Washoe, pioneer in signing chimpanzees, dead at 42

November 1, 2007

News from Central Washington University in Ellensburg tells of the death of Washoe, the first chimpanzee to learn American Sign Language (ASL), the matriarch of a small clan of signing chimps who pushed the boundaries on our view of the intelligence of animals, especially the other great apes besides humans.

Washoe, undated photo from Central Washington University Washoe was named after Washoe County, Nevada, the home of the University of Nevada – Reno, where she was taken in 1966 after being captured in Africa as an infant.

Washoe, who first learned a bit of American Sign Language in a research project in Nevada, had been living on Central Washington University’s Ellensburg campus since 1980. Her keepers said she had a vocabulary of about 250 words, although critics contended Washoe and some other primates learned to imitate sign language, but did not develop true language skills.

She died Tuesday night, according to Roger and Deborah Fouts, co-founders of The Chimpanzee and Human Communications Institute on the campus. She was born in Africa about 1965.

Between Washoe and her progeny, extended family and students (she taught signing to several others of her species) and the more famous Koko, the gorilla who speaks ASL, our ideas of the learning ability of animals, their achievements dramatically challenged our ideas about the moral sense of animals, and the uniform and universal superiority of humans.

Fouts and the researchers at the University of Nevada raised several chimps who were taught ASL. One of the more interesting, to me, and genuinely thought-provoking stories was of one young chimp who attended church with her human family. She asked questions about church, and eventually asked to be be baptized (the local cleric performed the rite). This is a Rubicon of great import to creationists, and I have yet to find one who isn’t inflamed or enraged by the story one way or another.

Roger Fouts lovingly described Washoe’s life and accomplishments in Next of Kin (including the baptism story). Fouts defends the rights of chimpanzees, His accounts of the life of research chimpanzees trouble anyone with a moral sense. This book troubled me when I first read it almost a decade ago, and I find it still haunts me any time I visit a display of animals, in a zoo, aquarium, or even at a wildlife preserve (I have not been to a circus since I read the book, coincidentally).

Just wait until cetaceans and cephalopods figure out how to use ASL.

Further reading and resources:

Leave a Comment » | Brain development, Brain learning, Education, Learning, Learning styles, Research, Science | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Sometimes Nobel winners do stupid things . . .

October 18, 2007

. . . and then other people who are expert in the field kick their butts.

No, I’m not talking about Al Gore. James Watson, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, recently insulted the entire continent of Africa, and a good bunch of North and South America, and western Europe. No, Dr. Watson, race is not a predictor of intelligence.

Greg Laden provides the boot action at his blog, Evolution. Bookmark it. As certain as your heritage is passed to your children by a double-helix structure in the structure of your cells, some fool will repeat Watson’s argument. Veterans of quote-mine wars warn that creationists right now are filing the statement away for use in some future debate, where they will claim falsely that “the science of genetics is evil because it promotes racism.”

So keep that Laden piece handy.

And if all of this is news to you as a social studies teacher? Read the piece thoroughly. Check out Laden’s links, ask questions if you’re unclear on anything he says. Laden takes questions. P. Z. Myers takes questions (and a tip of the old scrub brush to Pharyngula for point out Laden’s post). Comments are open here.

See, this is how science and free discussion work: People get awards for the good ideas they have, and they pay the price for stupid ideas. Discussion, among the experts, is based on real data, real research. Ideas win when they have the data to back them up, not on the word of some authority, regardless whether the authority is well schooled, of the right or far-right political party, or supernatural.

It’s a model for our students.

__________________________

Update:  Even more from Mr. Laden, as he notes in comments.  You have plenty of bookmarks available, right?

