The Book of Learning and Forgetting

Sometimes small books pack big punches. The Book of Learning and Forgetting by Frank Smith is one of those. Don’t let its serene cover fool you. Here are extracts from the opening chapter that provide a synopsis of the book, so you know exactly what you’re in for.

“This is a tale of two visions, of two conflicting points of view, about matters central to everyone’s life: learning and forgetting. I refer to one vision as the classic view of learning and forgetting. It is classic because it is archetypal, universal, deep-rooted, and uncontaminated. It says, very simply, that we learn from people around us with whom we identify. We can’t help learning from them, and we learn without knowing that we are learning.”

“There is an alternative to the classic view that is preeminent, coercive, manipulative, discriminatory – and wrong. It is a theory that learning is work, and that anything can be learned provided sufficient effort is expended and sufficient control enforced. The theory has gained supreme power in educational systems from kindergarten to university. It has become so pervasive that many people can’t imagine an alternative to it. This is the view – I call it the official theory of learning and forgetting – that is responsible for…”

What proceeds is a litany of evils that most current school systems run. Let me just highlight three.

·      Persuading individuals that they won’t learn unless they make a determined effort, and that the fault is theirs if they fail,

·      Imposing discriminatory and discouraging “tests” that ensure that individuals who most need help and encouragement get the least,

·      Convincing teachers, learners, and parents that the most important thing about education is scores and grades.

Frank Smith thinks that true learning is one that happens without “struggle”. We learn all the time, and in fact often learn things that are detrimental. We learn some things so well, they are not easy to forget and become ingrained – one of these is the official theory itself. Having been steeped in it, it’s hard to see differently, almost as if we’re stuck in a system. We learned it from those around us – parents, teachers, fellow classmates, school authorities, the mass media, pundits, and we absorbed it naturally (or classically).

The book has four parts. The first chapter I’ve quoted from above is very short and succinct laying out the conflict. Part II lays out the classic theory. This is followed by the official theory in Part III, and the final part is subtitled “Repairing the Damage”. It’s a slim book, only a hundred pages with twelve short chapters. In this post, I will highlight parts that I found interesting from Part II, and the next post will deal with the fiery Part III. (This is the second time around I’m reading the book, as part of my summer reading plan.)

In keeping with his succinct style, the author summarizes the classic theory: “You learn from the company you keep.” His examples mostly come from teaching and observing children, but his view isn’t one that’s highly disputed. We see children learn from those around them, absorbing both information and mannerisms like sponges. When they become teenagers and young adults, we worry about their peer group. We might monitor what children read, consume from other forms of mass media (music, radio, TV, movies, and everything sprawling over the internet). Why? Because we all recognize, to some degree, the power of these influences.

Literacy occupies a special place in this section. It turns out that children can learn words at immense rates (a way to estimate vocabulary is presented). However, it was clear that the main difference in a child’s range of vocabulary had to do with how much they read. (The researchers had controlled for socioeconomic status, parent’s education, size of family, etc., in this study.) You didn’t need a large range to begin with – in fact it is built up from reading. Furthermore, there was a correlation to better writing, spelling and overall academic skills. In the act of reading, the reader “joins the company of authors”. Smith provides some very compelling vignettes by examining the behavior of “reading to, for, and with children” and why the author is an excellent collaborator to learning. This unconscious learning as you lose yourself in a good book becomes a joyful activity, far removed from the drudgery and difficulty one might associate with school and learning.

In chapter 5 (“Learning Through Life”), the author provides a vignette of a friend who is a fount of “unwanted information” on British family royal gossip. Smith says he is tempted to use the official theory to stem this tide. “I imagine telling my friend he should work harder to learn. I’ll ask him to pay greater attention to news about the royal family in future and to take extensive notes. To help his learning I’ll send him frequent tests. I’ll also keep a record of his scores and let him know if he is keeping up or falling behind… [and after more examples,] I know what will happen. He’ll come to hate reading about the royal family… He might even give up reading altogether. By making him self-conscious about his learning I could destroy it, together with his confidence in himself.”

