The Education Debate – Full of sound and fury

Posted on March 14, 2010 by Josh

As MacBeth says in the eponymous play:

Life is…a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Reminds me of the education debate. For the high school kids reading my blog right now, here’s what I mean – there’s a lot of talk, and no action.

I just finished reading Valerie Strauss’ commentary on Obama’s revised education plan on The Washington Post’s site.

Then, as I often do, I started to read some of the responses.

Then, as usually happens, I realized I was wasting precious life, reading regurgitated doctrine from people who have been programmed to spew it out.

So I stopped, and started writing this.

My good friend Kwame Brown recently posted a blog entry with a similar set of questions as those raised by Valerie, and by an inquiry into education in our country.

In his post Education and the Tribe, he asks several good questions:
1. Why are citizens of the US (who are taxpayers) reticent to increase taxes (even minimally) to help pay for education?
2. What is happening within our education system, and what are the alternatives?
3. If funding is created, what should it be used for?

Kwame has some answers, and his readers have others.

My interest is in a deeper current.

The question I would pose is this – why is education in the state it is in today?

In order to change it, we need to know how it got to the state it is in. Some people advocate for activism, period. But I think that is misguided. Without understanding the background of the situation, you can easily waste time and effort, and potentially have disastrous results, opposite to those you hoped for.

Consider the case of a person who goes to a doctor with a problem. If the doctor does not interview the patient and try to find the possible cause of the problem, the doctor is merely treating the symptom – and may in fact hurt the patient even further.

Once we know how and why education is in the state it is in (and there are many many reasons – from personal to community to regional and national factors, and on to international factors, from marketing and consumerization/productization to cultural influences), we must then ask what is at stake for the people who brought education to the place it is now.

Again, there will be at least a few key stakeholders (I’m thinking of groups like Federal government, industry/business, state government, regional authorities, county authorities, and then parents, teachers and students, and others), and each group will have its own agenda, outcome and strategy.

What is at stake for each of these groups? What are their desires, fears, and needs?

When we find those, we can find the intersections, or “win/win” arguments to support our agenda (once that, itself, has been defined).

This, I think, is the way to make change. Yes, action can be organized and orchestrated now, and can be incredibly effective, but it must have its foundation in an understanding of the source of the problem, and a clear idea or proposal for the desired state.

Otherwise it’s all sound and fury…and will end up signifying nothing.

Move Theory Needs Your Help

Posted on February 23, 2010 by Josh

My good friend Kwame Brown:

director of fitness at the Arlington, VA, Lee-District RecCenter; PhD. in neuroscience; founding member of the International Youth Conditioning Association; Exuberant Animal (par excellence):

and all-around good guy, needs your help.

He’s trying to get some insight into the factors affecting child development – from parents, educators, and policy-makers. I’m sure that he’d even accept some ideas from folks who have an educated opinion, but don’t fit into any of those specific categories.

Please go over to his site and offer some ideas.

What You See Is What You Eat

Posted on February 16, 2010 by Josh

The Palm Beach Post did a great piece on some new literature about the frequency of junk food product placements in films.

A new study by Lisa Sutherland, assistant professor of pediatrics at Dartmouth Medical School, reveals the incredible amount of product placement occurring in popular movies.

138 of 200 films analyzed had some kind of product placement – food or beverage – most of it, what we could consider “junk food.”

How many products can we fit into one "placement?"

The problem with this is that the more we are exposed to a stimulus, the more likely we are to accept that stimulus as normal.

A lot of studies have shown dishabituation in people after being presented to stimuli a certain number of times. That is, they cease to notice the stimulus as being novel. Most of those studies have stopped there. Yes, you cease to notice the thing. But what does that mean with regard to how you treat it?

How do you treat something you don’t notice?

The fact is, we treat things we don’t notice as being non-threatening…as being “normal.” When we notice something, we say it is “unusual” or “out of the ordinary.” It is not “normal.”

Advertising achieves a few things at once. First, it exposes you to a novel stimulus, and presents that stimulus as something desirable (for good or bad reasons) and as being socially acceptable or creating a certain social status.

Then, it continues to pummel you with the messaging, till you aren’t even aware of it. For instance, if you watched TV last night, try to name ten commercials that you saw. Specifically – what were they about, what were they selling, how were they trying to convince you to buy?

It’s a hard game to play.

Finally, every now and then the advertiser tweaks the message. You receive a new stimulus. Your “desire-reaction” grows.

