Beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and Coca-Cola. I bought A History of the World in Six Glasses by Tom Standage because five of the six drinks are forbidden for Mormons. Want to know what the world would have been like if the Word of Wisdom had been around since the dawn of time? We all would have DIED!! And been very unsocial.
Actually, the book wasn't that dramatic. But it was pretty obvious that the health benefits of drinking beer instead of water contributed to the rise of civilization. Alcohol is a poison. It poisons people slowly, but it poisons germs a lot faster. Instead of dying of dysentery when you're 20, you can die of cirrhosis of the liver at 40! Early man doubled his lifespan by drinking alcohol. And because of the germ-killing properties of alcohol, people could stay in one place longer even after they fouled the water supply. Beer helped people go from the nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle to agriculture.
Wine had the same alcoholic advantages of beer, but with the advantage of being more expensive, so snobs could differentiate themselves from beer-drinkers. Eventually, the price evened out and everyone could drink wine too.
Alcoholic drinks were used to pay laborers. Better than money! Plus, the jobs at that time were so boring and miserable, being buzzed was the only way the workers could stand them.
Once coffee came to Europe, the Enlightenment happened. Caffeine makes you more alert. Now that the most popular drink didn't make you tipsy, people started thinking! Tea had the same advantage. The world got smarter because of caffeine.
Coke was originally a quack medicine. You know - guaranteed to cure everything from rotfoot to a broken heart. Coke did have a bit of cocaine in it, but it wasn't alcoholic. Coke really started to get popular when the Temperance Movement in America started gaining traction in banning alcoholic drinks. And when alcohol came back, Coke stayed anyway.
Coke conquered the world, and is synonymous with America and consumerism. In WWII, Coke sent Coke out with all the troops. The bottles didn't ship well, so Coke sent materials and employees out to military bases so that the troops could have Coke. Every American military base had it's Coke fountain and "Coke colonels", and even soldiers who didn't like Coke drank Coke because it was the American thing to do. The soldiers went home eventually, but Coke stayed everywhere.
The book predicts that the drink of the future, however, is water. Not just fancy bottled water that people in countries with safe tap water buy; the idea of safe drinking water for everyone is taking hold around the world. Thousands of years after mankind abandoned water in favor of drinks with antiseptics in them, the technology finally exists to make water safe to drink.
Standage's descriptions of how the drinks influenced the culture were interesting. Drinking is a very social event, and always has been.
My six drinks are water, milk, Diet Coke, baby formula (I make it but I don't drink it), hot chocolate and chocolate milk. What are your six drinks?
Showing posts with label Book Review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Book Review. Show all posts
Monday, January 05, 2009
Sunday, November 02, 2008
Book Review: Everything Bad is Good For You
After reading Everything Bad Is Good For You by Steven Johnson, I am no longer ashamed that I loved every episode of Average Joe. (That was the reality dating show where they found a beauty queen who said personality was more important than looks and gave her 20 average-looking guys to choose from.) However, I am ashamed that I do not have the brainpower to follow Survivor. Sigh. Perhaps Ben and Simon will be smart enough.
Johnson's argument is that it takes more brainpower to enjoy current pop culture than it did to enjoy pop culture twenty or thirty years ago. He takes on the assumption that pop culture is dumbing down, and turns it on its head.
Before he gets going, he separates out the morality of current pop culture from the complexity of pop culture. This book doesn't address the increased violence, sex and profanity in entertainment.
TV is getting smarter. Really. All you have to do is watch a show from the Golden Age of television (the 60s), or from the stupidity nadir of television (the 70s), and compare it to today's shows. Today's plots have so many interlocking relationships and plot lines that missing an episode requires a visit to one of the many fan sites to find out what happened because the producers don't design shows to fit in one episode. They design shows that take entire seasons to unravel.
While a viewer could sit down in front of Starsky and Hutch, watch just one episode, and be able to follow the plot, anyone who tries to watch just one episode of ER or Lost is going to spend the entire episode wondering what's happening. Older tv shows kept the viewer interested with the mystery of how the show will end. Current tv shows keep the viewer interested with the mystery of what the heck is going on right now. TV shows are a puzzle, not just braindead entertainment.
Speaking of puzzles, the ultimate pop culture puzzles are computer games. Johnson says that saying computer games teach good hand-eye coordination is like saying reading Charles Dickens teaches good spelling. That minor skill is so incidental to what you're actually learning that it's laughable to even count it as a benefit. Today's complex computer games, as opposed to PacMan, require a player to solve an unending series of puzzles. Far from being instant gratification, they often involve a player in frustrating problems without giving the player all the rules, and require the player to figure out the rules in order to solve the problems. That's high-level thinking.
That brings us to reality shows. Know what he says reality shows are? They're not documentaries, and they're certainly not reality. Reality TV shows based on strategy (like Survivor, not Fear Factor) are structured like computer games. There's a highly artificial environment. The players don't know all the rules at the outset but learn them as they go. Players have to make frequent decisions with both short-term and long-term goals in mind. And you can get killed (voted off) no matter how well you think you're doing.
The dating reality shows are like high school social networks. Ick. I didn't like high school, and much of the reason for that was because I couldn't read social network cues. I didn't know who liked who, or why, and what I was supposed to do about it. But thriving in a complex social network like high school is actually a real-life skill because work environments and families are also complex social networks. A person's emotional IQ is as important for success and happiness as a strictly cognitive IQ.
Johnson does briefly address several counter-arguments. The most important one is the social interaction question. It is all too easy to spend time developing cognitive skills and ignore emotional skills that are necessary when you turn the screen off. As with everything else, pop culture should be enjoyed in moderation. He also talked about why, if we are getting smarter, kids test lower in school.
But the book did give a whole new way to look at what tv and computer games are really doing to our minds. And I didn't even get to his thoughts about the Internet. It's pretty obvious the Internet demands more thinking from us, though, so that section was the least revolutionary for me.
The book is highly readable. This is the same author who wrote The Ghost Map. It was a fast and interesting read.
Johnson's argument is that it takes more brainpower to enjoy current pop culture than it did to enjoy pop culture twenty or thirty years ago. He takes on the assumption that pop culture is dumbing down, and turns it on its head.
Before he gets going, he separates out the morality of current pop culture from the complexity of pop culture. This book doesn't address the increased violence, sex and profanity in entertainment.
TV is getting smarter. Really. All you have to do is watch a show from the Golden Age of television (the 60s), or from the stupidity nadir of television (the 70s), and compare it to today's shows. Today's plots have so many interlocking relationships and plot lines that missing an episode requires a visit to one of the many fan sites to find out what happened because the producers don't design shows to fit in one episode. They design shows that take entire seasons to unravel.
While a viewer could sit down in front of Starsky and Hutch, watch just one episode, and be able to follow the plot, anyone who tries to watch just one episode of ER or Lost is going to spend the entire episode wondering what's happening. Older tv shows kept the viewer interested with the mystery of how the show will end. Current tv shows keep the viewer interested with the mystery of what the heck is going on right now. TV shows are a puzzle, not just braindead entertainment.
Speaking of puzzles, the ultimate pop culture puzzles are computer games. Johnson says that saying computer games teach good hand-eye coordination is like saying reading Charles Dickens teaches good spelling. That minor skill is so incidental to what you're actually learning that it's laughable to even count it as a benefit. Today's complex computer games, as opposed to PacMan, require a player to solve an unending series of puzzles. Far from being instant gratification, they often involve a player in frustrating problems without giving the player all the rules, and require the player to figure out the rules in order to solve the problems. That's high-level thinking.
That brings us to reality shows. Know what he says reality shows are? They're not documentaries, and they're certainly not reality. Reality TV shows based on strategy (like Survivor, not Fear Factor) are structured like computer games. There's a highly artificial environment. The players don't know all the rules at the outset but learn them as they go. Players have to make frequent decisions with both short-term and long-term goals in mind. And you can get killed (voted off) no matter how well you think you're doing.
The dating reality shows are like high school social networks. Ick. I didn't like high school, and much of the reason for that was because I couldn't read social network cues. I didn't know who liked who, or why, and what I was supposed to do about it. But thriving in a complex social network like high school is actually a real-life skill because work environments and families are also complex social networks. A person's emotional IQ is as important for success and happiness as a strictly cognitive IQ.
Johnson does briefly address several counter-arguments. The most important one is the social interaction question. It is all too easy to spend time developing cognitive skills and ignore emotional skills that are necessary when you turn the screen off. As with everything else, pop culture should be enjoyed in moderation. He also talked about why, if we are getting smarter, kids test lower in school.
But the book did give a whole new way to look at what tv and computer games are really doing to our minds. And I didn't even get to his thoughts about the Internet. It's pretty obvious the Internet demands more thinking from us, though, so that section was the least revolutionary for me.
The book is highly readable. This is the same author who wrote The Ghost Map. It was a fast and interesting read.
Wednesday, August 06, 2008
Book Review: Vaccine, The Controversial Story of Medicine’s Greatest Lifesaver, by Arthur Allen
The claim that vaccines are linked to autism has really bruised the vaccine industry. Pharmaceutical companies are quitting (more because vaccines aren’t profitable than because of fears of liability), parents are refusing to vaccinate, and vaccinologists are getting death threats. Allen wrote Vaccine: The Controversial Story of Medicine’s Greatest Lifesaver to put today’s debate into a historical context.
The historical context is that vaccines have always attracted controversy. The smallpox vaccine (which was the only vaccine from the 1700s to the 1900s), did save lives, but it also killed and maimed people. In 1901, hundreds of children were vaccinated against smallpox, and scores of them died of lockjaw because the vaccine was contaminated. Every smallpox vaccination of the early 1900s contained the threat of lockjaw, sepsis, painful swelling and fever. After all that, sometimes the vaccine didn’t “take” and the patient was not immune anyway. People literally ran and hid from the vaccination squads that roamed cities during smallpox epidemics.
Besides medical complications, vaccines were challenged on moral, religious, and health grounds. Disease is something God has decreed, and mankind has no business thwarting God’s will. It’s healthier for the immune system to suffer natural disease than to be unnaturally provoked by vaccines. It’s better to let the weaker children die of disease so the human race remains strong. Threads of the reasoning from the 1700s are still traceable in the protests against vaccines in 2008.
Like any medical procedure, vaccines do carry some risk, and always will. In 1986, the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System and the Vaccine Court were established to compensate the parents of children who have been injured by vaccines. In the war against infectious disease, the government finally formalized a process to recognize the injuries inflicted on the child soldiers. The most common compensable injuries are brain inflammation, seizures, and death. Such serious side effects are very rare. Perhaps one in every 250,000 children suffers such a terrible fate. But they do exist and it is right to formally recognize the injury.
Do vaccines cause autism? The main culprit fingered in this debate has been a mercury preservative – thimerosal. Every vaccine has to have a preservative to keep the vaccine effective and uncontaminated. Different vaccines work better with different preservatives. Thimerosal worked well in DTP, Hib, and hepatitis B vaccines.