6 Comments | Brain development, Brain learning, Citizenship, Civil Rights, Ethics, Evolution, Learning, Rampant stupidity, Reason, Teaching | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

They do as you do, not as you say

October 13, 2007

If you were wondering whether it’s still true that kids watch what you do rather than listen to what you say — yes, it’s still true. It’s more important to walk the walk than talk the talk — Gallup Management Journal features an article emphasizing the phenomenon, “The Sixth Element of Great Managing”:

One of the most powerful discoveries about how humans understand the world around them came about by accident. In the early 1990s, a group of researchers led by Dr. Giacomo Rizzolatti, a neuroscientist at the University of Parma in Italy, placed small electrodes in the brains of monkeys near the regions of the brain responsible for planning and carrying out movements. If the monkey picked up something, an electronic monitor that was connected to the wires in the animal’s brain would sound — “brrrrrip, brrrrrip, brrrrrip” — to register the firing of those neurons.

Then something happened — something so unusual that the researchers thought it had to be a mistake. If the monkey saw one of the scientists doing something — eating an ice cream cone, picking up a peanut or raisin, grabbing a banana — the monitor registered the firing of brain cells as if the monkey had done it, when all the animal did was watch.

“It took us several years to believe what we were seeing,” Rizzolatti told The New York Times. The structure behind the phenomenon was discovered to be what they called “mirror neurons,” cells scattered throughout key regions of the brain that mimic everything the monkey sees another do.

Subsequent research found a far more complicated set of mirror neurons in people. This “human see; human do” circuitry is believed to be why a yawn can be contagious, why even a newborn will stick out her tongue if she sees someone else do it, and why American boys sometimes mimic the idiosyncrasies of their favorite baseball players at bat. “It explains much about how we learn to smile, talk, walk, dance, or play tennis,” said a 2006 cover article in Scientific American Mind magazine.

If you want your students to be good at map reading, they need to see you reading maps. If you want your students to read, they need to see you read. The “mirror neurons” phenomenon should affect the strategies we use in the classroom.

File this under the “nothing new under the sun” category, or “oh, yeah, now I remember!”

1 Comment | Brain development, Brain learning, Education, Ethics, Learning, Learning styles, Teaching | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Spinning dancer

October 10, 2007

Spinning dancer - a right-brain/left-brain exercise

Cool .gif, and a bit of a rant:

Cool .gif: I found this .gif at That Wealth Advisor Guy, a blog of a midwestern investments advisor. He claims that if you see the dancer rotating clockwise, you are right-brained; if you see her rotating counter-clockwise, you are left-brained. I can see it both ways (look under her feet for a few seconds, see if she doesn’t reverse for you, too).

If this is a valid test — and I have no way to gauge that it is valid — it provides one more way to discern one more fact about people you work with, or know — or about your students with some relevance to their learning styles (I don’t know what the connections would be).

The rant: That Wealth Advisor Guy posts no links, no sources, and no citations to back up any of his claims. It may well be just a cool .gif. How could we know if he doesn’t give us the details?

His blog doesn’t allow comments.

Would I invest with a guy who doesn’t provide all the information I want, or all the information that should be legally required, and who seems unduly influenced by woo stuff he finds on the internet?

Off to see if I can find citations . . .

Below the fold: Right-brain, left-brain characteristics, as related by That Wealth Advisor Guy. Are they accurate, or backed by any research? Who can tell?

Update: Mo at Neurophilosophy debunks the left-brain / right-brain stuff. It’s just an optical illusion, which illustrates that we often see things differently from other people, but probably provides no deep insights into anything you should take seriously. Go read what he says!

Read the rest of this entry »

19 Comments | Brain development, Brain learning, Education, Learning styles, Woo | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Neuroscience, culture, and practical application

September 23, 2007

The oak tree at Jena's high school -- now cut down

My hypothesis is that a normal person may not peruse this site, The Situationist, without finding something of use for the person’s work or homelife — or at a minimum, something extremely intrigueing about a problem the person has in an organization to which the person belongs.

