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Fort Worth Museum of Science and History

As a reward for hours spent with packing, house repairs, and financial stuff, my mother and I went to the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History yesterday.

We had a good lunch at the Stars Cafe and a fascinating, though all too brief, visit to the exhibits, including interesting talks staff about the Museum’s history. In addition to being our reward, the visit was a commemoration. it was nearly 60 years ago, on George Washington’s birthday, that my parents and I moved to Fort Worth from Houston. On his birthday this year, my mother will be packing her belongings to move to Austin.

Not long after we arrived, she enrolled me in The Frisky and Blossom Club, the first class of the Museum School. So, a return to the Museum marked both her time in Fort Worth and the evolution of the Museum itself, from being a children’s museum in a house to the recently renovated, massive complex of today.

The current Museum is grand and spacious, with atriums and courtyards. But the prior Fort Worth Children’s Museum was a wonderful place in a different way, with a sense of mysteries tucked away in crowded rooms and clubs devoted to astronomy and insects. But it was my first encounter with the Museum at its Summit house location that hooked me on museums:

The museum’s history actually began in 1939 when the local council of Administrative Women in Education began a study of children’s museums, with the idea of starting one in Fort Worth. Two years later the charter was filed, but it would be almost four years before the museum would find a physical home. With the help of the city’s school board, the museum opened in early 1945 in two rooms in De Zavala Elementary School.

In 1947 the museum moved into the large R.E. Harding House at 1306 Summit, where it kept growing in size and popularity. Three years later two significant entities appeared: The Ladies Auxiliary of the Fort Worth Children’s Museum (now the Museum Guild), and “The Frisky and Blossom Club,” the forerunner of Museum School®. Soon it became apparent that a much larger facility was needed to serve the growing needs of the community. Ground was broken for a new facility in 1952. On January 25, 1954, the museum open the building at 1501 Montgomery Street. The following year the Charlie Mary Noble Planetarium, the first public planetarium in the region, opened.

In 1968 the name was changed to the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History so that adults even without children could enjoy the Museum. It worked! Today more than half the Museum’s visitors are adults. Much of that is due to the addition of the Omni Theater in 1983. The Omni was the first IMAX® dome theater in the Southwest and continues to be one of the most successful in the world.

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Luise Rainer’s 100th birthday

Yesterday, my mother and I watched The Great Waltz, starring Luise Rainer. It was part of a Turner Classic movie festival commemorating her 100th birthday.

She was very good in that, and still appears to be going strong. I wonder what she thinks of the younger generation with folks like Olivia de Havilland?

Rainer was the first two-time Oscar winner (for The Great Ziegfeld (1936) and The Good Earth (1937). She was also the first back-to-back Oscar winner, and is now the oldest living Oscar winner.

Scott Feinberg’s blog has more on Rainer, including some wonderful audio clips of his interview with her. I hope it’s OK to repost the photo here from his blog, showing the two of them, but recommend that you read and listen from his original post.

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Olivia De Havilland

We just watched the DVD version of Captain Blood, the 1935 adventure movie based on Rafael Sabatini’s novel.

Except for the numerous comments from the female members of the audience about Errol Flynn (“Oh! He is rather dashing, isn’t he?” “He has such a wonderful smile!” “Well, I have to admit, he is handsome!”), it was very entertaining. Captain Blood is a great movie, the forerunner of the eight films co-starring Olivia De Havilland and Flynn, as well as a major shaper of the whole adventure genre.

For our family, any movie starring Olivia De Havilland is special. In case you don’t know, we go way back.

In grammar school, Olivia was just a year ahead of Susan’s mother, Rhoda, who was in the same grade as Jane Eyre (I mean, Olivia’s sister, Joan Fontaine). They’ve maintained a connection ever since. On the other side, my mother feels a special connection, because she went to college in Milledgeville, Georgia, the home of Margaret Mitchell, who wrote Gone with the Wind, starring Olivia as Melanie.

Throughout her career, Olivia has always exemplified both excellent acting and the highest moral standards. She sought roles that expanded artistic limits, but  also promoted social good. She was successful in a lawsuit to secure greater creative freedom for performers. This led to the De Havilland law, which imposes a seven-year limit on contracts for service. She was the lead in The Snake Pit, one of the earliest films to attempt a realistic portrayal of mental illness. In 2008, she was awarded the US National Medal of Arts.

More (password protected)

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The Irony of Fate

When Stephen lived in St. Petersburg, he learned about the Russian classic movie, Ирония судьбы, или С лёгким паром! (Ironiya sudby, ili S lyogkim parom!; The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy your Bath!) and bought us a dvd of it.

I watched that and also the sequel, Ирония судьбы: Продолжение (Ironiya sudby 2; The Irony of Fate 2). In the sequel, the original actors continue the story, now 30 years later. Can you think of any other movies in which the story line continues that long, with the actors aging naturally?