To make a long story short, the government told the pharmaceutical companies to take thimerosal out of vaccines in 1999, even though there was no conclusive evidence that thimerosal caused autism. The appearance of possible harm was enough to undercut confidence in vaccines, and vaccines rely on confidence and trust.
Since 1999, scientific studies show that the type of thimerosal used in vaccines does not stay in the body long enough to get into the brain. Statistics also show that autism diagnoses have increased since 1999. If thimerosal was truly to blame for autism, diagnoses should have decreased after thimerosal was removed.
The debate about thimerosal continues, and some anti-vaccinationists switched their accusations to vaccines in general. Their broad and shifting claims are hard to prove or disprove. Allen ended his book by noting that the vaccine and autism debate is still an open chapter.
The discussion about the risks of vaccination tends to obscure the risks we don’t see anymore – the diseases themselves. We don’t see children with measles, mumps, polio, diphtheria or pertussis anymore. In the early 1700s, Cotton Mather, a well-known preacher, taught that, “a dead child is a sign no more surprising than a broken pitcher or a blasted flower,” though he felt that seeing his own children die was like “having a limb torn away.” Now we expect all our children to reach adulthood, and a dead child is the greatest tragedy most of us can imagine. Vaccines are “medicine’s greatest lifesaver” for children.
Vaccinology is not a flashy area of study. It attracts scientists who want to stop suffering before it starts. As one vaccinologist noted, “if a vaccine works, nothing happens.” It’s hard to measure the value of “nothing happening,” but no disease and no side effects are the goals of a vaccinologist.
Vaccinology is not without its problems. Market forces do not encourage vaccines, and so the government steps in to mandate vaccinations (by making vaccines necessary before a child can attend public school) and even prop up pharmaceutical companies that want to leave the industry because there is so little profit to be made in manufacturing vaccines. Pharmaceutical irresponsibility in the past has caused cases of disease and serious side-effects. Vaccinology should not be put on a pedestal any more than it should be painted as the villain.
Learning the historical context of vaccines is an excellent way to frame today’s debate about vaccines. This book contains enough history and information to put things in perspective. It’s 450 pages of 8-point font, though. You’ve got to be pretty motivated to plow through it, although it is written very well. Allen does a good job of making the technical details about manufacturing vaccines readable. The technical details are necessary to understand some of the risks of vaccines, and he explains the science well. Maybe you could skip the first 250 pages and just read the last 200 pages that cover the time since the 1960s.
All that, and I didn’t even get to talk about how some of the issues vaccines are solving were caused by medicine and hygiene in the first place. One quick example: polio virus used to be so common that everyone was immune to it. Once we started cleaning up our drinking water, we were no longer constantly exposed to polio and it became a serious disease. Now we need a vaccine to immunize us against a disease that everyone used to be immune to. We’re not going back to drinking dirty water, though.
If I had to sum it up in one line, I’d say that vaccines raise complex issues, and it’s impossible to answer them in one line. Keep that in mind when you hear people try to sum up vaccines in inflammatory slogans.
The historical context is that vaccines have always attracted controversy. The smallpox vaccine (which was the only vaccine from the 1700s to the 1900s), did save lives, but it also killed and maimed people. In 1901, hundreds of children were vaccinated against smallpox, and scores of them died of lockjaw because the vaccine was contaminated. Every smallpox vaccination of the early 1900s contained the threat of lockjaw, sepsis, painful swelling and fever. After all that, sometimes the vaccine didn’t “take” and the patient was not immune anyway. People literally ran and hid from the vaccination squads that roamed cities during smallpox epidemics.
Besides medical complications, vaccines were challenged on moral, religious, and health grounds. Disease is something God has decreed, and mankind has no business thwarting God’s will. It’s healthier for the immune system to suffer natural disease than to be unnaturally provoked by vaccines. It’s better to let the weaker children die of disease so the human race remains strong. Threads of the reasoning from the 1700s are still traceable in the protests against vaccines in 2008.
Like any medical procedure, vaccines do carry some risk, and always will. In 1986, the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System and the Vaccine Court were established to compensate the parents of children who have been injured by vaccines. In the war against infectious disease, the government finally formalized a process to recognize the injuries inflicted on the child soldiers. The most common compensable injuries are brain inflammation, seizures, and death. Such serious side effects are very rare. Perhaps one in every 250,000 children suffers such a terrible fate. But they do exist and it is right to formally recognize the injury.
Do vaccines cause autism? The main culprit fingered in this debate has been a mercury preservative – thimerosal. Every vaccine has to have a preservative to keep the vaccine effective and uncontaminated. Different vaccines work better with different preservatives. Thimerosal worked well in DTP, Hib, and hepatitis B vaccines.
To make a long story short, the government told the pharmaceutical companies to take thimerosal out of vaccines in 1999, even though there was no conclusive evidence that thimerosal caused autism. The appearance of possible harm was enough to undercut confidence in vaccines, and vaccines rely on confidence and trust.
Since 1999, scientific studies show that the type of thimerosal used in vaccines does not stay in the body long enough to get into the brain. Statistics also show that autism diagnoses have increased since 1999. If thimerosal was truly to blame for autism, diagnoses should have decreased after thimerosal was removed.
The debate about thimerosal continues, and some anti-vaccinationists switched their accusations to vaccines in general. Their broad and shifting claims are hard to prove or disprove. Allen ended his book by noting that the vaccine and autism debate is still an open chapter.
The discussion about the risks of vaccination tends to obscure the risks we don’t see anymore – the diseases themselves. We don’t see children with measles, mumps, polio, diphtheria or pertussis anymore. In the early 1700s, Cotton Mather, a well-known preacher, taught that, “a dead child is a sign no more surprising than a broken pitcher or a blasted flower,” though he felt that seeing his own children die was like “having a limb torn away.” Now we expect all our children to reach adulthood, and a dead child is the greatest tragedy most of us can imagine. Vaccines are “medicine’s greatest lifesaver” for children.
Vaccinology is not a flashy area of study. It attracts scientists who want to stop suffering before it starts. As one vaccinologist noted, “if a vaccine works, nothing happens.” It’s hard to measure the value of “nothing happening,” but no disease and no side effects are the goals of a vaccinologist.
Vaccinology is not without its problems. Market forces do not encourage vaccines, and so the government steps in to mandate vaccinations (by making vaccines necessary before a child can attend public school) and even prop up pharmaceutical companies that want to leave the industry because there is so little profit to be made in manufacturing vaccines. Pharmaceutical irresponsibility in the past has caused cases of disease and serious side-effects. Vaccinology should not be put on a pedestal any more than it should be painted as the villain.
Learning the historical context of vaccines is an excellent way to frame today’s debate about vaccines. This book contains enough history and information to put things in perspective. It’s 450 pages of 8-point font, though. You’ve got to be pretty motivated to plow through it, although it is written very well. Allen does a good job of making the technical details about manufacturing vaccines readable. The technical details are necessary to understand some of the risks of vaccines, and he explains the science well. Maybe you could skip the first 250 pages and just read the last 200 pages that cover the time since the 1960s.
All that, and I didn’t even get to talk about how some of the issues vaccines are solving were caused by medicine and hygiene in the first place. One quick example: polio virus used to be so common that everyone was immune to it. Once we started cleaning up our drinking water, we were no longer constantly exposed to polio and it became a serious disease. Now we need a vaccine to immunize us against a disease that everyone used to be immune to. We’re not going back to drinking dirty water, though.
If I had to sum it up in one line, I’d say that vaccines raise complex issues, and it’s impossible to answer them in one line. Keep that in mind when you hear people try to sum up vaccines in inflammatory slogans.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Book Review: The Cat in the Hat, by Dr. Seuss
When the narrator and his sister, Sally, are stuck home alone in the rain, The Cat in the Hat walks into their house and insists on showing them how to have lots of good fun that is funny even though the sun is not sunny. The fish loudly, and futilely, protests the Cat’s offer. Sally and the narrator say nothing at all, and so the Cat in the Hat commences to have fun.
The Cat in the Hat’s idea of a good time is to ignore the fish in the pot’s protestations that he should not be in the house when their mother is out, and that the fish does not like his games, not one little bit. Instead, the Cat bounces merrily up and down on a ball while balancing a cup and a cake on the top of his hat, then adding books, a toy boat, a rake and, most precariously, the fish himself. Inevitably, the Cat in the Hat comes down with a bump from up there on the ball, and Sally and the narrator see all the things fall.
Undeterred by the mishap, the Cat in the Hat continues to ignore the fish in the pot’s orders to get out of the house and fetches his friends, Thing One and Thing Two. The two Things share the Cat's ideas about fun; they ignore all warnings and proceed to make a complete mess, flying kites in the house, bumping them down the wall in the hall.
Finally, the fish in the pot sees that mother is on her way home. The wrath of mother is about to befall them all. The narrator, heretofore a silent observer of the Cat’s depredations, springs into action, trapping Thing One and Thing Two in a net, and throwing the Cat in the Hat and his Things out of the house.
In The Cat in the Hat, Dr. Seuss illustrates archetypal attitudes about fun. The Cat in the Hat believes fun is dangerous, destructive conduct carried out in spite of the warnings of a stick in the mud or, in this case, a fish in the pot. The Cat personifies those people who believe fun is possible only if one risks life and limb, and makes a huge mess. The Cat is insensitive to the idea that perhaps not everyone finds such activities enjoyable.
The fish in the pot can’t understand why the Cat finds enjoyment in irresponsible behavior that will undoubtedly require someone else to step in to either heal an injury or clean up a mess. Surely it is more enjoyable to have fun in a way that does not risk health, and that does not involve equating the amount of fun experienced to the size of the mess produced. Sadly for the fish, he does not have hands, or any other way to enforce his standards. Without any authority in the household, the fish in the pot is reduced to simply shouting at the Cat to get out of this house, an order the Cat ignores.
The narrator and Sally do not appear to be having fun at any point in the book. If the Cat wished to entertain them, he fails miserable. But neither child protests the Cat’s activities until the narrator’s burst of responsibility towards the end of the book. Unable to join in the Cat’s games, they are also unable to articulate their discomfort with the Cat.
The Cat, surprised that no one but himself and his cronies like his games, leaves with a sad kind of look. The fish in the pot, the narrator and Sally gaze at the mess that is so big and so deep and so tall that they cannot clean it up, there is no way at all.
At this point, the author resolves the problem of the mess by having the Cat in the Hat break character and return to clean up his mess. While the Cat's return certainly solved the problem of the big mess, the reader is left wondering if someone as devoted to irresponsible fun as the Cat would really come back just to pick up all the things that were down. While this action may hint at an unexplored complexity in the Cat’s character, it may also be nothing more than the author finding an easy way out of a tricky situation.
The book certainly buys into the popular notion that irresponsible conduct is fun. In the end, no permanent damage is done, and the narrator and Sally do not even get in trouble. The fish in the pot is returned to his bowl. The Cat in the Hat picks up his mess, but no mention is made of him straightening out the rake he bent, or repairing the cake that has had a toy boat sunk into it. Thing One and Thing Two simply disappear back into a box, ready for their next foray into fun at someone else’s expense. No one suffers any long-term consequences from the Cat’s depredations in the name of fun.