For example, check out these discussions:

  1. On the Jena 6
  2. On l’affaire Chemerinsky at UC-Irvine
  3. On college debt
  4. On confronting mistakes — especially one’s own

It’s a project at Harvard, interdisciplinary so far as I can tell.  Here’s the explanation:

There is a dominant conception of the human animal as a rational, or at least reasonable, preference-driven chooser, whose behavior reflects preferences, moderated by information processing and will, but little else. Laws, policies, and the most influential legal theories are premised on that same conception. Social psychology and related fields have discovered countless ways in which that conception is wrong. “The situation” refers to causally significant features around us and within us that we do not notice or believe are irrelevant in explaining human behavior. “Situationism” is an approach that is deliberately attentive to the situation. It is informed by social science—particularly social psychology, social cognition, and related fields—and the discoveries of market actors devoted to influencing consumer behavior—marketers, public relations experts, and the like. The Situationist is a forum for scholars, students, lawyers, policymakers, and interested citizens to examine, discuss, and debate the effect of situational forces – that is, non-salient factors around and within us – on law, policy, politics, policy theory, and our social, political, and economic institutions. The Situationist is associated with The Project on Law and Mind Sciences at Harvard Law School. To visit the Project’s website, click here.

Go see, and report back, if you don’t mind.

Leave a Comment » | Brain development, Brain learning, Classroom management, Education, Education success, History, Pedagogy, Teaching | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Intelligence: Can it rub off in the classroom?

September 3, 2007

Can intelligence rub off from an intelligent classroom to the students?

Educational osmosis is one way to learn, I have found. I think a good classroom is one in which the student learns regardless what the student is doing, even daydreaming by looking out the window. How to achieve that? We’re working on it. In 2007, such a classroom should visually stimulate learning, and do so with sound and kinesthetics, too. Repetition in different media, with different contexts, aids learning and cementing of knowledge. But, I speak only from experience, having taken only a tiny handful of “real” education classes in my life, and they rank at the bottom of my list of useful courses.

Brian C. Smith blogs about education technology from the technology side, at Streaming Thoughts. Some time ago he asked teachers to tell about their ideal classroom technology (my response is here). Now he’s back with results of his survey — what technology do teachers need for educational success?

It may be my fault for failing to make the point, but I think a successful classroom also needs access to a photocopier that can turn around material in short order — a fast photocopier is preferred. Classrooms also need printers.

I also wonder if working ventilation and temperature control for comfort figures into the technology equation.

The ideal classroom technology is that set which allows the student to learn well, with speed and wisdom.

Alexander (not yet the Great) and his teacher, Aristotle; public domain image, originally from British Museum?

1 Comment | Brain learning, Classroom management, Classroom technology, Education, Education spending, Teaching, Technology, Technology in the classroom | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Tom Lehrer + periodic table = learning (redux)

August 21, 2007

A commenter, Aoife, pointed to another animation of Tom Lehrer’s “Elements Song.” This one has the best production values of the three I’ve posted, and it’s available on DVD (teachers, note that it comes bundled with other science stuff probably good for classroom use).

It’s Macromedia Flash animation, by a guy from Texas, Mike Stanfill; go see.

(Where are the economics, history and government flash animations of equal quality?)

1 Comment | Brain learning, Music, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Tom Lehrer collides with the periodic table of the elements on YouTube

August 20, 2007

 

Cover to the original vinyl record, "An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer," containing his performance of his song, "The Elements."

Cover to the original vinyl record, “An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer,” containing his performance of his song, “The Elements.”

Great song, great table, entertaining mashup probably worthy of a more serious production; there are a lot of pictures of boxes on the periodic table.

Tip of the old scrub brush to Homeschool Stuff.

(Lehrer is a math instructor — he intentionally stalled out before getting his Ph.D. — who wrote a series of parody songs in the late 1950s and 1960s. There are three albums of his work, still available last time I checked. One legend is he stopped writing parodies a couple of decades ago, saying that satire was no longer possible after Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973. A collection of his works was assembled into a hit review, Tomfoolery! in 1980; it opened in London, moved to New York, and had a pleasant run in several other venues. Much of his work touches on the scientific, or dives right in.)

(You recognize the tune, of course. It’s from the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta Pirates of Penzance, “The Major-General’s Song.”)