Tweak the message

Children may be more susceptible to this type of messaging than adults, having not fully developed their “executive control” functions (though whether or not many adults have fully developed this is questionable as well…).

Fat Kids, Their Parents, Nature Deficit, and the Future

Posted on December 24, 2009 by Josh

So many articles on overweight/out-of-shape children popped up on my Google alerts yesterday that I have to post about it. Not that I don’t want to, you know.

The kids in Sacramento are terribly unfit, and getting less fit by the year. The Sacramento Bee article linked to above does a good job of showing how most “physical fitness” data ignores socioeconomic data. It’s essential that we start putting these things together, to be able to see the bigger picture.

You see, poor kids are typically less fit than kids from more wealthy families.

One of the schools mentioned also had to reduce the presence of their “physical fitness specialist” from five days per week, to two days per week. I’m sure that kind of thing is happening all over the country. “PE” isn’t valued in our culture.

Great Britain is experiencing the same symptoms. The article says, though, tat the biggest cause is a lack of regular physical activity by the children. Sounds good. Again, though, it’s only part of the argument.

This recent article in Scientific American points out how being in nature or in a natural setting not only reduces stress markers, but also creates value change in the people involved.

Out in the Wild, people naturally become more “other-focused,” and less “self-focused.” Further, our motivational drive switches from an extrinsic drive, to a more intrinsic drive.

In all of these articles, though, where are the parents?

I mean, why aren’t fingers being pointed? And pointed where they should be?

Socioeconomic status notwithstanding, parents play a huge role in getting their kids active, and into nature.

I suppose what I’m saying is this – we always look for the “cause” in the immediate present. But those things are just symptoms.

What happened in the parents’ generation that has led them to care less about physical activity and nature? Or at least, to be less involved in those things, or have their kids less involved?

What happened back then? Treat the cause, not the symptom…

Freedom to Learn – Fantastic Blog!

Posted on December 17, 2009 by Josh

Dr. Peter Gray‘s blog, “Freedom to Learn,” is a fantastic collection of thoughts, ideas, and great references regarding development, play, learning, and the effects of social structures on all of those.

I highly recommend it!

Self/Other – The Mother of Conflict

Posted on December 14, 2009 by Josh

Dr. Peter Gray’s recent article on Psychology Today, “The Morally Questionable Lessons of Formal Sports,” asks the very pertinent question – to what end, sports?

I’ve commented on my own experience with organized sports in previous posts, and will sum up by saying that I almost always have experienced what Dr. Gray outlines in his article – the creation of enemies through organized sporting activity.

Granted, none of those people are still my enemies, but the process of organized sport itself necessarily (in most cases) creates the Self/Other distinction more quickly than other group dynamics.

What happens next? Well, the group becomes Self and Other (or “my group and their group”. Then Self and Other becomes Self VS Other (or, “my group versus their group”).

Then the violence happens.

Once an individual perceives themselves as separated from their habitat – as physically separate – there are no consequences when things are done-to that habitat.

Habitat includes everything around us. Furniture, walls, plants, animals, air, weather, sounds, etc. Everything that is our “external organ.”

It is interesting that that process is so simple to accomplish.

In the study that Dr. Gray cites, it was accomplished by giving children rewards for winning whatever game against the other team. Win, you get an award. Lose, you do not.

Suddenly, I am not just separate from the large context, but not rewarded for my efforts (though they may have been as great, relatively, as those of the other players).

What dissolves this dialectic? Again, in the study Dr. Grey cites, conflict between groups was resolved by involving the group in a common goal.

We’ve seen this in history. Unite opposing factions, or views, against a “common enemy.”

Suddenly we’re all on the same team (at least for a while).

But what hasn’t happened is the dissolution of the Self/Other dialectic. It still remains, ruling over all, until the teams are split up again, and one is pitted against the other.

H1N1 – The Importance of Health Education

Posted on December 11, 2009 by Josh

This article from Cincinnati.com asks why health education has such a small role in Ohio’s education program.

Actually, it asks “why are we afraid of health education?”

Good question. In light of my recent post regarding an article from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on the topic of physical education in that state, I’m beginning to wonder the same thing.

When I think about the potential lost on children who are not taught about their bodies starting at an early age, I’m completely puzzled.

I’m not sure what education looks like now, but I know for a fact that any child who can memorize the 26 letters in the English alphabet can also learn and relate to the basic bones in their bodies, and the larger muscle groups.

What about their biological systems, or even physiological principles?

That’s part of Physical Education folks. Physical Education IS “health education.” At least, it should be.

