The Teeming Brain

My co-editor and I suffered a recent minor setback in our progress through the submissions to the Holy Horrors anthology. It occurred nearly three weeks ago at my end of the editorial continuum when one of my family members suffered the misfortune of having his house burn down. The good news is that he and his family are unhurt. The bad news is that they lost pretty much all of their possessions.

The way this event relates to Holy Horrors is that this family member lived right next to me, and we shared a high-speed satellite Internet connection. The base point was located at his house. So when his house burned, I lost my Internet access. For the past three weeks I’ve been working with a 26.6k dial-up modem connection. For reasons related to our private network situation, this rendered me unable to continue using my Dell laptop to read the story submissions, as had been my previous practice. So I’ve been stalled ever since then.

Fortunately, there’s been progress. Just yesterday we got the high-speed connection back up and running. There are a few network kinks to iron out, but it looks like the whole thing is mostly a “go.” So I can return to reading the remaining submissions to the anthology.

Previously I announced that we expected to have a tentative TOC decided by early or mid-May. That’s now going to be delayed by a few weeks, or maybe more than a month. So, apologies to all for the tedium. And thank you for your continued patience.

Not much original content to post today. As the school year enters its terminal phase, I’m engulfed in that ominous fourth-quarter weariness that translates into a creeping internal silence. It’s a great time to listen to Current93 and read Ligotti, Cioran, Amiel, Lovecraft, Robert Frost, and other prophets of the void. It’s also a great time just to sit outside or before a window, remain motionless, and contemplate the essential serenity — or maybe it’s better characterized as a perpetual, limpid exhaustion — of nature. But it’s not such a great time to talk (whether verbally or textually) or be active.

One thing that has still managed to catch my attention lately is the relationship between education and cutting-edge digital technology. This isn’t a purely theoretical interest; the school where I teach has applied for a grant to transform itself entirely into an eMINTS school. Part of the school was converted a couple of years ago. The hope is for the conversion to be completed over the next two years. If you’re not familiar with eMINTS, just visit their Website to learn more.

The term itself is an acronym for “enhancing Missouri’s Instructional Networked Teaching Strategies.” In a nutshell, it’s a program that remakes traditional schools into computer-centered ones. For each classroom it provides one computer for every two students, plus a computer control center for the teacher and an electronic white board (as in a SMART Board). But it’s more than just a passel of technology. The eMINTS people come in and provide 200 hours (!!) of initial professional development training for faculty to teach them how best to integrate the technology into their classroom instruction. The entire edifice is built around a “student-centered” approach to education and predicated upon the constructivist theory of learning, all of which is entirely in keeping with well-established trends in American educational practice that reach as far back as the progressive education movement of the 1920s and 30s, and even farther.

Since all of this promises to work radical changes on the nature of what I do here at my job, if indeed I stay on at it, I’ve thought it prudent to learn as much as I can about these matters. So for several weeks now I’ve positively inundated myself with articles, essays, and reports about constructivism, student-centered learning, and the use of computers and other digital technology in education.

Thus far, the result has been to turn me into a naysayer, or even a mild doomsayer. (Big surprise, that.)

Among the mountain of materials I’ve read and am still reading, a handful of essays, papers, and articles stand out as particularly illuminating, intelligent, and helpful. Below are links to three of them, along with relevant excerpts. Be advised that all of this research I’m performing has spontaneously evolved into a work in progress; I may well have a whole lot more to say about the issue of computers and digital technology in education as the weeks and months go by. For now, suffice it to say that while I think the integration of computer technology and Internet access into education offers some undeniably attractive, useful, and truly beneficial capabilities — such as a recent circumstance in the Great Books class that I teach, where I had students download portions of Plutarch’s Lives instead of being forced to buy new books or forego Plutarch entirely — in general the whole push seems founded upon two less-than-honorable and less-than-beneficial motivations: first, the further subsumption of formal education in America under the rubric of consumerism, vocationalism, and the rest of the Ellulian scenario that makes technical efficiency and economic gain the be-all, end-all of life; and second, a wholesale desire, which is framed by techno-evangelists as a simple necessity, for schools and teachers to capitulate to the outlook, mindset, sensibility, and worldview of an entire generation, or two, or three, of people who have been shaped from earliest childhood by a mass media-saturated environment. In other words, it’s education as framed and conducted for economic slaves who demand that everything they do be entertaining. And it’s being aided and abetted in ferocious fashion by the U.S. government via the No Child Left Behind Act and other such measures.

If this characterization sounds more like a caricaturization, I urge you to look up and read various recent publications by the U.S. Department of Education that address the issue of technology and education. Relevant reports and documents include, e.g., 2002’s 2020 Visions: Transforming Education and Training through Advanced Technology and 2004’s Toward a New Golden Age in American Education. The latter was released in late 2004/early 2005 to serve as the official federal education technology plan, and is subtitled “How the Internet, the Law, and Today’s Students are Revolutionizing Expectations.” If you read through these and other such government publications, you’ll find not a whit of restraint or self-awareness regarding the double-edged nature of what digital technologies and Internet access have to offer schools. You’ll find nothing in the way of examination, or even an acknowledgment, of the fact that the benefits of these technologies to education are hardly a matter of settled consensus or established fact. Instead, all you’ll find is a blatantly cheerleading-toned promotion of the transformation of schools into high-tech centers, all of it justified by repeated references to “the global economy” and “economic competitiveness” and “the knowledge and skills needed for the 21st century workplace.” If you think I exaggerate, I urge you to read these materials for yourself. And while you’re at it, don’t fail to notice the science fiction-sounding tone that enters in when surveyed students and technology experts wax enthusiastic about the future educational uses of virtual reality and computer-generated tutors.

The overall uber-optimistic tone of things is captured in a passage from the latter of the above-named documents that I find to be fascinating for its combination of hubris and heedlessness: “Within 10 years [No Child Left Behind] aims to abolish illiteracy and bring millions of children currently ‘lost’ to the educational system into the mainstream of learning and achievement. It is comparable in many ways to this country’s 1960s quest to put a man on the moon. Combined with the increased use of new technologies and the motivated expertise of today’s students, it means that 10 years from now we could be looking at the greatest leap forward in achievement in the history of education.” The implications are most visible in the context of the opening line of the report’s executive summary, which makes clear its primarily economic focus: “Over the next decade, the United States will face ever increasing competition in the global economy.”