Almost immediate update: Oooh! Here’s an even more ambitious animation of a live performance:

6 Comments | Brain learning, Music, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Typewriter of the moment: The Living Classroom

August 10, 2007

Typewriter donated by Anya to the Living Classroom, at the Community School of West Seattle, WashingtonSlight deviation from my usual practice of featuring the technological marvel of the writing machine of a well-known writer — these writers are not yet well known.

Someone brought in a vintage Smith-Corona typewriter to one of my favorite classrooms, at the Community School in West Seattle. Photographic evidence shows the machine is still in good working order (better than my Royal), and the students have already figured out how to make it work (see photo below).

My typing career began with my mother’s and father’s Royal, similar to the one I now own. It got me to ninth grade with no problems. I took typing classes on the classic, newsroom Underwoods, about the time that the IBM Selectric was making in-roads. In my senior year of high school I got an Underwood portable — brother Dwight was selling for Underwood-Olivetti. Later I got an old, junked Olivetti electric that was gray, would do line-and-a-half as well as double spacing, and which had a pitch somewhere between 10 and 12 pica. It was heavy and industrial, but the typeface was so readable that it was popular with my debater colleagues — we used to carry the machine with us to tournaments after I joined the college debate squad.

In my junior year at the University of Utah, on a Thomas J. Watson, Jr., Memorial scholarship from IBM, I purchased a Correcting Selectric II (no, IBM offered no discount). About 20 years later, tired of the massive repair bills and hoping word processors would forever banish it from our house, my wife donated that typewriter to the Salvation Army. I found another at a garage sale, and got it for $10.00. The mechanism on that one sprang out of the case about a year later, and we eventually donated it, too.

Perry W. Buffington found the Royal that graces my home office now, largely unused but full of sentiment. (I think Buff wanted me to write more.)

These kids in Washington — they don’t know the value of the tool they have. They can’t know.  Lucky kids.

Paper typed in the Living Classroom

Photo from the Living Classroom; work product from a student.

4 Comments | Brain learning, Classroom technology, Education, Pedagogy, Technology, Technology in the classroom, Typewriters | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Toldja

August 8, 2007

Remember the earlier post on this?

Flight patters, from Aaron Koblin Design|Media Arts

Robert Krulwich at ABC thought it was neat, too — see this video, and you can see the artist who created the maps. Does this mean there will be more?

1 Comment | Brain learning, Creativity, Geography - Economic, Geography - Physical, Maps, Presentations, Technology, Transportation | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

The story is the thing; tell the story in history

July 15, 2007

Son James and I spent July 4 in Taos, New Mexico, where we were working with Habitat for Humanity building homes (a project of the youth group at the church we attend, First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) of Duncanville, Texas). We took that day off, saw Transformers, looked at the sights in Taos, and drove to Eagle Nest Lake to see fireworks.

Lincoln reading to son, Tad; LOC photo

At some point through the week I was discussing with others the stories that make history memorable, in my view, and we discovered that few others on the trip knew the story of the deaths of both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It’s a story that is generally glossed over in U.S. history texts, but one that I make room for in U.S. history courses. My experience is that once kids get the story, that these two great men from such radically different backgrounds became great friends, then in presidential politics, great enemies, and then were reconciled, and then died on the exactly the same day which commemorated the event that both made them famous and that they made famous, kids don’t forget the story.

The story of their friendship is powerful and can be accompanied by readings from their letters in their later life (DBQ opportunity, teachers!). Generally, the story gets told in response to a question from a student. If I do it well, there will be sniffles from the class when we get to the part about Jefferson’s near-coma, awakening to ask whether it is the 4th of July, and then dying, and Adams’ death a few hours later, saying in error that “Jefferson still survives” (which is good that some students choke up, because it always gets me).

The story offers several mnemonic opportunities: 1826, the 50th year after the Declaration (1776); the presidencies of Adams and Jefferson, following one another; the fact that Adams and Jefferson were on the committee to write the Declaration, and that Adams nominated Jefferson as the better writer; the order of the terms of the presidency; the bitter politics at the end of Washington’s presidency (kids get interested in conflict, and the founding seems more vital to them when the controversies rear up); the reverence for law; Adams’ and Jefferson’s service as foreign ambassadors; and so on.