Smith doesn’t pull his punches. Joy is twisted into drudgery. I do think that there are better things than royal family gossip that one should be learning, such as chemistry. But I can’t help thinking that I say similar things to my students in my classes. I do try to do things to promote intrinsic motivation for learning the subject matter, but perhaps those are just minor fixes to prop up an unpalatable activity. There are some students who absolutely love what they’re studying (you can tell easily!) but for many of them, it’s the hoop that they have to jump through to get to the next level. Stuck in a system indeed. And for those who don’t do well – what do they learn? They may not learn much chemistry, but they are learning – learning that they are “no good at it”. It could be science, math, whatever else it is. And this is a negative lesson that’s hard to forget.

And on that downer of a note, stay tuned for the bleaker sequel when we tackle the official theory next.

Ghostbusting

I enjoyed the new Ghostbusters movie, and it got me thinking about how one traps a ghost. There is the candle and glass jar method, which I doubt really works. If a ghost passes through solid walls, it’s unclear why glass would physically trap it. Anyway, I am not steeped in Ghostbusters lore. I did watch and enjoy the original movie, but didn’t think about the gobbledygook science. I also vaguely remember a very old computer game thirty years ago based on the original movie.

In the new movie, at least, proton packs supply the energy for the bright energy streams used to encircle or punch ghosts. Protons could certainly be a fusion source; they might also constitute the energy stream although that is likely to do serious damage to ordinary matter. The mechanics of the traps aren’t really explained in the movie, although I may not have caught speedier parts of the conversation.

Fundamentally, how you trap a ghost depends on what constitutes a ghost. In a post last Halloween I speculated that they could be related to neutrinos (also dubbed “ghost” particles), and thus hardly interact with ordinary matter. In the Harry Potter series, the ghosts can certainly pass through walls and float unhindered by gravity. At the Deathday feast, ghosts try to interact with the foulest smelling putrid food to glimpse a “taste” of the material. Nearly Headless Nick does get knocked out by the basilisk, although being already dead he does not die a second time. This implies at least very weak interaction with ordinary matter – certainly with the airwaves since ghosts speak audibly.

Another possibility is that ghosts are an energy manifestation related to electromagnetic (EM) radiation. In this case, there are many ways one could interact with them. You could use an EM pulse as a ghost bomb, and you can certainly find ways to control and trap EM and thus make weapons that fight and trap ghosts. Optical traps are not uncommon in today’s science. You could certainly construct detectors; I think in Ghostbusters language this is a PKE or psychokinetic energy meter. What exactly is psychokinetic energy? Unclear.

In the movie, ghosts do find ways to interact with ordinary matter in a more substantial way. The first example is from sliming (and Slimer gets a cool cameo in the new movie). Ectoplasm (or “outer goo”) has a scientific meaning, but the movie taps into an older use of the term whereby charlatans holding séances would use it as a sign of a ghostly presence. Why goo? Couldn’t they have used something cleaner? I don’t know. In any case, making slime is a standard demo for elementary school kids and the chemistry is quite straightforward (with many YouTube videos in this day and age). It’s mainly cross-linked polymeric material with a certain consistency – the gooey kind. If the Ghostbusters team had a chemist, maybe the ectoplasm could be analyzed and we would have a better idea what constitutes ghosts.

Another method in the movie is via possession of a human. Now if ghosts were EM energy, and one makes a far-fetched connection with electric conduction through the nervous system, maybe that’s the physical connection in possession. Alternatively, the psycho part of PKE lodges itself in the brain and then controls the rest of the motor system. Interestingly, ghosts can also possess inanimate objects such as balloons and mannequins. I’m not sure how to explain that, but I suppose I can just sit back and enjoy watching the movie mayhem. Science gives way to entertainment.

The ghosts in the movie, except for the malevolent one in control of the others, don’t seem to have much of a personality – they’re more like zombies. Not much of the psyche in the psycho. This is in contrast to the ghosts at Hogwarts, all of whom seem to have retained their psyche and memories. Now that’s an interesting idea – can the psyche and memories be disembodied? Is there a ghost in the machine? But perhaps the embodiment simply takes a different form, be it neutrino-like particles, an EM network, or loading your mental state into a computer as seen in sci-fi.

I don’t remember much of the old movie, but one that made an impression that I still remember is the ZUUL building. I can identify it easily in any subsequent movie unrelated to ghosts

Problem-Solving Presentation Skills

This past week, I was helping out with a portion of my department’s Assessment efforts. The particular task for our group was to go through selected common questions from past year exams and score them according to a pre-determined rubric. The rubric assesses (1) conceptual knowledge, (2) ability to apply that knowledge to solve a problem, and (3) clarity of work. It is the third category that I would like to discuss in today’s post because there was much to mull over.

