La Tavola Calda

Please visit us at our new home~

2012-07-01T12:06:00.001-07:00

La Tavola Calda is now Mom Psych. We look forward to seeing you there!

Innovative Educators: Saving American Schools

2009-04-23T15:49:00.000-07:00

Ask a dozen Americans across demographics to comment on public education and there is likely to be general agreement: the system needs help.

Unfortunately, as with most issues, the problem is easier to define than the solution. How does one fix it? And whose responsibility is it? Government has poured astronomical sums into the education system without securing long-term successful change, and those within the community who don't have school-age children sometimes forget that other people's children may someday be making decisions that affect their retirement. Political and social bickering can erect roadblocks to change that seem impossible for traditional schools to overcome—and even if the roadblocks come down, school officials may have no idea where to begin to implement effective change.

Occasionally, however, a group of innovative educators arrives in a community and offers a viable alternative to the status quo. It's fairly obvious when this has happened: ecstatic parents whisk their children out of failing traditionally-modeled schools and stampede to the new alternative.

To the immense relief of many local parents, one such group of innovators landed on Pasadena's doorstep early in 2007. The public school system in this small California city had been plagued for decades with socio-economic divisions and a sub-standard reputation, but when Kate Bean arrived on the scene with her experienced educational design team, a reason to hope was born. Bean's new school, which opened in the fall of 2007, is not only innovative in teaching methods, but also in aspiration: to create an environment where children will grow "intellectually, physically, and socially" with a heavy emphasis on developing a sense of community responsibility, healthy living and leadership skills. As a free charter school within the Pasadena Unified School District, Aveson was envisioned as a K-12 learning community where each age group could contribute in the education of the whole.

It seemed to be perfect timing. Initial enrollment coincided with another significant and positive change: the replacement of the district's school superintendent. According to the Pasadena Weekly, there was every reason to hope that the groundwork was being laid for significant change—even though the replacement, Edwin Diaz, was being asked to "deal with the legacy of one of the worst administrations in local public school history."

Wisely, Diaz seemed to have no intention of operating as a maverick. He approached the challenge with a team spirit: "Any improvement is going to be a community wide effort." Diaz told the L.A. Times. "This is not the type of situation where you can go in in isolation and begin implementing things you think will have an effect on student performance. We have to reach out to stakeholders and get them involved as much as possible."

Many of those stakeholders have been thriving at Aveson for nearly two years now, an important part of the community-wide effort Diaz envisioned: often real change must be preceded by successful individual experiments that can be emulated on a larger scale. In Pasadena, at least, Aveson seems to be one such success.

Bringing Generations Together: Using Classrooms to Build Communities

2009-03-30T10:14:00.000-07:00

The best intergenerational programs attempt to address at least two issues at once. A common set would be, for instance, the isolation of the elderly along with the education of youth. If three or more issues can be addressed by one program it can only be considered a bonus.

Researchers from the University of Tennessee could be said to have reached this level of success with a 2003 study, in which they attempted to demonstrate how older adults could affect the school behavior patterns of young children, as well as their attitudes toward the elderly. In this case, the children were 4th graders.

Using an inner-city school as the laboratory, researchers chose two classes as the control group (who continued classroom instruction in the usual way) while two similar classes participated in an outdoor version of the curriculum alongside volunteer elders from a nearby senior center. The "Intergenerational Outdoor Classroom Project" ran two days a week for four weeks.

The findings? Children who participated in the intergenerational project had significant improvement in attitude scores toward older adults, as well as significant improvement in overall school behavior. The control group did not.

According to the researchers, these findings were not a huge surprise. Speaking to the first finding, they had this to say:

"Children's negative attitudes toward elders have often been associated with a lack of positive contact between these two groups." But the researchers point out that not all interactions between these groups are positive. In fact, recalling past studies they note that when contact occurs between children and the elderly in nursing homes, negative attitudes are not changed. Because the elders in this study were actively engaged in interacting with the students, however, the children saw them as positive role models and could imagine being like them someday.

The second finding had multifaceted benefits. "[Behaviorally] at-risk children pose special challenges to school systems already strained with limited budgets," the researchers pointed out. "Research suggests that children with behavioral problems benefit from higher teacher-student ratios, increased adult role models, and non-traditional teaching methods. Higher adult to children ratios can help prevent behavior problems, like school bullying."

The adults from the senior center ameliorated all of these conditions through their participation. They increased the teacher-student ratios, served as role models, and simply by virtue of their presence defined a non-traditional classroom situation, even without considering the outdoor setting.

Perhaps the adults even gained something from the experience themselves—although the latter aspect was not examined: a circumstance the researchers in retrospect viewed as a weakness of the study. Nevertheless, say the researchers, "anecdotal evidence suggests that the elders found their involvement with the children to be highly rewarding."