As an aside to all this, I’ll point out that it’s been interesting and refreshing through the course of all this reading and research to rediscover Jacques Ellul, whose work I first discovered through my reading of Theodore Roszak’s Where the Wasteland Ends in 1991, and which exercised an enormous influence over me.

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And now for a few extended quotations from some of the things I’ve been reading lately in relation to all of the above. If the following excerpts interest you, I urge you to follow the links and read the essays/articles in their entirety, since they do a wonderful job of articulating some of the issues that should — but currently don’t — occupy centerstage in a lively national dialogue about the pros and cons of re-visioning and restructuring America’s educational institutions according to the technological imperative.

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Michael T. Charles, “Where are we going as we leave no child behind? La technique and Postman, Papers, and Palmer — Part One.“

“NCLB represents a watershed mark in a century-long movement to think of education as a production task. Standards are established for all students — analogous to a set of product specifications for a production assembly line. Curricula are written for teachers to use to build those products. Standardized exams function as quality control checks of those products on that production line. NCLB mandates that all products from the line be raised to a certain quality standard — i.e. all students must pass the exam. No child should be left behind. It is difficult to argue against this notion of higher quality once one views education as a production task. My suggestion is that this idea is fundamentally wrong, and that education is instead a profoundly human endeavor.

….”The phenomenon that lies behind the NCLB legislation was described by Jacques Ellul as la technique in his book of the same name in 1954, translated into English as The Technological Society in part because of the recommendation of Aldous Huxley, the author of Brave New World in 1932. Ellul (1964) defines la technique as the ‘totality of means, rationally arrived at and having (for any given stage of development) absolute efficiency.’ (xxv). He argues that the effect of this phenomenon is the consumption of all human ends by increasingly technological means.

“Ellul’s writing can be a challenging read, and many of his examples are from postwar France and world events which many of us today may not find so compelling. The contemporary American writer Neil Postman revisits much of Ellul’s argument in his book Technopoly – the monopoly of technical thinking. In this book he describes the surrender of culture to technology. His premise is that the uncontrolled growth of technology destroys the vital sources of our humanity. In the field of education I would restate his argument to say that the fundamentally human character of education is being increasingly invaded by the same technological thinking that dominates in our culture. NCLB is an embodiment of that invasion.”

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Michael T. Charles, “Where are we going as we leave no child behind? La technique and Postman, Papers, and Palmer — Part Two.“

“Thus if one is concerned about the invasion of technopoly into education, then the critical thing to oppose is not, for example, the use of computers in K-12 education or the possibility that computers will one day replace teachers in schools. The thing to oppose is the kind of technical thinking embodied in legislation like NCLB which suggests that improved school productivity is synonymous with better student learning. Postman is particularly skilled in arguing against a ’sleepwalking attitude’ against using computers in the schools in ways that might ‘distract us from more important things.’ What I am suggesting is that we need to guard against this same sleepwalking attitude regarding the larger invasion of technical thinking into how we help students learn. The triumph of technical thinking is best embodied in the mechanism of NCLB and not in the presence of computers in classrooms.

….“Ironically [Seymour Papert’s] argument for school reform is ultimately that our current schools are inefficient. According to Jacques Ellul, efficiency is the sole value of our technical system. Thus Papert proposes to undo technical thinking using technology. But the reason that he gives for undoing this technical thinking is fundamentally technical — to help a complex system function more efficiently. So while in many ways Papert seems to understand the heart of Ellul’s argument about the predominance of la technique or technical thinking, in the end he appeals to the technical value of efficiency to make his case. One of the most profound parts of Ellul’s critique is that he argues that technical thinking is so pervasive that it is very difficult to escape it, even when one is consciously trying to do so. Ellul’s point is not simply that there are the ‘good thinkers’ who critique technology and the ‘bad thinkers’ who are its sponsors. His point is that all thought is pulled in the technical direction, and that our technical solutions are ultimately exacerbating our human problems. For Ellul technical thinking is the only way we have left to think in this modern (and post-modern) age. This brief exploration of Papert’s perceptive critique of technical thinking makes that point once more. Doing things more efficiently is something that even our best critics of technology must appeal to if they are to be heard.”

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Marc Marenco, “Glowing Glass Islands, Invisible Musicians, and the Brave New World: Accomodation and Critique in the Age of Access.”

“I tend to agree with Postman and others who see these figures as reflecting, at least in part, a being overwhelmed with entertainment-saturated developmental milieus and a continual bombardment of endless, useless, unintegrated facts; what Brown and Duguid calls ‘information’ in contrast to ‘knowledge.’ It is a cliché, but a true one, that the ‘medium is the message’ and we are absorbing the media of ICT into our bones without, in my view, critique and analysis commensurate with the seriousness of the enterprise. I am not here arguing for the elimination of ICT in higher education. But it is amazing to me how rapidly this question of the reduction or elimination of ICT has become un-askable. It is all simply there like the air somehow and one is only chided or smiled at in pointing that out in a serious tone of voice.

“Hubert Dreyfus writes, ‘…not only are we transformed by the way we use our tools, we are not aware of how we are being transformed, so we need all the more to try to make explicit what the Net is doing for us and what it is doing to us in the process.’ What I am looking for, what I am committed to, is a robust, open, sustained conversation about the psychological, social, economic, educational, moral and spiritual impact of ICT that is just as robust as the evangelical fervor with which ICT is being embraced in our schools and homes. THAT, it seems to me, is what education is all about – not only teaching our students to ADAPT to the world they are being thrust into but developing a strong personal and social centering that is able to imagine change and act on that imagination.”

You know, maybe I should just give in and make Tuesday the official Update Day for The Teeming Brain. Of course, then my posts would start sliding inexorably in the direction of Wednesdays. So I suppose I should just leave things as they are and operate on the assumption that a self-imposed deadline is good for nothing if not to miss it.