Let me describe the assessment setup. I’m grateful to a very organized colleague who coordinated the efforts. Since this was part of a program-level assessment, we were looking at outcomes for our majors. First, General Chemistry final exams from declared majors had to be extracted from close to two thousand exam scripts covering a four-year span. The exams were turned to the page displaying the question to be assessed, and an ID number was written on that page. The rest of the exam was stapled to prevent easily looking at the student’s name. Thankfully, I did not have to do any of this – and I profusely thank all those who did the work. (We’ll need to come up with a less time-intensive approach in the future.)

At this point, the faculty team of four got to work. The rubric was discussed beforehand, then we individually scored five exams and discussed our results. This was to establish norming procedures. Subsequently we would divide up the rest of the pile, otherwise it would take too long for us as a group to go through discussion and scoring each exam. The five exams chosen for norming covered the range from “student nailed the question” to “multiple errors and confusion all over the place”. After norming, we got to work. Each exam had to be scored independently by two people (instead of all four). The coordinator would then do all the necessary post-analysis including checking the agreement level and if there were any anomalies.

Was it tedious to score a bunch of exams using a rubric? Yes, but I learned some very interesting things that I would not have considered when grading my final exams at the end of the semester. First, with a much larger data set we could see both the commonality (of student errors) and the diversity of approaches used. Every year we teach multiple sections of General Chemistry. (Last year alone we had 15 sections of the first semester course!) Second, since all four of us were in the same room, we could discuss what was most important to us in determining whether a student successfully demonstrated conceptual knowledge or how we interpreted clarity. (It was usually straightforward to see if a student could apply their knowledge to solve a problem.) I’m pleased to say that while we did agree for the most part, we also learned from each other. Now, I happen to be in a department where hallway chatting with my colleagues about various aspects of teaching is commonplace. However, having the goal of assessing a particular question opened up both a wider and deeper conversation. A hallway chat might be 10-15 minutes. Being in the same room for 3-4 hours with a specific task provides a different and complementary environment. (Our coordinator also provided excellent food and snacks to tide us over!)

I would like to focus on discussing the clarity aspect in problem-solving, particularly in how students present their answers on paper. This jumped out at me during our session assessing the solving of a stoichiometry problem, because as faculty we sometimes disagreed about what details we wanted to see in a solution. A capable student who knows how to solve a multi-step numerical problem is going to get the correct values for the final answer, however some skip steps. For example, students correctly calculated the number of moles of reactants, and then “knew” which was the limiting reactant based on the next set of calculations – but did not always clearly point out which was the limiting reactant. Other students would scrawl “limiting reactant” or LR somewhere close by, but did not show how they knew. (It requires a quick algebraic calculation based on the relative stoichiometry of the reactants in the balanced equation.) Very likely, they punched their calculator, figured out the right answer, and then moved on. The other place where clarity was an issue was not clearly indicating when one was calculating “amount consumed” versus “amount produced” and in some cases “amount leftover” for the non-limiting reactant. Some students wrote in all the numbers correctly, even showing the calculation, but with little to no explanatory text.

One point of discussion that came up is “who” the audience should be. Clearly, the students are writing for the instructor – but they often tacitly assume that the instructor can “read between the lines”. Now, since we were all experienced faculty and we’ve used the common question multiple times (for assessment purposes), we can follow what the student is doing even if steps are skipped or text is not written out clearly – at least when the student gets the correct final numerical values. (If the student gets the final values wrong, then we have to look a little more carefully at where the student went wrong to see if any partial credit can be given and to indicate the source of the error.) But perhaps the students should aim their explanations not at the instructor, but at the level of a fellow student in the same class. That’s what I tell students in the accompanying lab course as they write in their lab notebooks and put together their lab reports, but I don’t think I’ve explicitly said the same for exams in the “lecture” portion of the course.