And sometimes—in the arena of human relationships at least—anecdotal evidence can be the most satisfying kind.

The Question of Homework: Does It Foster Love of Learning?

2009-03-23T09:21:00.000-07:00

Is homework necessary for young children, or is it burdensome? This debate is not new to America, but in recent years it has gained new momentum. News sources from PBS to The Washington Post have discussed the issue, searching for the balance that would educate children at all socio-economic levels without overloading them. Some innovative schools have begun to work at eliminating the kind of monotonous busy-work that kills a child's incentive to learn and keeps them from their families for extended periods in the evenings.

But could all homework be bad for children? Homework proponents insist that some subjects cannot be mastered without repetitive rote memorization. Even homework critics allow for the fact that well thought-out assignments can certainly contribute to a child's love of learning, especially when it requires the full engagement of an inquiring mind. However, many educators believe that the over-application of monotonous rote learning often has the opposite affect.

In addition, some teachers find that when children are left on their own to complete homework, their misunderstandings about certain tasks can become entrenched. Unfortunately, fewer families than ever are intact, and single parents may find themselves working long hours with less time and energy to spend helping children complete assignments.

Even if they do find time to help children through their homework, that may be the only time parents and children share between the end of the workday and bedtime.

So, homework or no homework? Which is best way for parents to help children learn?

John Holt, educator and author of the two profound classics How Children Fail and How Children Learn, made some perceptive observations as early as the mid-sixties. "It is before they get to school that children are likely to do their best learning," he noted, reasoning that this is because children begin life wanting to learn. Because they have an innate excitement for exploration and discovery, the way they learn before school may be the most effective method by which they will be ever be taught.

"Vivid, vital, pleasurable experiences are the easiest to remember," Holt points out, adding that "memory works best when unforced." In contrast, we think and learn badly when we're afraid or anxious.

Unfortunately, Holt insisted, most schools are less concerned with excitement, exploration or discovery—which are pleasurable experiences to a child—and more concerned with fragmentary and industrialized forms of learning.

As a result, he says, "[children] are bored because the things they are given and told to do in school are so trivial, so dull, and make such limited and narrow demands on the wide spectrum of their intelligence, capabilities and talents."

This accusation could be made against some kinds of homework as well, which might suggest that parents could be better off spending their meagre time with their children in more productive ways.

In fact, if parents were able to consistently spend leisure time with their children at home, perhaps some of the behavioral problems that interfere with classroom learning would begin to dissipate. As a result, teachers might find themselves with more time to teach, and under less pressure to meet testing standards.

It should not be surprising that engaged parenting is the pivotal factor leading to the creation of any such upward spiral. Homework or no homework, parents will always have an important role to play in nurturing a child's love of learning. In fact, it may be that positive family and community relationships have much more to do with a child's educational success than any other consideration worthy of debate.

Everything I Ever Needed to Know, I Learned at the Zoo

2008-02-03T14:06:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I think we underestimate the educational wealth to be gained from our pets. I mean, think about it. If you viewed the world the way your cat does, you'd find it a lot easier to respond to barbs and insults with a casual eyebrow-lift and a wide yawn. You might inadvertently expose your claws as you stretched before rolling over, but it wouldn't really mean anything beyond extreme boredom.

If you viewed the world the way your dog does, you'd see only the good in people and you'd go into every relationship expecting the best. The question, "what am I, chopped liver?" would mean nothing to you, you LOVE chopped liver. You'd appreciate the little things other people do for you, and even if they gave you leftovers you'd wag your tail and make them feel as though they'd given you the moon.

You never see a pet Iguana disturbed even to the point of blinking at adversity, and fish don't waste effort worrying about things that may or may not happen. It's pretty much "just keep swimming" for them, and "living in a fishbowl" doesn't give them a reason to have a nervous breakdown.

But apparently, having a pet isn't just an exercise in uncovering life's little lessons. According to researchers, animals return very real physical and mental health gifts to their human companions. Hence the focus on Animal Assisted Therapy by psychiatrists, hospitals, therapists and other health professionals.

Does your genetic imprint leave you with an elevated risk for heart attacks? Studies such as one undertaken by Australia's Baker Medical Research Institute find that having a pet lowers blood pressure and cholesterol levels by a degree equal to that of typically recommended dietary changes.

Suffering from depression? Recovering from surgery? Animals can help you return to normal measureably sooner.

Are you close to a child who may be experiencing some form of abuse or neglect in the home? Researchers find that a relationship with a family pet can ameliorate some of the attachment insecurities and other deficiencies such children develop. Even if you can't introduce a pet into the home, occasional visits with an animal can be helpful, especially when an accompanying adult can explain the right treatment of the pet to the child.