The movie is a sad love story, but also a farce, with slapstick, rampant misunderstandings, demonstrations of the limits of logic, and still, strikingly honest and insightful comments on the human condition. It shows some of the best and worst of Russia.

It’s easy to understand why watching Ironiya sudby has become a New Year’s Eve tradition in Russia. We followed that tradition here in two parts, the first on New Year’s Day and the second last night. In between, Emily and Stephen prepared a special Russian dinner, including borscht, salade Olivier, and blinis with herring, salmon, onions, and creamed butter.

Zhenya and Nadya were the same as always. He’s 36, a talented surgeon, but nerdy and shy. It’s not clear where his life is going next or what he wants to commit to doing. Nadya is a literature teacher, beautiful, but also somewhat shy and unsure of herself. Together with Galya and Ippolit they stumble through a bizarre, yet oddly-believable, sequence of events in which they learn what matters most.

If you were to hear the plot ahead of time, you’d not only lose some of the fun, but you might wrongly conclude that it’s contrived and silly. Instead, that plot becomes a muted background, which the viewer quickly catches onto. It then serves like the click-clack of a train (here, the faceless architecture of the Brezhnev era), with the real action going on inside the railroad cars.

I especially like the guitar-accompanied songs, which are based on poems by Boris Pasternak, Marina Tsvetayeva, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Bella Akhmadulina, and others. They fit with the story, and they’re sung in full.

See additional posts of mine on movies.

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Minds-on Math, Science, and Social Studies with standard school supplies

Jack Easley was an professor at the University of Illinois from 1962 until his retirement in 1989. His research on cognitive development in the learning of science and mathematics across various cultures influenced educators around the world. He co-founded the Dialogues in Methods of Education group, which continues to this day. He was also a much loved friend, who died December 10, 1994.

I recently came across some insightful email messages from Jack. Here’s one that I’m certain he would like to have shared more widely, even though they were simply rough notes related to a project:

There is a lot of attention given over to kits and manipulative materials for inquiry. Since these are not always available, it is worthwhile looking at what can be done without the kits, the manipulative blocks, etc.

Math

The Japanese schools use cardboard replicas of plastic tiles, and several teachers in the US have found that these can be cut out of file folders with a paper cutter. It is not necessary to have one set for each child, but the following sizes would be appropriate for each team:

  • 5 square units (half-inch squares are usually fine, but 1in or 1 cm can be used.)
  • 2 oblongs, 5 units long (e.g., .5 in by 2.5 in)
  • 5 oblongs, 10 units long (e.g., .5 in by 5 in)
  • 2 fifties (e.g., 2.5 in by 5 in)
  • 10 hundreds (e.g., 5 by 5 in)

With rulers, children can mark one side of the oblongs, fifties and hundreds into ways that show how they all fit together. Other sizes ( 20s, 40s, 25s, etc.) are often convenient, depending on the story problems (going to the bank, etc.) children are solving with these cardboard tiles.

Using bulletin board paper, scrolls of 500 or 1,000 units can also be cut and rolled up (e.g., 5 in by 25 in, or 5 in by 50 in). To make representations of even larger numbers is not much of a problem with the smaller sized units, but if you use 1 sq in as a unit, it begins to get out of hand.

The size of unit can be chosen not only with the fine motor coordination of children in mind, but with the fact that place value and round numbers upwards of 99 are much easier to talk about than those between 9 and 100. Smaller unit sizes (.5 in or 1 cm) should permit more meaningful work with scrolls for numbers like 5,000 or 10,000.

In my opinion, and that of a minority of mathematics educators, the word “ten” is one of the least often suspected but most often confused among number names. The problem may be that “ten” is not a word that easily takes adjectival modification as in “Two tens, three tens, etc.” Ten is most often used as an adjective itself as in “ten fingers, ten hundred, etc.” Research suggests that it takes children until about fourth grade to realize that ten can be a unit instead of just a counting number or the cardinal number of a collection (Cobb & Wheatley, 1988; Steffe, 1983; Steffe & Cobb, 1988.) Informal observations suggest that 100, 1,000, and 1,000,000 are treated as abstract units quite naturally by most 6-year-olds. The debate is whether or not young children can plausibly attach concrete representations to those units.

