Running Gamak: Warren Senders' Blog

Bright College Days

More thoughts & recollections from my life as a learner.

College:

As a college student, I was lucky; I did my learning through a now-defunct organization called Campus-Free College. Another CFC graduate described it nicely:

Campus-Free College unfortunately no longer exists. It provided a fabulous opportunity for self-directed students (seeking bachelor and master degrees) to design their own curriculum in coordination with professors at colleges throughout the world and professionals in their chosen field of study. It was the ultimate school for entrepreneurs.
Link

Another student recalls:

“Campus Free College” was the place where I applied to work on an undergraduate degree. The school was later renamed Beacon College. It was a place where you could negotiate and design your own college level program and then recruit your own teachers and advisors.

Link

Perhaps the most famous graduate of CFC was Mitchell Kapor, the guy behind Lotus 1-2-3.

Every bit of learning I did at CFC (which later changed its name to Beacon College) was coordinated with two individuals: Larry L_____, who was assigned to be my “Program Advisor,” and was responsible for regular conferences with me about my learning goals and progress, and Joseph S____, who was assigned to be the “Monitor” for Larry and me, and was responsible for cross-checking with us about the larger context of what we proposed. Overseeing this three-part relationship was a body called the Academic Council, which approved the awarding of grades and offered feedback as required.
more »

Things I Learned In School, Pt. II

More thoughts on things I learned about teaching and learning…from teachers.

High School:

As a student in a public high school in Sudbury, Massachusetts, I had some friends who were officially my teachers; we talked about life, learning, politics, culture…and if they had to give me a C or a D in class, I really didn’t care. It was obviously a game we all had to play for the benefit of…who?

There was one history teacher, Mr. M_______, who taught a single course: a comprehensive year-long survey of Russian history. A classroom virtuoso, his teaching was part lecture, part dance, part abstract painting (his hyperkinetic scribbling on the chalkboard served as an outlet for an incessant need to move), part arts and crafts. He conceived Russian History not as a body-of-material-to-be-mastered, but as a medium through which students found out about the world and about themselves. At the time I took his course, which was open only to juniors and seniors, he was employing a very unusual grading method:

“In this class,” he said on the first day, “you are granted the symbol A. Depending on your contributions and participation, you will either receive a Large A, for ‘amazing,’ or a small a, for ‘awful.’ In either case you will have the symbol A. I do not want any of you doing work in the class because you crave a symbol. I want you doing the work because you genuinely want to do the work.”

It was a wonderful course. And what I took away from it was a general gestalt understanding of the sweep of Russian history…and a huge practical insight about what effective teaching could and should be. It didn’t matter that in the first semester I got an A and in the second an a. That, if anything, served to reinforce my growing awareness that the grades I got had nothing at all to do with what I learned.

Lesson: The System may require grades, but there are many ways to skin a cat.

From my freshman year in high school, I knew that I wanted to be on the school newspaper. I joined the staff and began writing and participating in the marathon layout sessions. It was my ambition to be the editor of the paper in my senior year; I felt this strongly enough that when my parents got one-year faculty appointments in Toronto for the duration of my junior year, I argued that I had to stay behind, or I would lose my place in the queue. I lived with my grandmother that year, and I kept my place (as “Associate Editor”); when my senior year began, I was the Editor, and I did a hell of a job, if I do say so myself. The paper had a Faculty Adviser, who stayed out of our way and signed forms as required. He was responsible for giving us all grades; everyone got an A. The grade was required by the system, but it was irrelevant to my motivation, which was purely that I wanted to edit the newspaper.

Lesson: You can get a good grade for doing a good job, and it still doesn’t necessarily mean anything.

Raga Bhatiyar: Taleem from S.G. Devasthali, 1994

This clip has just gone up on the S.G. Devasthali memorial page. It’s 30 minutes of detailed instruction from Guruji to me and Vijaya in early 1994.

Hope you enjoy it.

Madder Than Mad: The “Outrage-Lib” Climate-Change LTE Kit!

If you’re even paying attention a little bit, it’s pretty clear that Mother Earth is in a very bad state. She’s got a horrible fever, and she’s developing oozing sores all over the place, and….oh, hell. You know this as well as I do. Better, if you’re one of the people who actually go to the trouble of learning about our planet’s crises in enough detail to write terrifying pieces that scare the crap out of me.