In his book, Dr. Seuss creates four categories of attitudes about fun: (1) The Cat in the Hat’s thrill-seeking drive to have a good time; (2) Thing One and Thing Two’s participation that enables the Cat’s bad behavior; (3) the fish in the pot’s nervous, yet powerless, protests against irresponsible fun; and (4) the narrator and Sally’s unwilling participation as a silent, yet still disapproving, audience.
The character I identify with the most in The Cat in the Hat is the fish in the pot. This may simply be a reflection of my current occupation, because moms are typically expected to clean up the mess and take care of the injured. The Cat in the Hat, on the other hand, exemplifies the childish tendency to go hog-wild and think about the consequences later.
In the end, only half the characters in the book have fun. The reader is left wondering if there is a way to have fun that involves all four categories of characters. Perhaps the Cat’s willingness to pick up his mess signals some remorse on the Cat’s part, and a possibility that he may be willing to have fun in a way that encourages the more cautious characters to join him in his games, rather than alienating them.
Which character best personifies your idea of fun?
The Cat in the Hat’s idea of a good time is to ignore the fish in the pot’s protestations that he should not be in the house when their mother is out, and that the fish does not like his games, not one little bit. Instead, the Cat bounces merrily up and down on a ball while balancing a cup and a cake on the top of his hat, then adding books, a toy boat, a rake and, most precariously, the fish himself. Inevitably, the Cat in the Hat comes down with a bump from up there on the ball, and Sally and the narrator see all the things fall.
Undeterred by the mishap, the Cat in the Hat continues to ignore the fish in the pot’s orders to get out of the house and fetches his friends, Thing One and Thing Two. The two Things share the Cat's ideas about fun; they ignore all warnings and proceed to make a complete mess, flying kites in the house, bumping them down the wall in the hall.
Finally, the fish in the pot sees that mother is on her way home. The wrath of mother is about to befall them all. The narrator, heretofore a silent observer of the Cat’s depredations, springs into action, trapping Thing One and Thing Two in a net, and throwing the Cat in the Hat and his Things out of the house.
In The Cat in the Hat, Dr. Seuss illustrates archetypal attitudes about fun. The Cat in the Hat believes fun is dangerous, destructive conduct carried out in spite of the warnings of a stick in the mud or, in this case, a fish in the pot. The Cat personifies those people who believe fun is possible only if one risks life and limb, and makes a huge mess. The Cat is insensitive to the idea that perhaps not everyone finds such activities enjoyable.
The fish in the pot can’t understand why the Cat finds enjoyment in irresponsible behavior that will undoubtedly require someone else to step in to either heal an injury or clean up a mess. Surely it is more enjoyable to have fun in a way that does not risk health, and that does not involve equating the amount of fun experienced to the size of the mess produced. Sadly for the fish, he does not have hands, or any other way to enforce his standards. Without any authority in the household, the fish in the pot is reduced to simply shouting at the Cat to get out of this house, an order the Cat ignores.
The narrator and Sally do not appear to be having fun at any point in the book. If the Cat wished to entertain them, he fails miserable. But neither child protests the Cat’s activities until the narrator’s burst of responsibility towards the end of the book. Unable to join in the Cat’s games, they are also unable to articulate their discomfort with the Cat.
The Cat, surprised that no one but himself and his cronies like his games, leaves with a sad kind of look. The fish in the pot, the narrator and Sally gaze at the mess that is so big and so deep and so tall that they cannot clean it up, there is no way at all.
At this point, the author resolves the problem of the mess by having the Cat in the Hat break character and return to clean up his mess. While the Cat's return certainly solved the problem of the big mess, the reader is left wondering if someone as devoted to irresponsible fun as the Cat would really come back just to pick up all the things that were down. While this action may hint at an unexplored complexity in the Cat’s character, it may also be nothing more than the author finding an easy way out of a tricky situation.
The book certainly buys into the popular notion that irresponsible conduct is fun. In the end, no permanent damage is done, and the narrator and Sally do not even get in trouble. The fish in the pot is returned to his bowl. The Cat in the Hat picks up his mess, but no mention is made of him straightening out the rake he bent, or repairing the cake that has had a toy boat sunk into it. Thing One and Thing Two simply disappear back into a box, ready for their next foray into fun at someone else’s expense. No one suffers any long-term consequences from the Cat’s depredations in the name of fun.
In his book, Dr. Seuss creates four categories of attitudes about fun: (1) The Cat in the Hat’s thrill-seeking drive to have a good time; (2) Thing One and Thing Two’s participation that enables the Cat’s bad behavior; (3) the fish in the pot’s nervous, yet powerless, protests against irresponsible fun; and (4) the narrator and Sally’s unwilling participation as a silent, yet still disapproving, audience.
The character I identify with the most in The Cat in the Hat is the fish in the pot. This may simply be a reflection of my current occupation, because moms are typically expected to clean up the mess and take care of the injured. The Cat in the Hat, on the other hand, exemplifies the childish tendency to go hog-wild and think about the consequences later.
In the end, only half the characters in the book have fun. The reader is left wondering if there is a way to have fun that involves all four categories of characters. Perhaps the Cat’s willingness to pick up his mess signals some remorse on the Cat’s part, and a possibility that he may be willing to have fun in a way that encourages the more cautious characters to join him in his games, rather than alienating them.
Which character best personifies your idea of fun?
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Book Review: Watership Down by Richard Adams
Yes, I know it’s talking bunnies. But that’s what makes Watership Down so amazing. With characters whose line of sight is about 8 inches off the ground, and who can’t hold a sword or do magic, Adams wrote one of the best fantasies in print.
Hazel’s brother, Fiver, has a vision foretelling the destruction of Sandleford Warren. When Hazel brings the danger to the attention of the Threarah, the Threarah shrugs off the warning. Frustrated, Hazel leaves the warren with a group of rabbits in search of safety. They briefly find a haven in Strawberry’s warren, which turns out to be a horrifying counterfeit of safety. After a narrow escape, they settle on Watership Down, and prepare to live the good life. Unfortunately, they forgot to bring any female rabbits with them. Off they go again in search of doe rabbits. They find does, but they have to fight the dictatorial General Woundwort to get them.
Because you can’t talk about fantasy without talking about Tolkien, I’ll talk about Tolkien. Lord of the Rings is the best fantasy series every written. It was so good that floods of authors who want to write fantasy found a formula in LOTR, and essentially create Tolkienesque derivative fantasies. Some of them are fantastic stories. It’s a testament to Tolkien’s accomplishment that even second and third generations copies of his work are so much fun to read.
Watership Down is not a Tolkien fantasy derivative. Unlike LOTR-based works, Adams does not create several different races and then draw one representative in each race to join an uncertain and angst-ridden leader on a quest to destroy the enemy. There is only one society in Watership Down. And while the rabbits are affected by humans, birds and mice, their story isn’t about learning to work with different races. Their struggles are in learning to work with the familiar faces they’ve always known. Working with familiar people can be just as challenging as working with people who are obviously different.
Hazel is not a heroic leader because that is his destiny. He is a leader because someone has to do the job, and if the stronger rabbits take over, they might not treat his brother very well. Unlike the leaders in Tolkienesque fantasy, Hazel has no angst. Occasionally he is uncertain, but he is too practical to procrastinate a decision in order to agonize about whether or not he ought to be the one making the decision.
We know leaders like Hazel. He isn’t out to prove his worthiness to rule the world. He’s just trying to get the job done. And he’s got to do the job with the people at hand. He doesn’t get a sidekick with magical powers or otherworldly wisdom. You can see leaders like Hazel in the ward leadership, or on the local community council. They are average guys working with average people who somehow keep things moving forward by day-to-day decisions instead of by vanquishing all their foes in one cataclysmic confrontation. Hazel is a leader you know face to face, not one you read about in the newspaper.
Another difference between LOTR-based fantasy and Watership Down is the complexity and familiarity of the evil. LOTR-based evil is very one-dimensional. Sauron is unredeemably evil, and never had the capacity to be any different. His followers share his flat evil, and have no purpose but to be sword-fodder for the good guys.
The rabbits in Watership Down never meet one-dimensional evil. They deal with the careless evil of man, who shrugs at the rabbits’ existence and destroys them. They deal with the complacent evil of the Threarah, who will not listen to counsel because it will discomfit him. The evil at Strawberry’s burrow is a different kind of complacency, one even the Threarah would never countenance.
Then there is General Woundwort, the one actively evil villain of the book. But even General Woundwort wasn’t always evil. Fear turned him into a dictator. Even now, he sees himself as a benefactor and protector of his warren. When Hazel confronts Woundwort with a choice, there is enough depth in him that the outcome is not a foregone conclusion. Woundwort could choose either way, and either way would be believable for his character.
Total Sauron-level evil exists in our world, but it isn’t anything I’m likely to encounter. I live in a happy little bubble. I’m more likely to run into Threarah-level evil: “I’m too comfortable to really think anything bad will happen.” Or Strawberry’s warren-level evil: “As long as the bad things don’t happen to me, it doesn’t matter if other people suffer.” Or General Woundwort-level evil: “I’m afraid and I’ll turn into a control freak just to eliminate my fear.”
Watership Down is a prosaic fantasy. Evil is not going to end the world in one blaze of hatred. The humans who destroy Sandleford Warren aren’t doing it to be evil. The rabbits, poignantly, realize their own unimportance. “It was just because we were in their way,” says Captain Holly, one of the only survivors of the destruction of Sandleford Warren. You can’t force a dramatic showdown with your own insignificance.
Adams’ book is a fantasy about living in the world, not about saving the world. It’s a fantasy that is surprisingly close to the life we actually live, even if it is about rabbits.
Hazel’s brother, Fiver, has a vision foretelling the destruction of Sandleford Warren. When Hazel brings the danger to the attention of the Threarah, the Threarah shrugs off the warning. Frustrated, Hazel leaves the warren with a group of rabbits in search of safety. They briefly find a haven in Strawberry’s warren, which turns out to be a horrifying counterfeit of safety. After a narrow escape, they settle on Watership Down, and prepare to live the good life. Unfortunately, they forgot to bring any female rabbits with them. Off they go again in search of doe rabbits. They find does, but they have to fight the dictatorial General Woundwort to get them.
Because you can’t talk about fantasy without talking about Tolkien, I’ll talk about Tolkien. Lord of the Rings is the best fantasy series every written. It was so good that floods of authors who want to write fantasy found a formula in LOTR, and essentially create Tolkienesque derivative fantasies. Some of them are fantastic stories. It’s a testament to Tolkien’s accomplishment that even second and third generations copies of his work are so much fun to read.
Watership Down is not a Tolkien fantasy derivative. Unlike LOTR-based works, Adams does not create several different races and then draw one representative in each race to join an uncertain and angst-ridden leader on a quest to destroy the enemy. There is only one society in Watership Down. And while the rabbits are affected by humans, birds and mice, their story isn’t about learning to work with different races. Their struggles are in learning to work with the familiar faces they’ve always known. Working with familiar people can be just as challenging as working with people who are obviously different.