I mentioned a few posts ago that I had conducted a “cultural awareness survey” with my students and fellow faculty and staff at the high school where I play the part of an English teacher. I’ve finally tabulated the results and am ready to share them. I’m not really experienced at this, so I’m certain I must have done many things wrong in the constructing, administering, and tabulating of the survey. Not least among these is my failure to adjust the total percentage scores of various answers to make the them add up to 100 percent. I also worry that the format I’ve chosen to present the whole thing in may be dense and confusing. I’m not sure how to handle these matters. But I still think the results are interesting, and I hope you find them to be so, too.

Below is the text of the whole shebang. I’ve already shared it with a couple of my classes, and sometime this week I’ll be photocopying it and distributing it to faculty and staff members. It remains to be seen how small I’ll have to make the font in order to avoid using a ridiculous amount of paper (currently the file is 13 pages long in Microsoft Word).

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RESULTS OF CULTURAL AWARENESS SURVEY

Administered on February 15, 2007

On February 15, 2007, I administered an unscientific “cultural awareness survey” of my own devising to 63 high school students and 12 teachers and staff members at the rural Missouri school where I teach English language arts. 32 of the students were juniors and seniors (16 to 18 years old). 31 were sophomores (15 and 16 years old). The teachers and staff members hailed from various jobs and subject areas. My intention was to get a feel for the kind of information that occupies the mind of a typical modern-day inhabitant of rural middle America. Lately I’ve been paying close attention to the kinds of things the people around me talk about whenever they chat freely. What kinds of cultural topics dominate their attention? What information, issues, and themes stock their minds and are available for ready recall? What do average Americans absorb spontaneously and often unconsciously from the mass media-saturated environment around them? At a moment’s notice, what do they know and where is their attention focused? These are the questions that have interested me.

So I made up a survey, which, as you’ll see, may be decidedly slanted in its approach. In its questions it also clearly bears the marks not just of the general but of the specific time period in which I created it (which fact is itself a monument to the fleeting quality of mass/pop culture’s attention span). I instructed all respondents to rely on nothing beyond their own present knowledge as they went about answering the questions, as opposed to asking another person or doing any kind of research. The point, I told them, was to find out what knowledge they have right now. For questions to which they didn’t know the answers, I instructed them to leave the item blank or else write, “I don’t know.” The students took the survey in my classroom, under my supervision. The faculty and staff members took it on their own time and returned it to my faculty mailbox.

I designed the survey to have people provide their own responses instead of giving them a list from which to choose. Naturally, this made the total field of responses sprawling and chaotic. As I was tallying and analyzing them, I decided to group some of them into types and categories wherever this seemed natural. Some readers of this survey may disagree with some of my categorizations. For example, people who subscribe to one or more of the conspiracy theories advanced by the 9/11 truth movement may not agree that terrorism, Al Qaeda, and 9/11 should be lumped together as a category of response to the first question.

Some of the respondents gave more than one answer to some of the questions, which is why the total tally of responses exceeds the total number of respondents on some questions.

The accompanying discussions of the “correct” answers are written by me, and I take sole responsibility for any errors and idiocies that show up in them.

As for the overall nature of the results, I’ll let the cat out of the bag in advance by saying they were very much as I had expected them to be. Most of the teens and many of the adults knew more about entertainment trivia from the mass media than about more serious stuff. In many cases the most popular answer to a given question about current events unrelated to pop entertainment was “I don’t know.” After I gave the survey to my students and discussed their responses with them, summarizing for them some of the political things they didn’t know about, quite a few of them told me, “I see exactly what you’re getting at. You’re pointing out how we know a lot about stupid, meaningless stuff and not much at all about serious things.” I used the opportunity to point out to them that it’s useless to live in a “free” society with “open” information if many or most people practice a kind of willful ignorance. Who needs censors, I said, when so many people don’t even know about the rather shocking information that’s presently out there in the open—as in, for example, the revelations in the past few years about the hijacking of America’s foreign policy by neoconservatives with a slanted geopolitical agenda—and instead opt to zone out on mass entertainment junk? I quoted Ray Bradbury’s famous Fahrenheit 451-related warning—“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them”—and talked a little bit about “bread and circuses” and Neil Postman’s warning that America seems in danger of succumbing to the Huxleyan scenario of voluntary suicide by wrapping itself up in an endless round of meaningless and dissipating entertainments. To their credit, many of the kids seemed quite interested in all of this.

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1. Why did the United States go to war against Iraq?

CORRECT ANSWER: There is no single correct answer to this one. The “official” story advanced by the U.S. government is that intelligence reports showed Saddam Hussein possessed or was attempting to gain or manufacture weapons of mass destruction to use against the U.S. and other nations. The claim has also been advanced that Hussein was working in league with Osama bin Laden and was giving aid to Al Qaeda. In the aftermath of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, not only were the claims about WMDs shown to be false, but numerous government whistleblowers and investigative journalists reported that high-level government officials (e.g., George Bush, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, et al.) knew in advance that the intelligence reports were shaky at best, and that the Bush-Cheney administration had manipulated them in the service of a neoconservative geopolitical agenda (regarding which, see question 7).

ANSWERS GIVEN:

FACULTY AND STAFF—TOP ANSWER: Because the U.S. thought Saddam Hussein had or was pursuing weapons of mass destruction – 75% (9)

FACULTY AND STAFF—OTHER ANSWERS:

· Terrorism/Al Qaeda/“Because of 9/11” – 33% (4)

· Because Saddam Hussein / Iraq was supporting terrorism – 25% (3)

· Because of reasons related to oil – 17% (2)

· Because of unresolved issues from the first Gulf War – 17% (2)

· Because Iraq wouldn’t admit U.N. weapons inspectors – 7% (2)

· Because Saddam Hussein was a tyrant or dictator/To “liberate” the Iraqis – 8% (1)

STUDENTS—TOP ANSWER: Terrorism/Al Qaeda/“Because of 9/11” – 60% (3

STUDENTS—OTHER ANSWERS:

· Because the U.S. thought Saddam Hussein had or was pursuing weapons of mass destruction – 22% (14)

· Because of reasons related to oil – 13% (

· Because Saddam Hussein was a tyrant or dictator/To “liberate” the Iraqis – 10% (6)

· “I don’t know”/No response – 8% (5)

· “Because of Saddam”/“To stop Saddam”/“To get Saddam” – 6% (4)

· Because George W. Bush and/or the U.S. was being “childish” or “stupid” – 5% (3)

· Additional responses: Unresolved issues from the Gulf War. Iraq wouldn’t admit U.N. weapons inspectors. “Because Osama bin Laden was hiding in Iraq.” “To build a democracy.” “To show our dominance as a superpower.” “So they wouldn’t attack us first.”

