesn't mean that I must be spurred into action. Indeed, the closer it is to a deadline, the busier I seem to be. What used to be a same-day or eight-hour maximum turnaround time is now about 72 hours or three days simply because the queue for consultations is very long.

Advice for future students: get yours early to avoid disappointment — those who consult me now may be paying as much as a 100% premium over my usual rates. I can't help it; I want to help, but I won't die for my students, and the extra earnings go towards my medical insurance and maintaining the resources I use to help solve their problems.

Gentlemen

Tonight I sat in a burger joint, with five young men. They were a lot more polished than when I had last spoken with them, and they too had passed through fires of their own. I used to be the master of their domain in the high tower, but this was only because I was the oldest wyvern in the brood.

Tonight they saw many things for me. They patched the fabric of time. They laughed at the lame jokes, claiming nostalgia. And so we shared stories that brought closure to the past and humour to the present.

I am glad to have been their guide and now their friend. It is only a few years since they left their home on the hill, but you can tell that they sniff the wind and see the future unfold. Their wings itch for it.

"The best is yet to be."

Ladies

I remember that when I worked on the hill, I used to refer to all my charges as 'ladies'. There were some giggles and guffaws (yes, even those) when I first did this, but I know I was steadfast in thinking that some day they would certainly be so, if not.

Nineteen years later, I had the great pleasure of catching up with many of them on a lovely Monday afternoon. All around me, the same naughty smiles, the same charming graces, the same pointed wit — but more refined. If not ladies then, they certainly were ladies at lunch.

I really enjoyed their company. I am glad we are friends. It would have been inappropriate then, when I taught them. But it is a blessing now, and I am grateful for it. Each of them gave me a different fragment of light back then; I saw the whole rainbow this day.

"Simple dans ma vertu; forte dans mon devoir."

Loco Parents

Schools have traditionally treated the teacher-student relationship as one in which the teacher is in loco parentis; that is, the teacher acts in place of a parent. If this were the gold standard, it would save much difficulty in ethical discussion — the teacher would have parental-level rights within the bounds of the school, and commensurate responsibilities. And of course, teachers would be bound by the kind of proprieties and conventions that exist between parent and child.

The contract should work both ways; should parents NOT desire this state of affairs, they should not be sending their children to school. Rather, such parents should educate the children at home, either by themselves, or through private tuition.

I think the point at which the relationship broke down was when schools began to be seen as service providers, with parents as clients and children as objects deposited at the schools by parents for 'servicing' and 'upgrading'. This had at least three bad effects: parents offloaded part of their responsibility, some children no longer thought of teachers as anything but (under)qualified technicians, and some teachers thought of their work as a mechanistic process (no matter how artful).

The only way to repair this situation is to allow the traditional state to persist. Teachers share in the parenting of the child, as far as education goes. You send children to school, the teachers school them. You don't like it, take them out.

Deadlines

I have students who have deadlines on D-Day and submit drafts on the midnight between D-1 and D-Day, asking for help. What is the point of that?

Listen up, ladies and gentlemen. Here are things to think about.

First, you need to know what you don't know. I suggest you attend lectures and tutorials, and if those are too boring, spend the time reading the material and making sense of it. Somewhere in all that, you will learn what it is about the material that is impervious to the razor-edged sharpness of your brain. Alternately, you might learn that you know it all. Good for you.

Second, you need to list the things you need help with. Don't come to me with, "I don't know anything, help me." I will proceed to spend time showing you what you do know. But that might not help you with what you don't know. And trust me, everyone knows some things. I can prove it to you.

Third, if you have not overcome the difficulties highlighted in the two previous paragraphs, and you come to me with only a day or two left, pray for miracles of cognitive blossoming. That might help. I can then help you blooming students in the confidence that not my will but the divine will shall be done.

Last, you really might be screwed, and it will certainly not be something I am to be faulted or blamed for. (Incidentally, you should know the difference between 'fault' and 'blame'. If not, search this blog till you find it.)