Considering all the benefits to be gained from pet companionship, perhaps there are ways we can repay our four-footed (or no-footed) friends. If nothing comes to mind immediately, you might check out last Thursday's post by my friend Lisa McGlaun on Life Prints. As Victor Hugo suggested, we may have more to gain from pet relationships than research has yet upturned:

"From the oyster to the eagle, from the swine to the tiger, all animals are to be found in men and each of them exists in some man, sometimes several at the time. Animals are nothing but the portrayal of our virtues and vices made manifest to our eyes, the visible reflections of our souls. God displays them to us to give us food for thought."

The Truth About Wine

2007-08-26T12:09:00.000-07:00

It's good for you!

Oh, I know what you're thinking: "Sure, everything that was bad for you is good for you suddenly. Chocolate, caffeine, wine--isn't it just a rash of wishful thinking and media hype?"

Actually, it isn't. Though once looked down upon as mere fluff on the fringes of an acceptable diet, these fabulous foods have been gaining new respect in the scientific community for more than a decade. And for good reason. The health-benefits of wine have now been widely researched, and research on coffee, tea and chocolate is accumulating as well. The good news can be traced to a wide range of polyphenols: a group of healthy, plant-based substances that include resveratrol and all types of flavonoids--some of which are condensed tannins. These are all powerful antioxidants capable of conferring enormous health benefits when ingested by humans.

In 2001, US Patent #6063770 was issued to the inventor of a cancer treatment that used tannic acid and tannin complexes as "a method of stripping N-acetyl neuraminic acid from a cancer cell surface allowing recognition of said cancer cell by the immune system."

A 2005 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found there was no linear association between caffeine and hypertension, despite the fact that past studies had apparently found one. What was different about their study? They broke out the caffeine drinks by type. Their conclusion? It wasn't caffeine that was the problem. It's the kinds of drinks you choose. In the words of the researchers, "even though habitual coffee consumption was not associated with an increased risk of hypertension, consumption of sugared or diet cola was associated with it. Further research to elucidate the role of cola beverages in hypertension is warranted."

A 2007 study by the American Academy of Neurology found that caffeine exhibited a protective effect against cognitive decline in older women.

Give caffeine to your ADHD child to make him or her less hyperactive? Surely not. But according to the Journal of Attention Disorders: "Studies examining caffeine's effects on cognitive, psychomotor, and affective functioning of children with ADHD were reviewed. For children with ADHD, caffeine was more effective than no treatment in decreasing impulsivity, aggression, and parents' and teachers' perceptions of children's symptom severity, and more effective than placebo in decreasing hyperactivity and teachers' perceptions of children's symptom severity, and in improving executive functioning/planning."

As for the red wine headaches that plague some would-be drinkers: contrary to popular belief they are not caused by sulfites. There are more sulfites in white wine than in red, and sulfites are naturally occurring substances in many other foods. In fact, if sulfites are going to cause a problem at all, it will usually be a breathing problem rather than a headache.

Many people who get red wine headaches have noticed that some types of wine give them problems while others do not. Those with the patience and stomach to experiment have sometimes found an association to the type of oak barrels the wine may have been aged in.

Regardless of the cause, considering that caffeine is an active ingredient in some headache medicines, go ahead and enjoy that glass of red wine with dinner. Just be sure to have a good, strong cup of Italian coffee afterward!

New Canadian TV Show Looks for August Weddings

2007-07-29T12:42:00.000-07:00

by Gina Stepp

August is the second biggest month of the year for weddings, so it's no surprise that Wedding SOS, a new series planned for SLICE network, has recently placed an advertisement calling for couples whose nuptials will be held that month in 2007. The idea, apparently, is that host Jane Dayus-Hinch will act as "fairy godmother" to fix any wedding snafus that may occur on the special day. As is the usual practice with fairy godmothers, you only get three wishes and presumably one of them is not allowed to be "I wish to have a hundred more wishes," or anything along those lines.

Three wishes may be sufficient to ensure the success of most weddings, actually. Especially if their snafus are of a practical nature, such as an unplugged freezer that has resulted in the loss of a spectacular ice-sculpture, or an absent-minded best man who has accidentally swallowed the bride's wedding ring. But I'm curious to see how they plan to fix the really difficult problems: like a distant father-daughter relationship that has left the bride without anyone to walk her down the aisle.

In case Wedding SOS doesn't have that part covered, it might be helpful for August brides to read Like Father, Like . . . Daughter, which explores some of the concepts taught by Dr. Linda Nielsen of Wake Forest University in her Fathers and Daughters class.

According to Nielsen, who has taught her course for about 20 years, there is a great deal a daughter can do on her own to change the relationship she has with her father--and, in fact, for her own peace of mind, she says, a daughter should make the initial steps, whether or not her father even seems interested.

If her efforts don't yield results, a bride is no worse off than before and at least has the satisfaction of knowing she tried once more. With a free conscience, she can then use one of her wishes and hope fairy godmother Jane Dayus-Hinch conjures up an appropriate substitute!