NOTES:

· 8% of students (5) explicitly said the U.S. went to war because it was directly attacked by Iraq.

· 17% of faculty and staff (2) and 6% of students (4) expressed doubt, skepticism, or cynicism about the “official” reasons given for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and/or recognized the existence of alternative ones.

· One student said the 9/11 attacks “killed millions of people.”

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2. What year did the current war start?

CORRECT ANSWER: 2003. That’s when the U.S. started the “shock and awe” bombing campaign in Baghdad.

FACULTY AND STAFF—TOP ANSWER: TIE - 2001 and 2003, both at 33% (4)

FACULTY AND STAFF—OTHER ANSWERS:

· 2002 – 25% (3)

· “I don’t know”/No response – 8% (1)

STUDENTS—TOP ANSWER: 2001 – 44% (2

STUDENTS—OTHER ANSWERS:

· 2002 – 25% (16)

· 2003 – 17% (11) (One teen got this correct by writing “9/11/03”)

· “I don’t know”/No response – 5% (3)

· 2004 – 3% (2)

· Student misread question and gave inapplicable answer: 3% (2)

· 2000 – 2% (1)

NOTES:

· One faculty member commented that the correct answer is 2002 if “current war” means Afghanistan.

· One student commented, “We had CIA paramilitary teams in Iraq in 2002 but the war started in 2003.”

· During a post-survey discussion in class, one sophomore student expressed astonishment upon being told that the U.S. really is currently involved in a real war “where we’re killing people.” Prior to that, the student had thought the U.S. simply has soldiers stationed in Iraq to maintain order.

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3. Where else are we currently involved in a major military engagement?

CORRECT ANSWER: Afghanistan

FACULTY AND STAFF—TOP ANSWER: Afghanistan – 66% (

FACULTY AND STAFF—OTHER ANSWERS:

· “I don’t know” / No response – 3% (2)

· Additional responses: Iran, “Korea,” North Korea, Israel

STUDENTS—TOP ANSWER: “I don’t know”/No response – 33% (21)

STUDENTS—OTHER ANSWERS:

· Afghanistan – 22% (14)

· Iran – 22% (14)

· “Korea” – 10% (6)

· North Korea – 8% (5)

· Kuwait – 5% (3)

· Additional responses: Germany, Israel, South Korea, Africa, Pakistan, Sudan, Canada, Baghdad (mistakenly named as a country)

NOTES:

· One student wrote, “I didn’t know we were involved in another war right now, but I intend to find out.”

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4. Who has been the United States’ main ally in the war?

CORRECT ANSWER: Great Britain / The U.K.

FACULTY AND STAFF—TOP ANSWER: Great Britain / The U.K. – 92% (11) (Three said “England,” which is close enough)

FACULTY AND STAFF—OTHER ANSWERS:

· “I don’t know”/No response – 8% (1)

STUDENTS—TOP ANSWER: Great Britain / The U.K. – 43% (25) (Two said “England,” which is close enough)

STUDENTS—OTHER ANSWERS:

· “I don’t know” / No response – 22% (14)

· Iraq – 8% (5)

· Iran – 6% (4)

· France – 5% (3)

· George Bush – 5% (3);

· Additional responses: China, Germany, Russia, Afghanistan, Egypt, India, Israel, Kuwait, “Our own people”

· Responses probably due to misunderstanding the word “ally”: Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein

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5. An important individual in the Bush-Cheney administration is currently on trial. Who is it? What is he accused of?

CORRECT ANSWER: At the time this survey was given, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, former chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, was the defendant in a highly publicized criminal trial. The main charges against him were perjury and obstruction of justice. He was accused of lying to a federal grand jury that was investigating how Valerie Plame came to be publicly identified as a CIA operative.

FACULTY AND STAFF—TOP ANSWER: Lewis Libby / “Scooter” Libby – 58% (7)

FACULTY AND STAFF—OTHER ANSWERS:

· “I don’t know”/No response – 25% (4)

· George W. Bush – 8% (1) (Respondent wrote, “He let the gov. listen to people’s phone calls without permission.”)

STUDENTS—TOP ANSWER: “I don’t know”/No response – 83% (52)

STUDENTS—OTHER ANSWERS:

· Lewis Libby / “Scooter” Libby – 5% (3)

· Dick Cheney – 5% (3)

· Additional responses: George W. Bush (for letting government spy on phone calls), Bill Clinton (for adultery), Saddam Hussein, “General Casey,” Rep. Mark Foley (not named by student, who wrote, “Can’t think of his name. Gay thing, mean emails”)

RESPONSES TO QUESTION ABOUT CHARGES AGAINST LIBBY:

· “I don’t know” / No reason given – 3

· “Exposing an agent”/“Leaked info about an undercover agent” – 2

· Additional reasons given: “He fibbed about revealing a CIA member’s name”; “CIA leaks”; “Accused of being a CIA insider”; Perjury

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6. What happened on September 11, 2001?

CORRECT ANSWER: The jury’s still out on all of the causes and factors, but the bottom line is that the World Trade Center was destroyed, the Pentagon was damaged, and according to official U.S. figures, roughly 3000 people were killed.

FACULTY AND STAFF—TOP ANSWER: Terrorists/Al Qaeda/suicide bombers/followers of Osama bin Laden hijacked commercial airliners and crashed them into the WTC towers and the Pentagon – 75% (9)

FACULTY AND STAFF—OTHER ANSWERS:

· WTC and/or Pentagon were “bombed” – 25% (3)

STUDENTS—TOP ANSWER: Terrorists/Al Qaeda/suicide bombers/followers of Osama bin Laden hijacked commercial airliners and crashed them into the WTC towers and the Pentagon – 67% (42)

STUDENTS—OTHER ANSWERS:

· Airplanes/jets crashed into WTC and/or Pentagon (no mention of terrorists, motives, etc.) – 17% (11)

· Iraq/Saddam Hussein attacked the WTC and/or Pentagon – 8% (5)

· WTC and/or Pentagon were “bombed” – 3% (2)

· Additional response: “Something in New York.”

