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Advice for teachers

4 February 2009 / / 2 Comments

My head of department asked the postgrads who teach classes to give some advice to new teachers. Here’s what I wrote. I think it applies to areas of teaching beyond linguistics.

= – = – = – = – = – = – = – = – = – = – = – = – = – = – = – =

Here are some ideas to think about, though obviously everyone will have to do things their own way.

• Ask yourself: Why do you like linguistics? You’re probably in this area because you think it’s sort of cool. And it is! So show your students what you love about linguistics. They will pick up on your enthusiasm.

• Try and remember one teacher that you liked. What did they do? Why did you like them? For me, I remember Marge Foland, my drama teacher. She was fun and ‘sparky’, with a zany sense of humour. She expected great work from us, and we were happy to give it. I don’t teach just like she did because I’m a different person, but I do find that that kind of style works for me. Whatever your teacher did that clicks with you is an indicator of a teaching style that you’ll probably do well at.

• Teaching is a lot like parenting. You have to convey expectations clearly to your students, give them nurturing feedback, and dish out consequences when they need it. (Warm and fuzzy, not cold and prickly.) Also, you must like your students.

• People learn by doing things. Try and take every opportunity to present students with real live data, and have them deal with it. Focus on the principle you’re trying to reinforce. Often what will happen is that they’ll run up against the limits of their knowledge, and struggle to find a solution. Then they’re ready for you, the experienced one, to provide some suggestions for moving ahead.

• No one expects you to be infallible, just reasonably well-read and well-informed. A great thing to say is “I don’t know” and the next thing you should always say after that is “How could we find out?” And it’s not bad to follow that up with “If I had to make a guess, I’d say… And the reason I say that is…” When you say these things, you’re preparing them to solve their own problems.

• Let them talk to each other and contribute their unique experiences to the class. I do a lot of small group discussion in tutorials. When I’m doing all the talking in the tutorial, I know something’s wrong. Step back and let them work through the issues without you. You may worry that they’ll reinforce each others’ mistakes, but that doesn’t usually happen. Groups of people are smarter than their smartest member, so they’ve got a better chance of getting it right. Sometimes they come up with ideas I haven’t thought of. And they get a chance to contribute, so they’re building the class.

• Always have a contingency plan. Activities run short or sometimes just don’t work, and you’ll need to have something else to do. Even having a few discussion questions up your sleeve can save the day. Don’t be afraid to toss the lesson plan and have a discussion they’re interested in, if the tutorial goes that way. Let them drive. Some of the best tutorials are like that.

• Teach the scientific method. Our data comes from the physical world. We develop testable and falsifiable hypotheses to explain the data, and if the hypotheses don’t correspond to the facts, we modify or dump them. We have many perceptual filters and biases that prevent us from seeing things clearly, and we have tools like statistics to help us avoid these traps. Find out about them. Use issues in linguistics to teach the basics of critical thinking, including the virtues of open-mindedness and skepticism. Avoid holy wars. By teaching students the scientific method, we’re not just doing good linguistics, we’re building a populace that is better equipped to live in the world, even after they’ve forgotten all the things we’ve presented.

Atheist bus font

1 February 2009 / / 6 Comments

Last week was taken up by a happy event: Ms Perfect and I moved into our new home. That meant getting all the furniture in, tracking down the right hedge trimmer (so as not to obscure the white picket fence), and getting the utilities hooked up. Now the Internet Drought is over, and I’m back online.

We here at Good Reason like to keep up with everything typographical, so when we found the Atheist Bus typeface, it was too good not to share. Here it is: Dirty Headline, the very same font used on atheist buses in England (and atheist t-shirts elsewhere), downloadable for free thanks to dafont.com.

Making your own atheist slogans is now a simple matter. Maybe you like the current one, but you think it lacks a little punch. Why not try pumping up the volume?

Now that’s a spicy meatball.

SC state senator is afraid of words

26 January 2009 / / Comments Off on SC state senator is afraid of words

Did anyone notice this fine piece of legislation? South Carolina Senator Robert Ford wants to make swearing a felony.

Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of South Carolina:

SECTION 1. Article 3, Chapter 15, Title 16 of the 1976 Code is amended by adding:

“Section 16-15-370. (A) It is unlawful for a person in a public forum or place of public accommodation wilfully and knowingly to publish orally or in writing, exhibit, or otherwise make available material containing words, language, or actions of a profane, vulgar, lewd, lascivious, or indecent nature.

What’s the penalty? Get this:

(B) A person who violates the provisions of this section is guilty of a felony and, upon conviction, must be fined not more than five thousand dollars or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.”

Takes me back to the good old days of Puritan America, where blasphemy could get you whipped, your forehead branded with a ‘B’, or your tongue bored through with a hot iron. For repeat offenses, you could be killed. And remember that blasphemy could be swearing, or simply being an atheist.