But my PE classes never looked like that, either. Instead, we had loosely organized athletics practice…based on nothing, seemingly, with no apparent aim from year to year. When I turned 13 we had “health class,” which was a series of classes designed to scare the shit out of you regarding the use of drugs (especially LSD), drunk driving, and sexual intercourse.

Great education assholes.

This type of “education” leaves the kids scared and lacking in knowledge or power. They have to rely either on their family, friends, or other people to help them to “do the right thing.” Good luck.

Give me your child for one hour a day for 6 months of every year for the three years from their 12th to their 15th birthday. They will learn, grow, and change in ways you would probably rebel against. They would surpass your and their own beliefs in their possibilities.

So, why are we afraid of Physical Educaton?

Physical education in schools

Posted on December 10, 2009 by Josh

Another great article from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, this one by Bryan McCullick, called Obesity won’t improve without reforming PE, sums up the thoughts of a lot of my classmates (and professors) from one class this past semester.

The article points out that PE is a wonderful method for preventing obesity, for informing young minds, and for creating healthy lifestyles. It also points out that PE is conspicuously missing from President Obama’s healthcare reform package.

“PE is at the core of promoting healthy choices. A comprehensive school program includes PE, health education, healthy food options, recess for elementary school students, intramural sport programs and physical activity clubs, and interscholastic sports for high school students. Ideally, schools would also include physical activity breaks, walk/bike to school programs, appropriate physical activity in after-school child care programs, and staff wellness programs.”

The above is, in fact, the definition of “physical educator” that my classmates and I arrived at this semester. And is the definition the physicians had in mind who created the field of kinesiology back in the early 1900′s.

Bryan gives us some good financial data:
“A 2009 report from the California Center for Public Health Advocacy on the annual economic costs of physical inactivity, obesity and being overweight in California estimated that in 2006 physical inactivity cost $20.19 billion, being overweight and obesity $20.98 billion. That’s more than $41 billion in economic costs for Californians alone.”

I’ve mentioned in previous blog posts the costs of “Non-Communicable Diseases.” When you consider that NCD’s include obesity, heart disease, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes, you have to wonder why more attention isn’t being given to physical activity on a national level.

Then Bryan gets to the point that really stuck with me this past semester…the one that I think is the major hurdle to all of this:
“The quality [my italics] of PE students’ need is glaringly omitted in anyone’s talking points in the health care debate. Overcrowded gymnasiums, insufficient or outdated resources, and sometimes inhumane working conditions (no air conditioning in gyms when school begins in August) are archetypal for many PE programs…Further, 33 percent of states reacting, again, to federal mandates for “highly qualified” teachers have relaxed licensure requirements for PE teachers. To help young people develop into physically educated individuals, a specialist with a body of knowledge and skills is needed in every school. The days of the ball-rolling, coffee-swilling, game-prepping PE “coach” have contributed to the current obesity rate increase.”

One of the things that happened to the field of kinesiology, the field of physical education, in the 1970′s, was that the academic began to split from the professional. That is, the people doing research and teaching academic classes were no longer the same people providing exercise advice, or dealing with human beings’ physical state as their daily work.

Soon thereafter, “physical educator” was a worthless term – and the profession went with the job. Schools figured, heck, anyone can teach a PE class. It’s just having the kids play around or something.

No more tying their Biology lessons into their own biology, or their Chemistry lessons into their own Physiology. No more education on the proper technique for performing certain movements, and the reasons behind that technique. Nor for the ways the body responds to various types of exercise.

The fact that I can work as a personal trainer has a lot to do with the terrible state of physical education in this country. Most of my clients are more than able and happy to exercise without paying another person to show them how – they just don’t know what to do or how to do it without potentially hurting themselves!

They always say that the best employee seeks to put him/herself out of a job, by making the connections needed across the organization to make themselves unnecessary. They create efficiency.

I hope to do the same thing with my training. It’s my new goal.

Job Title: Physical Educator

The Marshmallow Test

Posted on September 22, 2009 by Josh

Here’s a video of the marshmallow test that my foot-camp friend sent me today:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWW1vpz1ybo&hl=en&fs=1&]

Before I write more…here’s another video, with a similar test…

History Eraser Button (Ren and Stimpy)

While the second video isn’t exactly the same…there’s something similar happening there.

The scientists who’ve written about the marshmallow test might lead you to believe that the children who could resist had higher levels of self-regulation. Their “executive function,” or ability to dictate their own actions in spite of urges, was better developed.