A Better Age of Daughters

My heart was warmed recently by a surprise invitation to a gathering of young ladies I used to teach. These young ladies are now in their thirties, and still as pretty as I remember them. Yes, I said this, even though in today's climate saying that your students are pretty immediately makes people want to call the police.

The thing is that I was brought up to be honest especially in the matter of compliments, whether accepting or offering. You could stretch irony, sarcasm, self-deprecation and suchlike only so far, because it was understood that humility was right but that pretence was not. And so if you said someone was clever, you had better have meant it; and if someone said you were a well-behaved young man, you said, "At the moment."

I remember the moment of crystal clarity when I realised I was not particularly good-looking but also not particularly ugly. I sought comfort in the phrase 'pleasantly ugly'. 'Somewhat uninteresting' was my second choice.

The other thing is that my paternal grandfather in particular encouraged us to see the good in people. That extended to trying to see people in the best light not only metaphorically but aesthetically. You looked them over until you could capture the best memory of them — something which modern digital photography tends to obviate by saturation bombing.

And so, yes, the students I remember were pretty. All of them. In different ways. And they have grown up well, and I am happy for them and the surprise invitation I received.

Reluctant Learners

I once heard a senior educator say, "You can teach all you like, but if the student hasn't learnt, you haven't really taught."

The problem I have with this is that it is akin to saying, "You can hit the wall all you like, but if the wall hasn't crumbled, you haven't really hit it."

There should always be some degree of collaboration involved. The student has a duty to try to learn. It is not a scenario in which the teacher is an entertainer to be appraised by the skeptical crowd at 'Education Idol' or some such — it is one in which the teacher is a conductor (at the very least) expecting some degree of compliance from an orchestra.

There are many other metaphors that will serves us well, but the 'go ahead, impress me, and if I haven't learnt — it's because you haven't taught' concept is rubbish.

Which brings me to the title of this post. The word 'reluctant' is not a passive one; the Latin reluctari means 'to struggle against'. A reluctant learner, like some I have encountered, is not a passive lump, but one who struggles against the teacher and the teaching process.

Nowadays, that unteachability is seen as a sign of 'independent thinking' and indeed seems to be considered a virtue. And so, we have reluctant teachers — teachers who must struggle against such silly ideas as accepting such thinking without critical evaluation.

Frayed

On a sultry Friday, I heard various students say that:

• there was a proven ethical basis for not eating shark's fin soup
• the Germans never had any ideas about a master race
• puberty was a random phenomenon

I was not amused.

Sentenced to Death

I have been sentenced to death. I have read a total of more than sixty essays most of which pretend to be essays on the theory of knowledge but are nothing of the sort. Most of them are collections of sentences, working their dreary way to release after a long term.

Helping the inmates demonstrate their fitness to be released is mind-boggling. Many of them can't write five lines without contradicting themselves or using words that have to be defined because they are not good enough. The latter problem adds to the bulk of the stool that is being dropped.

And so it goes. They're not always bad. Sometimes you find diamonds aching to be polished. Sometimes you find craftsmanship and even style. But mostly you take patience and add endurance, and work your way through the accidental labyrinths, past the bull-headed beast-men and the tangled webs, until your crimes are expiated and your sins are cleansed.

A Theory about Theory of Knowledge

Over the last fifteen years, I've had the pleasure of investigating the way in which students theorize about knowledge. The odd thing is that the more they think about what they know and how they know it (or how they think they know it), the less coherently they express this. It's almost as if they have drunk too deep of the stuff and are repenting in the gutter.

That has to be the reason why I'm seeing a particularly disturbing phenomenon more and more. Essays my students write tend to be linear and at best two-dimensional, despite the many thoughts they seem to have in the classroom. It's as if they are deliberately putting on blinkers in order to avoid distractions, in order to plough a long, lean furrow.

This leads to essays in which a line of argument about knowledge is advanced and pursued through thick and thin, but without a broader context and without much engagement with other aspects of knowledge.

At the end of the line, one finds a single glowing point of conclusion, like the last glow of an ember before the dark snuffs it out. It's all rather depressing.