In 1699 a Virginia statute was designed to eliminate “horrid and Atheistic principles greatly tending to the dishonor of Almighty God . . . “Blasphemers might deny God or the holy Trinity, declare that there are more than one God, or worship another god or goddess.

Dark days.

Hey, is ‘piss’ vulgar? Because I have a book that Mr Ford might like to prosecute.

Conversations with the Priest: My feelings are truer than your feelings

25 January 2009 / / 1 Comment

Latter-day Saints believe that their church is the Only True Church on the earth. That’s not such a drastic claim. Even though not every religion comes out and says it, most religions would say that their system (if not their own particular denomination) is true and all other are in some sense less true.

I was talking to The Priest about this, and I asked him, “Let’s say I told you that Apollo pulled the sun across the sky in a chariot. Would you accept my claim?”

He had to allow that he wouldn’t.

“Why not?” I asked. “On what basis would you reject my religion and accept yours? Or what about Muslims or Hindus with their claims?”

His answer was that he’d read and studied things, and the Holy Ghost had confirmed to him (via those wonderful feelings and experiences) that his religion was true.

“Well, they’ve read and studied, too!” I said. “And they have strong feelings that their religion is true. Are your feelings somehow more valid than theirs?”

There isn’t really a good answer to that, and to his credit he didn’t try to invent one. But imagine the cheek of taking that kind of approach!

When Mormons claim to have the One True Religion, they don’t really mean to be arrogant, truly. They sometimes allow that all religions have some truth (oh, what a generous admission), but they have more. Well, that would be all right, if they had better evidence than flimsy feelings, but they do not. So for churches that use emotions as evidence, that means that their proof is the intensity or the frequency or the persuasive power of the feelings they have. Other people in deadened and benighted religions may have spiritual feelings, sure, but they’re just not as real or powerful as their feelings. Their feelings just aren’t as valid.

That conversation was an eye-opener to me. I never realised how breathtakingly arrogant that view is, but it is. And it’s not exclusive to Mormons. It’s indulged in by every religious believer who says that their nebulous claims trump other people’s nebulous claims.

NB: The Priest is not a real person. He’s an amalgam of many religious people I’ve spoken with. I only write down a conversation with “the Priest” after I’ve heard the same claims from at least three different people. As a result, the dialogue is almost entirely made up, in order to make myself sound smart. Or it could be 100% accurate. I forget.

Proposition 8: Un-American?

24 January 2009 / / 1 Comment

Did Tom Hanks say something wrong when he called Mormon Prop 8 supporters ‘un-American’? Hanks has released a statement apologising for the remark, and while at first I wished he hadn’t, I find myself agreeing with his reasoning.

“Last week, I labeled members of the Mormon church who supported California’s Proposition 8 as ‘un-American,'” the actor said in a statement through his publicist. “I believe Proposition 8 is counter to the promise of our Constitution; it is codified discrimination.”

“But everyone has a right to vote their conscience; nothing could be more American,” the statement continues. “To say members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints who contributed to Proposition 8 are ‘un-American’ creates more division when the time calls for respectful disagreement. No one should use ‘un-American’ lightly or in haste. I did. I should not have.”

Hanks strikes a nice balance in his remark. He reaffirms the wrongness of writing bigotry into law, but takes care to focus on the offending word. Prop 8 represents a form of bigotry which is indeed counter to values Americans like to claim, like equality, fair play, and so on. But leave the word ‘un-American’ back in the McCarthy days, where it belongs.

So I’ll say that Mormon supporters of Prop 8 are hateful, intolerant, unfair, mean-spirited, bigoted, and pathologically ignorant. Not un-American.

PS: Did anyone near you donate? It’s a matter of public record. Check it out on Prop 8 Maps. Name and shame, people.

Nashville again smacks down ‘English only’ law

24 January 2009 / / 1 Comment

A shout out to the good citizens of Nashville, who voted down an English-only proposal that would have prevented the use of other languages by government workers and publications.

The proposal was introduced by Eric Crafton, a metropolitan councilman. It was opposed by a broad coalition including the mayor, civil rights groups, business leaders, ministers and the heads of nine institutions of higher education.

“The results of this special election reaffirm Nashville’s identity as a welcoming and friendly city,” Mayor Karl Dean said in a statement.

As I’ve argued before, people advance these proposals claiming to want to save money and encourage English use, but they’re really just a more acceptable way of punishing immigrants.

Critics said the proposal would tarnish Nashville’s reputation as a cultural mixing pot and drive away immigrants and international businesses. They also accused Mr. Crafton of worsening anti-immigrant sentiment and wasting at least $350,000 of taxpayer’s money on a special election.

Nice to see it fail. Well done, Nashville.