Now, I do model what should go into a solution. When something new is introduced, I work out the solution step-by-step on the board with accompanying explanatory remarks and assumptions. My exam solution sets also include all this. But I think there are three issues I need to consider further. Many moons ago, I made the switch to using online homework (via Pearson’s Mastering Chemistry since we use a Pearson textbook for General Chemistry). Like any other system there are pros and cons. The major pro is that students are motivated to constantly keep up and can work anywhere, anytime as long as they have an internet connection. They also get immediate feedback. It also reduces my grading substantially since I no longer grade homework (which was rather tedious). The major con is that students type in their numerical values or very short (easy-for-computer-to-grade) answers in the online system. They don’t get much practice writing out an answer in full clarity, unless they happen to be predisposed to doing so. A few do, as evidence of their homework-notebook (I ask students to work the problems on paper and bring it in to my office when they have questions), but most others have a sketchy outline with all sorts of skipped steps. So they only get practice when they are taking notes in class (when I work an example on the board). When we actively work in small groups on problems in class, I often don’t collect their worksheets – although I do provide a solution set (sometimes on the spot on the board). When I circulate in class, I’m usually not looking for the clarity in the written solution; I’m focused on trying to help the students understand the main concepts and apply them. I need to rethink my approach.

One possible route is to go back to making students turn in solutions to problem sets. I still do this when I have a smaller class, but in a larger class the grading becomes substantial. But perhaps I should still do this several times during the semester in a larger class. Another possibility is to actually have students look at previous student work (varying from excellent to downright confusing) and critique it using a rubric, i.e., have the students do the same thing I did for Assessment. This might be a very valuable exercise and I should block off some class time to make sure this happens several times during the semester. While I could come up with examples demonstrating the range, I think using actual student work might be more convincing. I was flabbergasted by some of the answers in the assessment, as I had to decide what the score should be on the rubric.

The second thing I need to consider is how I tend to give the stronger students in my classes a pass (i.e. full credit) for a correct final solution even though steps have been skipped. In the assessment, I did not know the identity of the student and they were often not from my class (given the multiplicity of sections) and therefore I really took a good look at clarity (because it was on the rubric). If being able to present your work clearly and with sufficiently complete information is a key skill, I need to make sure this gets emphasized sufficiently not just in my teaching, but in my grading. Yes, I know the students in my own class and I know those who “know” how to do the problem. I can even tell what they are doing in their heads and not writing down. But the writing down and presenting is important – very important in fact – for any future career.

Third, I realized that some of the students skip steps or don’t present their work as clearly because of time pressure in exams. My exams are tight – the average student has just enough time to finish, but with very little leeway. I think that time on task is one among several measures of whether a student understands the material. A student who really understands will be able to solve the problems much more quickly than one who is floundering around trying many things that don’t work. But maybe they are too tight, and I need to reduce the amount of material asked on an exam and balance it with clarity in solution presentation. This means that I need to emphasize the importance of clarity throughout the semester if I want to see the students do this on an exam.

That’s a lot to mull over, but I’ve still got six weeks to prepare. I did learn some very useful things from this assessment exercise, and it’s something our group will be sharing with the department. Sometimes assessment can be useful, even though there are some tedious bits and related administrative busywork. I certainly benefited from my participation in the exercise.

Stuck in a System

Reading philosophy is always a challenge for me, but I am trying to persevere through Jacques Ellul’s Technological System. Although written in 1980, close to the rise of the personal desktop computer, Ellul is remarkably prescient of how computer technology will exert a degree of unprecedented control over our lives. I’m only a quarter of the way through (because it is slow reading), and although the author is still setting the stage, I’m finding it a very sobering read – especially as I think about education.

For better and for worse, the rise of nationalized education means that school for both teachers and pupils is, for the most part, embedded in a vast gargantuan system. It has grown progressively unwieldly with size as has the corresponding political system that could bring changes. This is in sharp contrast to the one-room schoolhouse, a small group of students with perhaps only a single teacher. There is no government-mandated syllabus nor are students grouped together in classes by age. The older ones help the younger ones.

Standards and accountability no longer allow for such freedom and variety. Not that it is inherently bad to have standards, and accountability is generally a good thing; but good intentions of “maintaining high standards” has typically devolved into the lowest common denominator as technology increasingly participates in assessment. Not everything that counts can be counted. As much as we’d like to think we have autonomy as teachers, that control is slowly being taken away to be subject to the technological system.