Hazel is not a heroic leader because that is his destiny. He is a leader because someone has to do the job, and if the stronger rabbits take over, they might not treat his brother very well. Unlike the leaders in Tolkienesque fantasy, Hazel has no angst. Occasionally he is uncertain, but he is too practical to procrastinate a decision in order to agonize about whether or not he ought to be the one making the decision.
We know leaders like Hazel. He isn’t out to prove his worthiness to rule the world. He’s just trying to get the job done. And he’s got to do the job with the people at hand. He doesn’t get a sidekick with magical powers or otherworldly wisdom. You can see leaders like Hazel in the ward leadership, or on the local community council. They are average guys working with average people who somehow keep things moving forward by day-to-day decisions instead of by vanquishing all their foes in one cataclysmic confrontation. Hazel is a leader you know face to face, not one you read about in the newspaper.
Another difference between LOTR-based fantasy and Watership Down is the complexity and familiarity of the evil. LOTR-based evil is very one-dimensional. Sauron is unredeemably evil, and never had the capacity to be any different. His followers share his flat evil, and have no purpose but to be sword-fodder for the good guys.
The rabbits in Watership Down never meet one-dimensional evil. They deal with the careless evil of man, who shrugs at the rabbits’ existence and destroys them. They deal with the complacent evil of the Threarah, who will not listen to counsel because it will discomfit him. The evil at Strawberry’s burrow is a different kind of complacency, one even the Threarah would never countenance.
Then there is General Woundwort, the one actively evil villain of the book. But even General Woundwort wasn’t always evil. Fear turned him into a dictator. Even now, he sees himself as a benefactor and protector of his warren. When Hazel confronts Woundwort with a choice, there is enough depth in him that the outcome is not a foregone conclusion. Woundwort could choose either way, and either way would be believable for his character.
Total Sauron-level evil exists in our world, but it isn’t anything I’m likely to encounter. I live in a happy little bubble. I’m more likely to run into Threarah-level evil: “I’m too comfortable to really think anything bad will happen.” Or Strawberry’s warren-level evil: “As long as the bad things don’t happen to me, it doesn’t matter if other people suffer.” Or General Woundwort-level evil: “I’m afraid and I’ll turn into a control freak just to eliminate my fear.”
Watership Down is a prosaic fantasy. Evil is not going to end the world in one blaze of hatred. The humans who destroy Sandleford Warren aren’t doing it to be evil. The rabbits, poignantly, realize their own unimportance. “It was just because we were in their way,” says Captain Holly, one of the only survivors of the destruction of Sandleford Warren. You can’t force a dramatic showdown with your own insignificance.
Adams’ book is a fantasy about living in the world, not about saving the world. It’s a fantasy that is surprisingly close to the life we actually live, even if it is about rabbits.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Book Review: Reading Reflex by Carmen and Geoffrey McGuinness
The only frustration I had with books like Overcoming Dyslexia (reviewed last week) was the recommendation to take your child to a specialized reading center, or to persuade your school to adopt a new reading curriculum. Those are nice ideal solutions, but they aren’t very realistic for someone with a limited budget and a minor reading problem.
I was relieved to find Reading Reflex by Carmen McGuinness. McGuinness gives you a way to teach your child to read, and it only costs you $16 for the book, and several hours of your time.
Reading Reflex explains the Phono-Graphix method, which is an Orton-Gillingham based reading technique. Orton-Gillingham multi-sensory teaching techniques are the best way to teach a child with a reading disability.
Multi-sensory teaching techniques also work for children who have not yet learned to read, such as kindergarteners. McGuinness explained where you would change the lesson based on whether you’re working with a beginning reader or a struggling older reader, but most of the lessons don’t change.
Phono-Graphix strips out the rules and mnemonic devices of traditional phonics. I’ll give you a specific example instead of trying to summarize the whole thing.
A phonics rule commonly taught is, “when two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking.” This means that “ai” is pronounced like in “rain.” This rule is an if-then statement. If you see two vowels together, then the sound they make is the name of the first vowel. If-then statements are a type of propositional logic, and children struggle with propositional logic until they are at least 8 or 9 years old. In addition to learning to read, this phonics rule also requires you to teach the child a type of logic that is still beyond the grasp of most kindergarten-age children. It’s a developmental thing. Logical rules that make sense to adults don’t make sense to kids. (You’ve probably noticed that.)
Besides which, the rule is wrong more than half the time. “Ai” isn’t always the “a-e” sound. It’s also the “e” sound, like in “said.” If a rule only works half the time, it isn’t really a rule, it’s a possibility.
Phono-Graphix dumps the rule. Instead, you teach your child that “ai” is either “ay” like in “rain” or “e” like in “said.” Then you have them sort a word list, and separate out the words based on their sounds. So you give the child a list: rain, said, bait, sail, again, mountain. The child sorts the “ay” sounds: rain, bait and sail. Then she makes a separate list of “e” sounds: said, again and mountain.
Instead of learning a rule and all the exceptions for “ai”, the child learns that there are two possible sounds for “ai.” The word “said” is no longer an exception to a rule, and does not have to be memorized as a sight word. It’s predictable now.
That rule “when two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking” doesn’t work for other vowel combinations either. Look at these: Seat-steak-bread. Toe-shoe. Cried-chief-friend.
There are several other ways this book strips out the extra baggage that surrounds reading. Phonics was a good idea that got bogged down with too many rules. Whole language and sight words increase reading difficulties for everyone except children who already read easily. Phono-Graphix reduces reading back to the sounds.
The only thing I found silly in Phono-Graphix was the suggestion to not call letters “letters” but to call them “sound pictures” instead. Saying “sound pictures” is consistent with their theory, but kids know what letters are, so you may as well use the word.
If you go with this method, be sure to read the introductory chapters that explain the theory behind what you’re teaching. Do not start the lessons unless you know the theory.
There is also a chapter on how to help a child read multi-syllable words. About fourth grade, the amount of long words a child is expected to read increases dramatically. It’s common to detect a reading problem during the “fourth grade slump.” Phono-Graphix targets that problem too.
McGuinness maps out the order of the lessons and how to explain the concepts. I supplemented the lessons with some games to work on skills such as looking at the word before trying to read the word (a problem my student had from sight word techniques).
I was relieved to find Reading Reflex by Carmen McGuinness. McGuinness gives you a way to teach your child to read, and it only costs you $16 for the book, and several hours of your time.
Reading Reflex explains the Phono-Graphix method, which is an Orton-Gillingham based reading technique. Orton-Gillingham multi-sensory teaching techniques are the best way to teach a child with a reading disability.
Multi-sensory teaching techniques also work for children who have not yet learned to read, such as kindergarteners. McGuinness explained where you would change the lesson based on whether you’re working with a beginning reader or a struggling older reader, but most of the lessons don’t change.
Phono-Graphix strips out the rules and mnemonic devices of traditional phonics. I’ll give you a specific example instead of trying to summarize the whole thing.
A phonics rule commonly taught is, “when two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking.” This means that “ai” is pronounced like in “rain.” This rule is an if-then statement. If you see two vowels together, then the sound they make is the name of the first vowel. If-then statements are a type of propositional logic, and children struggle with propositional logic until they are at least 8 or 9 years old. In addition to learning to read, this phonics rule also requires you to teach the child a type of logic that is still beyond the grasp of most kindergarten-age children. It’s a developmental thing. Logical rules that make sense to adults don’t make sense to kids. (You’ve probably noticed that.)
Besides which, the rule is wrong more than half the time. “Ai” isn’t always the “a-e” sound. It’s also the “e” sound, like in “said.” If a rule only works half the time, it isn’t really a rule, it’s a possibility.
Phono-Graphix dumps the rule. Instead, you teach your child that “ai” is either “ay” like in “rain” or “e” like in “said.” Then you have them sort a word list, and separate out the words based on their sounds. So you give the child a list: rain, said, bait, sail, again, mountain. The child sorts the “ay” sounds: rain, bait and sail. Then she makes a separate list of “e” sounds: said, again and mountain.
Instead of learning a rule and all the exceptions for “ai”, the child learns that there are two possible sounds for “ai.” The word “said” is no longer an exception to a rule, and does not have to be memorized as a sight word. It’s predictable now.
That rule “when two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking” doesn’t work for other vowel combinations either. Look at these: Seat-steak-bread. Toe-shoe. Cried-chief-friend.
There are several other ways this book strips out the extra baggage that surrounds reading. Phonics was a good idea that got bogged down with too many rules. Whole language and sight words increase reading difficulties for everyone except children who already read easily. Phono-Graphix reduces reading back to the sounds.
The only thing I found silly in Phono-Graphix was the suggestion to not call letters “letters” but to call them “sound pictures” instead. Saying “sound pictures” is consistent with their theory, but kids know what letters are, so you may as well use the word.
If you go with this method, be sure to read the introductory chapters that explain the theory behind what you’re teaching. Do not start the lessons unless you know the theory.
There is also a chapter on how to help a child read multi-syllable words. About fourth grade, the amount of long words a child is expected to read increases dramatically. It’s common to detect a reading problem during the “fourth grade slump.” Phono-Graphix targets that problem too.
McGuinness maps out the order of the lessons and how to explain the concepts. I supplemented the lessons with some games to work on skills such as looking at the word before trying to read the word (a problem my student had from sight word techniques).
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
Book Review: Overcoming Dyslexia by Sally Shaywitz, M.D.
Nursery rhymes are the best indicator of a preschooler’s future ability to read. Children who love nursery rhymes learn to read easily. Children who don’t like nursery rhymes or other rhyming games will struggle to learn to read. Struggling children can be taught to read, but it does take more effort from both child and teacher.
Dr. Shaywitz’s book, Overcoming Dyslexia, is so packed with information that I will touch on only the most general ideas of dyslexia in this post, including a few ways to spot a reading problem. Next week, I’ll be reviewing a book with lesson plans for a struggling reader.
The ideas in this book will help any child who is struggling to read, whether or not he has dyslexia. (There is not a lot of agreement on how to diagnose dyslexia.) Read this book while the school argues about whether or not your child is entitled to extra help.
Dyslexia is a problem at the level of sounds. It has nothing to do with a person’s ability to think, reason or understand. A dyslexic students can get A’s as long as someone reads the textbook to them. Dyslexia affects only the person’s ability to translate spoken language into separate sounds and attach letters to those individual sounds.
Learning to read requires a child to pull a word apart into sounds. Weakness in the ability to pull a word apart leads to weak reading skills. That’s why rhyme is such a good indicator of how fast a child will learn to read. Being able to rhyme means being able to pull the word apart. To identify that cat, hat and mat rhyme, the listener has to be able to take off the first sound, and realize that the last two sounds are the same.
Imagine a nearsighted child getting her first pair of glasses and saying, “I never knew that building was made of red bricks. I thought the wall was just one big smear of red paint.” Dyslexics hear words as one big smear, rather than as separate bricks. Fortunately, the ability to hear sounds as separate bricks can be taught and learned. It takes more effort for both the teacher and the student, but a dyslexic student can learn to read.