NOTES:

3% of students (2) expressed doubt, cynicism, or skepticism over “official” story (that Arab members of Al Qaeda hijacked commercial airliners and flew them into U.S. targets). One student commented, “We were attacked because we couldn’t mind our own business.”

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7. What does the term “neoconservative” refer to?

CORRECT ANSWER: Generally, the “neocons” (as they are commonly known) are those who, in the words of the Merriam-Webster dictionary, “advocate the assertive promotion of democracy and U.S. national interest in international affairs including through military means.” They are often accused of promoting an overtly imperialist vision of America. They are called neo or “new” conservatives because they are typically former liberals who came to embrace conservative politics—or rather their own peculiar brand of it—in reaction to what they perceived as the excesses of liberalism.

FACULTY AND STAFF—TOP ANSWER: “New” conservative; new type of Republican – 33% (4)

FACULTY AND STAFF—OTHER ANSWERS:

· “Extreme” conservative – 25% (3)

· “I don’t know”/No response – 16% (2)

· Additional responses: Semi-conservative, “A political movement,” “Wing of Republican party; war supporters”

STUDENTS—TOP ANSWER: “I don’t know”/No response – 78% (49)

STUDENTS—OTHER ANSWERS:

· “Not conservative” – 10% (6)

· Additional responses: “Extreme” conservative, “new” conservative or “new” type of republican, “Neither conservative nor non-conservative,” “Not aware of things,” “Saving the rain forests,” “We are not conserving our natural resources”

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8. Have you ever heard of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC)? If so, what is it?

CORRECT ANSWER: The PNAC is, or was, a neoconservative U.S. think tank based in Washington, D.C. Its membership included many prominent Republicans and members of the Bush-Cheney administration, including Dick Cheney, Jeb Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Lewis Libby, Steve Forbes, and Dan Quayle. The introduction to the Wikipedia article about them provides a good overview: “PNAC was a major advocate for the United States’ 2003 invasion of Iraq. The invasion formed a centerpiece of the group’s neoconservative agenda. Complications with the invasion have contributed to PNAC’s decline, along with the decline of the larger neoconservative foreign policy movement. PNAC now only has one employee and is seen as nearly defunct.

“Critics allege that the controversial organization proposes military and economic space, cyberspace, and global domination by the United States, so as to establish and maintain a Pax Americana, a US dominance in world affairs. Some have argued the US-led invasion of Iraq in March of 2003 was the first step in furthering these plans.”

During the buildup to current Iraq war, President Bush’s public speeches, including his 2003 State of the Union Address, were stocked with claims and ideas drawn from the PNAC’s publications, especially their September 2000 report titled Rebuilding America’s Defenses. A notorious passage in this document describing the PNAC’s intended transformation of America’s global role said the “process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor.” This has been cited by some critics of the war and the Bush administration as evidence that the U.S. government was complicit in the 9/11 event and/or that it cynically exploited the event as a means for achieving the PNAC’s geopolitical agenda.

FACULTY AND STAFF—TOP ANSWER: Never heard of it/No response – 83% (10)

FACULTY AND STAFF—OTHER ANSWERS:

· “A neoconservative organization. Almost extinct.” – 8% (1)

· “Anti-war peace movement” – 8% (1)

STUDENTS—TOP ANSWER: “I don’t know”/No response – 100% (63)

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9. The U.S. is currently considering taking military action against another country. What country is it? What reasons are being given for a possible attack?

CORRECT ANSWER: Iran, which is supposedly trying to develop nuclear weapons. The U.S. government has also claimed Iran is helping the insurgency in Iraq.

FACULTY AND STAFF—TOP ANSWER: Iran – 83% (10)

FACULTY AND STAFF—OTHER ANSWERS:

· “I don’t know”/No response – 16% (2)

STUDENTS—TOP ANSWER: “I don’t know”/No response – 35% (22)

STUDENTS—OTHER ANSWERS:

· North Korea – 27% (17) (“They are threatening us”; “They launched nuclear missiles”; “They are dangerous”; “WMDs”)

· Iran – 22% (14)

· “Korea” – 8% (5) (for nuclear weapons; “Possibly making weapons-grade uranium”

· Afghanistan – 5% (3) (“Because we think they have nuclear weapons”)

· Additional responses: South Korea (for nuclear weapons), Syria (for being a terrorist threat), China (“They have always been a threat”)

REASONS GIVEN BY THOSE WHO NAMED IRAN:

· Iran is supposedly supporting terrorist activity in Iraq and/or elsewhere

· Iran supposedly has or is trying to manufacture nuclear weapons

· Iran is attacking U.S. soldiers in Iraq

- - - - -

10. Which political party scored a major overall victory in the elections last November?

CORRECT ANSWER: The Democratic Party

FACULTY AND STAFF—TOP ANSWER: The Democratic Party – 92% (11)

FACULTY AND STAFF—OTHER ANSWERS:

· The Republican Party – 8% (1)

STUDENTS—TOP ANSWER: The Democratic Party – 67% (42)

STUDENTS—OTHER ANSWERS:

· The Republican Party – 17% (11)

· “I don’t know” / No response – 14% (9)

· Additional response: Clinton

NOTES:

One faculty member amended the question to read “minor” instead of “major” and commented, “Not enough for vetoes.”

- - - - -

11. Who is currently Vice President of the United States?

CORRECT ANSWER: Dick Cheney

FACULTY AND STAFF—TOP ANSWER: Dick Cheney – 100% (12)

STUDENTS—TOP ANSWER: Dick Cheney – 89% (56)

STUDENTS—OTHER ANSWERS:

· “I don’t know”/No response – 10% (6)

· Additional response: George Bush

- - - - -

12. A major music awards show was broadcast on television recently. What was it? Can you name at least one person or group who won an award?