As teachers it is crucial for us to frame education as a relationship between persons; I think this is what teaching and learning is all about. It cannot be easily reduced into its constituent parts. We must resist the application of Taylorian scientific management to our “industry” (a telling example of how the terminology has permeated into our field). This has become increasingly difficult because the advancement of technologies results in an increasing enslavement to those technologies. It consumes and subsumes everything. I’m not advocating a Luddite response; I personally benefit from technology – but it is important to step back and see how it enforces a wider system that attempts to enforce compliance to a flat, rigid, errorless, efficient, program. If we lose awareness, we have only ourselves to blame when we all become pawns serving the system.

I have no solution to this conundrum. Sometimes I wonder if it is too late. There are systems within systems within systems; their smooth running enhanced by technology. I think Ellul would say that this puts humanity in an increasingly un-natural situation to which adaptation also brings a concomitant increase in stress. It is no wonder that teachers/professors and students seem increasingly harried. Speed is one measure of efficiency, and our lives are whizzing by. Technology may have brought us some “leisure” time, but we increasingly need to fill it with more technology. A vicious cycle perhaps. Only in a system does this happen.

A Chimeric Origin: Complexity, Sex, Life and Death

“If life is nothing but an electron looking for a place to rest, death is nothing but that electron come to rest.”

That’s the last sentence of the penultimate paragraph to Nick Lane’s The Vital Question. In Sections III and IV of his book, Lane tackles the origin of eukaryotes. (For my thoughts on the earlier sections, see part 1 and part 2.) Evidence is marshaled suggesting (but not proving) that a one-time endosymbiosis between a bacterium and an archaean cousin is the ancestor to all eukaryotic life on earth. This would be LECA, the Last Eukaryotic Common Ancestor. But reconstructing how this chimera came about is very difficult, and there seems to be a quantum leap in complexity.

After going through issues of genome size, circular versus straight chromosomes, phylogenetic considerations, and other potential structural constraints, Lane writes: “[LECA] was a complex cell that already had straight chromosomes, a membrane-bound nucleus, mitochondria, various specialized organelles and other membrane structures, a dynamic cytoskeleton, and traits like sex. It was recognizably a ‘modern’ eukaryotic cell. None of these traits exist in bacteria in anything resembling the eukaryotic state.”

To underscore the strangeness of this situation, he uses the following analogy. “It’s as if every single invention of modern society – houses, hygiene, roads, division of labour, farming, courts of law, standing armies, universities, governments, you name it – all these inventions could be traced back to ancient Rome; but before Rome, there was nothing but primitive hunter-gatherer societies. No remains of ancient Greece, China, Egypt, the Levant, Persia, or any other civilization; just abundant traces of hunter-gatherers everywhere you look. Here’s the rub. Imagine that experts have spent decades scrutinizing the archaeology of the world to unearth the remains of earlier cities, civilisations that pre-dated the Romans, which would give insight into how Rome was built. Hundreds of examples were discovered, yet each one, on closer inspection, turned out to post-date Rome. All these outwardly ancient and primitive cities were actually founded in the ‘dark ages’ by progenitors who could trace their own ancestors back to ancient Rome. In effect, all roads lead to Rome, and Rome really was built in a day.”

What drove the appearance of the eukaryote and cellular complexity? Energy per gene and chemical food sources. Lane surveys a range of bacteria comparing physical size, genome size and metabolic rate. There turns out to be a significant barrier to scale-up. Endosymbiosis between prokaryotes is uncommon although there are a couple of examples. Lane weaves a narrative starring mitochondria, the energy powerhouses of eukaryotes, that seem to fit the odd structure of our genes – piecemeal, messy and full of introns. The similarity between self-splicing introns and the eukaryotic spliceosome suggests that introns originated from the bacterial endosymbiont, subsequently evolving into genome-reduced mitochondria focused on bioenergetics needs.

Having two genomic sources can cause a variety of problems. Lane outlines the issues and uses them to construct an argument for the origins of sex (and two sexes in particular), the division between germline and somatic cells, and cell death via apoptosis. These are marshaled as evidence for the two-fold origin of eukaryotes. I can’t easily summarize the details here (you’ll have to read the book) but I will say that although speculative, his arguments are very intriguing. For example, why should cytochrome c, a respiratory protein, be so important in apoptosis? I suspect Lane is on to something here, but I do not have enough of a background in cell biology, genetics and biochemistry to properly evaluate his argument.

