On parents.

I am, in general, very very similar to both my parents. Both write and read, and I'm the only one of dad's children to have inherited that. But I'm so, so grateful for it. I grew up in a household of intellect and creativity and learning, and that defines who I am. Dad's published a book. Mom does NaNoWriMo every year. We have bookshelves in nearly every room of the house and one room with walls of shelving--and we're running out of space.

So I've never really had any reason to resent or feel superior to my parents. They're reasonable in regards to rules, fair with punishments, and we agree in most ideological discussions. We have similar values and like similar things. I really do feel comfortable talking to them about most things. (Believe me, I know I'm lucky to have cool parents. I don't take it for granted.)

I hope that I'll parent like my parents someday. That I'll teach my kids to be readers. That I won't dismiss their requests out of hand, even if they're to go to events half way across the country. That I'll respect their decisions about their own lives and treat them like real people with real feelings instead of as someone to control because "they're kids and they don't know better." That I'll teach them to love learning, to enjoy going to museums as much as water parks and to read as often as they watch TV. But if any of the lessons don't stick, that I'll accept that they are their own people and let them do whatever it is even if I don't like it.

From dad, I hope I can learn that there's nothing wrong with working hard, being poor, or not being educated. The way I grew up (and am growing up), it's easy to get stuck in a bubble of pretension and forget that there are other things in life than being educated and intelligent. I may value that above all else, but I hope I can remember to see worth in other paths of life.

From mom, I'd like to get groundedness. She's much more able to handle reality than dad ever was, philosopher as he is. She manages our finances, does most odd jobs around the house, does most decorating, organizing, yard work, and essentially takes care of the details of everyday life that dad and I tend to have trouble dealing with.

And as far as things I don't want to get? The biggest things probably lie in the genetic inheritance of anxiety disorders. It's rather personal, so I won't say much about it here, but both of my parents have struggled with depression and anxiety through their lives, and I'd rather like to avoid that if it's at all possible, though I often think I probably won't be so lucky.

On imagining people complexly.

The problem I have with any negative prediction of the future is that it invites the reader to take on an 'us vs. them' attitude about the topic of choice. The Pedestrian is meant to make you think about your own behavior, but because the point-of-view character is the odd man out, it makes you feel as if you are as well. "This is a reflection of the worst parts of our society," you think, "because all those other people spend their time indoors, watching TV!" Because you're looking from the outside in, it's easy to fall into the trap of seeing yourself as not a product of your society, as different from everyone else, as the lone free-thinking individual in a world of sheep. It's easy to make dramatic predictions about the damage cell phones can do while thinking of your own use as necessary and reasonable.

It's important to consider, when going in to this topic, the autonomy of every person involved. Easy as it is to think of people as mindless technology addicts, it just isn't true for most of us--or if it is, it's unlikely that anyone writing an article about it doesn't fall into that category as well. Every person has a consciousness and lives a real life, and claiming, for example, that giving teenagers cell phones will make them unable to stop themselves from making bad choices both infantilizes them and insults their free will. Every day, people are using cell phones for great things--keeping in touch with people who don't live nearby, contacting the right people more efficiently in emergencies, and, yes, browsing the internet to look up useful information. The innovations in that field are good things, and a great many people get enjoyment and good use out of new technologies.

 So who exactly are these other people who are using it poorly? Those people with worse judgement than you, people who aren't reasonable like you are, people who don't have the free will you do and are just slaves to Apple, that ultimate paragon of mindless consumerism--except, of course, when you use it. It's extremely difficult to present a negative trend objectively and without invoking this attitude forcefully.

So do I think that too much cell phone use can be a bad thing? Yes. But do I think that cell phones themselves are bad, or that the solution to people misusing them is to not allow them at all, or anything like that? Absolutely not. And I think that, when making suggestions about ways to 'fix' the problem of cell phone use, one should first consider whether what they're saying applies to them, and if it doesn't? Maybe they should think a little harder.

On merit pay.

The problem with teacher merit pay is that it sounds like an excellent idea, but often functions poorly in the real world (like communism, some would say). I'm fairly certain that it would be supremely ineffective if it were implemented in this school, mostly because I have very little faith in the administration to make decent decisions about anything, much less as delicate a topic as this.

