Essential skills - follow-up

A person just never knows when a post will strike a reaction from readers. Last Sunday's "Your list of essential skills?" must have an element of a good writing prompt* in it. I was awed by the wonderful responses, which far exceeded the content of the original post. I want to make sure Blue Skunk readers consider reading these posts in full.

Stephen Downes, who I consider one of the great thinkers and contrarians (this is a compliment) blogging, provided a link to a similar post he created about a year ago. He includes as an essential skill 9. How to value yourself and writes in part:

Valuing yourself is partially a matter of personal development, and partially a matter of choice. In order to value yourself, you need to feel you are worth valuing. In fact, you are worth valuing, but it often helps to prove it to yourself by attaining some objective, learning some skill, or earning some distinction. And in order to value yourself, you have to say "I am valuable."

This is an important point. How we think about ourselves is as much a matter of learning as anything else. If somebody tells you that you are worthless over and over, and if you do nothing to counteract that, then you will come to believe you are worthless, because that's how your neural connections will form. But if you repeat, and believe, and behave in such a way as to say to yourself over and over, I am valuable, then that's what you will come to believe.

Read all his post. It's outstanding.

I was reminded of quite a number of skills I left off my list. Kelly S wrote (and Ron Rivera seconded):

One thing that is not on your list that I try to teach is tolerance. Our school is very ethnically and economically diverse and as a staff we have tried to make tolerance a priority with our students. Through our actions, lessons, and resources I have added to the library, we try to find ways to celebrate our differences.

I certainly agree.

Paul at quoteflections adds: Love for nature and the environment. A sensitivity to nature will result in stewardship decisions. How could I have left that off my original list? Again, read his entire post!  (If you are not a reader of Paul's blog, you should be. His posts are brief, regular, eclectic, always thoughtful, often moving.)

MIguel Guhlin wrote a great list that includes:

Transparency - This is one that wasn't an obvious one for me, but I've come to appreciate. When I was a kid, I hated for people to read my unfinished writing (drafts), but blogging has taught me to practice transparency. If you're a screw-up, it's best that other people know what you're doing to improve that <grin>. And, share the challenges of the journey with others as much as possible. Transparency is critical in a team otherwise, people are wondering what the heck you are up to.

Since I have never screwed-up, I will have to have faith that Miguel knows what he's talking about here. Oh, Sally thinks a sense of humor is critical.

Pete Reilly came through as I anticipated. My biggest take away from his thoughtful list was:

Number 10…Gratitude.
May my children appreciate life and the world around them. The world is filled with boundless gifts and the more they appreciate these gifts, the more they will appreciate their most precious gift, themselves.

He also asks a fundamental question:

Can these be taught? I’ve learned much from spiritual teachers along the way. How did they teach? By traveling the path just a bit little in front of me…

…and helping light my way.

Several folks chided me a little for dropping "basic accounting:" Linda Fox wrote:

Today's headlines announce that the mortgage mess is just going to get worse. Basic accounting? Yeah, man! Maybe if we'd done more of that the past 20 years in schools, we wouldn't be seeing so much disaster in the housing world. OK - I know I'm dating myself here but, when I went to schools there was a required class called consumer economics. Not for nothin' but I seem to be managing my own debt etc.

Mike Curtain, from whom I got the link for the original list, created added:

Knowing where you put things- both physically and mentally:  Complexity seems to be increasing faster than our brains’ capability to manage it.  The ability to leverage tools to stay organized - both in terms of physical items, contacts, and appointments as well as ideas and facts - are invaluable.  And perhaps part of that means managing a storehouse of facts that we can quickly and easily recall - you never know when someone will name-drop “Harold Pinter” or need to know how to convert gallons to liters.  No, I’m not saying it should all be memorized and yes, it can be Googled, but we need to be able to contextualize and use that knowledge effectively.

I'm with you on this one, Mike. And his entire list is worth considering.

Janice Robertson, among others, argued for the inclusion of ...

resilience - being able to bounce back from whatever gets thrown at you... being able to get up and try again after you've failed half a dozen times... being able to think of another solution after your boss has said no that won't work to your first ten ideas... I think resilience goes a long way.

Maureen Irwin observes:

Dustin's list includes things that probably CAN be taught; yours are more inherent, but I think they, too can be learned, bit by bit, by watching the right models. With luck, all kids have teachers, parents or other adults in their lives that live these ideals. Empathy and creativity can be developed; passion is caught and nurtured.