Not only is 2010 the hottest year on record, it’s also reaching new heights in denialist stupidity.

For example, every day our news outlets print articles or run pieces on one or another of the terrible catastrophes that are taking place. The disaster du jour is of course happening in Russia, where drought and wildfires are making people’s lives awfully close to pure hell. And the New York Times ran a front-page article about it…without mentioning the phrases “climate change” or “global warming” once.

As I said, denialist stupidity.

And as Bill McKibben said recently, it’s time to turn up the heat on the national conversation a bit. Our media aren’t going to mention global warming voluntarily unless it’s to mock the concept; we are going to have to force the issue.

Pursuant to which, I wish to make a small contribution to the forcing process.

I am no longer a newspaper reader, but I check papers around the country every day to find material for my letters. Yesterday was the Times, and I wrote them this letter:

As Russia’s food infrastructure crumbles under the pressure of a terrible drought, it’s tempting to think of it as a problem for “them,” not for “us.” But America isn’t immune to the devastating effects of global climate change. Russia’s crisis is part and parcel of the same complex set of phenomena that gave us Manhattan’s recent heat wave — and the freak snowstorms that brought Washington, DC to a standstill last winter. If we as a nation are to undertake meaningful action on behalf of the planetary systems that sustain us, the Jeffersonian ideal of a “well-informed citizenry” is more essential than ever: the fact that the phrase “climate change” does not appear at all in an article about the Russian drought is an unfortunate abdication of journalistic responsibility.

Warren Senders

Now as some of you know, I am anxious for people to steal my work and make it their own. The more of us write letters to media on this issue, the more impact we’ll have. I wrote a diary a while back showing the techniques I use when I steal someone else’s work and turn it into a letter.

But we are creatures of convenience. If it’s not convenient, it’s harder for us to do it.

I thought deeply about this for about 30 seconds last night, and generated a comment on the Friday Earthship diary at Daily Kos. A few people liked it, but I think the person who liked it the most was me. So I’m turning it into a diary; specifically, the diary you’re reading now.

For your epistolary convenience, I am pleased to present the first “Outrage-Lib” Climate-Change Letter To The Editor (”Mad Lib” doesn’t do justice to the level of emotion I experience).

This is designed to be used in response to articles or broadcast pieces about weather weirdness that do not mention climate change or global warming. Use it in good health! Use it in sickness. But use it!

————————————————————————————————————

“As we see the terrible effects of the _________________________________

(recent storm)
(recent heat wave)
(recent drought)
(freak snowfall)
(rain of frogs)
(plague of locusts)

in ___________________________________

(our town,)
(our state,)
(some other state,)
(some other country,)
(Washington, DC,)

it is easy and tempting to think of it as an isolated phenomenon that’s happening to someone else.

But the ____________________________________

(recent storm)
(recent heat wave)
(recent drought)
(freak snowfall)
(rain of frogs)
(plague of locusts)

in __________________________________

(our town)
(our state)
(some other state)
(some other country)
(Washington, DC)

is part and parcel of the same complex set of phenomena that gave us ___________________________

(other weird weather people may have noticed)

That is to say, ____________

(global warming.)
(climate change.)
(anthropogenic global warming.)
(the climate crisis.)

If we as a nation are to __________________________

(survive,)
(undertake meaningful action on behalf of the planetary systems that sustain us,)
(build a future for our children and their children in turn,)
(live long and prosper,)
(avoid species extinction, which the biologist Frank Fenner thinks is all but inevitable at this point,)

we must ____________________________

(face the facts.)
(use our mentality, wake up to reality.)
(know what’s going on.)
(restore the Jeffersonian ideal of a “well-informed citizenry.”)
(abandon the damaging reliance on false equivalence in our journalism.)

The fact that the phrase “climate change” does not appear at all in this article is ___________________________________

(an unfortunate abdication of journalistic responsibility.)
(an indication of moral bankruptcy on the part of your hopelessly corrupt publisher.)
(a demonstration of how poorly our news media handle the most important threat humanity has ever faced.)
(a fucking outrage!)

So there!
Yours Sincerely,

(You)”

————————————————————————————————————

If you fill in the blanks it’ll still come out under 150 words.

