Occasional Paper: Money for Nothing

For most of my life I was what could best be described as financially indifferent. I didn’t keep track of money coming in and I certainly didn’t keep track of it going out. Utility bills were what they were, gas prices didn’t faze me, I bought whatever looked tempting at the grocery store, and convenience shopping won over comparison shopping hands down. I had multiple credit cards, all operating at maximum capacity. And if friends or family members asked my advice, I could be depended on to rationalize a big house, a new car, take-out food and an all-frills vacation for them. In my view, money should be exchanged for happiness and the less money, the more happiness.

So that went on for a long time. Then about 2 years ago I got divorced and did a financial about face. The money I had (or didn’t have) wasn’t about happiness, it was all that stood between me and homelessness. Money meant not showing up on my mother’s doorstep with a suitcase. And that meant taking stock. It has been a 2-year process. I started with selling my half of the house, then I sold everything in the house that I didn’t need. It turned out I didn’t need a lot. When I had all the money in a figurative pile, I paid off the credit cards, moved to a one-bedroom apartment, bought store brand groceries in bulk, changed to energy-efficient light bulbs, stopped using the air conditioner and started washing clothes only when they were good and dirty. I drove less and rode a rented bicycle. I downgraded my phone after I decided paying $200 a month wasn’t that “smart.”I read internet tips on saving money and realized that I already did most of them. I learned how to invest money and started buying stocks and mutual funds and kept track of gains and losses. I allocated half my paycheck to my retirement account. 

It turns out money can’t buy happiness. Being in control of money does. Actually it buys something more enduring than happiness, contentment and peace of mind.

To me, this life lesson translates to teaching as a way of providing the different, but no less vital commodity of knowledge. Until students realize they are masters of their own destiny, taking control of their own learning, owning what they learn and appreciating the value of that knowledge, they will be “educationally indifferent.”

Literacy Autobiography 5:

One of the most rewarding aspects of experiencing literacy development is to experience it vicariously. As a parent, I have had the privilege of observing my children's blooming literacy and  recorded some of their expressions.

Young children are novices at language, and yet brilliant at creatively expressing themselves. They don't have a rich vocabulary, but they form unique combinations of the words they have in order to accurately depict their experiences. It is this creative expression that we cherish and find so endearing. 

At age 3, my daughter would sometimes use words to approximate the spoken language she heard around her. "What my doing?" was her way of asking "what am I doing?" When my son was 3, he would end all his sentences with ".....orsomepin." This was a mystery until I figured out that he was imitating our speech, as we often ended a question by saying, "can I get you another sandwich or something?"

Sometimes my daughter would combine incongruous words to express herself: "I want a big full!" instead of "I want a lot!" When she wanted another strawberry, she might say, "that first one didn't enough."

Well before the children were able to read, they recognized that letters could be combined to represent objects. To get my daughter to go into her car seat, I might say, "maybe we could put a D-O-N-U-T in a ziploc bag and give it to her in the car?" And my daughter would overhear this and exclaim, "Oh yes, I want a D-O!"

Autumn teaching her younger sister, Faith, to read

Recognizing how my own children acquired spoken language and how this prepared them to acquire reading and writing skills was a lesson to me in respecting both the learning process and the innate creativity of students to work with the tools they have in order to express themselves.

Literacy Autobiography 4:

From time to time when I am out among other people I overhear conversation in a language I am vaguely familiar with. I can only decipher a word or two, so I have to infer the jist of the dialog loosely. And I reflect on how language unites and yet separates us from each other.

When I was in Japan, I made friends with a couple from North Korea. They cheerfully served as guides for me in a country with all the instructions written in (worse than Greek!) Kanji symbols. There are roughly 2,000 commonly used Kanji characters, each representing a unique concept or word. Kanji is difficult to master as it is a hieroglyphic (not phonetic) format. Nevertheless, Kanji is very aesthetically appealing, hence Penny's choice of Kanji character tattoo in the Big Bang Theory.

As my North Korean friends and I were walking through a park in Hatoyama-New Town, I saw graffiti artistically spray painted in bold, colorful Kanji characters on a concrete bridge. "What does that say?" I asked breathlessly, marveling about a society so intellectual that even its vandals were poets, expressing themselves in obscure characters that took years of study to reproduce.

The North Koreans exchanged glances and shook their heads sadly. "It is very bad. The message means they want to kill other people." 

