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Stealing the souls of children


“People pay for what they do,and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead.”

James Baldwin 

My hand, the bay’s gift, returned

In the end, it’s the ground that will save us, if we are, or even want, to be saved.

We’re of the mud, of the air, of the water, of the sun. We diminish the folks before us on this once fine land when we “honor” these as metaphors.

We diminish our ancestors from our homelands who spoke of the spirits and the blurring of the lines between the living and the dead as autumn darkness presses on our souls.


Cliffs of Moher, County Clare (Aaron Logan via Wikimedia)

These are not simply metaphors or myths or models. They are ways to understand the world, the world beyond the digital.

You cannot grasp a fistful of earth through a screen.
Our hands were made for more than pushing keys.

We are stripping the souls from our children.

We become who we deserve to become.
But we should let our children decide whether a soul is worth keeping.

Winter is coming, again.

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Teaching science: I

High school lab set up for fermentation demo showing flasks, bottles and air locks.
Making ethanol in the classroom looks “sciency” but….

I am leading a new course this fall, the Nature of Science (NOS).

Much, perhaps most, of what passes for science in high school is dogma. The NGSS tried to fix this, but so long as we diminish “matter” and “energy” to a few paragraphs in September, so long as we let children believe the world is round without letting them challenge us with “obvious” evidence to the contrary, and so long as science teachers continue to “believe in” [gravity/evolution/heliocentrism/plate tectonics/etc.] high school science remains a fairy tale.

Science is, to be fair, nothing but fairy tales, but fairy tales anchored in the natural world. This is a tad problematic at times, as the border between natural and supernatural, what’s real and what’s not, gets fuzzy, especially at the quantum level.

So in September I am getting a class of bright young humans and we’re going to explore our natural world.

I may be asking you for help….

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Black music, white teacher: an apology owed

Mance Lipscomb, via Morehead State Public Radio

We  favor blues musicians without testosterone, without teeth, without sight, without color.

Black women, androgynous white men, and old Black men are safer. Old, scratchy vinyl recordings are safer. But we shy away from the Black man in his prime.

The blues are easy to play poorly yet sound good to white ears. The Stones made a living on this.

I was playing Robert Johnson as the seniors strolled into class on Friday. I’ve gotten in the habit of playing music as the day starts, and Robert Johnson was the morning headliner.

Robert Johnson, photo via NYT

The third marking period started a few days ago. The class just had their first quiz. Most failed, not unexpected given it was the first quiz for seniors that did not count. Senioritis has kicked in.

So I sang an off-the-cuff blues piece about senioritis backed by a harmonica riff lifted off YouTube.

And now I realize this was a mistake.

So tomorrow I will start class with an apology. Not for playing Robert Johnson, a fierce blues man who died far too young. Not for singing, though that may warrant a separate kind of apology.

I will apologize for my lack of respect. Using that art form at that moment to entertain students was wrong. It felt off at the moment, but I wasn’t sure why. I thank Justin of objective opinions for his kind reminder.

(Yes, I will still sing and play the blues by myself for myself–but I cannot share what I do not own.)