Inauguration liveblogging

20 January 2009 / / 4 Comments

It’s 1.30 am in Perth, but I’m up watching. The Inauguration is on all channels.

1.30 Everyone looks great in their solid colours. Yellow is hard to pull off, though. Not thinking of anyone in particular. Ahem.

1.39 I can’t even be mad at Bush today. His characteristic smirk looks tempered.

1.49 A corpulent fellow is talking to an invisible supernatural being. Some people are cheering, which I don’t think you’re supposed to do during a prayer.

1.54 You have to love Aretha. How cool is it that she’s singing? I think her hit ‘Respect’ came out the year I was born, and here she is still. I want to turn the sound up, but I don’t want to wake Ms Perfect.

1.57 Biden’s up. I hope he and Obama do support the Constitution — by prosecuting everyone in the Bush administration. So help me.

1.59 Shut up, Australian announcer. I want to hear the music. Must be cold. Not optimal for string players.

2.04 The Moment.

2.10 One of the things I like about Obama’s speeches is that he seems to require us to be our best. He speaks to our intelligence and not our primal urges like fear or dominance.

2.14 What must Bush/Cheney et al. be thinking as Obama lists the dire circumstances facing America?

2.16 ‘Common good’? ‘Rule of law’? What is he talking about? I haven’t heard these words in a presidential speech for a long time. It feels strange and new in my ears.

2.19 Hey, non-believers got a mention. I think I may have just forgiven him for Rick Warren. Almost. But I’m too easily influenced about that kind of thing.

2.27 I liked how his speech was a mixture of general policy direction (in the form of challenges we face), and encouragement.

2.52 Dick Cheney looks like no one more than old Mr Potter from It’s a Wonderful Life. An apt comparison, I think.

2.54 George W. Bush waves from the helicopter. Goodbye to all that. Now we can get on with the work.

2.56 I bet the pilot of that helicopter isn’t some ideological crony plucked from Liberty University.

3.07 They’re starting to show commercials again, so it must be time to wrap it up and go back to bed. I’m glad I got up for this. A lot has been made of the history of this occasion, especially the race aspect, and that’s a really big deal. But for me, race is just one way to look at it. I’m proud that Obama’s the president, not because he’s black, but because he’s intelligent and hard-working. We’ve had eight years of a lazy and stupid president, and the nation has suffered from it in lots of ways: the national discourse, education, military, internationally. Today marks the Return of the Smart People — people who see reality as having some authority in decision-making. It’s a relief.

Mmm… jelly filling… UV DETH

18 January 2009 / / 4 Comments

Via Jeffrey: You know what would be good right now? Some pro-abortion donuts.

KRISPY KREME CELEBRATES OBAMA WITH PRO-ABORTION DOUGHNUTS

“The next time you stare down a conveyor belt of slow-moving, hot, sugary glazed donuts at your local Krispy Kreme you just might be supporting President-elect Barack Obama’s radical support for abortion on demand – including his sweeping promise to sign the Freedom of Choice Act as soon as he steps in the Oval Office, Jan. 20.

The doughnut giant released the following statement yesterday:

Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Inc. (NYSE: KKD) is honoring American’s sense of pride and freedom of choice on Inauguration Day, by offering a free doughnut of choice to every customer on this historic day, Jan. 20. By doing so, participating Krispy Kreme stores nationwide are making an oath to tasty goodies — just another reminder of how oh-so-sweet “free” can be.

Just an unfortunate choice of words? For the sake of our Wednesday morning doughnut runs, we hope so. The unfortunate reality of a post Roe v. Wade America is that “choice” is synonymous with abortion access and celebration of ‘freedom of choice’ is a tacit endorsement of abortion rights on demand.

We all love donuts, but they take the relationship in a direction that’s eerily close to stalking.

Think about it, you political lefties out there. When you first saw this ad:

…did you immediately think ‘boycott’? Did you throw your DVD player out the window, and organise a protest? Probably not, because you have a functioning mind and aren’t always trying to be outraged over manufactured controversy. People at the ALL don’t have the benefit of this.

There are two lessons here.

One, if you are a donut maker, do not capitulate to crazy people. Remember the flap over Rachel Ray’s scarf? She wore one in a Dunkin’ Donuts commercial, and the wingnut-o-sphere went berzerk, and decided that the ad was a coded message of support for Palestine and terrorism or something. Incredibly, Dunkin’ Donuts pulled the ad. But the Religious Right weren’t satisfied. Now, they have decided to attack donuts — again.

Two, the Christian Right has the collective brain power of a ten-dollar Mixmaster. And it’s always stuck on high.

Mormon Studies fellowship, but not where you’d guess

17 January 2009 / / Comments Off on Mormon Studies fellowship, but not where you’d guess

The University of Utah is offering a fellowship in Mormon Studies.