I felt somewhat like a dog that had been called vile names, but in a sweet and kindly voice. And I was reminded of how much of human communication, particularly written language, is meaningless outside cultural context. Teaching literacy helps us to overcome the isolation that can accompany cultural identity, which if not addressed, can breed misunderstanding and contempt.

Literacy Autobiography 3:

One of my mentors in science is an accomplished researcher and prolific writer, having authored numerous book chapters, journal articles, grants and patents. He is a gifted pianist and composer. Describing him as a creative genius would not be misrepresentative.

However, one day I found myself in the unfamiliar and somewhat appalling position of pitying him. This came about after a conversation during which I mentioned some of my favorite books. He looked at me quizzically. "I don't read for pleasure," he said. I must have looked incredulous. He seemed almost apologetic but was quite adamant. "Really. I don't like to read fiction or anything outside of my field, actually. But I love reading journal articles. I get so engrossed in them and excited by them that I don't have a desire to read anything less...consequential."

As admirable as this sentiment might seem for a scientist, it was austere and foreign to me. Scientific research is not a clinical endeavor from the scientist's point of view. A scientist who is passionate about his work lives it, nurtures it, defends it, revels in it and occasionally despairs of it. The tangible rewards of a career in science are scarce (especially for grad students!). Scientists are zealots with an operatic outlook: ebullient one minute, cynical and defeated the next. A good book, a pleasurable book, elicits this same euphoria and misery in the reader. Teaching literacy through reading for pleasure as well as for knowledge ignites the passion and drive and dedication that supports a science career.

Scientists are not necessarily searching for happy ending, but a fascinating, exhilarating one.

Three of my favorite books, all conveniently packaged in one volume!

Literacy Autobiography 2:

In 2001, I had the opportunity to live and work as a visiting scientist in Hatoyama, Japan, near Tokyo, for three months. With a few exceptions, all the scientists at the Hitachi Research Center spoke some English, and although there were some language barriers, and casual conversation was forced, my Japanese coworkers and I were effective collaborators. Their decent English (and my pathetic Japanese) was more than adequate for us to generate a master's thesis worth of data together. This experience was a pivotal one for me, it demonstrated the power of scientific literacy.

Literacy and language competency involves the mastery of subtle concepts that require a social context. But science is in many ways a universal language. Northern, Southern and Western blots are performed and interpreted the same way in every country, no matter how far north, south or west. And although a scientific story can be spun with a culturally relevant flavor (I once gave a talk titled, "Ricin, it Does a Body Good"), the story could be as effectively grasped in Javanese as in Japanese.

In an increasingly globalized environment, scientifically literate students are abundantly equipped to work together. Physical, racial, cultural, socioeconomical and gender barriers fall away. Teaching scientific literacy is preparing students for a lifetime of effective interaction and collaboration.

NPR podcast of "The Unsuccessful Quest For A Universal Language"
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=185348917

Literacy Autobiography 1:

My mother was a speech language pathologist and teacher (now retired). My father was a PhD chemist (also now retired). My sister was a book editor for many years.

So any chance I might have had of escaping a fervent interest in books (and science) was pretty much squashed at birth.

One of my earliest memories of family literacy instillation was being taught to read at age 4. My mother subscribed to a gentle, indulgent approach of reading instruction; my father, not so much. But time spent with my father was precious at age 4 and so I was an avid student. He would hold the book for me while I laboriously sounded out the words, but that was as far as he humored me. One night, I came to a real poser of a word for my limited lexicon: "quick." I exhausted all the q words I knew, trying to force them into the awkward sentence that ensued. Even then I had a rudimentary understanding of word context: words that were square pegs could not simply be hammered into the available round holes in the sentence. "Queen?"..."quiet?"..."quite?" None of these could be satisfactorily integrated into a sentence about running rabbits.

My dad, true to form, did not relent and feed me the elusive q word. Instead, he saw my increasing frustration and mildly suggested I go to bed. I did, although reluctant to give up, I had to resign myself that this particular q word might forever be a mystery.

Of all the things that have come to me in dreams, "QUICK!" was singularly gratifying. I woke up the next morning and jubilantly announced that I knew the word! My faith in words and the world was restored.

Teaching literacy is a way for me to provide students with their own legacy of self-discovery: an evolving, challenging, and ultimately empowering personal quest.