Keynote

2007-06-14T23:14:00.000-07:00

by Haley Stepp

Guest blogger Haley Stepp is a 14-year-old sophomore at California State University who recently covered Silverdocs (the noted documentary film festival) for Lady DaVinci.com

Ted Leonsis spoke about filmanthropy today in his Keynote session. It was an intriguing view on the goal of filmmaking; many filmmakers seem either to want to make money, or to want to change the world—but Leonsis’s view stood out because it allowed for the simultaneous application of both approaches.

Of course, Leonsis explained, profit is important. If you take to a producer an idea that will bring your company into debt, you’ll (naturally) be fired. However, he continued, it is very hard to make a profit from documentaries. Instead of focusing entirely on business, filmmakers should ask themselves whether their films make a difference. In other words, they should try to change the world while not forgetting about profit. Leonsis believes filmmakers can awaken thoughts and ideas in other people while creating a sense of fulfillment in themselves.

Referred to as a "pioneer of the new media industry," Leonsis is known for his philanthropy, so it is no surprise to hear him stress that filmmaking should give people happiness. If a career or line of work doesn’t give people happiness, he proposed in his address—be it the worker or those enjoying their products—then there’s no reason to continue with that career. And Leonsis realizes that happiness does not come from wealth.

Leonsis’s thoughtful approach to profit is worth pondering. Though he insisted that profit is not everything, he sees the advantage of profit through the internet: as the internet grows more and more prevalent, it becomes more possible to reach a larger audience with film. And it is true—the the world is becoming an increasingly online one; as a college student, I spend much of my time on the computer doing research for papers, looking for media, and creating media of my own. My attention could well be caught and held by an interesting “online documentary.” Filmmakers should not neglect the internet as they pursue theatres. The possibility exists to reach a much larger audience, and gain a greater opportunity to change the world. And—not forgetting about profit—to make more money than ever before.

Notes From the Future

2007-06-13T13:04:00.000-07:00

Guest blogger Haley Stepp is a 14-year-old sophomore at California State University who recently covered Silverdocs (the noted documentary film festival) for Lady DaVinci.

The “Notes From the Future” panel on June 13 provided some interesting insights into the future of filmmaking, as well as several filmmakers’ responses to this possible future. I find this quite an intriguing topic, as we live in a rapidly changing world, altered by growing knowledge and technology. Since this world is strongly affected by media, changes in the media will affect the world.

The conclusion of the panel left that the internet will continue to change film, but that the model of filmmaking will stay the same. According to G.J. Echternkamp, the producer of Frank and Cindy, people will always prefer watching movies on a television or theatre screen, and will always appreciate well-made, high-budget films. The internet, he thinks, will not become much more than a promotional place for video. The other panelists shared similar opinions.

I partially agree with his view. Though I have watched films on the internet, it is more exciting to watch them on a television or theatre screen; most of the people I know feel the same. I have high confidence, therefore, that well-made theatre films will remain an integral part of the film experience. However, I do believe that an increasing number of people will extend that experience to the internet, as well. Already there are web sites on which one can watch full-length movies when programmed media conflicts with one’s schedule. There are online rental sites, as well, that allow downloading. This online film experience will most likely continue to expand, but people will also continue to pay for the majority of their films.

From a college student's point of view, today's panel discussion covered some interesting material, although it was presented in a somewhat disorganized fashion. The panelists spent a lot of time expressing their dissatisfaction with internet media and their hopes that the internet will not impact the film industry negatively; this brought attention away from possible developments for the future, which was the purported topic. Instead the focus got stuck on those things the panelists don’t like about the current effects of internet on film, and strayed to the future only when discussing the negative: things they hope the future will not bring. However, there were several good insights on the part of the panelists, which illuminated some interesting possibilities for the future of film.

Time to be Plutoed

2007-01-10T22:08:00.000-08:00

by Gina Stepp

On January 2, 1928, Time Magazine featured its first “Man of the Year," aviator Charles Lindbergh. It was a brilliant solution to the year-end dilemma presented by a traditionally slow news week. As a result, what is now called (in modern parlance) the “Person” of the Year, has been an eagerly anticipated feature of Time Magazine ever since. This was, in fact, the reason I stayed glued to CNN on the evening of December 16. It was a Saturday night….a night when anything can happen and no one ordinarily wants to stay home. So why did I? I wanted to find out whether for 2006, by some wild fluke, the person of the year just might be me.

And it was! Imagine my surprise. I should mention there was just the tiniest unexpected letdown though. Once you’ve made the cover of Time as Person of the Year (as I now have), there’s not really all that much more to anticipate in that quarter. I mean—obviously it’s not going to be me again next year, so where’s the incentive to hang on to the edge of my seat anymore?