The best way to spot a reading problem is to have your child read aloud to you. Pay attention to the types of mistakes your child makes. Does she skip all the function words (an, the, on)? Does she guess? Do all words that start with the same letter get the same guess (like reading “those” for though, then, they, their)? Does she skip the middle of big words (automobile becomes autobile)? Does she read fast and ignore her own mistakes even when the mistake reduces the sentence to nonsense? Does she figure out the word from context and substitute a simpler word (like saying ‘mom’ when the text says ‘mother’)?
Ask your child to verbally pull a word apart. Say “stale.” Now say it without the “t” (sale). Now replace the “s” with an “m” (male).
Ask your child to identify the number of sounds in a word:
How many sounds are in “go?” Two sounds.
How many sounds are in “though?” Two sounds.
How many sounds are in “cheese?” Three sounds.
Please note that while some dyslexic children transpose letters, most do not. A child who does not transpose letters may still have dyslexic tendencies and need help.
If your child is having difficulty reading, do not delay. Dyslexia does not improve over time if ignored. Struggling readers do not catch up. Most will eventually learn to read, but they will not catch up to their peers, and their fluency will remain poor. No one ever regrets starting too early to resolve a reading problem.
Extra one-on-one teaching is vital. The tutor should use a method that specifically addresses reading difficulties, not just more of the same classroom techniques that work fine for most children, but leave behind children with a reading problem. (Whole-word and sight-word reading techniques should be dropped immediately. They exacerbate a reading disability.)
Part I of Overcoming Dyslexia explains the nature of dyslexia, and how reading looks in the brain. Dyslexics have normal brains. MRI scans show that all the regions of the brain are present and work fine. However, dyslexics use a different area of their brain to read than fluent readers do. When taught properly, a dyslexic child shifts his reading from the “slow reading” part of the brain to the “fast reading” part of their brain. MRI scans taken before and after tutoring showed the shift in reading location.
Part II explains how to diagnose dyslexia. This section contains lists of milestones for reading, broken down by age. These chapters help you identify whether your child is normal, or is behind the curve.
Part III explains how to teach a dyslexic child to read. While there are very good concrete suggestions, most of this section is still general. It doesn’t contain lesson plans. It does review several of the reading programs available to schools. This section assumes that the school will be happy to step up and give your child individual attention, even if that requires spending thousands of dollars on new curriculum.
Part IV explains how to take a dyslexic child from being able to read slowly to being able to read fluently. Do not stop once the child can laboriously read accurately. Bringing the child all the way to fluency is possible. Fluency is necessary, given the amount of information adults are expected to read.
As I mentioned, this book is so full of useful information that it’s impossible to do more than hint at it in a book review. If your child has trouble reading, this is the book you want to read to understand your child’s problem. Next week, I’ll review a book with specific lesson plans for teaching a child with a reading problem.
Dr. Shaywitz’s book, Overcoming Dyslexia, is so packed with information that I will touch on only the most general ideas of dyslexia in this post, including a few ways to spot a reading problem. Next week, I’ll be reviewing a book with lesson plans for a struggling reader.
The ideas in this book will help any child who is struggling to read, whether or not he has dyslexia. (There is not a lot of agreement on how to diagnose dyslexia.) Read this book while the school argues about whether or not your child is entitled to extra help.
Dyslexia is a problem at the level of sounds. It has nothing to do with a person’s ability to think, reason or understand. A dyslexic students can get A’s as long as someone reads the textbook to them. Dyslexia affects only the person’s ability to translate spoken language into separate sounds and attach letters to those individual sounds.
Learning to read requires a child to pull a word apart into sounds. Weakness in the ability to pull a word apart leads to weak reading skills. That’s why rhyme is such a good indicator of how fast a child will learn to read. Being able to rhyme means being able to pull the word apart. To identify that cat, hat and mat rhyme, the listener has to be able to take off the first sound, and realize that the last two sounds are the same.
Imagine a nearsighted child getting her first pair of glasses and saying, “I never knew that building was made of red bricks. I thought the wall was just one big smear of red paint.” Dyslexics hear words as one big smear, rather than as separate bricks. Fortunately, the ability to hear sounds as separate bricks can be taught and learned. It takes more effort for both the teacher and the student, but a dyslexic student can learn to read.
The best way to spot a reading problem is to have your child read aloud to you. Pay attention to the types of mistakes your child makes. Does she skip all the function words (an, the, on)? Does she guess? Do all words that start with the same letter get the same guess (like reading “those” for though, then, they, their)? Does she skip the middle of big words (automobile becomes autobile)? Does she read fast and ignore her own mistakes even when the mistake reduces the sentence to nonsense? Does she figure out the word from context and substitute a simpler word (like saying ‘mom’ when the text says ‘mother’)?
Ask your child to verbally pull a word apart. Say “stale.” Now say it without the “t” (sale). Now replace the “s” with an “m” (male).
Ask your child to identify the number of sounds in a word:
How many sounds are in “go?” Two sounds.
How many sounds are in “though?” Two sounds.
How many sounds are in “cheese?” Three sounds.
Please note that while some dyslexic children transpose letters, most do not. A child who does not transpose letters may still have dyslexic tendencies and need help.
If your child is having difficulty reading, do not delay. Dyslexia does not improve over time if ignored. Struggling readers do not catch up. Most will eventually learn to read, but they will not catch up to their peers, and their fluency will remain poor. No one ever regrets starting too early to resolve a reading problem.
Extra one-on-one teaching is vital. The tutor should use a method that specifically addresses reading difficulties, not just more of the same classroom techniques that work fine for most children, but leave behind children with a reading problem. (Whole-word and sight-word reading techniques should be dropped immediately. They exacerbate a reading disability.)
Part I of Overcoming Dyslexia explains the nature of dyslexia, and how reading looks in the brain. Dyslexics have normal brains. MRI scans show that all the regions of the brain are present and work fine. However, dyslexics use a different area of their brain to read than fluent readers do. When taught properly, a dyslexic child shifts his reading from the “slow reading” part of the brain to the “fast reading” part of their brain. MRI scans taken before and after tutoring showed the shift in reading location.
Part II explains how to diagnose dyslexia. This section contains lists of milestones for reading, broken down by age. These chapters help you identify whether your child is normal, or is behind the curve.
Part III explains how to teach a dyslexic child to read. While there are very good concrete suggestions, most of this section is still general. It doesn’t contain lesson plans. It does review several of the reading programs available to schools. This section assumes that the school will be happy to step up and give your child individual attention, even if that requires spending thousands of dollars on new curriculum.
Part IV explains how to take a dyslexic child from being able to read slowly to being able to read fluently. Do not stop once the child can laboriously read accurately. Bringing the child all the way to fluency is possible. Fluency is necessary, given the amount of information adults are expected to read.
As I mentioned, this book is so full of useful information that it’s impossible to do more than hint at it in a book review. If your child has trouble reading, this is the book you want to read to understand your child’s problem. Next week, I’ll review a book with specific lesson plans for teaching a child with a reading problem.
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
Book Review: The Colony: The Harrowing True Story of the Exiles of Molokai
This is another one of those books that makes me glad I live nowadays, and not in the good old days.
In 1866, Hawaii criminalized leprosy. Officials arrested lepers and shipped them into exile at Molokai, without even a way to protest a misdiagnosis. Exiles were treated as dead - their spouses were considered widowed, their wills were executed and their property distributed. John Tayman tells their story in "The Colony: The Harrowing True Story of the Exiles of Molokai."
The law of exile was based on the fear that leprosy was highly contagious, and there was nothing that could be done for infected people. Neither fear was true. There are two forms of leprosy - a form that settles in the nerves and is not contagious at all; and a form that manifests on the skin as lesions and tumors and is contagious only when in its active state.
The disease is passed by airborne particles, very similar to how tuberculosis is passed - the contagious person has to cough on you an awful lot. Even if exposed, 95% of people will never develop leprosy because their immune system destroys it. There is a genetic tweak that makes about 5% of the population vulnerable to leprosy. The tweak shows up in most races, but is more common in native Hawaiians than in, say, Asians or Caucasians. So Hawaii was particularly hard hit by leprosy. Hence the fear that led to the law of exile.
The original settlement was a travesty. Hawaii was sending sick people off to die in an inaccessible village that the government purchased. The health officials tricked the first exiles - they lured them in with promises of treatment, then stuck them on a boat and shipped 12 of them away in the first load. By the time they reached Molokai, the crops had rotted in the ground and the houses had suffered from disrepair.
Hawaii did not have the money to take care of the leper colony. They planned on the colony being self-sufficient, raising all their own food. Subsistence farming is difficult for the dying, and malnutrition and starvation hastened the process. Hawaii sent the sickest people away first. Not surprisingly, many of them died of starvation and exposure, not leprosy. There was no doctor at Molokai because the health officials believed treatment was useless.
Over the decades (not months, not years, but decades), public pressure slowly improved conditions at Molokai. Building materials were shipped in to build houses so sick people did not have to live in the fissures of the lava rocks. A doctor visited by boat or plane once in a while. An orphanage was built for children sent into exile. The exiles received an allowance to buy clothing and a general store opened.
The Catholics sent a priest who spent the rest of his life at Molokai, eventually dying of leprosy himself. He is in the process of being canonized. A group of eight nuns also spent their lives on Molokai.
Hawaii had unending problems with finding a reliable superintendent for the colony. Lawlessness reigned more often than not, with all the crimes you'd expect in a place where food, shelter, clothing and women were in short supply.
Those first 40 years, Molokai was so awful that lepers were known to murder the doctor who diagnosed them, and the bounty hunters who came to drag them away.
In the early 1900s, the leprosy bacillus was identified, which made diagnosis more accurate. Dozens of exiles who had spent decades in Molokai appealed their diagnoses and were freed. They had lost most of their lives in exile due to skin conditions like eczema. In the late 1940s, an effective treatment for leprosy was finally found. The treatment cured the disease, but could not repair the damage already done.
In 1969, Hawaii repealed the law of exile. Having leprosy was no longer a crime. The exiles were allowed to leave the island. Some did, but the social stigma and terrible deformity caused by leprosy kept many at Molokai, which by now had a decent little village.
In 1980, Molokai was designated as a historic preserve to keep it safe from developers who wanted to turn it into a resort. As of 2004, the average age of the residents of Molokai was 76. It is peopled solely with lepers who lived their whole lives at Molokai, and the people who work in the hospital.
The first half of the book was a history of leprosy and Molokai. In the second half, Tayman followed the personal stories of four lepers from their diagnosis to the time of the book’s publication. The book is very long, but well-written.
In 1866, Hawaii criminalized leprosy. Officials arrested lepers and shipped them into exile at Molokai, without even a way to protest a misdiagnosis. Exiles were treated as dead - their spouses were considered widowed, their wills were executed and their property distributed. John Tayman tells their story in "The Colony: The Harrowing True Story of the Exiles of Molokai."