I really think something needs to be done about teachers' pay. There's so little money in teaching that it's become a last-resort job; "those who can't do, teach," as they say. So the people doing the educating are themselves not particularly well-educated, effective, or intelligent, many times. And even when there are effective teachers, they're hard to identify and therefore often not rewarded, and vapid, uncreative teachers who are only teaching because they have to are on a level playing field with smart, inventive teachers who teach because they love it. 

However, there are some major problems with merit pay. Most of the points made in the article are valid--favoritism and problem students would skew the results. And I disagree emphatically with the effectiveness of standardized testing, so I don't think basing it on numbers would be a positive thing at all. You could eliminate some problems by basing pay on student evaluations, but that would cause a whole other set of problems, because many students would give positive ratings to lenient teachers with easy classes, and a lot less learning would probably get done.

Merit pay is a solid idea to solve a serious problem, and there are some changes that could be made to improve it (base it on a combination of test scores, administrative evaluation, and student evaluation, for example), but ultimately I doubt that a practical application could ever work. There are just a few too many holes to fill, I think.

ETA: I'd love to do a blog post on copyright law on the internet, online piracy, and creative commons/transformative works.

On charity.

To be honest, I don't have an opinion on this topic. I'm a hippie, a liberal, a bleeding-heart INFP, and I think we should help everyone all the time with everything. The enormous unfairness of seeing people who have more than they could possibly need side-by-side with people who have nothing is so overwhelming that I try to avoid thinking about it whenever possible to keep from falling into despair and ceasing to be a functioning human being.

The types of charity I tend to support most focus on education, knowledge, and reading, including easy access to books in impoverished areas. As I've said before, I think achieving the greatest possible understanding and knowledge of the world is a worthwhile goal for anyone to pursue, and I want to help make that option available to as many people as possible.

That said, I know that many people don't value intelligence and information as much as I do, and I don't begrudge anyone for supporting something different. Any charity work is worthwhile, as long as you're making informed decisions on the best organizations to assist (if, for example, you choose the organization whose name you know best, it's likely that they aren't a very effective charity because they're spending their money on advertising--basically, do your research before you donate or volunteer).

So yes, if it were up to me, I'd donate the money to the HPA's Accio Books campaign or our local library. But luckily it's up to someone more informed, capable and decisive than me to choose between Africa and the Huntington food pantry, both of which are immensely worthwhile causes.

On love.

Once again, I have no idea where to begin with this prompt. I can't express my thoughts honestly and clearly because I don't have the faintest idea what they are. I know what I think about love as a force and a cause and a part of life, but defining it, looking at it for what it is rather than what it does, seems impossible to do adequately, especially since I have very little experience in the matter.

One thing I do know: love does not have to be romantic. This seems sort of obvious, but it's easy to forget given our society's vast overemphasis on romantic and sexual relationships. But just as asexual people can have romantic relationships, aromantic people can experience love. It's of the platonic variety, between friends or family members, but that can be just as powerful, if not as glorified, as romance.

That said, I think it's definitely possible to get married without romantic love. Love of some form--even friendly, vague affection, platonic love, or any variation thereupon--should always be present, I think, but romance doesn't have to factor into it if that's not what's right for you. Also, I don't think love has to be the only reason at all. Getting married to your best friend so you can get a tax break is a completely legitimate decision too, though decidedly less socially acceptable, because our society, in general, still believes in the limiting and unrealistic idea of a romantic, heterosexual, monogamous soulmate for every single person in the world.

I don't know what's true for me yet, as it largely depends on people I have yet to meet in situations I have yet to find myself in. But I know I believe that whatever makes you happy is completely valid, no matter what society says is correct. Not straight? That's cool. Non-romantic? That's cool too. Non-gender-binary? Sure, whatever. Non-sexual? Absolutely, go ahead. Heterosexual, cisgender, monogamous, and generally matching all society's standards? Awesome, have fun with that. One of the greatest things about living in a free society is that everyone's personal truth can be respected and pursued, and while America is not quite 'there' yet in terms of legal and social freedom of love, we're certainly working on it.

On "The Dumbest Generation".