I don’t think I’m the only one who feels this way either. In fact, my message to Time is, “move over, my friend, there’s a more interesting year-end prospect in town. Quite frankly, you have been plutoed!” (At this point, the blank expression on Time’s face clues me in to the fact that perhaps it’s having trouble understanding my dialect.) “Plutoed,” I repeat. “Surely you know what it means to be plutoed? And if not--well, then! That’s precisely the reason you have been plutoed.”

But plutoed by whom? Plutoed by what? Well, every January from now on, instead of tuning to CNN to watch the unveiling of Time’s Person of the Year; we will all be glued (via the Infobahn) to http colon, double backslash, www dot, americandialect dot org, in order to discover the current recipient of the honour of…. “The Word of the Year.”

Just in case you’re wondering, the 2006 “Word of the Year” title (by the power of the American Dialect Society), has been awarded to the new expression “to pluto, or to be plutoed.” According to the ADS, ‘to pluto,’ is “to demote or devalue someone or something, as happened to the former planet Pluto when the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union decided Pluto no longer met its definition of a planet.” (See: Dogged! Pluto Stripped of Planetary Status, August 2006).

The ADS (it should be noted) is no fly-by-night organization. “Founded in 1889,” says their website, “the American Dialect Society is dedicated to the study of the English language in North America, and of other languages, or dialects of other languages, influencing it or influenced by it. Our members include academics and amateurs, professionals and dilettantes, teachers and writers.” (More than likely, the dilettantes bit is just to make the Society seem more personable, since the other members listed evoke images of 9th grade English teachers).

At this point it’s important to acknowledge that most of the time, the ADS concentrates on serious language issues. However, like Time Magazine, each December the Society likes to reminisce about those of the past year’s events that could be considered significant in relation to their particular line of work. Also like Time Magazine, the ADS has an effective process for collecting nominations, discussing the merits of each, and counting votes. Distinctly unlike Time Magazine, however, the American Dialect Society has two other important assets. An actual working knowledge of how to relate to the average American, and an understanding of the nation's sense of humour.

Witness the accuracy of the ADS in identifying past winners:

Most Likely to Succeed for 2002: “Blog: from “weblog,” a website of personal events, comments, and links.”
Word of the Year for 2000: “Chad: a small scrap of paper punched from a voting card.”
Most likely to Succeed and Most Useful for 1999: “dot-com: a company operating on the web.”
Most Likely to Succeed for 1997: “DVD: for Digital Versatile Disk; an optical disk expected to replace CDs.”
Most Likely to Succeed for 1992: “snail mail: mail that is physically delivered as opposed to e-mail”
Most Likely to Succeed for 1991: “rollerblade: to skate with rollers in a single row.”

But the Society’s understanding of the nation's sense of humour surfaces in what might be considered the “lesser” categories of new additions to the American dialect:

Most Creative word of 2005: “Whale-tail: the appearance of thong or g-string underwear above the waistband.”
Most Euphemistic of 2004: “Badly-sourced: false.” (This narrowly edged out “Wardrobe malfunction: unanticipated exposure of bodily parts.”)
Most Euphemistic of 2000: “Courtesy Call: an uninvited call from a telemarketer”
Most Euphemistic of 1998: “Senior Moment: momentary lapse of memory due to age.”
Most Original of 1998: "multislacking:" (the ADS defines it as "playing at the computer when one should be working," although I think this is currently more usefully defined as, "ignoring several high-priority tasks at once.")

So, to wrap up my message to Time Magazine, the next time a I get a call from them asking if I'd like a subscription, I'm going to say this:

"Maybe I'm having a senior moment, but your assumption that I would welcome your courtesy call while I'm in the middle of some important multislacking was badly sourced. Next time don't call, send me an ad by snail mail so at least I can deep-six it in the circular file, pronto. If you try any more phone-spamming I might come down with sudden jihad syndrome, or possibly go postal--and that would just be so low rent!"

The Greatest Expedition: In Search of Oneself

2006-10-08T11:29:00.000-07:00

By Anthony Savoia

I grew up in Florida and spent a lot of time in the woods behind our house. We had an inside corner lot at the edge of a fairly new housing development, with only untouched Florida wood and grassland for miles behind our property.

Heaven on earth to any young boy, this seemingly vast wilderness lent itself to endless hours of making trails, exploring new territory and building forts, club houses and bridges across the drainage canals that criss-crossed the area. My childhood imagination would run wild there and I would dream of being one of the earliest settlers in that area and staking a claim to this new land where I could build a new life. I would think about Lewis and Clark and often wished I could have been part of those early explorations, seeing this untouched land for the first time. It was easy to imagine how much fun it would have been to be a great explorer.