My theory is that students are afraid of looking at knowledge. It is as if, having grown up in an atmosphere of air, they are suddenly having to think about breathing, about fighting for every breath and attempting to scent the aromas of nitrogen and oxygen. It is as if they think they will die if they cannot adequately chart the movement of air through every alveolus in the lung. And so, they fall back on a description of process, rather than a picture of relationships.

A 1500-word essay on breathing would be beyond them, but a 1500-word chocolate-box assortment of linked facts amounting to a description of how air passes into the lung and emerges depleted — ah, that is what they can do with some confidence.

That is why, the day before the essays are due, students can still ask me questions like, "What's my conclusion supposed to be?" or "Are there any implications to what I've said?" or "What is my knowledge issue?" They've forgotten how to think, because they're thinking too hard and too narrowly about thought. Like the millipede who became paralysed after being asked, "Which leg do you move first when you wake up?" they are paralysed by having to describe how they know how they know.

Shy

I think she is shy not because she is afeard, but because there are too many things on her mind. She is swarmed by them, mellipotent, bellipotent, honeybees with stings that irritate not burn. She hesitates to conclude, because there is too much life in her mind, and hence no conclusion. She would rather let it out in light and movement, in air and crystal-clear water.

And therefore, we must put some straw into the clay, some iron into the cement. The marbled index of a mind forever foraging must be made into the streamlined codex of a mind ready to sit for exams. Sigh.

The Last Minute Lasts 3-5 Months

Quite often, people remark on the fact that I seem to have a lot of last-minute students. That's one of those strange terms, because although I know what they mean by it, that's not conveyed at all by the naked text.

That's because 'last minute' has become somewhat of an anachronistic term. I can only imagine that this refers to old-time clocks which showed the time changing in increments of minutes, as the mechanism shifted the hands by 1/60 of a revolution. Recently, the term 'last second' has become a bit more common, since that's the smallest convenient unit of time, and clocks use those now. The older term 'eleventh hour' is hardly ever used — after all, now you can get a lot done in the last hour before midnight or noon.

But back to my students. No, I don't think they're last-anything. They do often come to me with 3-5 months remaining of their effective school life before terminal exams. And every single one of them has the potential to do well.

My job is, at the very least, to get them the equivalent of a B grade. This is generally easy to do; get them up to speed, throw them in running, they'll make it.

My calling is a bit different. It's to see if I can push them to an A grade in the short term, or if I have more time, to instil in them some interest, motivation or drive to be habitual learners. That old adage about 'teaching a man to fish instead of giving a man to fish' is pretty applicable. But all that is moot unless you can persuade the person in question that fish is worth eating, that there are many kinds of tasty fish; and that a lifelong interest in finding, catching and eating fish is a worthy one.

And so... give me a student for 3 months and I'll give that student fish; give me a student for 18 months and I'll make that student a fisherman who eats what he catches.

Gratitude Memetics (Part I)

For some time now, in the world of academia, some academics have taken to tracing their 'academic descent' — who their doctoral supervisor was, who their supervisor's supervisor was, and so on until you reach the earliest recorded node. The doctoral thesis is an interesting carrier of this memetic record because it is normally the defining moment of the typical academic life.

Strictly speaking, the doctoral dissertation is a meme. A really good one will propagate itself while evolving into a book, a roadshow, a seminar, a conference, and eventually perhaps an institution of its own. As it propagates itself through the citation/reference system, thorough the cells known as journals, in the wombs known as committees, they infect the human race for good or for ill.

Today however, I was just content to be looking at the master's thesis a former student of mine submitted, in the field of theatre. What really made my day was when this student told me how, when speaking to colleagues about goals and ambitions, memories of me would emerge. Those colleagues would then be treated to a short spiel on how my teaching was an eye-opener and something worthy of emulation.

I was speechless. And very, very grateful. We who are confident, positive personalities sometimes look as if we don't need kindness, or that nice words and memories are superfluous to our requirements. But we're human too, and I felt good, and I thanked this ex-student from the bottom of my miserable heart.

Grouping

My very first group tutorial consisted entirely of young ladies. And we met at a noisy, crowded café. Subsequent meetings were in noisier surroundings. I've seldom had so much fun.