Of course they won’t print it. That’s not the point. The point is that they need to be called out on their irresponsibility, and the more feedback they get calling them out, the harder it will be for them to do it again.

We may be doomed but I’m damned if I’m going to go silently.

You?

Two Good Books About The Future

We modern humans sure do love our conveniences. Most things in our lives are so convenient we’ve forgotten there ever was such a thing as inconvenience.

Look at some of the inconveniences we’ve forgotten:

Having to procure our own food from start to finish.

Having limited quantities of untrustworthy water.

Being at the mercy of the climate.

Being at the mercy of the weather.

Having no easy access to large quantities of energy.

Assuming that some of our children won’t live to adulthood.

Living in a world where death is always immanent.

These are some of the big ones. Many of the conveniences we know and love are resolutions of one or another of this list, scaled to fit circumstances. Having to replace the steam nozzle on your cappuccino-maker is a tiny inconvenience to one person (you); the collapse of a coffee crop is a major inconvenience with repercussions all the way from farmer to consumer.

In the coming years, times are going to get harder. Some of the inconveniences we’ve forgotten about are going to re-enter our lives. Weather-related mortality is going to increase (it already has). Our infrastructure is going to deteriorate (it already has). Our water supply is going to be less reliable (it already is).

Our current economy is built around convenience. Having ready credit is a convenience, as is having ready cash available at any ATM. Being able to fly anywhere in the world, is a convenience, as is having a place to stay when you get there.

You get the picture.

more »

A Few Lessons In Learning From Forty Years Ago

Elementary School:

Even when I was a kid, it was apparent to me that the grades I got in school didn’t really say much about what I was learning. It was also apparent that the grades kids got were irrelevant to who they were as people. My mother told me that when I got my first report card, she admired my grades and asked about how I stood in comparison with the other kids — whereupon I responded, more or less, “Why should I care about them?”

Lesson: Sometimes people use grades to compare your work to a standard metric; sometimes people use grades to compare your work to that of your peers.

Junior High School (aka Middle School): Two lessons from a bad teacher; one lesson from a good teacher.

6th grade English class. Free reading. I take out my copy of Martin Gardner’s “Annotated Alice” (loaded with footnotes explaining the math problems Dodgson/Carrol was referencing, the political humor embedded in the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, and the chess game that continues throughout the entire “Looking Glass,” among other things). Mrs. P___ comes around, asks, “What are you reading?” I hold up my book. She looks astonished, and says, “That’s for little kids!”

Lesson: Just because they’re teachers doesn’t mean they know what they’re talking about.

8th grade English class; it’s Mrs. P___ again. I loathe her. My grades are slipping, because I cannot bring myself to do any work for that woman. My mother very wisely hears my complaints, and then says, “If Mrs. P___ is so stupid, why should you let her make you stupid, too?” I start doing all the classwork very assiduously, and begin getting good grades again. Every A on every paper is the result of me angrily refusing to let my teacher make me stupid; every completed assignment is a secret “f**k you, Mrs. P___.”

Lesson: Good grades don’t mean what other people may think they mean.

8th grade Music. An elective class, it’s billed as “Music Listening.” The teacher is the new, young, long-haired & bearded Mr. M___. The first day of class, he tells us that we’ll be listening to different kinds of classical music and learning what makes it tick. The students protest that they don’t want to listen to classical music (I don’t say anything; I’m sitting in the back row). Mr. M___ asks, “What do you want to listen to?” The answer comes back, “We want to listen to rock!” Mr. M___ says, “Okay.”

That moment is etched in my memory. It was the first time I ever saw a teacher voluntarily and enthusiastically transform an entire curriculum plan on the spur of the moment, in response to the needs of the students.

It turned out that Mr. M___ knew the history and development of rock and popular music backwards and forwards: over the semester we did an exhaustive cultural and historical survey of American music, with recordings of blues, rockabilly and all the precursors of the rock music we were hearing every day….and, of course, the rock music we were hearing every day.

It was that class that introduced me to Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, changing my life forever (I vividly remember sitting in class listening to “Who Are The Brain Police?” and being utterly amazed that music like this was possible. “Freak Out” was one of the first three LPs I bought with the money I earned doing chores. I still have it, by the way.). I have no idea what grade I got at the end, because it really didn’t matter in the least. It was an incredible class, and it made me absolutely certain that whatever I did in my life, I wanted to do it in music. And the most important part of it was that it was obviously designed on the spur of the moment, in response to the stated needs of the students.