The law of exile was based on the fear that leprosy was highly contagious, and there was nothing that could be done for infected people. Neither fear was true. There are two forms of leprosy - a form that settles in the nerves and is not contagious at all; and a form that manifests on the skin as lesions and tumors and is contagious only when in its active state.
The disease is passed by airborne particles, very similar to how tuberculosis is passed - the contagious person has to cough on you an awful lot. Even if exposed, 95% of people will never develop leprosy because their immune system destroys it. There is a genetic tweak that makes about 5% of the population vulnerable to leprosy. The tweak shows up in most races, but is more common in native Hawaiians than in, say, Asians or Caucasians. So Hawaii was particularly hard hit by leprosy. Hence the fear that led to the law of exile.
The original settlement was a travesty. Hawaii was sending sick people off to die in an inaccessible village that the government purchased. The health officials tricked the first exiles - they lured them in with promises of treatment, then stuck them on a boat and shipped 12 of them away in the first load. By the time they reached Molokai, the crops had rotted in the ground and the houses had suffered from disrepair.
Hawaii did not have the money to take care of the leper colony. They planned on the colony being self-sufficient, raising all their own food. Subsistence farming is difficult for the dying, and malnutrition and starvation hastened the process. Hawaii sent the sickest people away first. Not surprisingly, many of them died of starvation and exposure, not leprosy. There was no doctor at Molokai because the health officials believed treatment was useless.
Over the decades (not months, not years, but decades), public pressure slowly improved conditions at Molokai. Building materials were shipped in to build houses so sick people did not have to live in the fissures of the lava rocks. A doctor visited by boat or plane once in a while. An orphanage was built for children sent into exile. The exiles received an allowance to buy clothing and a general store opened.
The Catholics sent a priest who spent the rest of his life at Molokai, eventually dying of leprosy himself. He is in the process of being canonized. A group of eight nuns also spent their lives on Molokai.
Hawaii had unending problems with finding a reliable superintendent for the colony. Lawlessness reigned more often than not, with all the crimes you'd expect in a place where food, shelter, clothing and women were in short supply.
Those first 40 years, Molokai was so awful that lepers were known to murder the doctor who diagnosed them, and the bounty hunters who came to drag them away.
In the early 1900s, the leprosy bacillus was identified, which made diagnosis more accurate. Dozens of exiles who had spent decades in Molokai appealed their diagnoses and were freed. They had lost most of their lives in exile due to skin conditions like eczema. In the late 1940s, an effective treatment for leprosy was finally found. The treatment cured the disease, but could not repair the damage already done.
In 1969, Hawaii repealed the law of exile. Having leprosy was no longer a crime. The exiles were allowed to leave the island. Some did, but the social stigma and terrible deformity caused by leprosy kept many at Molokai, which by now had a decent little village.
In 1980, Molokai was designated as a historic preserve to keep it safe from developers who wanted to turn it into a resort. As of 2004, the average age of the residents of Molokai was 76. It is peopled solely with lepers who lived their whole lives at Molokai, and the people who work in the hospital.
The first half of the book was a history of leprosy and Molokai. In the second half, Tayman followed the personal stories of four lepers from their diagnosis to the time of the book’s publication. The book is very long, but well-written.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Book Review: The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson
The Ghost Map is the most interesting book about raw sewage I’ve ever read! If you only read one book about poop in your entire life, this is the book to read.
The “ghost map” refers to the map on which Dr. John Snow plotted the deaths from the cholera outbreak in London in 1854. Cholera is a bacterial infection in the lower intestine that causes violent diarrhea until the sufferer dies of dehydration. If the victim can drink enough water, his body can usually fight off the infection. No one knew that, though. Cholera had an extremely high mortality rate in the last century.
Dr. Snow believed cholera was transmitted by contaminated water, but no one agreed with him. Most people agreed that cholera spread by miasma. Stinky air made you sick. With an idea like that, no one much bothered with the cleanliness of the water. London was pumping raw sewage into the Thames about as fast as it was pumping its drinking water out of the Thames.
The scientific method was still in its infancy. The idea that you should test your idea to see if you were right was almost insulting to the intelligentsia of the day. If everyone knew something to be true, there was no need to show it was true by independent research. ‘Miasmatists’ controlled public health measures because everyone had always known that bad smells caused disease. Dr. Snow wasn’t just up against a wrong idea; he was up against an entire way of thinking.
Doctor John Snow and Vicar Henry Whitehead tracked the deaths from this particular cholera outbreak to show that the Broad Street water pump was spreading cholera. With lists of the dead in hand, the two men knocked on doors, asking survivors if they had drunk from the Broad Street pump, or if the deceased had done so. They tracked down people who had fled the neighborhood, and asked them where they got their water. It was a laborious and intrusive bit of detective work, but it paid off. They convinced a government committee of the Broad Street pump’s danger. The committee shut off the pump, and the outbreak stopped.
When the committee had the pump excavated, they discovered that the cesspool of the neighboring apartment building was draining into the well. And yes, a young mother had washed her sick baby’s diapers in water she had thrown into the cesspool in the days before the baby died. There is no hint in the record if anyone every told that young mother that hundreds of people had died because she had cleaned up after her dying baby as best she could in the conditions that existed in London in 1854. I hope they didn’t tell her.
Over the next few decades, the idea that cholera came from sewage in the water gradually spread, and the government started to pay attention to water quality. Bazalgette designed a massive sewer system for London that was so well-done that London still uses the tunnels and design today (although the equipment has obviously been upgraded).
The Ghost Map is also a story about the history of cities. In 1854, life in a city was a chancy proposition because of poor sanitation, bad construction, and appalling working conditions. Society was holding its breath to see if cities were a viable way of life, or if humanity ought to scatter back to the farm. The verdict is in. Cities are here to stay; they’re going to get bigger; and they provide a better life than rural living does, even in third world countries that still have conditions from the 1850s in their cities.
Johnson wrote a fascinating account of disease, cities, and the scientific method. It was hard to put down, and I don’t often say that about a non-fiction book. I can’t recommend this book highly enough.
And I wasn’t kidding about the first paragraph. Johnson explains how poop was handled in London in 1854 before there were sewer systems. It’s enough to make you say a prayer of gratitude every time you flush your toilet.
The “ghost map” refers to the map on which Dr. John Snow plotted the deaths from the cholera outbreak in London in 1854. Cholera is a bacterial infection in the lower intestine that causes violent diarrhea until the sufferer dies of dehydration. If the victim can drink enough water, his body can usually fight off the infection. No one knew that, though. Cholera had an extremely high mortality rate in the last century.
Dr. Snow believed cholera was transmitted by contaminated water, but no one agreed with him. Most people agreed that cholera spread by miasma. Stinky air made you sick. With an idea like that, no one much bothered with the cleanliness of the water. London was pumping raw sewage into the Thames about as fast as it was pumping its drinking water out of the Thames.
The scientific method was still in its infancy. The idea that you should test your idea to see if you were right was almost insulting to the intelligentsia of the day. If everyone knew something to be true, there was no need to show it was true by independent research. ‘Miasmatists’ controlled public health measures because everyone had always known that bad smells caused disease. Dr. Snow wasn’t just up against a wrong idea; he was up against an entire way of thinking.
Doctor John Snow and Vicar Henry Whitehead tracked the deaths from this particular cholera outbreak to show that the Broad Street water pump was spreading cholera. With lists of the dead in hand, the two men knocked on doors, asking survivors if they had drunk from the Broad Street pump, or if the deceased had done so. They tracked down people who had fled the neighborhood, and asked them where they got their water. It was a laborious and intrusive bit of detective work, but it paid off. They convinced a government committee of the Broad Street pump’s danger. The committee shut off the pump, and the outbreak stopped.
When the committee had the pump excavated, they discovered that the cesspool of the neighboring apartment building was draining into the well. And yes, a young mother had washed her sick baby’s diapers in water she had thrown into the cesspool in the days before the baby died. There is no hint in the record if anyone every told that young mother that hundreds of people had died because she had cleaned up after her dying baby as best she could in the conditions that existed in London in 1854. I hope they didn’t tell her.
Over the next few decades, the idea that cholera came from sewage in the water gradually spread, and the government started to pay attention to water quality. Bazalgette designed a massive sewer system for London that was so well-done that London still uses the tunnels and design today (although the equipment has obviously been upgraded).
The Ghost Map is also a story about the history of cities. In 1854, life in a city was a chancy proposition because of poor sanitation, bad construction, and appalling working conditions. Society was holding its breath to see if cities were a viable way of life, or if humanity ought to scatter back to the farm. The verdict is in. Cities are here to stay; they’re going to get bigger; and they provide a better life than rural living does, even in third world countries that still have conditions from the 1850s in their cities.
Johnson wrote a fascinating account of disease, cities, and the scientific method. It was hard to put down, and I don’t often say that about a non-fiction book. I can’t recommend this book highly enough.
And I wasn’t kidding about the first paragraph. Johnson explains how poop was handled in London in 1854 before there were sewer systems. It’s enough to make you say a prayer of gratitude every time you flush your toilet.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Book Review: The Healthiest Kid in the Neighborhood
Just after Ben was born, I picked up The Healthiest Kid in the Neighborhood by Dr. Sears. Before I tell you the laugh-out-loud funny parts of this book (did this guy not have an editor?), I will tell you the helpful parts.
The measure of any book about nutrition is the changes the reader makes based on the book. I read the book almost two years ago, and these are the changes that have stuck with me:
1. Blueberries. Sears says blueberries are good because of the anti-oxidants, so I buy blueberries. Ben loves blueberries. It was one of his first words: “bzzbzz!” I thought it was cute he could say the word without using any vowels. He gets really purple when he eats blueberries.
2. Olive oil. Sears talks about how necessary it is to get good fats in your diet. I now use olive oil instead of regular vegetable oil whenever possible. Olive oil doesn’t handle high heats very well, so it’s mostly confined to the stovetop and salads.
3. Fish is good for you. I dug out a recipe for salmon loaf, and try to make it about once a month. Dirk was polite about it. Benji is also polite about it. He chirps a cute little “no” at me and politely asks for a cracker.
4. Flaxseed. This stuff is the best natural way to lower your cholesterol. You just sprinkle it on stuff like cereal, or put it in muffins or pancakes.
Besides the list of things to eat, Sears gives an understandable description of why transfats are bad but regular fats are good, and why high fructose corn syrup is so much worse than plain old sugar. He breaks it all the way down to the molecular level. It was a good explanation.
Now for the parts where Sears really should have listened to suggestions from an editor, or his wife.
Sears has a really good idea for helping kids classify food. He says to label food like a traffic light. Green light foods are foods you can always eat. Yellow light foods are ones you can eat sometimes. Red light foods are foods that you should avoid.
He uses this classification system because you should not label foods good and bad because kids would feel like they were bad just because they like bad food. Did you think you were bad when your mom said, “no, that’s bad for you, don’t eat it”? Yeah, me neither. But to protect the fragile psyches of children, we label food like a stoplight. (I actually think this is a good idea because it gives kids a way to categorize what mom says “no” to.)