Once I’d told the story, others got the point. The story illustrates Mark Twain’s point about how much more difficult it is to write fiction. Fiction must stick with possibilities, Twain noted, while reality isn’t so constrained. If you wrote a screenplay with two heroes like Adams and Jefferson, and then had them die on the same day within a few hours of each other, hundreds of miles apart, you’d be criticized for being unrealistic. But it happened in history. It’s a true story, better than any lipsticked version Parson Weems could ever invent.

Study of history should never be a drudging trudge to memorize dates. The stories are what count, they are the things people remember. The stories tell people why history is important, and what mistakes to avoid, to satisfy Santayana’s ghost.

Such stories, especially about the founding of America, make history come alive and, often, grab students by the throat and make it memorable for them.  History is Elementary carries a nice story with the same message, though using Washington’s surprise attack on the Hessians from Trenton.  Teachers in need of such stories might do well to pick up a copy of David McCullough’s 1776, or Joseph Ellis’s Founding Brothers.

What other stories are there?  Well, the story about the scar on James Madison’s nose, and how it led to the cementing of the American Revolution (James Monroe, by the way, also died on July 4 — but in 1831).  The story of Lincoln’s trip to New Orleans; the story of Teddy Roosevelt’s capture of Mike Finnegan and two other outlaws, in the Dakotas; the story of Calvin Coolidge’s son’s death; the story of Robert Lincoln’s brushes with presidential assassinations; the story of the Civil War beginning in one man’s back-40 acres, and ending in his parlor; the story as Stephen Ambrose tells it of three men pinned down on a beach in Normandy on D-Day, and deciding the best course of action was to move forward to win the war; American history is rife with bizarre coincidences and seemingly minor events that go on to have great consequences.

I love to hear the story, especially told well.  Well told stories help students learn and retain history, and, I’ll wager, they boost the scores on standardized tests.

4 Comments | 1776, 4th of July, America's founding, Brain learning, Capturing history, DBQ sources, Education, George Washington, Historic documents, History, History and art, History blogs, History museums, James Madison, John Adams, Lesson plans, Patriotism, Santayana's ghost, Teaching, Thomas Jefferson | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Applied geography: The Sweet Tea Line

June 20, 2007

Here is a great exercise in applied geography: “The Sweet Tea Line” at Neatorama, with a link to Eight Over Five with a wonderful set of interactive maps — though, if you go to the Eight Over Five site, you don’t find any link to this particular map (can anyone explain?).

One of the maps of the Sweet Tea Line from 8 over 5 One of the maps from Eight Over Five, using data to determine the Sweet Tea Line.

What about regional variations in food, language, customs or commerce in your state? I remember discovering that “regular coffee” in western Massachusetts meant coffee with a lot of cream and sugar. Not so at Boston’s Logan Airport. Where is the line? What about the lines of where a soft drink is “a pop,” versus “a soda pop,” versus “a coke,” versus “a soda?” Read the rest of this entry »

5 Comments | America's founding, Brain learning, Civil War, Geography - Economic, Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, George Washington, History, Lesson plans, Maps | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

For-profit Educate, Inc., goes private (Sylvan Learning, Hooked-on-Phonics)

June 15, 2007

Educate, Inc., the parent company of Sylvan Learning Centers, traded for the last time on the NASDAQ exchange yesterday.

No, the company didn’t go out of business. It was taken private by its management, after being a public company for three years. From the Baltimore Sun morning e-mail:

Educate becomes a private company

Educate Inc. has completed its transition into a private company, ending its three-year run on public markets.

Best known for its Sylvan tutoring centers, the Baltimore company, which was purchased in a management-led buyout, traded for the last time on the Nasdaq yesterday.

The investor group that purchased the company is led by chief executive officer R. Christopher Hoehn-Saric, other executives and affiliates of Sterling Capital Partners and Citigroup Private Equity. They paid $8 a share for the company in the deal valued at $535 million.