Lane’s book is the molecular biology counterpart to Brownlee and Ward’s Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe (written from the perspective of an astronomer and a paleontologist). Lane’s central story, however, is energy transduction. In his concluding paragraph, Lane summarizes: “Living needs an unceasing flux of energy. It’s hardly surprising that energy flux puts major constraints on the path of evolution, defining what is possible. It’s not surprising that bacteria keep doing what bacteria do, unable to tinker in any serious way with the flame that keeps them growing, dividing, conquering. It’s not surprising that the one accident that did work out, that singular endosymbiosis between prokaryotes, did not tinker with the flame, but ignited it in many copies in each and every eukaryotic cell, finally giving rise to complex life. It’s not surprising that keeping this flame alive is vital to our physiology and evolution, explaining many quirks of our past and our lives today.”

I beg to differ on terminology. I think this story is surprising. Being able to ‘explain’ something or at least string together a logical narrative with scientific arguments, does not make it any less surprising. The story is wonder-ful and awe-some. An excellent writer such as Lane evokes in the reader this sense of wonder.

Magic: Art or Science?

We typically refer to a magician as one steeped in the knowledge of the magical arts, not the magical sciences. Today, this seems oxymoronic at an educational institution. If we think of the subjects taken by Harry Potter and his classmates at Hogwarts, they sound rather science-y and applied-vocational – not at all what we would colloquially call the “arts” today.

The Arts sounds subjective, conjuring up notions of the fine arts – painting, dance, music, theatre, photography, and more. In many schools, these are sometimes grouped under the umbrella of the Humanities. Here you have literature, history, philosophy, religious studies, languages. With the exception of History of Magic and Ancient Runes, Hogwarts students do not seem to have any other formal coursework in the humanities. (Muggle Studies seems to be more of a social studies course, and Divination might be a pretend-science.) I’m sure there are extra-curricular activities that involve the arts; but that’s true in the Muggle world too – with funding cuts in education unfortunately resulting in the arts being slashed from the curriculum.

But perhaps it makes sense that a school of magic’s main purpose is to teach students how to control and use magic responsibly, thus the coursework has a strong applied slant. Since magic typically involves the manipulation of objects in the natural world, they have a science-y component as well. Care of Magical Creatures and Herbology intersect well with Zoology and Botany. Potions is clearly Chemistry. Astronomy is Astronomy. Arithmancy, I’ve argued is Physical Chemistry. Transfiguration, Charms and Defense against the Dark Arts sound like laboratory-exercises – practicum in a controlled environment. In medieval times, a budding art-isan learned the “secret art” or craft from a more experienced artisan through an apprenticeship. In contrast, a school with common formalized subjects and methodology might imply a transition from subjectivity to objectivity; Art to Science. After all, one of the so-called tenets of the scientific method is objective experimental repeatability.

The liberal arts are often misunderstood today because the words “liberal” and “arts” have changed colloquially in meaning over time. In ancient times, Art wasn’t just about art but more about craftsmanship. The Arts had a strong practical slant, differentiating themselves from the theorizing of philosophers. Yesterday’s Art is today’s Science. In medieval times, and certainly among the alchemists, there was a hiddenness associated with their art. The wizarding world of Harry Potter has its International Statute of Secrecy.

Should the Hogwarts curriculum have more of the Humanities and Social Sciences? I would think that (Magical) Ethics is important – but perhaps it is taught through the practical use-of-magic courses. We certainly see the theoretical slant of defensive magic when Umbridge teaches. How about Economics, if say you wanted to work at Gringotts? Or political science if you were interested in a career with the Ministry of Magic? Perhaps you were given on-the-job training as part of your career. Your schooling at Hogwarts was not meant for these purposes. As to other social aspects, perhaps the residential community played an important role in inculcating values – practically, rather than theoretically in a classroom.

In our world today, liberal arts education is fighting a rearguard action for relevance. Employers want skills, but want universities to supply majors trained in such skills. Perhaps we have something to learn from Hogwarts. It provides an education that is important, practical, and useful, yet not career-specific. It gives you the skills and the freedom to parlay your skillset into a variety of careers. That’s what the liberal arts means – learning the skills to live life fully and freely. It’s not about art or science, humanities versus STEM, subjective against objective, and many other false dichotomies.