As with yesterday's discussion about freedom of speech, the internet is a complicated topic which I feel very strongly about. I could write a novel about this without much effort. But since according to Mark Bauerlein, no one born after 1982 reads those anymore, I'll try to keep this relatively short.

We are not the dumbest generation. The internet does not make you stupid. Failing to remember trivial facts is not an indicator of low intelligence, because, as we know, comprehension and beyond is what really matters (Quad D!); instead, it's an indicator of the fact that the internet allows us to store information elsewhere. Our internal hard-drives are no longer the only thing available to us; we can store all the information we'd ever need on wikipedia, leaving more room in our brains for doing the sorts of things a computer can't--higher order thought processes.

In fact, many of the things Bauerlein posits are negative consequences of the internet age--narcissism, illiteracy, pop culture obsession, microscopic attention spans--are either patently untrue or viewed through a lens that is, itself, outdated. I'd like to see his explanation for the fact that young adult literature has exploded in the same time frame as the internet, or what he thinks of the Vlogbrothers--two video bloggers who discuss the world intelligently, critically, and honestly, as well as educate their viewers on science, history, and literature, and who have thousands of teenage fans. Is that not a powerful example of the good the net does for those who've grown up in its clutches? Or are their 700 thousand subscribers--and the millions of teens reading YA--just outliers, inconvenient data points in his narrow-minded view of the damage caused by the internet?

And there's something else Bauerlein fails to understand--the internet does change the way people think, behave, and develop. But it's not something to be afraid of, it's something to adapt to. If the internet makes it so that people don't remember things they can find online, so what? Pretty soon there will be no one to insist on the importance of rote memorization. If the net is actually going to make sweeping changes to the way people think, it's going to change society too, because the people are what make the society. Meanwhile, he's writing this from the point of view of the current paradigm, which will be gone in two generations.

He says that two-thirds of undergrads score above average on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory--but all that does, by definition, is raise the average. In fact, that statistic is very telling of his viewpoint--he's essentially comparing students today to students of the past and framing the results negatively, as though the past test-takers who created this 'average' in the first place are better than those of today. But I don't think change is not inherently bad, contrary to an unexamined assumption which Bauerlein seems to stand on for most of his article.

I object to this article so strongly in part because it insults me personally. It speaks of teenagers' "brazen disregard of books and learning" as I sit reading it in a room full of my personal book collection. It tells me that the internet will make me stupid while I consistently use it to talk to people with different worldviews, learn more about topics I find interesting, and generally remain as informed as possible about the world and the morals involved in navigating it. It bemoans "juvenile mental habits" caused by the web while I actively try to think critically about the things I read and watch, with the assistance of a dialogue made possible by, you guessed it, the internet.

Bauerlein's article speaks of teenagers as though they're a different species, a faceless group who are helplessly manipulated by their environment without any control in the matter, rather than full, living, thinking humans who actually have unique personalities and exist, like everyone, along a spectrum of intelligence and thoughtfulness. His drastic oversimplification of the teenage experience has the potential to do much more damage than the internet ever will.

(A side note, to Mr. Roush--I feel like these blogs are some of the best things I've written for this class, and I was wondering if you'd consider commenting on any of the posts?)

On Censorship.

Reading the two articles on this topic, I didn't know what to think. Freedom of speech is a complicated topic, and both writers are making powerful, persuasive entreaties, but to opposite ends. Both articles make valid points, and it's hard to know which is right. But there's a quote from the first article which I find so resoundingly true that it gave me a starting point from which to form an opinion.

Idiocy thrives in the dark, not in dialogue.

and its partner,

Idiocy does not die in darkness but, rather, in dialogue.

One of the things I believe in most strongly is the greatest possible freedom of information in all parts of life. I want to learn, I want to understand things to the best of my ability, I want to make good judgements and decisions, and I can't do any of those things inside a cloud of vague misinformation like what's offered by any strongly biased source of knowledge.

So while I disagree with the comments Guillen made, and a part of me wants to just say 'let's make the idiots shut up,' I know that would be counter-intuitive and hypocritical. Because even if his comments are ignorant, he should have the right to make them, just as authors and educators the world over should be allowed to give bias-free information to the best of their abilities. Just as everyone should speak without retribution from those who would keep people in the dark for fear of promoting idiocy.