But then, while talking about how important it is to not label a kid “bad” for liking “bad” foods, he labels the moms. Moms who feed their kids good food are “Pure Moms” and have “Pure Kids”. Moms who don’t are “Junk Food Moms” who have “Junk Food Kids.” Then he tells stories about PMs with their PKs (he seriously uses those abbreviations), as compared to the JFMs and JFKs. I think he should pass out stickers with Happy Meals that say, “my mom is giving me coronary artery disease!”
The other part that sent me into giggles was the last chapter, where he is determined to persuade all those Coronary Artery Disease Moms that they too can eat nutritiously. He describes taking his own kids grocery shopping. I’m giggling again just thinking about it. He admits that his wife does their grocery shopping, and this is the first time he’s been inside a store with a kid in his entire life.
The reader is treated to fun episodes like, “what happened when Dr. Sears lets the kids pick out their own breakfast cereal” which Dr. Sears then corrects in the teaching episode, “how to rationally tell your children that bran is healthier than chocolate-frosted sugar bombs.”
Then they go pick out meat. I’m laughing my head off again. Dr. Sears asks his kids whether they want to buy steak or wild salmon. “Kids, do you want to eat a lazy cow that ate nasty processed food made out of its own cousins? Or do you want to eat a fish that roamed the wild oceans, eating physically fit plankton, leaping tall buildings in a single bound, and regularly doing fish aerobics?” Oh all right, that’s not a direct quote or anything. But the whole string of “wise parent teaching eager children in the supermarket” cracked me up.
Anyway, it’s a decent book. You just have to filter out the real information from the massive guilt trips, condescension, and other pomposity.
The measure of any book about nutrition is the changes the reader makes based on the book. I read the book almost two years ago, and these are the changes that have stuck with me:
1. Blueberries. Sears says blueberries are good because of the anti-oxidants, so I buy blueberries. Ben loves blueberries. It was one of his first words: “bzzbzz!” I thought it was cute he could say the word without using any vowels. He gets really purple when he eats blueberries.
2. Olive oil. Sears talks about how necessary it is to get good fats in your diet. I now use olive oil instead of regular vegetable oil whenever possible. Olive oil doesn’t handle high heats very well, so it’s mostly confined to the stovetop and salads.
3. Fish is good for you. I dug out a recipe for salmon loaf, and try to make it about once a month. Dirk was polite about it. Benji is also polite about it. He chirps a cute little “no” at me and politely asks for a cracker.
4. Flaxseed. This stuff is the best natural way to lower your cholesterol. You just sprinkle it on stuff like cereal, or put it in muffins or pancakes.
Besides the list of things to eat, Sears gives an understandable description of why transfats are bad but regular fats are good, and why high fructose corn syrup is so much worse than plain old sugar. He breaks it all the way down to the molecular level. It was a good explanation.
Now for the parts where Sears really should have listened to suggestions from an editor, or his wife.
Sears has a really good idea for helping kids classify food. He says to label food like a traffic light. Green light foods are foods you can always eat. Yellow light foods are ones you can eat sometimes. Red light foods are foods that you should avoid.
He uses this classification system because you should not label foods good and bad because kids would feel like they were bad just because they like bad food. Did you think you were bad when your mom said, “no, that’s bad for you, don’t eat it”? Yeah, me neither. But to protect the fragile psyches of children, we label food like a stoplight. (I actually think this is a good idea because it gives kids a way to categorize what mom says “no” to.)
But then, while talking about how important it is to not label a kid “bad” for liking “bad” foods, he labels the moms. Moms who feed their kids good food are “Pure Moms” and have “Pure Kids”. Moms who don’t are “Junk Food Moms” who have “Junk Food Kids.” Then he tells stories about PMs with their PKs (he seriously uses those abbreviations), as compared to the JFMs and JFKs. I think he should pass out stickers with Happy Meals that say, “my mom is giving me coronary artery disease!”
The other part that sent me into giggles was the last chapter, where he is determined to persuade all those Coronary Artery Disease Moms that they too can eat nutritiously. He describes taking his own kids grocery shopping. I’m giggling again just thinking about it. He admits that his wife does their grocery shopping, and this is the first time he’s been inside a store with a kid in his entire life.
The reader is treated to fun episodes like, “what happened when Dr. Sears lets the kids pick out their own breakfast cereal” which Dr. Sears then corrects in the teaching episode, “how to rationally tell your children that bran is healthier than chocolate-frosted sugar bombs.”
Then they go pick out meat. I’m laughing my head off again. Dr. Sears asks his kids whether they want to buy steak or wild salmon. “Kids, do you want to eat a lazy cow that ate nasty processed food made out of its own cousins? Or do you want to eat a fish that roamed the wild oceans, eating physically fit plankton, leaping tall buildings in a single bound, and regularly doing fish aerobics?” Oh all right, that’s not a direct quote or anything. But the whole string of “wise parent teaching eager children in the supermarket” cracked me up.
Anyway, it’s a decent book. You just have to filter out the real information from the massive guilt trips, condescension, and other pomposity.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Book Review: Judge Sewall's Apology, by Richard Francis
Full title: Judge Sewall's Apology: The Salem Witch Trials and the Forming of an American Conscience, by Richard Francis.
The Salem witch hunt started with a couple of girls playing games with fortune telling. They scared themselves into fits. The minister claimed the fits came from the devil. The girls could only clear themselves from the charge of being witches by claiming they were innocent victims of other witches. And so the accusations started.
In a six month period in 1692, a panel of five judges and a jury drawn from the community condemned more than 20 people to death for practicing witchcraft. The accused who claimed innocence were found guilty, and executed by hanging. The accused who confessed to being witches were spared. Those who died insisted on their innocence even as the executioner placed the ropes around their necks.
The community was deeply divided over the witch trials as soon as they began. One judge resigned in protest, rather than condemn people to death for witchcraft on the flimsy and ridiculous evidence being presented. Petitions were circulated; letters were written; higher courts sent advice that would have stopped the witch hunt in its tracks. But for six months, the judges continued to pass death sentences.
What sort of man would condemn men and women to death as witches based on the shenanigans of children? Judge Sewall, at least, was a good, decent Puritan man, caught by his prejudices and simplistic worldview, who spent the rest of his life regretting his role in the event that became the American catchphrase for injustice.
Two years before the witch trials, Judge Sewall condemned several men to death for piracy. Three of the pirates had friends in high places, and Sewall was persuaded to reprieve their death sentences. He regretted allowing himself to be browbeaten into pardoning men he knew to be guilty. He resolved to do his duty to God to enforce justice. This resolve would overshadow his mercy and good sense in the witch trials.
Sewall’s journal does not contain many entries from the time period when Sewall was involved in the witchcraft trials. But in the months and years following that fateful summer, Sewall writes his efforts to come to terms with what happened, and his responsibility for it.
Five years after the witch trials, the town fasted and prayed to ask God’s forgiveness for the witch hunt and other wickedness. During the fast, Judge Sewall stood up in the congregation while the minister read his formal written apology. “Samuel Sewall, sensible of the reiterated strokes of God upon himself and family; and being sensible, that as to the Guilt contracted, . . . [for his actions as a judge at the witch trials] he is, . . . more concerned than any that he knows of, Desires to take the Blame & Shame of it, Asking pardon of Men, And especially desiring prayers that God who has an Unlimited Authority, would pardon that Sin . . .”
No other judge apologized. The minister who first cried “witchcraft!” apologized, but shifted the blame from himself to the Devil for deceiving him. The apologies from the jury foreman and several members of the jury, and from one of the girls who made accusations, also shifted blame to Satan and to the general fervor of the community. (The culture of victimhood is apparently not new to our century.) Only Sewall accepted blame without trying to wiggle out from under it.
Sewall’s journal after the witch trials reflects a more complex view of good and evil. The witch trials relied heavily on the assumption that everything is either of God or the Devil. There was no allowance for confusion, mysteries, or garden variety mistakes. Sewall’s shift in perspective is a microcosm of the general societal shift in perspective as a young America settled into the second generation of Puritans and began to let go of its apocalyptic worldview. The fact that a cow stops giving milk is no longer proof that the Devil is invading and the prophecies in Revelation are being fulfilled.
I wish the author had spent more time talking about societal trends and how they changed. The book’s strength, which is the level of detail in Judge Sewall’s journal, also became its weakness. The author stuck to Sewall’s journal so carefully that it got distracting (he interrupted the witch trial descriptions to report that Sewall talked to someone about a business deal, and had dinner with a neighbor) and then boring (Sewall had dinner with lots of people, and recorded what the menu was, and the author made sure I knew about every one of them).
The most interesting thing about reading history and biographies is to see how similar the past is to the present. Our day worries about violent crime; Sewall’s day worried about Indian attacks. Our day worries about moral decay in the rising generation; Sewall’s day worried about moral decay in the rising generation. Our day worries about cancer, diabetes and heart disease; Sewall’s day worried about smallpox, measles and fevers.
I believe that people who look nostalgically back at the good old days just haven’t read enough history books. History repeats itself, both the good and the bad.
Several factors that contributed to the witch trials coincided again in Eldorado when the government took children from the FLDS. Again, the initial accusation came from a girl who invented her story. Drastic action was taken too quickly, based on flimsy evidence and wild stories. Once things finally calmed down and someone asked, “what really happened?” people started to realize that things weren’t as dire as they’d thought.
And, as in the witch trials, at least some people in the Eldorado disaster meant well, thought they were doing the right thing, and might spend the rest of their lives wondering how they could have been so wrong.
The Salem witch hunt started with a couple of girls playing games with fortune telling. They scared themselves into fits. The minister claimed the fits came from the devil. The girls could only clear themselves from the charge of being witches by claiming they were innocent victims of other witches. And so the accusations started.
In a six month period in 1692, a panel of five judges and a jury drawn from the community condemned more than 20 people to death for practicing witchcraft. The accused who claimed innocence were found guilty, and executed by hanging. The accused who confessed to being witches were spared. Those who died insisted on their innocence even as the executioner placed the ropes around their necks.
The community was deeply divided over the witch trials as soon as they began. One judge resigned in protest, rather than condemn people to death for witchcraft on the flimsy and ridiculous evidence being presented. Petitions were circulated; letters were written; higher courts sent advice that would have stopped the witch hunt in its tracks. But for six months, the judges continued to pass death sentences.
What sort of man would condemn men and women to death as witches based on the shenanigans of children? Judge Sewall, at least, was a good, decent Puritan man, caught by his prejudices and simplistic worldview, who spent the rest of his life regretting his role in the event that became the American catchphrase for injustice.
Two years before the witch trials, Judge Sewall condemned several men to death for piracy. Three of the pirates had friends in high places, and Sewall was persuaded to reprieve their death sentences. He regretted allowing himself to be browbeaten into pardoning men he knew to be guilty. He resolved to do his duty to God to enforce justice. This resolve would overshadow his mercy and good sense in the witch trials.