Lost in a Good Book

I’m supposed to be making progress through The Vital Question but instead I got Lost in a Good Book. Several actually. It’s hard to resist the wacky writing of Jasper Fforde in his Thursday Next series. I’ve now read the first three: The Eyre Affair, Lost in a Good Book, and The Well of Lost Plots. While I’ve known about Fforde’s books for a while, I resisted starting on the series not having read Jane Eyre, nor much other literature for that matter. However, sometime in the last two years I watched the movie on DVD (the lazy way of learning the story). Since I’m on holiday and my sister has the first four books in a precious boxed-set, I thought I’d start on The Eyre Affair.

It didn’t matter that I could not remember most of the Jane Eyre story. I’m sure I also missed the multiple references to other ‘great’ works of literature. But for those that I did notice, they added richness to the lunatic narrative. It’s difficult to define the genre of Fforde’s writing. It’s like a cross between Once Upon A Time and Continuum, although it precedes both TV series (and is much better than both). If you want a good dose of literature and languages, techno-wizardry and time-jumping, than the adventures of Thursday Next, the plucky heroine (yes, that is her name) might be up your alley. Words are the main feature of the books. Grammar suddenly becomes interesting when pesky and potentially fatal grammasites attack you. A mispelling vyrus can be equally deadly.

I don’t know much about Fforde, and his Wikipedia entry is rather thin. But he has many admirers. There is an annual Fforde Fiesta, billing itself as “the gathering of fans of Jasper Fforde and those who like to embrace absurdity”. His writing may be absurd, but I found it very educational – in the sense that it made me want to broaden my horizons and learn more. I had a similar feeling watching snippets of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton on YouTube. I did not know much about Alexander Hamilton, but I started learning more. Fforde and Miranda are motivators for the quintessential liberal arts education and life-long learning. They’ve done a lot of work re-packaging what one might have encountered as dry history and boring literature and made it come alive!

In the third book, Thursday Next is introduced to Generics – characters who don’t quite have a role or personality yet and are “in training”. They are eager and fast learners. Our brains seem to be wired for learning. Watching a child learn is miraculous – the fluidity, the speed, the delight. Then we beat out curiosity and love of learning through a system of education borrowed from the industrialists and the military, where efficiency and standardization reign. This does not stop learning per se, but it constrains school lessons into bitter medicine, and learners turn elsewhere for their sweets. Computers and the internet has widened the choice of such delights. The immersive worlds (of Warcraft and many others) reward the learning of its myriad and intricate details. Just ask any enthusiast and you will be amazed at their knowledge.

Sadly, life-after-school becomes work – another chore, where creativity in many cases might draw reprimands from a supervisor. In that sense, I’m very fortunate to be an academic working at a university where I can be creative in my classes and in my scholarship, for the most part without the higher-ups breathing down my neck to be more “efficient”. That doesn’t mean my work is easy – it is challenging, but pleasurably so. Computer game designers have figured out the sweet spot for their target audience: there must be both frustration and reward, in a virtuous cycle that leads to increasingly more difficult challenges. I love puzzles. If they are too easy, I lose interest quickly. If too difficult, I give up in frustration. Finding the students’ zone of proximal development can be tricky, and it’s a moving target. This is the challenge for me as a teacher, embedded in a much larger edifice that rewards efficiency and throughput. But is that simply the nature of nature? The Vital Question argues that increasing the efficiency of energy transduction to drive entropy generation drove the evolution of life.

A liberal arts education, I would hope, leads to the creativity of a Jasper Fforde who can step outside the box, mix genres, introduce novelty, and make the reader think. Here’s one of those thoughtful passages from The Well of Lost Plots. A regular resident is explaining to the main protagonist part of how the BookWorld works, and by extension the magic of books and reading.

“Write is only the word we use to describe the recording process. The Well of Lost Plots is where we interface the writer’s imagination with the characters and plots so that it will make sense in the reader’s mind. After all, reading is arguably a far more creative and imaginative process than writing; when the reader creates emotion in their head, or the smell of a warm summer’s breeze on their face, they should reserve as much praise for themselves as they do for the writer – perhaps more.”

I should get back to The Vital Question, although Fforde actually poses one possible solution to the enriching primordial broth that led to the origin-of-life. You might have guessed that it involves time-travel. (I’ve speculated on this here. Fforde’s version however is much wackier with a back story, or maybe it’s a front story.) To find out, you’ll have to get Lost in a Good Book.