Stories about expeditions and explorations both real and imagined still stir my curiosity. Science fiction shows about space travel where new planets and strange things are discovered still appeal to me today, and I know I’m not unique. Most of us can at least understand the fascination that drives the efforts of our own, modern-day trailblazers.

Dr. John Splettstoesser has 55 years experience in Antarctic exploration. He is now an onboard lecturer for a cruise line that specializes in Antarctic trips. He is often quoted as saying, "If a person embarks on a voyage with known itinerary and destination, he is a traveler. If the same person embarks on a journey where the itinerary and destination are not known, he is an explorer.”

This is a grand statement and the more one examines it, the more the truth of it becomes apparent.

Although Splettstoesser doesn’t specify what sorts of destinations a traveler should choose, today’s society has almost overwhelmingly decided that it’s a moot point. The way of the explorer is much more exciting and brings greater virtue and rewards than the way of a mere traveler.

Cancer survivor, Jerry White, wrote a report in which he urged people to, “put aside the mode of thinking that locks them into somebody else’s itinerary and open their minds to put on the explorer mentality. You just may be amazed and pleasantly surprised by where the journey leads you.”

The appeal of being an explorer is one that is easily embraced today. Applied to the grander scheme of life, rather than just specific instances of a particular situation, this becomes a very romantic ideal in the sense that it seems to inspire one to seek out the new and unproven rather than the old and ‘tired’ ways of the generations before it. But is it really as romantic as it sounds?

Many a marriage has foundered on the rocky shores of “exploration.” Without a clear destination, we justify abandoning our commitments in order to “find ourselves.” Because any and all destinations are equally open to us without regard to their worthiness or the worthiness of those things we might have to give up, we no longer have a steady path or a solid end in view. We find that we need to “discover who we are.”

Unfortunately, the problem with finding ourselves through exploration is simply this: we don’t know when we’ve arrived at our destination.

Is it really more fulfilling to be an explorer whose itinerary and destination is not known? Or is it better to know who we are and where we are going?

When we don’t stop to ask for directions

When and how did we come to accept that “finding ourselves” meant throwing away all the maps? The decade of the sixties often takes the blame. After all, it was a time when a young generation began questioning the moral and ethical cultures of the day by promoting the antithesis. Jumping from one ditch into another is a common mistake of youth; and in the sixties, youth demanded society must become more “progressive” (read: permissive). The goals were to ensure that society would enjoy freedom from oppression and intolerance, while advancing the cause of civilization through social reform. Speaking in generalities, the generation was out to find itself. Millions of youth in the “civilized” western world set out to find themselves by pushing the edges of moral and ethical boundaries. Free sex, rampant drug use and disrespect for established institutions were all part of this “self-exploration.”

But to really understand what happened, says Melanie Phillips, a staff writer for Britain’s Daily Mail, “you have to realize that "the sixties" didn't start in 1960.” In a 2004 essay entitled, The Peter Pan Establishment, she notes, “Following World War Two, the revulsion against Nazism turned into hostility towards all forms of repression. This fuelled the rise of the therapy culture, on the basis that suppressing any desire was harmful for the individual. The fact that this happened to be essential for civilization was unfortunately overlooked. No, what became sacrosanct was how we felt about ourselves.” Phillips calls it, “an agenda of radical self-centredness.”

The baby boomers aren’t the only ones with this agenda. According to popular Australian parenting coach, Michael Grose, “Now the years from 18 until 25 and beyond seem to have become a distinct stage of life, where young people seem to have lodged for a while, staving off the responsibilities of full adulthood. This phase has been dubbed the 'twixter' stage…their babyboomer parents don’t want to grow old – they don’t want to grow up."

Nicole Gordon, who writes for Colorado's Mountain Gazette takes issue with being labeled. “I won’t deny that the quarter-life crisis keeps myself and a lot of my twixter friends up at night,” she says. “I would love to find meaningful work that unites who I am with what I do. But I also find the whole thing offensive. The basic premise of labels like kidults, permakids and adultescents is condescending.” Gordon doesn’t believe the generation before hers is any more “adult” than her own. She makes an interesting point. “Why does one need a stable career, mortgage, spouse and children to be considered an adult?” she asks. “Are people who have these things somehow more responsible and mature than those who don’t? And do their lives really have any more clarity or sense of purpose than anyone else’s? Considering that our parents’ divorce rates top 50 percent, the average American household supposedly carries about $9,000 of debt and a recent survey reports that two-thirds of Americans dislike their jobs, I don’t think so.”

Maybe Gordon is right. Perhaps each generation is simply “exploring” on different continents—neither has the edge over the other, because neither generation has a clear destination in mind. Perhaps none of us can find ourselves precisely because we’re too self-centered. We’ve forgotten that humans are social beings—we aren’t islands. Finding ourselves requires shoring up the connections we have with others and honoring our commitments to them.