But they never asked the kids why they held out.

What if all the study shows is that children who hold out are more greedy than children who do not? Or that children who can make it are more likely to become fat than other children?

More importantly – why did the kids hold out? And why didn’t the researchers ever ask them?

You might say, “Oh, it’s self-evident. They restrained themselves so that they could have more marshmallows.”

But I think we should go deeper than that. Why, then, did they want more marshmallows?

Was the test done after the children had been starved for a certain amount of time? Now that would be an interesting study! Or was it done right before lunch, or right after lunch? What time was it? Do all children like marshmallows equally? Do all children automatically want more marshmallows?

The answer is – who knows! No one asked them.

Part of the temptation of temptation is temptation itself. What’s maddening to Tantalus is not that he constantly wants the grapes hanging over his head – that float away, just out of reach when he grabs for them – or the water that rushes from his feet as he tries to suck at it – It’s that he constantly wants those things…forever!

I mean, come on…wouldn’t it get old after a while?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EDeiC0OTJw&hl=en&fs=1&]

I think this joke has run its course…don’t you?

Indeed.

So what does it prove that the kids who could hold out could, and the ones who could not, could not?

Well, perhaps it proves many things, such as:

Self-regulation and self-denial are different animals, and should be studied differently
Self-regulation comes from a feeling of security, abundance, trust, and safety in ones environment and caretakers. Kids who eat the marshmallow don’t feel that way…
Kids who eat the marshmallow are hungrier than kids who don’t.
Kids who deny themselves the marshmallow grow up to have eating disorders.

But I digress.

I don’t think it really proves anything.

Want a marshmallow?

These are fake. If you come back and read some more, I'll give you real marshmallows...maybe.

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Exuberant Animal East Coast Jam – November 7 and 8

Posted on September 19, 2009 by Josh

Hi!

Exuberant Animal is holding its first ever East Coast event on the weekend of November 7th and 8th, at the Gerstung Intersport Center, in Baltimore, MD.

The event is only $150, and includes 2 full days of play and learning, dinner on Saturday night, and a party.

Click this Picture to Download the Event Flyer

For those of you who don’t know, Exuberant Animal is a group founded by Frank Forencich that promotes health, vitality, and happiness, through physical activity – in particular, in play and play-based movement.

EA is built around a concept of fitness that comes from an evolutionary perspective of the human animal. We advanced through eons of development by being playful – inquisitive, adventurous, daring – by experimenting with new ways of doing things.

This evolutionary perspective is a large part of the EA mission, and includes addressing not just the ills of sedentarism, but also the ills caused by some of our modern “conveniences” – shoes, computers (and other devices leading to repetitive stress syndromes), hard flat surfaces, etc.

Because of this, you find people as diverse as Mick Dodge (the Barefoot Sensei), Barefoot Ted McDonald (barefoot running expert, and one of the cast/characters in Chris McDougall‘s new book “Born to Run“), Kwame Brown (neuroscientist, child-development expert, and board member of the IYCA), Dr. Stuart Brown (head of the National Institute for Play).

As different as we are, we all share a common belief in the benefits of play for all people.

For me, being a part of Exuberant Animal has been a transformative process.

Having been in the fitness industry for 9 years now, and involved in play (in every aspect of life) and physical activity for my whole life, I’d come to a point where the traditional approach of sets, reps, and boring static exercise using machines, dumbbells, and other equipment, just wasn’t making sense anymore. I could feel the boredom flowing between my clients and myself after their umpteenth set of squats, bench press, or other “traditional” exercise.

Taking the reps/sets out of exercise, and injecting play in its place, brings diversity to movement. From that diversity, happiness grows.

As anyone knows who ever played competitive sports, you were at your peak when you weren’t focused on how much conditioning you did that day, but on how much you were “in it” – in the flow state. This is the state of play – where possibilities are open, you are unselfconscious, able to enjoy using your body in the moment to have fun and accomplish your desired goal.

In my experience, what most clients suffer from is a lack of motivation. Then, they come into the gym and we put them into bizarre circumstances where we’re observing and correcting them, making them even more self-conscious.

EA provides alternatives through fitness “games” that make the process interactive, playful, and most of all FUN. You still get to work people in all three planes of motion, you still get to use whatever equipment you like the most, but now you also get to engage your client’s spirits in their workouts.

If you’re on the East Coast, and you’re at all interested, go to the EA website, check out the details, and register for this event. It’s going to be great – and even greater if you’re there!

I’ll see you there!

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