Group tutorials tend to consist of young ladies. Young gentlemen seem not to want to be caught studying together, as if it were somehow unmanly.

Studying with someone else of the opposite sex, however, seems acceptable to them.

Problem Slots

The problem, of course, is time-tabling. I have fourteen student classes a week. I do not have enough slots for various reasons. I have to get them to move around a bit. It is troublesome. It is a happy problem. But it is a galling one. They come from everywhere. They require me in several places. I am not transcendent enough. I laugh a lot when I think about how different it is from my last place of work.

A Hazy Shade

"Look around, the leaves are brown now; and the sky's a hazy shade of winter," says the old Simon & Garfunkel song. It's an autumnal song, and somewhat unsuitable for the day just past, which was my brother's 40th birthday.

One of the main points of the conversation over dinner was his account of how his new students were unable to say why, precisely, a 'non-traditional security threat' was 'non-traditional'. After all, as he pointed out, piracy and plagues are historically not uncommon.

I laughed and said, "The main thing is that you can't use traditional agencies of state, soldiers and police, to deal with these things, right?"

"Exactly!" he boomed. "But how is it that these young people can't get it?"

That's the problem with the current educational system. Having holy scriptures in the form of the 'Dominant Narrative' (which sounds like The Lord's Prayer, etymologically) of local history, and the 'Ten-Year Series' (which sounds like an analogue of the Decalogue), students don't know things and don't think about ideas that fall outside the spotlit magic circles of their learning. They aren't academics, but pragmatics — doers who do thinking, rather than think.

Of course, there are always exceptions. But these prove the rule (which means they challenge the rule, not that they provide evidence that the rule exists), and in a city-state with a dominant rule, such proving is a perilous task; the tendency to essay such a task is often scythed down by well-meaning friends, relatives and teachers.

Perhaps this year signals a new start. Perhaps those who prove the rule will show it is not proof against criticism. And perhaps we will once again have learners who learn, and thinkers who think.

Otherwise, "Look around, the leaves are brown; there's a patch of snow on the ground."

Affection

Perhaps it is because we are colonials that we do not make public display of affection; perhaps it is because we are orientals, disoriented; perhaps occidentals, accidentally. Whatever it is, our displays of affection tend to be somewhat chaste, furtive, subdued. The exceptions prove the rule — that is, they test the rule and show that it is indeed a rule.

When we see public displays of affection, it stirs feelings ranging from a subtle disquiet to a deeper unease to a sense of outrage or despair. When we are the object of such displays, we have to make excuses (some might say reasons) for it, ourselves, or those affectionate to us.

The word 'affect' used to mean 'aiming towards [something]'. It is of course related to words like 'effect' ('the outcome of [something]'), 'defect' ('negation, or lack of, [something]') and 'perfect' ('having arrived at, or having completed, [something]'). To show affection is to show that you have an affinity towards the object of affection, a fondness or a good disposition toward that person.

When I was at the Citadel, I treated almost every single one of my students with affection, which to me meant a judicious amount of positive good-feeling and the hope that they would be well, go well, turn out well. There were a few for whom I had a larger supply of fondness — I got to know them better, and they were likable, and there was more affinity. This, unfortunately, clashed with 'judicious' — a teacher should strive to be fair, and yet all humans are not.

Looking back, I must say that there are no former students to whom I wish ill. I still am fond of all of them to various degrees, even the ones who posted nasty things about me on their blogs, or who hated my lessons, or who decided I was a bad teacher. I know these people, and I am sure they had good reasons for what they thought. To those I am grateful, for having pointed out my defects.

It is of course easier to like the people who posted nice things, or who liked my lessons, or who decided I was a good teacher. To these I am grateful, for seeing the good things and encouraging me.

But there are, here and there, a few to whom I showed little affection and perhaps a bit more wrath or disaffection than I should have. If you, reading this, recall such things, I am really sorry. I think I meant well. Probably wasn't very good at showing it.

