I Speak of Dreams

Crafting Feedback to Improve Performance

Attitudes, Skills and Knowledge (ASK) is an educational consultiing firm.  This month's newsletter features a column by David Oliver that is well worth reading by anybody who has to shape and evaluate another person's performance (that's just about everybody, right?)

[Grant] Wiggins says that feedback is not  about praise or blame, approval or disapproval.  Good feedback describes what a student [person]  did or did not do for the purpose of   changing or maintaining a behavior or performance. Robert Marzano   and associates concur that effective feedback should provide  students [people] with an explanation of what they are doing correctly and  what steps they must take to continue to make progress.   

Think about how often somebody has told you "Not good enough!" but didn't give you any guidance as to how to improve.  Not very motivational, is it?

Good Advice, But from Whom?

When I ask you to listen to me and you start giving advice, you have not done what I asked.

Territory or Map? The Radicalism of Inexperience

Alford Korzybski said: "the map is not the territory." 

There's a great article in the May 2005 issue of Discover Magazine on Temple Grandin, by the writer Verlyn Klinkenborg. 

One of the points Grandin is that many people now don't have the experience to distinguish between the map and the territory, and may prefer the map.

What happens then?

Why I love Language Log (or Geoff Pullam, I'm Not Sure Which)

I've been looking for a piece I read sometime in the past 3 months, in which advice was given to ESL (English as a Second Language) speakers in the European Union, decoding British reserve.  That is to say, a British person saying, "That isn't quite correct", it should be parsed as "What a towering piece of dung!!!" in most other languages or vernaculars. This search has lead me down some rewarding rabbit holes.  Geoff Pullam said:

Here's some advice.  Whenever you hear someone starting to say something that begins with "The X have no word for Y", or "The X have N different words for Y", never listen to them, and always check your wallet to make sure it's still there.

(oh, and a Ray Girvan link -- )

Miller's Law

"In order to understand what another person is saying, you must assume that it is true, and try to imagine what it could be true of."

Forest of Rhetoric

I wish I had the opportunity to be trained for debate when I was in high school. I have the fantasy that I might have learned to understand things earlier. I have a fascination with Hadin Elgin's work, and also with rhetoric.

The formal study of rhetoric is laid out elegantly here.

Courageous Conversations

Do programs such as Courageous Conversations and causing teachers to "face up to their own racism and privilege" really lessen the achievement gap? Harry Brighouse thinks not.

It is interesting that Singleton started out helping middle class kids find a good college fit.

Pullum's 6-12 Curriculum

I'm avoiding Monday, I know I am. Never mind:

Geoff Pullum proposes a new middle school/high school curriculum. After some thought, I believe he is correct (as opposed to right):

And John's remark brought back to me something more general that I have been thinking about for some time concerning middle and high school. Below is a short list of some things that I feel I really needed to know (still need to know, in some cases) in order to be a functioning human being in a modern society.

I also disagree with his response to the young woman's comment. I often feel that way about half-done housework. A little is better than none, and that's all you're getting today

Disputation Fu

My mom would use any trick in the book to win an argument. She never gave me the book--thank heavens for Making Light and BoingBoing

Thirty-eight dishonest tricks which are commonly used in argument, with the methods of overcoming them

[this work] is intended to be a list which can be conveniently used for detecting dishonest modes of thought which we shall actually meet in arguments and speeches. Sometimes more than one of the tricks mentioned would be classified by the logician under one heading, some he would omit altogether, while others that he would put in are not to be found here. Practical convenience and practical importance are the criteria I have used in this list. If we have a plague of flies in the house we buy fly-papers and not a treatise on the zoological classification of Musca domestica.

On Boundaries and Staying Clear

Let me see if I can say this straight. One person, A, used an image in a way that offended another person, B. B protested. A called him some names, and denied that the details of image were offensive. B kept his wits about him, and said no, it was the way the image was used, not the details. And then person B goes on his way to talk about other stuff that I find interesting.

So why do I care about this scenario, above? Because I need to learn how to keep on thinking clearly around people who say things like "You are WRONG to be offended!" and "HOW could you possibly think that way!". It's an ongoing project for me-- I'm kind of handicapped in that regard, I freeze up. Hence my interest in the thinking of people like Suzette Hadin Elgin*

Person B modelled the sort of behavior I want to emulate--thoughtful, compassionate, but able to set boundaries and move on.