Sewall’s journal does not contain many entries from the time period when Sewall was involved in the witchcraft trials. But in the months and years following that fateful summer, Sewall writes his efforts to come to terms with what happened, and his responsibility for it.
Five years after the witch trials, the town fasted and prayed to ask God’s forgiveness for the witch hunt and other wickedness. During the fast, Judge Sewall stood up in the congregation while the minister read his formal written apology. “Samuel Sewall, sensible of the reiterated strokes of God upon himself and family; and being sensible, that as to the Guilt contracted, . . . [for his actions as a judge at the witch trials] he is, . . . more concerned than any that he knows of, Desires to take the Blame & Shame of it, Asking pardon of Men, And especially desiring prayers that God who has an Unlimited Authority, would pardon that Sin . . .”
No other judge apologized. The minister who first cried “witchcraft!” apologized, but shifted the blame from himself to the Devil for deceiving him. The apologies from the jury foreman and several members of the jury, and from one of the girls who made accusations, also shifted blame to Satan and to the general fervor of the community. (The culture of victimhood is apparently not new to our century.) Only Sewall accepted blame without trying to wiggle out from under it.
Sewall’s journal after the witch trials reflects a more complex view of good and evil. The witch trials relied heavily on the assumption that everything is either of God or the Devil. There was no allowance for confusion, mysteries, or garden variety mistakes. Sewall’s shift in perspective is a microcosm of the general societal shift in perspective as a young America settled into the second generation of Puritans and began to let go of its apocalyptic worldview. The fact that a cow stops giving milk is no longer proof that the Devil is invading and the prophecies in Revelation are being fulfilled.
I wish the author had spent more time talking about societal trends and how they changed. The book’s strength, which is the level of detail in Judge Sewall’s journal, also became its weakness. The author stuck to Sewall’s journal so carefully that it got distracting (he interrupted the witch trial descriptions to report that Sewall talked to someone about a business deal, and had dinner with a neighbor) and then boring (Sewall had dinner with lots of people, and recorded what the menu was, and the author made sure I knew about every one of them).
The most interesting thing about reading history and biographies is to see how similar the past is to the present. Our day worries about violent crime; Sewall’s day worried about Indian attacks. Our day worries about moral decay in the rising generation; Sewall’s day worried about moral decay in the rising generation. Our day worries about cancer, diabetes and heart disease; Sewall’s day worried about smallpox, measles and fevers.
I believe that people who look nostalgically back at the good old days just haven’t read enough history books. History repeats itself, both the good and the bad.
Several factors that contributed to the witch trials coincided again in Eldorado when the government took children from the FLDS. Again, the initial accusation came from a girl who invented her story. Drastic action was taken too quickly, based on flimsy evidence and wild stories. Once things finally calmed down and someone asked, “what really happened?” people started to realize that things weren’t as dire as they’d thought.
And, as in the witch trials, at least some people in the Eldorado disaster meant well, thought they were doing the right thing, and might spend the rest of their lives wondering how they could have been so wrong.
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
Book Review: Shadow Spinner by Susan Fletcher
“Every night, Shahrazad begins a story. And every morning, the Sultan lets her live another day – providing the story is interesting enough to capture his attention. After almost one thousand nights, Shahrazad is running out of tales. And that is how Marjan’s story begins . . .” (from the dust jacket)
Shahrazad’s need to find a thousand and one tales pulls Marjan into a desperate search to help Shahrazad find a new tale, and continue her brave ploy to save the lives of the women of Persia from the Sultan, who was killing a new wife every morning because he had been betrayed by an adulterous wife. It isn’t enough that the tale be amusing. Shahrazad deliberately chooses tales to teach the Sultan about human nature, in hopes that he will learn not to judge all women by one woman’s betrayal.
Shahrazad’s ambition exploits a major purpose of fiction. We read fiction because it tells stories about us, about people like us, and about people not like us. Fiction may not be true in the sense that the stories really happened, but the stories are true when they honestly explore motivations, actions and consequences. Through fiction, we get inside others’ heads in a way that is impossible in real life. Understanding others’ motivations leads us to see them as individuals, instead of as members of a group that we can judge, dismiss, and despise from a comfortable distance. That is Shahrazad’s goal. If she can only tell the Sultan enough stories, he will understand that not all women are the same. Not all women will be false to him, as his wife was. Then the killing can stop permanently, even if Shahrazad runs out of stories.
All those long paragraphs, and I haven’t even mentioned the main character! Even while risking her life for Shahrazad, Marjan struggles with her fear of a blighted future, and with forgiving someone she loved for not protecting her. Her story works like Shahrazad says a story should work. Marjan’s story holds up a mirror to let the reader look at her own fears or grudges.
It’s only fitting that a book about a storyteller would be so well told. The characters are strong and consistent. They confront moral issues and motivations we see in our own lives, but they do it without sounding like twenty-first century women plunked down in ancient Persia. The plot keeps you turning the pages. It takes a good author to bring both a tense plot and well-rounded characters together in the same book.
Book clubs would have a good time discussing Shadow Spinner. Young adult readers would like reading it as well.
Shahrazad’s need to find a thousand and one tales pulls Marjan into a desperate search to help Shahrazad find a new tale, and continue her brave ploy to save the lives of the women of Persia from the Sultan, who was killing a new wife every morning because he had been betrayed by an adulterous wife. It isn’t enough that the tale be amusing. Shahrazad deliberately chooses tales to teach the Sultan about human nature, in hopes that he will learn not to judge all women by one woman’s betrayal.
Shahrazad’s ambition exploits a major purpose of fiction. We read fiction because it tells stories about us, about people like us, and about people not like us. Fiction may not be true in the sense that the stories really happened, but the stories are true when they honestly explore motivations, actions and consequences. Through fiction, we get inside others’ heads in a way that is impossible in real life. Understanding others’ motivations leads us to see them as individuals, instead of as members of a group that we can judge, dismiss, and despise from a comfortable distance. That is Shahrazad’s goal. If she can only tell the Sultan enough stories, he will understand that not all women are the same. Not all women will be false to him, as his wife was. Then the killing can stop permanently, even if Shahrazad runs out of stories.
All those long paragraphs, and I haven’t even mentioned the main character! Even while risking her life for Shahrazad, Marjan struggles with her fear of a blighted future, and with forgiving someone she loved for not protecting her. Her story works like Shahrazad says a story should work. Marjan’s story holds up a mirror to let the reader look at her own fears or grudges.
It’s only fitting that a book about a storyteller would be so well told. The characters are strong and consistent. They confront moral issues and motivations we see in our own lives, but they do it without sounding like twenty-first century women plunked down in ancient Persia. The plot keeps you turning the pages. It takes a good author to bring both a tense plot and well-rounded characters together in the same book.
Book clubs would have a good time discussing Shadow Spinner. Young adult readers would like reading it as well.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Book Review: The Scientist in the Crib
Ever wondered how a baby thinks? The Scientist in the Crib describes the efforts and experiments of developmental psychologists who want to figure out just what that little binky-sucking cherub is thinking. Scientists started taking babies seriously only about 30 or 40 years ago. Up until then, psychologists (if they thought about babies at all) thought children were blank slates who knew nothing, just a crying carrot in the crib.
Turns out that babies are born with many assumptions, many of which are wrong, and with powerful learning abilities that allow them to largely put their world in order by the time they're just three years old. The title is also the conclusion of many developmental psychologists who study babies -- babies are like scientists. They have ideas; they perform experiments; they change their ideas based on the experiments. For example, babies think if they can't see something, then it doesn't exist. Objects disappear forever if you cover them with a cloth. Babies experiment with this idea, and learn it is wrong. Things exist even if they're out of sight! Imagine that! This amazing discovery is the reason why the game peekaboo is so exciting for a little one.
Babies are also continually experimenting on adults. Babies are born knowing that they are somehow like adults, and that they should imitate adults. A psychologist tested lots of newborns and discovered that if you stick out your tongue at a new baby, the new baby sticks his tongue out at you. (Yes, your tax dollars at work, I'm sure.) But it takes a scientist to tell us how profound that is. The newborn with his tongue out: (1) recognizes the adult face as something similar enough to his own that he can imitate it; (2) knows where his tongue is (there are no mirrors in the womb); and (3) knows how to stick it out.
Babies learn from adults because they are born wanting to imitate adults. Then, when they're about two, babies learn something terrible -- adults don't want the baby to do everything the baby wants to do. Gasp! This shocking discovery is the impetus behind the "terrible twos." The baby is trying to see just why mom doesn't want him to dump out the rice, and what happens if he dumps it out anyway. Mom is the lab rat in the baby's experiment of "do people really think differently than I do?"
The book is an easy read, and contains a lot of humor. You can't really write a book about how babies learn without funny anecdotes, and the authors throw in several.
Finding out how babies think and learn provides a lot of insight into how adults think and learn also. In fact, it isn't babies who think like scientists. It's scientists who think like babies. The scientific method of developing a hypothesis, experimenting with that hypothesis, and drawing a conclusion based on the experiment is one we've all used since birth. It's the way we found out about the world. As the authors note, the adult scientist peering into the crib meets the curious gaze of the infant scientist peering out of the crib.
Turns out that babies are born with many assumptions, many of which are wrong, and with powerful learning abilities that allow them to largely put their world in order by the time they're just three years old. The title is also the conclusion of many developmental psychologists who study babies -- babies are like scientists. They have ideas; they perform experiments; they change their ideas based on the experiments. For example, babies think if they can't see something, then it doesn't exist. Objects disappear forever if you cover them with a cloth. Babies experiment with this idea, and learn it is wrong. Things exist even if they're out of sight! Imagine that! This amazing discovery is the reason why the game peekaboo is so exciting for a little one.
Babies are also continually experimenting on adults. Babies are born knowing that they are somehow like adults, and that they should imitate adults. A psychologist tested lots of newborns and discovered that if you stick out your tongue at a new baby, the new baby sticks his tongue out at you. (Yes, your tax dollars at work, I'm sure.) But it takes a scientist to tell us how profound that is. The newborn with his tongue out: (1) recognizes the adult face as something similar enough to his own that he can imitate it; (2) knows where his tongue is (there are no mirrors in the womb); and (3) knows how to stick it out.
Babies learn from adults because they are born wanting to imitate adults. Then, when they're about two, babies learn something terrible -- adults don't want the baby to do everything the baby wants to do. Gasp! This shocking discovery is the impetus behind the "terrible twos." The baby is trying to see just why mom doesn't want him to dump out the rice, and what happens if he dumps it out anyway. Mom is the lab rat in the baby's experiment of "do people really think differently than I do?"
The book is an easy read, and contains a lot of humor. You can't really write a book about how babies learn without funny anecdotes, and the authors throw in several.
Finding out how babies think and learn provides a lot of insight into how adults think and learn also. In fact, it isn't babies who think like scientists. It's scientists who think like babies. The scientific method of developing a hypothesis, experimenting with that hypothesis, and drawing a conclusion based on the experiment is one we've all used since birth. It's the way we found out about the world. As the authors note, the adult scientist peering into the crib meets the curious gaze of the infant scientist peering out of the crib.
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