In other words: if you want to find yourself…you have to lose yourself first. But lose yourself how? In modern terms, losing oneself can actually be a self-centered proposition. One that doesn't allow for furthering interpersonal connections.

It often seems that when someone goes out to ‘find themselves’ they generally end up finding themselves divorced and alone or finding themselves in debt. If we don’t have a clear idea of the kind of person we want to be, we can “find ourselves” in all kinds of unpleasant situations. If we really think we have “lost ourselves,” it usually only means we’ve lost sight of our destination. Yet, the first thing we do is abandon everything that has been part of our “selves” because we seem to believe that these things distract us from seeing who we are. The reality is we do need to lose ourselves, but not in the ‘usual’ way. Instead, one gains more clarity and purpose by losing the focus on one’s “self” and turning one’s focus onto those around us. As we find and build our relationships, we find our real “selves,” and we regain our purpose.

There are times when focusing inward can actually be helpful, of course. It’s called self-examination, but it’s very different from the “agenda of self-centredness” that Phillips talks about. When we search ourselves to compare our “current” selves to our “destination” selves, this helps us make adjustments in the way we approach our relationships—not selfish adjustments, but adjustments aimed at raising the quality of life for those around us. The bonus is that when we raise the quality of life for those around us, our quality of life skyrockets alongside.

Searching our inner selves is about being rooted, grounded, planted. Knowing what our goal is, and pushing ourselves to reach it. It’s about finding out what we have inside of us that we can give to others. It’s not about pushing everyone else out of our lives so we can figure out what we ‘want’ life to give to us.

Choosing a Road

Our travels through this life are more fulfilling when we have a clear vision of what we expect of ourselves, and less fulfilling when we expect to find happiness in blind exploration and experimentation. But having a clear notion of where we want to end up doesn’t mean we’ll be trudging along a mind-numbingly boring, well-worn path. Robert Frost’s ‘Road Less Traveled’ illustrates that we don’t need to blaze new trails to experience fascinating, life-enriching choice.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

The person Frost describes is not blindly exploring. There was a destination, but also a choice of paths, both of which had obviously been taken before. The individual is a self-described “traveler,” who realizes he may not ever be at the crossroads of this same choice again. This is the sort of choice we have when we decide on a career, or make a commitment to a marriage. When we are at crossroads like these, we ‘look down' our paths as far as we can before making such life-defining choices; and after making them, we are kept committed to the path because our destination is part of our identity. The clearer our view of our destination when we start out, the happier we’ll be in the end with the paths we’ve chosen to help us get there. Actually, in these post-modern times, just having a destination at all puts us on the ‘road less traveled by.’ And our commitment to it is what makes all the difference.

(Mr. Savoia died from the effects of Kidney Cancer in March of 2006.)

Through the Looking Glass: Mirror Neurons and Moral Nonsense

2006-09-17T22:22:00.000-07:00

by Gina Stepp

Scanning the past week’s news, one gets the distinct impression there has been an unusually high number of “man’s inhumanity to man” stories. Darfur, Iraq, Lebanon, Israel. Kidnapped children, boys arrested for planning an attack on their school, and a murdered family in a Dallas suburb. A familiar question tugs at the edges of consciousness when we begin to feel the human experience is laden with these kinds of stories. Does the fact that there is so much cruelty to report speak to the lack of morality in human nature, or conversely to the presence of a moral conscience of some sort? This intriguing question was addressed by James Q. Wilson in his 1993 book, The Moral Sense, but it deserves revisiting in the light of more current understanding.

When considering why “bloodletting and savagery are news,” Wilson proposes, “There are two answers. The first is that they are unusual. If daily life were simply a war of all against all, what would be newsworthy would be the occasional outbreak of compassion and decency, self-restraint and fair dealing.” The second answer is not far off the first: Wilson says misery is news because it is shocking to us. “We recoil in horror at pictures of starving children, death camp victims, and greedy looters.” Wilson believes there is a “moral sense” in us that makes us able to empathize with one another. His book presents some very convincing arguments and is not devoid of science, but his problem, he admitted, was in finding hard scientific evidence to prove the existence of this “sense.”

Only three years after Wilson’s book was published, three Italian neuroscientists (Vittorio Gallese, Giacomo Rizzolatti, and Leonardo Fogassi) accidentally discovered something that could prove to be the scientific credence Wilson was looking for. During a study of monkey neurons and how they discharge while performing goal-related hand actions like picking up peanuts, the scientists found that the neurons also charged when the monkey observed one of the scientists performing the same action. After further studies, the scientists concluded that “to perceive an action is equivalent to internally simulating it. This enables the observer to use her/his own resources to experientially penetrate the world of the other by means of a direct, automatic, and unconscious process of simulation.” They called the responsible neurons “mirror neurons,” and extended their studies to explore the same phenomenon related to emotions. What the researchers described as the “activation of a neural mechanism shared by the observer and the observed to enable direct experiential understanding” is what the rest of us call “empathy.”