Lesson: Good teachers listen to their students. Good teachers are prepared for change, and welcome it. Good teachers know their subject(s). If a learning experience is genuine, the grade received is largely irrelevant.

Inconvenient Futures: Two Books You Should Read

We modern humans sure do love our conveniences. Most things in our lives are so convenient we’ve forgotten there ever was such a thing as inconvenience.

Look at some of the inconveniences we’ve forgotten:

Having to procure our own food from start to finish.

Having limited quantities of untrustworthy water.

Being at the mercy of the climate.

Being at the mercy of the weather.

Having no easy access to large quantities of energy.

Assuming that some of our children won’t live to adulthood.

Living in a world where death is always immanent.

These are some of the big ones. Many of the conveniences we know and love are resolutions of one or another of this list, scaled to fit circumstances. Having to replace the steam nozzle on your cappuccino-maker is a tiny inconvenience to one person (you); the collapse of a coffee crop is a major inconvenience with repercussions all the way from farmer to consumer.

In the coming years, times are going to get harder. Some of the inconveniences we’ve forgotten about are going to re-enter our lives. Weather-related mortality is going to increase (it already has). Our infrastructure is going to deteriorate (it already has). Our water supply is going to be less reliable (it already is).

Our current economy is built around convenience. Having ready credit is a convenience, as is having ready cash available at any ATM. Being able to fly anywhere in the world, is a convenience, as is having a place to stay when you get there.

You get the picture.

Traditional cultures have social rituals and mechanisms for coping with the procurement and preparation of food, the climate and weather, the difficulty of large tasks, the death or sickness of a community member. You could make a pretty strong case that a culture’s identity and uniqueness is encoded in its response to difficulty, to hardship, to inconvenience.

And we humans crave community. We are social creatures, and our cultures provide us with meaningful ways to relate in a wide variety of contexts. We need one another most when times aren’t good.

Which is part of the reason our communality has eroded concurrently with our inconveniences. An unintended consequence of the development of a quick-satisfaction consumer culture in which anything we want is available is the gradual disappearance of the things we really want: one another. Until pretty recently most human beings were always there for one another. Now, not so much.

Which brings me to two books I’ve been reading recently.

more »

You Can’t Steal A Gift!

My ongoing exploration of alternative ways of thinking about our economic paradigm has given me a new set of lenses to use when I look at the things I already do.

I’m a musician; it’s how I make my living.

Recently a colleague linked to a story in the Boston Globe:

Across New England, church coffeehouses, library cafes, and eateries that pass the hat to pay local musicians or open their doors to casual jam sessions are experiencing a crackdown by performance rights organizations, or PROs, which collect royalties for songwriters.

His FB comment described them as: People trying to get something for nothing and then whining when they are thwarted.

Sympathetic though I am to the needs of working professionals, his words nevertheless didn’t set well with me. This post is my attempt at resolving that dissonance.

I’m a musician. It’s how I make my living — but it’s also how I make my life.

more »

On Consumerism and Daddying

I am alone.

My wife and daughter are in India, dealing with the recent passing of my father-in-law. The past two weeks have been hysterical; as the stay-at-home-and-work component of our marital pair, I’ve been responsible for organizing tickets, organizing passport renewals (thanks to Ed Markey’s office for their support!) and emergency visa authorizations. And, because I have massive amounts of work (including a Very Important Concert), I couldn’t go with them.

I am, instead, trying to clean and straighten the house, so that when they return in mid-summer there is order instead of uproar. Which means that I’m currently dealing with a problematic epiphenomenon of 21st-Century American Childhood. To wit, a serious stuffed toy problem.

My daughter is five, and I think her teddy-bear count is somewhere in the low thirties, with stuffed penguins running close behind. How in Sam Hill did this happen?

more »

Layakari Practice: The N+1 Game

Here’s another installment in my series of practice materials. This is another approach to the mastery of layakari in the 16-beat teentaal cycle. I call this the N+1 Game.

The object of this exercise is to explore a rich yet tightly constrained set of melodic materials in a variety of rhythmic phrasings. The same melody is sung in thirty-six slightly different rhythmic variations, each one fitting neatly into one cycle of teentaal.

more »