These reactions suggest many educators are yearning for a more comprehensive set of skills or attributes be seen as important to our children. Maybe we are all burnt on the over-reliance on test scores on low-level skills. That education is about the whole child - and whole teacher.

Forgive me if I've left someone out. Oh, and the meme is open for anyone to participate in. Even Cheddar-heads.

* My best writing prompt was "Create the best excuse you can for not getting your writing assignment turned in on time." 

My favorite genie.

Viewing the future

It doesn't get much bleaker. The Earth is a desolate wasteland, devoid of life, overflowing with the detritus from centuries of consumerism. Rivers are are a gummy soup. Smog and dust storms hide the sky. Humanity has been reduced to lifeless slugs cared for by psychotic robots in a gigantic spaceship. The ship's auto-pilot refuses to relinquish control to its human captain. The last green plant alive is losing its few limp leaves.

This was the setting for one of the funniest movies I've seen for a long time.

The family, including very excited grandsons ages 7 and 2, watched WALL-E on the big screen last night. And all of us enjoyed it on our own levels. Paul and Miles loved the slapstick and silliness of WALL-E (Chaplin's Little Tramp morphed into a trash compacter). There was a sweet love story. The allusions to sci-fi flicks from Star Wars to 2001 to ET to The Matrix came fast and furious. Others have written about the movie's political message. It certainly is an environmental fable. But I was fascinated by the humans even more than the robots in the film.

I've written before about how much I value science fiction books that take current social/political trends and then stretch them into an identifiable future. The science "fiction" of WALL-E does the much the same, guessing how our Net Gen might look taken to the extreme.

Aboard the Axiom spaceship, enormously fat, rather sexless humans have given up the use of their legs, preferring to move (and be moved) by floating chaise lounges while sipping gigantic soft drinks. They move in parallel staring at a Facebook like screen, neither talking nor touching each other. Advertisements are their scenery.  The technology allows them a carefree, self-centered existence. These people are not evil - just meaningless. It's only the artificial intelligences that have personalities in WALL-E's world.

This is an amazing movie that I am dying to see again. (I do spend a fair amount of time watching my grandsons watching movies rather than the screen itself.)

I'm interested in hearing your take-aways from WALL-E.

Photo from the IMBD.

The ultimate rose-colored glasses

egocasting pp. Reading, watching, and listening only to media that reflect one's own tastes or opinions. wordspy.com

Daniel Wilson, in his Popular Mechanic's article "10 Genius Inventions We're Still Waiting For":

Augmented Reality
Kids’ knees and noggins can be protected with padding and helmets—but how do we safeguard their delicate minds? The answer may lie with Augmented Reality (AR), a technology that combines sights and sounds of the real world with virtual information. AR eyeglasses could detect inappropriate sights and remove them from view, while AR-enabled earbuds would delete ambient cursing. Meanwhile, adults might wear glasses that substitute blessed blank space for roadside billboards, television commercials and the annoying corporate names on most stadiums. Professor Jie Yang of the interACT research center at Carnegie Mellon University recently laid the groundwork for this technology. His prototype digital camera picks out street signs and billboards from a scene and translates their text to another language. Next on his to-do list, we hope: figuring out a way to translate obnoxious on-hold music into songs we actually like. 

The ultimate in rose-colored glasses - or goggles. Put these on and all the "unpleasantness" in the world simply goes away. Gee, let's blank out not just commercials, but:

• people who are too fat or too thin
  
• people who are a different race or religion or culture
  
• poor people, street people, scary people
• any person with a pimple, scar or wart
  
• boys wearing those baggy pants that show their drawers
• people with bad hair
  

I can see this list might get very, very long... 

Here's the scary thing. Are people who egocast already using a "reality filter?" How much do any of us look only for like minds in the blogs we read, speakers we invite to our conferences, or journals we study and cite? Do we only work with the other teachers in our schools who share our educational beliefs?

I thought about this as the LWW headed out this fine spring day to tend her beloved flower gardens. Wouldn't it just be ever so much easier to wear glasses that would block the weeds than to take the time to pull them ?

Put a blogger you disagree with in your feed today. Read a real newspaper. Talk to the social studies teacher who lectures and hates computers.