CORRECT ANSWER: The Grammys

FACULTY AND STAFF—TOP ANSWER: The Grammys – 83% (10)

FACULTY AND STAFF—OTHER ANSWERS:

· “I don’t know”/No response – 16% (2)

STUDENTS—TOP ANSWER: The Grammys – 71% (45)

STUDENTS—OTHER ANSWERS:

· “I don’t know”/No response – 22% (14)

· The People’s Choice Awards – 5% (3)

· Additional response: CMA Awards

WINNERS LISTED BY THOSE WHO CORRECTLY NAMED THE GRAMMYS:

Dixie Chicks (19), Carrie Underwood (11), The Red Hot Chili Peppers (6), Mary J. Blige (3), Justin Timberlake (2), Ludacris, Larry Stephenson Band, Rascal Flatts, John Mayer, Ricky Skaggs

- - - - -

13. The news media have been talking a lot about a famous person who died recently. Can you name this person? What was this person famous for?

CORRECT ANSWER: Anna Nicole Smith. Another answer or two might be correct depending on the meaning attached to the word “recently.”

FACULTY AND STAFF—TOP ANSWER: Anna Nicole Smith – 83% (10)

FACULTY AND STAFF—OTHER ANSWERS:

· “I don’t know”/No response – 8% (1)

· President Ford – 8% (1)

STUDENTS—TOP ANSWER: Anna Nicole Smith – 84% (54)

STUDENTS—OTHER ANSWERS:

· “I don’t know”/No response – 11% (7)

· Additional student responses: Henry Ford, Richard Nixon, “the crocodile hunter”

REASONS GIVEN FOR ANNA NICOLE SMITH’S FAME:

· She posed for Playboy – 35

· She married a rich old man – 14

· She was a spokesperson for TrimSpa – 11

· She was a model – 7

· She had a reality TV show – 4

· She was an actress – 4

· She was a slut – 2

· Additional reasons: She was a “blond ditz,” she was a singer, she was a dancer

- - - - -

14. What’s the title of the current television show about nuclear war in the U.S.?

CORRECT ANSWER: Jericho, but a couple of alternative answers might work as well.

FACULTY AND STAFF—TOP ANSWER: “I don’t know”/No response – 58% (7)

FACULTY AND STAFF—OTHER ANSWERS:

· 24 – 33% (4)

· Jericho – 17% (2)

STUDENTS—TOP ANSWER: “I don’t know”/No response – 59% (37)

STUDENTS—OTHER ANSWERS:

· Jericho – 27% (17)

· 24 – 5% (3)

· Additional student responses: Heroes, The Unit, the nightly news

- - - - -

15. What’s the title of the most popular primetime television game show right now? What are the rules of the game (i.e., how do you play)?

CORRECT ANSWER: Deal or No Deal

FACULTY AND STAFF—TOP ANSWER: Deal or No Deal – 58% (7)

FACULTY AND STAFF—OTHER ANSWERS:

· “I don’t know”/No response – 42% (5)

STUDENTS—TOP ANSWER: Deal or No Deal – 57% (36)

STUDENTS—OTHER ANSWERS:

· “I don’t know”/No response – 37% (23)

· Additional student responses: Wheel of Fortune, 1 vs. 100

Number who correctly explained how to play Deal or No Deal: 35 (100% of those who tried)

- - - - -

16. A report was recently issued that contains the collective opinion of thousands of scientists about a particular issue. What is that issue? What does the report say about it?

CORRECT ANSWER: The report concerns global warming. The overall gist is that global warming is real, that it is having and will continue to have dramatic and even catastrophic effects on earth and its ecosystem, and that humans are almost certainly causing or contributing to it.

FACULTY AND STAFF—TOP ANSWER: Global warming – 58% (7)

FACULTY AND STAFF—OTHER ANSWERS:

· “I don’t know”/No response – 25%% (3)

· Stem cell research – 17% (2)

STUDENTS—TOP ANSWER: “I don’t know”/No response – 71% (45)

STUDENTS—OTHER ANSWERS:

· Stem cell research – 13% (

· Global warming – 10% (6)

· Additional student responses: Bird flu, global cooling, cloning

Number who correctly characterized the report’s “take” on global warming: 54% (7/12)

- - - - -

17. Which American movie star has been widely ridiculed or viewed as being a bit crazy in the past year because of his religious beliefs?

CORRECT ANSWER: Tom Cruise is the obvious answer, although alternative ones might be valid.

FACULTY AND STAFF—TOP ANSWER: Tom Cruise – 58% (7)

FACULTY AND STAFF—OTHER ANSWERS:

· Mel Gibson – 33% (4)

· “I don’t know”/No answer given – 8% (1)

STUDENTS—TOP ANSWER: Tom Cruise – 44% (2

STUDENTS—OTHER ANSWERS:

· “I don’t know”/No answer given – 38% (24)

· Mel Gibson – 16% (10)

· Additional student answer: Madonna

- - - - -

18. Who starred in the movie Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby?

CORRECT ANSWER: Will Ferrell played the lead role. Other actors could be named correctly as well.

FACULTY AND STAFF—TOP ANSWER: Will Ferrell – 83% (10)

FACULTY AND STAFF—OTHER ANSWERS:

· “I don’t know”/No answer given – 17% (2)

STUDENTS—TOP ANSWER: Will Ferrell – 75% (47)

STUDENTS—OTHER ANSWERS:

· “I don’t know”/No answer given – 19% (12)

· Ricky Bobby – 6% (4)

- - - - -

19. What’s the title of a recent movie about talking cars?

CORRECT ANSWER: Cars

FACULTY AND STAFF—TOP ANSWER: Cars – 100% (12)

STUDENTS—TOP ANSWER: Cars – 100% (63)

- - - - -

20. Who starred in a recent movie about a health inspector?

CORRECT ANSWER: “Larry the Cable Guy” played the lead role in Larry the Cable Guy, Health Inspector. Other actors could be named correctly as well.

FACULTY AND STAFF—TOP ANSWER: “I don’t know”/No answer given – 58% (7)

FACULTY AND STAFF—OTHER ANSWERS:

· Larry the Cable Guy – 42% (5)

STUDENTS—TOP ANSWER: Will Ferrell – 75% (47)

STUDENTS—OTHER ANSWERS:

· Larry the Cable Guy – 83% (52)

· “I don’t know”/No answer given – 16% (10)

· Additional student answer: Adam Sandler

Why is it that whenever I have a day off work, I’m less likely to make a blog post on time than when I’m stuck in my classroom? I dunno. I had the day off yesterday in recognition of Easter (the school where I work actually called it “Easter Break” on the district calendar instead of something generic like “Spring Holiday”), and no blogging happened. Oh, well.