To all of you, you know that these words, this post, is one of those things you can put in a blog but not say face to face. It would be most un-English, or even un-Chinese, or un-natural (haha) to actually do such a thing. It is customary at this point to say, "You know who you are." Except that I'm not sure you do. I can only hope that apologies go to those who deserve them, and good wishes go to all.

Why Student Output Should Be Better (But Isn't)

25 years ago, I was an 18 year old person in senior high. If we did research at all, it was mainly in a reasonably well-stocked library, or from our own collections of material. We sometimes had files of newspaper clippings, sorted by topic and date.

A lot of that (though not all) has now been made redundant simply because most schools now purchase online access to journals and newspapers. Simple search functions linking to any of those databases will produce a plethora of peer-reviewed journal articles. In conjunction with Google™ Scholar and Wikipedia, a student can literally research and produce a paper on any topic, running at around 2000 words, in less than 400 minutes, maybe even less than six hours.

25 years ago, this was just barely possible, except that you would have to read piles of material because there was no search function and you'd have to rely on the occasional annual index of topics that kind journal-publishers might produce, or on the experience (and philanthropy) of the person manning the morgue at the newspaper office. If you were fortunate, you had a knowledgeable librarian.

And yet, the quality of student work these days is poor. Each paper is generally poorly referenced, and the references selected are often poor themselves. The argument doesn't hang together, and neither does the structure.

Why is this so?

I have an idea, developed after many years of talking to high school students and asking them about their work processes. It's a pretty sad idea.

I think that students don't read enough.

Search functions identify quotes which they can use in their papers, but they have seldom read the entire book or chapter from which these quotes have been lifted. Because the context has not been read through and analysed, the quotes are unjustified or simply taken out of context in the worst way possible.

Students don't read around the topic anymore, because instead of homing in on their material, they jump straight to it. It's like the subway or MRT. If you pop up in the middle of a neighbourhood, you only know the area around the station, and your knowledge of context and related material diminishes sharply as the distance increases.

Students don't read enough often because their teachers and librarians don't read enough. My personal library consists of about 8000 books. This is small, and in the age of the Internet, it ought to be redundant (and often is). But when I research a paper, I end up with a bibliography; a 25-page paper with perhaps 8000-10000 words in it takes a week for first draft because I have normally read an average of 500 pages from various sources while planning and writing that paper.

If a student comes to me with a topic, I can often recommend books or journal articles or websites because I've seen them, read them, or know someone who has. And if I can't recommend sources, I use Google™ like everybody else, or Wikipedia. But if I do, I take the additional step of trying to triangulate my sources to see if they agree. If I can find only one source, and it is not linked to any other, I can't in good conscience recommend it as an authority unless there are seriously good reasons to do so.

It all boils down to three things: receive a lot of input, think a lot about it, structure it into consistent output. That provides basic quality. Style, grammar, neatness — all this provides extended quality. But any kind of quality requires hard work.

The final bit of hard work is reading your own stuff critically. You need to read it aloud, if possible. This exposes the silly stuff better. Sometimes, under the influence of sleep deprivation or bad environmental pollution, you write silly things. It's best to pretend your paper was written by someone you hate and that you will get a cash reward for finding mistakes in it, arm yourself with a red pen for hard copy or something like those awful comment flags in MS Word™, and attack your own work.

This phase takes a lot of time, for me. I literally read and re-read everything I publish, several times. Unfortunately (as some of you have noticed) I do this less for my blog posts. I don't like making mistakes, though. That means I make some attempt to find mistakes, will amend them as soon as I find them, and will confess them if some poor sod has already been subjected to them.

Students these days claim they haven't enough time. I just wonder how much less time they would have had in the days before advanced search and online databases, before YouTube and Wikipedia, before the ability to download digital versions of key documents within minutes. They have less excuse for mediocrity than I had.

One final rant about reading: why can't students bother to look things up for themselves, given all the online help they currently have? I hate it when students ask me for definitions of things, places, people or ideas. It's all online!

Yesterday, I had coffee with a young man who lamented the difficulty of training educators. He asked how I would go about it. Well, I told him that each person should be educated in a different way, but that there were some key requirements.