Other cognitive scientists have carried these studies even further and found that the mechanisms related to mirror neurons seem to be defective in autism—thus explaining the social impairments of people with that pathology.

Does this mean that mirror neurons and the resulting capability for empathy are, in some small part, the underpinning of our “moral sense”? Even if this is so—there must be more to learn. As human beings, our abilities to apply empathy go far beyond that of a monkey. While monkeys seem able to anticipate or empathize with “motor” activities that they themselves have experienced, human beings are capable in varying degrees of empathizing with others who experience things they themselves have not.

I say “in varying degrees” because there are obviously those amongst us whose abilities to empathize are impaired, even if not to the same degree as autistics. And this brings us back to the week’s news.

If man’s inhumanity to man is a reflection of his mirror neurons and a somehow impaired ability to empathize, there may still be hope for change. Neuroscientists now know that the brain is capable of developing new neurons at any age—a process known as “neurogenesis.” But the brain's plasticity is notable even in the absence of neurogenesis. Jeffrey Schwartz of UCLA, for example, has had considerable success in treating OCD patients by establishing new patterns of behaviour to replace old ones, thereby creating new connections between existing neurons.

Does this mean “old dogs” can be taught “new tricks”? Could new patterns of moral behaviour encourage the development of new neurons, even of new “mirror” neurons? Can we build on our basic "moral sense," become more “empathic," thereby reducing instances of man’s inhumanity to man? If so, maybe it’s time to think about which new behaviors might best replace the old. If not—we should simply resign ourselves to the status quo and ignore whatever feelings of disgust may be awakened by the inevitable headlines on CNN.

Dogged! Pluto Stripped of Planetary Status

2006-08-25T11:31:00.000-07:00

by Gina Stepp

Christine Lavin’s folk albums have been enjoyed in our house since before my oldest child was born. Of course, if you aren't familiar with the singer, you may well wonder why her name opens an article purporting to discuss the latest news about Pluto. (You know – that heavenly body formerly known as a planet.) It’s not a complicated story really, but a little background information might help.

It all started back in 1996 when Lavin wrote a song entitled Planet X, her musings sparked by a USA Today article about the controversy surrounding Pluto’s planetary status. After a brief rhyming history of Pluto’s discovery and the scientific arguments over its importance, she asked the question,

But how are we going to deal with it
if science comes up with the proof
that Pluto was never a planet.
How do we handle this truth?
As the PhD's all disagree
we don't know yet who's wrong or who's right
but wherever you are, whatever you are,
Pluto, we know you're out there tonight.

We found the song (and the question) amusing, but we never really expected events to come to a head as they did this week when Pluto’s status was decided once and for all at a meeting in Prague of the International Astronomical Union. This, apparently, is the body that sets standards for the field of astronomy, which means they have always had the power to demote Pluto to a lowly Kuiper Belt object (KBO), Trans-Neptunal object (TNO), or even a “Plutino.” Plutinos, by the way, are objects that orbit the sun beyond Neptune. Most are much smaller than Pluto and are believed to be similar to comets, but they are defined by orbital patterns which resemble Pluto's. This of course makes it all a bit confusing. How does one imagine classifying Pluto among its own namesakes? And incidentally, are they going to have to rename plutonium now?

More to the point, why does the International Astronomical Union even care? Why all the fuss over a tiny frozen planet whose only real value to the universe was (thanks to a little help from Walt Disney) its ability to capture the imaginations of school-children on a planet more sure of its status a couple of billion miles away?

The truth is that Pluto was beginning to make the solar system seem a bit more complicated than the average astronomer likes. As more and more “bodies” are making themselves known at the edges of our solar system, Pluto has begun looking less and less like another planet, and more and more like the rest of the non-descript and far-flung debris littering space. This has resulted in increasing scientific disdain for the ninth planet, despite the fact that new discoveries reveal Pluto has at least three of its own moons, which would give any of the rest of us a great deal of significance if we could boast such a thing. Nevertheless, astronomers began to think that if they allowed Pluto to join the planetary club, the door might have to be opened to dozens or even hundreds more. At the very least, they would certainly have to admit a tenth body discovered last year which is even further from the sun than Pluto but seems to be slightly larger and has been popularly nicknamed "Xena." As long ago as 1996, Christine Lavin could see where all this was going:

and now 20 astronomy textbooks
refer to Pluto as less than a planet
I guess if Pluto showed up at a planet convention
the bouncer at the door might have to ban it.

On the other hand, the International Astronomical Union may have done Pluto a good turn. If the IAU had given Pluto the thumbs up and with it hundreds of other “planets,” one might imagine the beleaguered entity responding in Groucho Marx style, with the words:

“Please accept my resignation from the solar system. I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member.”