The company announced this week that more than 75 percent of shareholders approved the deal, which came as the firm has struggled with poor product sales.

Internal reorganization was swift.  The company’s website carried this note this morning:

On June 13, 2007, through a merger transaction, Edge Acquisition, LLC became the owner of Educate, Inc. In a related series of simultaneous transactions, the companies which were part of Educate, Inc. have been split into the following independent companies:

  • Educate Services, which includes Sylvan Learning, Catapult Learning, and Schulerhilfe;
  • Hooked on Phonics, Inc., which includes Hooked on Phonics, Reading Rainbow, and GPN;
  • Educate Online, Inc., which includes Catapult Online and eSylvan;
  • Progressus, Inc.; and
  • Educate Corporate Centers Holdings, Inc., which is a franchisee of various Sylvan Learning and owner of Sylvan Learning Centers.

The companies are now operating independently to better serve students, families and schools across the country. To learn more about the merger and related transactions, click here.

Making a profit delivering education is rare.  Milton Friedman notwithstanding, free market rules do not apply to educational enterprises in the same way they do to other services.  This is one more example, or set of examples, that should give pause to any rational person considering making public schools “compete” for money to improve education for any child, especially any group of children.  Sylvan Learning Centers are considered to be the top of the heap in their niche; Hooked-on-Phonics is a cliché success story.  And they “struggle with poor product sales.”

I hope the company finds the education answers, the magic bullets, and can retail them at affordable prices.

The answer, by the way, probably is not 42.

1 Comment | Brain learning, Business, Business Ethics, Education, Education quality, Education spending, Education success, Free market economics, Pedagogy, Teaching, Technology, Technology in the classroom | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

What’s the difference between school and prison?

June 5, 2007

Kevin Siers of the Charlotte Observer, in the Star-Courier, Highlands-Crosby, Texas, March 11, 2004

Give up?

Yeah, often the students give up, too. If you don’t know the answer, your school may resemble a prison.

Gary Stager’s post with jarring comparisons is here, at District Administration’s Pulse! blog. [District Administration purges its archives about every three years, it turns out; here is a copy of Mr. Stager’s column courtesy the Wayback Machine – Internet Archive.]

When the elder Fillmore’s Bathtub son attended intermediate school, he complained of the discipline. So did a lot of other good kids. We got a call from a parent asking if we’d join in a meeting with the new principal, and hoping to learn things were really hunky dory and offer assurances to our son, we went.

Read the rest of this entry »

17 Comments | Brain development, Brain learning, Education, Education quality, Education reform, Education success, Ethics, Pedagogy, Public education, School discipline, TAKS, Teaching, TEKS, Testing, Texas | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

How it’s done right

June 1, 2007

If I need a lift, I go here. It’s how school should be — probably all the way through.

I don’t know the details of how or why this class is set up the way it is, but day after day they do things that other people use as textbook examples of what a good classroom ought to be doing, sometimes. And they do it day, after day, after day.

Carnival of Education, are you paying attention?

Wow.

I wager right now that these kids will be the top performers on the standardized tests for at least the next five years, in their classrooms and schools. The Living Classroom weblog is a valuable chronicle for how to provide quality education.

Somebody should step up with the money to track how these kids do, especially against their contemporaries. Alas, this is exactly the sort of information that will be lost, due to “lack of funding.” Fortunately, one of the women involved in the classroom made the chronicles, and shared them.

Side note: Looking at the photos, ask yourself, “Does our town offer these types of recreational facilities for use?” Washington has traditionally led the nation in setting aside land for public recreational use — this class has taken full advantage of being in a town that had the foresight to put up public art and public beaches, and other public parks and places. There is a lesson here for city planners, and for mayors and city councils who wonder how they might support their schools, run by other governmental entities.

Dandelion, class activitiy for The Living Classroom

2 Comments | Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), Brain development, Brain learning, Classroom size, Classroom technology, Education, Education blogs, Education quality, Education success, Lesson plans, Music, Pedagogy, School discipline, Teaching | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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