This week’s entry is a transcription from my private journal. It’s been awhile since I made a post like this. In fact, I think I’ve only shared a single journal excerpt previously here at The Teeming Brain, in a post last October titled “The irreducible daimonic element on authentic education.” So it’s about time I continued this minor tangent.

In recent months and years my journaling has been sporadic. Whereas all throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s my journal was an ongoing obsession, now it’s died down to an occasional eruption. In 2003 I culled a book-length collection of excerpts from my scattered notebooks and titled it There Is No Grand Scheme. It’s currently unpublished, but you can read excerpts in a book titled In Pieces: An Anthology of Fragmentary Writing, which was published in May 2006 by Impassio Press.

If you do read those excerpts, or if There Is No Grand Scheme is ever published, you won’t find the following entry in it, since I wrote the entry after culling and editing the book. It explores a fundamental and frequent cast of mood and thought that often overtakes me, especially when I’ve been reading the words of other authors who share a sensibility similar to my own.

It also shows me pursuing a spontaneous line of thought without concern for whether it adds up to a coherent point with a fleshed-out conclusion.

* * * * *

04/30/04, Friday, 7:15 a.m.

Currently reading Amiel and feeling a deep & powerful fascination with his struggles to come to terms with the conflicting drives & thoughts & doubts within him.

For many years I have keenly perceived two possible ways with spiritual or religious longings, two contrasting understandings of the ultimate spiritual goal, as well as two distinct methods of approaching it. One way is to regard the self’s deep longings as something that can be met and fulfilled by attaining their object, by achieving what the longings point toward. The other way is to regard that longed-for object as illusory and the longings themselves as misguided; to regard the longings as evidence not of the existence and possible achievement of their object (as in the theology of C.S. Lewis), but as evidence of a defect or disruption in the self that longs, and thus as something to “see through” and transcend. The first view holds that the soul’s longing can be positively fulfilled, while the second holds that the soul’s longing is fulfilled by being recognized as delusory.

Chesterton brushed up against this issue in his Orthodoxy when he contrasted the characteristically Christian statue of a saint (eyes wide open and staring, looking eagerly toward the divine goal to be obtained) with the typical Buddhist statue (the Buddha smiling with eyes closed, gazing inward in silent, peaceful detachment). Others have noted the division as well, such as Alan Watts, who in Psychotherapy East and West invoked almost exactly the same contrasting image of religious iconography that Chesterton did but used it to make an almost diametrically opposite point.

Amiel does much the same thing when he contrasts Christianity with Buddhism, and although his understanding of Buddhism is colored by the 19th century Schopenhauerian misunderstanding of it as pure “annihilationism,” still his recognition of the fundamental character of, and differences between, the two views is acute and poignantly affecting.

I’ve just been reading his entry from August 31, 1869, wherein he virtually cries out in agony over his inability to know which of the two positions to settle upon, and also his inability to believe wholeheartedly in or commit fully to either of them.

Here as elsewhere, I see myself reflected in Amiel, and he in me, to an astonishing degree. These two ways with the self’s longings have been with me for so long that I have almost made an identity out of my suspension between them. Something, however, seems to have definitively tipped within me during these past two years or so, because I have not been as susceptible lately to those wholesale uprushings of Christian longing that used to burst within me at regular intervals.

Of course it has not been lost on me that this has coincided with the onset of my inability to write a story, although I have been unable to arrive at any clear understanding here.

My first viewing of the film Chariots of Fire in the late 1990s fixed for me an iconic image of the soul achieving its longing in positive, Christian fashion. When Ben Cross’s Abraham sits in the audience seats beside the track after having lost his first race and replays helplessly, in agony, the mental image of Eric Liddell bursting across the finish line — that image stabs right through my heart. With eyes closed Abraham/Cross purses his brow in pain, and we see what he’s seeing in his mind’s eye: the image of Liddell running like a virtual elemental force, arms flailing in their characteristic undisciplined display, head thrown back in a kind of primal rapture, mouth open and lips drawn back in a kind of leonine gasping-fierce grimace of ecstasy. Liddell breaks the tape with his chest as the rushing, roaring sound of the crowd swells. Abraham cannot stop replaying the memory with deepest agony.

Later, when Abraham wins his Olympic gold medal, there is no sense of victory but just a hollow feeling of loss while Vangelis’ unbearably melancholy music underpins the scene, subduing all ambient noise. Abraham is locked in his own private world of unfulfillable grief.

It’s that time once again. A new month has begun and I’ve been tracking my reading activities. My list of items read in March is printed below for your amusement and amazement.

You’ll note (or at least I noted) that I actually read a short story last month that wasn’t a submission to the Holy Horrors anthology. No, really!

The type of items appearing on my list of articles and essays continues to hold steady. For those who like to watch trends, here are three of the Big Stories that aren’t just ephemeral “newsy” things but are instead substantial matters of serious import that are producing, and will continue to produce, serious effects on our collective life:

1. The long-forecast burst of America’s housing bubble is now a confirmed reality and is working in tandem with a meltdown in the subprime mortgage market to produce some serious effects on the American economy, as seen in last month’s global stock market craziness (which is of course tied to many more issues than just America’s housing problem). The wave is presently far from peaking. More dire consequences await us.
2. Speaking of peak, the peak oil issue continues to edge its way into mainstream media consciousness, as aided most recently by last Thursday’s report on the subject from the U.S. GAO (Government Accountability Office). This report got major traction in the mainstream media. The Associated Press even put out a story on it, which did as much to inject it into the mainstream print media as anything could do. Especially for those of us who have been studying and paying attention to peak oil (sometimes obsessively) for several years now, this is all most interesting. But of course the issue itself is of interest to everybody on the planet, as indicated in the CNBC story: “The report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office concluded that the U.S. has no plans in place to address ‘peak oil,’ the future point in history of maximum oil production, which would be followed by irreversible declines in oil fields around the world.

   “‘While the consequences of a peak would be felt globally, the United States, as the largest consumer of oil and one of the nations most heavily dependent on oil for transportation, may be particularly vulnerable,’ the GAO report said.

   “An expert told CNBC on Thursday that peak oil is the ‘the single biggest issue to threaten sustainable society’ in the United States.