I told him that first of all, a person should have read all the fundamental texts (or at least, enough texts to cover the fundamentals) of the subject to be taught. A general educator should have a broader and more difficult reading list than a specialised educator.

Secondly, the person to be 'trained' (I hate that word in this context; it reminds me of dog obedience school) needs to develop the capacity for interacting with people, listening to feedback (verbal or non-verbal) and tweaking the interaction as it progresses. You need to try as hard as you can to understand the people you're teaching, and you need to feel apologetic if you don't quite 'get' them.

Thirdly, the person needs to be able to detect bullshit both in what is taught and in the responses of students. Yes, self-critical as well as other-critical analysis is required. You shouldn't lie to students even by accident. If you don't know something, say so. If you have made a mistake, admit it and apologize.

If students are badly taught, then their role-models of learning are deficient. This is another reason why student output is bad; their input and learning models are bad too. As my grandfather used to say, "Why do children misbehave? Because their parents do!"

In most parts of the world that I've seen, I estimate that perhaps one teacher out of every 20 is a good one. The quality tends to be worse if the organization is larger, unless a lot of money is spent and a lot of research and evaluation is carried out in the attempt to 'buy' good staff. That means students have to be good self-teachers most of the time.

I wish my own students all the best. I try to give them my best, being fully aware that it's never enough. But they should also aim to do better, by reading, thinking, and being self-critical — and by remembering that the best is always yet to be.

Development Fail 2

If the previous post were a movie synopsis, this must be the sequel. Someone pointed out to me that I'd probably fail at least one of the possible tests that could legitimately be set for me under the guidelines suggested at the end of that post.

Honestly, that's true. I'd probably fail a programming test in a modern computer language simply because I'm horrendously out of practice. If I were allowed to do it in pseudocode or using flowcharts, I'd probably pass. For chemistry, I confess my inadequacies in areas outside transition-metal, organic, and analytical chemistry. If I were confronted with some phase equilibrium physical chemistry practical test, I might not make it either.

For history, it's a toss-up. If the test required specific knowledge, then I would probably fail, since I don't think my knowledge base covers enough history to give me a fighting chance. On the other hand, I could probably pass a test with sources provided or which was open-book. Economics or literature would be the same, sole difference being that you can reason your way out of economic problems, while you might still be stuck with a specific literary conundrum.

I am quite confident I'd pass a Theory of Knowledge test or any other test not requiring specific factual knowledge. But I must say that this is because I have spent so much time developing professional authority by conscientiously lecturing, teaching, and tutoring students; analysing and evaluating their work; thinking through issues with them.

In fact, I suspect a lot of my supposedly self-directed learning required the stimulus that only dealing with good students (active, creative, startling, interesting) can provide. Good students need not have a lot of academic fervour or a huge knowledge base. But they must think about stuff and do stuff and be happy and enthusiastic about what they think and do.

And so, I am very very grateful to them; without them, I would be suffering from development fail too.

Rice Memories

Last night I had a wonderful time with an old fellow-traveller. We sat up late with some excellent biryani with its traditional accompaniments and traded stories until it was time to go home.

I have many memories of bumming around with this gentleman. I remember him telling me, "You are indeed a bum," at least once. We were all bums then, when we were not being professionals. He remains in-service, and I am now not in the same service, but it was a fantastic time.

The memories of food between friends serve to keep us connected. Good meals never entirely leave the digestive system of the brain. Their residues remain, allowing us to compare current intake with the intake of bygone eras, or our faint recollections of them.

The same goes for our students. We remember all of them in faint echoes and resonances, by their shadows and fragments of their names. But they are our staple diet, our common bond. Some are particular piquant in the impressions they have left. Some we can remember in unique instances of memory the way we remember the unique meals of surpassing excellence; some we remember in a general sense because they were so much a part of our lives — like the corner shop which used to sell the most excellent murtabak everyday, and which we savoured frequently, or the fiery noodles that were our most common breakfast and the anchor of our diet.

And there are few meals I have hated or disliked enough to remember in a negative way. In fact, as with students, there are none.