“It’s a matter of academic justice,” said Bob Goldberg, the center’s director. “There would not be a question if we were in New York City and wanted to establish a course in Jewish studies, or in Chicago, Baltimore or Boston and wanted to start a course in Catholic studies. This is a perfect place to do research on Mormonism. To me, it’s a no-brainer.”

The U.’s is the first such fellowship in the nation, but joins a growing list of colleges that offer some coursework in Mormon studies, including Claremont College in southern California, Utah State University, Vanderbilt University and the University of North Carolina, to name a few.

Sounds interesting, but what’s even more interesting is that you can’t do a degree in Mormon Studies in the one place you’d think you could: BYU.

Why not? Well, perhaps a few ideas. There’s a certain distrust of learning in the LDS Church, unless it’s specifically dedicated to meeting the needs of the organisation instead of, you know, facts. This suspicion was written into the Book of Mormon, and it’s worked its way into General Conference. Dallin Oaks, an LDS apostle, famously warned of the dangers of ‘symposia’ (meaning those clever Sunstone rascals). Here’s the money quote.

I have seen some persons attempt to understand or undertake to criticize the gospel or the Church by the method of reason alone, unaccompanied by the use or recognition of revelation. When reason is adopted as the only—or even the principal—method of judging the gospel, the outcome is predetermined.

He doesn’t say what the ‘outcome’ is, but it can’t be good. So Oaks is implying that trying to understand the Church using reason instead of — what? whisperings of a spirit being? some guy telling you? — will cause you to reject religious doctrine. An interesting admission, and a huge warning sign that you’re dealing with an enemy of reason.

Church leaders have periodically slagged off Mormons who research into the church’s history. One leader, Neal Maxwell, trivialised the scholarly efforts of thinking Latter-day Saints as “intellectual bungee jumping“. (A prominent Mormon apologetics institute was subsequently renamed in his honour.)

So it’s not likely that the LDS Church (via its official university) will make a place for scholarly Mormon research anytime soon. They don’t seem to think their faith can stand scrutiny, and with that I fully agree.

John Morley said it well:

Where it is a duty to worship the sun it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat.

No attempt to find the god that ordered the hit

16 January 2009 / / 1 Comment

It’s hard to find good minions anymore.

The Chestermere man charged with attempted murder in Minnesota says it was God that made him stab another truck driver.

According to documents filed in the Clay County Court, Harmit Singh Bhangu, 32 of Chestermere, told an officer who was interviewing him that God orders him to do things.

How the mighty have fallen. God used to have henchmen like Moses and Joshua, and now he’s reduced to working with crazy people.

I don’t want to pick on the poor guy, even though he’s a very very scary poor guy who’s just about killed another poor guy. Mr Bhangu has got some serious problems, and maybe some medication might have helped him.

But the Brain Teaser of the Day is: On what basis would a religious believer claim that God didn’t really order him to kill a man?

Is it because God would never tell someone to kill someone else? That’s a hard view to defend from the Bible. Try reading Joshua 13, where Yahweh appears as some kind of evil familiar, impelling the aged Joshua to yet more slaughter.

Is it because Mr Bhangu is doing obviously crazy things? Ezekiel lay on his side for over a year. He also ate bread cooked over a cow pat. All perfectly biblical, and extremely loopy.

As a Mormon, the question of how to evaluate other people’s revelations used to be a tough one. Now as an atheist, it’s easy. Anyone who says that a god is speaking to them is wrong. But I don’t care so much as long as they’re keeping their delusion to themselves, keeping it away from children, not harming anyone with it, and not trying to legislate on the basis of it. When they overstep these bounds, they move from deluded to dangerous, like Mr Bhangu.

Now here’s a part from the article that caught my attention:

“(The) defendant stated that he knew it was wrong to kill people in this country but that God had ordered him to do it,” say the documents filed by police.

And if God orders you to do something, you don’t worry about a trifling thing like law. All my life, I heard people in church telling me that God came first. God’s law was higher than man’s law. Little did I realise that they were implanting a meme that would justify my breaking any law that the church considered wrong.

And I see that it’s not just Mormons that are getting the treatment. Here’s a Christian columnist asking kids the musical question:

What Would You Do If Arrested For Talking About God?

“If they threatened to hurt me if I didn’t stop talking about God, I wouldn’t listen to them because I know that I am pleasing God,” says Megan, 9.

Megan would be following the example of the Apostles Peter and John upon their release from jail.
…
Ask this question: If police were told to arrest all Christians in your area, would they come to your house?

Hurt them? Arrest them? Who’s advocating this? Or is this a bit of galvanisation through paranoia?

This article delivers two memes at once: ‘Religious Dogma Over Secular Law’, and ‘They’re Coming to Get Us’. But fancy putting either one before a child. At best, you make them fearful for the safety of their family, and at worst you raise a generation of Law-Breakers for Jesus.

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