   “‘We are on the verge of actually replacing global warming by this term peak oil,’ said Matthew Simmons, author of Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Oil Shock and the World Economy. ‘We have demand roaring ahead and supply is faltering.’

   ….“‘We’re basically held hostage by countries that aren’t friendly to us in terms of what’s available,’ John Kilduff, senior vice president of energy risk management at Fimat USA, told CNBC. ‘That is so dangerous to the United States economy you can’t believe it. We have big problems on our hands.’”

3. The U.S. is about to launch a war against Iran.

Just a word to the wise: the confluence of these three things and several related issues indicates — and I mean this in all seriousness, even though I’m phrasing it colloquially — that the summer of 2007 will be a good time to hold on to your ass. Nothing’s guaranteed, of course, but among other possibilities this could be the summer of $5.00-per-gallon gasoline in the U.S. — or maybe much, much higher than that depending on the specific interactions between geological factors and geopolitical ones — as well as ominous social disruptions, a positively frightening economic turmoil, and the visible onset of World War III. Various issues like the ones listed above have been brewing for quite some time — Western military conflict with Iran, for example, was a live issue exactly a year ago — and seem to be poised to come to fruition at last, in a spiral that may begin now and continue to unwind for who knows how long. It really does look like things are coming together to produce the proverbial “perfect storm.”

But for now, a reading list!

BOOKS

• Morris Berman, Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire (2006), ch. 9 (finished)
• T.M. Wright, I Am the Bird (2006)
• William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Julius Caesar—Act I
• Kim Paffenroth, Gospel of the Living Dead—Introduction, chs. 1, 2

SHORT FICTION

• Henry James, “Sir Edmund Orme”
• Many fiction submissions for Holy Horrors

ARTICLES, ESSAYS, etc.

• Alistair Barr, “Subprime mortgage woes may be spreading,” MarketWatch, March 11, 2007
• Philip Augar, “Adam Smith’s hidden hand is vanishing,” Financial Times [FT.com], March 14, 2007
• John Authers, “The Short View: Dr. Doom’s Diagnosis” [legendary economist Henry Kaufmann’s grim prognosis for America’s near financial future], Financial Times [FT.com], March 15, 2007
• “The Challenge of Affluence,” Energy Bulletin, March 23, 2007 [survey of collective media coverage of recent reports “that increasing material wealth no longer brings happiness, but in fact is counter-productive”]
• “Chavez calls Negroponte ‘professional killer,’” CNN.com, March 4, 2007
• Brett Clanton, “Drivers Sputter as Gas Prices Rise Early,” The Houston Chronicle, March 7, 2007
• Julie Creswell and Vikas Bajaj, “Mortgage Crisis Spirals, and Casualties Mount,” The New York Times, March 5, 2007
• Bill Clinton, “Five Questions for the 21^st Century” [excerpts from speech delivered March 2 at Kansas State University], Energy Bulletin, March 4, 2007
• Sharon L. Crenson, “Housing Drop May Spur Recession Unless Fed Cuts Rates” [article about recent report from Merrill Lynch & Co.], Bloomberg.com, March 15, 2007
• “Critics denounce Pizza Hut reading program,” CNN.com, March 2, 2007
• Martin Crutsinger, “U.S. trade deficit a record 6.5% of economy,” Toronto Star, March 15, 2007
• “Denmark riots: Dozens more arrested,” CNN.com, March 4, 2007
• Joseph Epstein, “The Culture of Celebrity: Let us now praise famous airheads,” The Weekly Standard Vol. 011, Issue 05 (10/17/2005)
• Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, “Goldman Sachs warns of ‘dead bodies’ after market turmoil,” Telegraph online, March 6, 2007
• Lincoln Feast, “U.S. subprime fears spark renewed slide in global stocks,” Yahoo! Finance, March 14, 2007
• “Florida teacher in trouble with school district over bare bottom,” CNN.com, March 13, 2007
• Dan Fost, “Back to School: Technology—PC or not PC?” SFGate.com (The San Francisco Chronicle), August 15, 2005 [article about the “growing number of critics (who) are urging caution in the rush to computerize” America’s education system]
• Claire Gallen, “U.S. mortgage woes could be tip of iceberg: economists,” Yahoo! News, March 16, 2007
• Steve Goldstein, “U.S. stock futures hurt again by Yen, lending fears,” MarketWatch, March 5, 2007
• GreenMan, “A Peak Oil Credo,” Energy Bulletin, March 25, 2007 (reprinted from The Oil Drum)
• John Michael Greer, weekly blog posts at The Archdruid Report
• Sophia Hares, “Global stock markets battered as yen rises,” Yahoo! Finance, March 5, 2007
• Phil Hart, “A review of 2006 EIA data; Expectations for Year Ahead,” Energy Bulletin, March 4, 2007
• Richard Heinberg, “Iran: We will know soon…,” Energy Bulletin, March 27, 2007 [excerpts from full article at Global Public Media about possible dire and far-reaching consequences of an American military attack on Iran]
• “International Energy Agency Warns On Sharp Oil Stocks Falls,” nasdaq.com, March 13, 2007
• Chris Isidore, “GM warns of accounting problems,” CNNMoney.com, March 15, 2007
• Bob Ivry, “Foreclosures May Hit 1.5 Million as U.S. Housing Bust Deepens,” Bloomberg.com, March 12, 2007
• Oliver James, “Workaholic consumerism is now a treadmill and a curse,” The Guardian, May 2, 2006
• “Journalists: U.S. military deleted photos of attack,” CNN.com, March 4, 2007
• Emily Kaiser, “Housing ‘nightmare’ tarnishes the American dream,” Yahoo! Finance, March 18, 2007
• Glen M. Kleiman, “Does Technology Enhance Inquiry-Based Learning?” CoSN: The Consortium for School Networking, 2004 [brief examination of data about the effectiveness of Missouri’s eMINTS program (“Enhancing Missouri's Instructional Networked Teaching Strategies”), which is intended to transform the educational philosophy, methodology, and practice of Missouri’s public schools by switching to an entirely computer-based, inquiry-driven approach]
• Clifford Krauss, “With Coal Plant Cut Back, Texas Faces Energy Gap,” The New York Times, March 8, 2007
• James Howard Kunstler, weekly blog posts at