There are other troubles with the names of numbers greater than 9 and less than 100, e.g., 18 and 81 sound too much alike, both beginning with the word, “eight,” and there are few people who would think that “twenty” was originally pronounced, and possibly spelled, “twain tens.” (Some have tried introducing new number names, onety, twoty, threety, fourty, fivety, and doing that seems to help in regrouping, but teachers and parents complain that children don’t know how to translate them into standard English.) Saying how many tens there are in 11, 22, 35, etc. is no longer a part of English speech today. Instead, everyone learns to rattle off the counting numbers 1 to 100 without pausing to think that there are ten cycles in that series. It may work like telling time or money. (With digital timepieces, we count minutes from 01 to 59 and then hours. We count cents from 01 to 99 and then dollars.) Starting over, which is the essence of place value, is something we don’t seem to think about naturally with those funny two-digit number names. (In the orient, and many native American languages, number names are much more sensible than in European languages.) However, all is well when we get to a hundred and we have three digits. A great deal of regrouping in arithmetic, which is the real advantage of understanding place value, can be learned by working with cardboard tiles and scrolls, without adding and subtracting those peculiarly named numbers from 10 through 99. Adding and subtracting hundreds and thousands, multiplying and dividing by hundreds and by thousands teach place value well and provide ample practice for first and second graders on basic, one-digit addition and subtraction facts.

Cutting templates for drawing the cm size tiles and scrolls in coffee can lids permits children in first and second grade to represent numbers by drawings on paper instead of actually manipulating the tiles themselves. The Japanese have found that drawings of tiles to represent an operation is a valuable intermediate step between manipulation of tiles with number sentences and writing numerical algorithms without manipulations, for it helps children invent and test their own algorithms.

Geometrical forms can be cut out of folders or paper. Also, it is instructive to draw circles, squares, triangles, and other regular figures six or seven inches across and measure their circumferences in various ways. One way to measure a circumference is to set the compass for an inch or a cm of separation and count how many steps it takes to walk around the figure and back to the starting point.

Place a pencil across your hand near the tips of your fingers. Put the heel of your other hand on top of it. Predict, Observe, Explain (POE) where the pencil will be when you have moved the heel of your top hand back until it is over the heel of the bottom hand. Do this motion several times without the pencil, then POE where the pencil will be.

Architecture

Tiling patterns that repeat endlessly can be made on a flat surface. One interesting challenge is to design and cut-out a piece of paper that folds up to make a box, a prism, a pyramid, or some other shaped three-dimensional object.

Columns can be made from rolled or folded construction paper and tested for load bearing by piling textbooks on top. The number of science books, or math books, that a column can hold is something to predict, observe, and explain (POE). One can even measure (POEM) the length, diameter, and circumference of such columns and figure out some kind of graph that represents how those quantities relate to the load a column will carry. Applications (POEMA) of what has been learned can be found, in studying the structure of buildings, bridge supports, street light and traffic light posts, and in making models of buildings. (This is also a good use for science and mathematics books which children and teachers find boring.)

Making designs for stained glass windows with a compass is an intriguing activity. A six-pointed rose window is one goal, but many other designs are possible. Of course coloring one’s design in the most attractive way possible is an added challenge, which assumes everyone has some crayons, or whatever to color them with.

Optics

Punching a pencil through the middle of a dark piece of construction paper 8-11 inches wide and laying it down on a white piece of paper on a flat desk in a well-lighted classroom raises the following question: Looking at the white spot (after making the edges neat by tearing off or folding back the torn pieces the pencil left), try to predict (P) what shape and size that white spot will become when the dark paper is raised an inch or two. (Of the hundreds of people I have asked that question, only one 3rd grade girl, who must have tried it before and one physics Ph.D. could come close.) Observe and Explain (POE) what has been observed. Measure (POEM) how high the dark paper is raised above the white paper and measure what you can of the pattern of light you can see when looking underneath the dark paper (POEM). Is there a relation between the two measurements? What is the best way to make such measurements as you gradually raise the dark paper higher and higher? Plot a graph.

Apply (POEMA) this phenomenon to other sources of light besides schoolroom lights. E.g., tape the dark paper to the window, and cover the rest of the window(s) and turn out the lights. If you hold a thin piece of white paper near the pencil hole, can you see any pattern on the white paper? Substitute a magnifying glass or hand lens for the pencil hole? How does that change the way things look? the graph? Go outdoors on a sunny day with a piece of dark paper in which you have carefully cut three or four different shaped holes about the size of a dime or less. Hold the dark paper so it casts a shadow over a white paper. What is the shape of the light spots going through the holes? How do they change as you move the dark paper higher? (POEM)

Put some water in the plastic cup or glass bottle. Put a pencil in the water. How does it look? Why? If you can find a straight soda straw, put it in and compare it’s shape with the pencil. POE what you will see when you look through the soda straw into the water.

Air

  • Blow through a piece of tubing or soda straw into a jar or cup of water. What is the smallest bubble you can blow? What is the biggest bubble you can blow? Can you blow a bubble and suck it back in before it leaves the end of the tube or straw? What is inside the bubbles you blow? How is it different from the air in the room? Where does the air in the bubble come from? Where does it go when a bubble pops?
  • Put a wad of tissue or paper towel in the bottom of the plastic cup or glass bottle, big enough so it won’t fall out when you turn it upside down. (Use tape if necessary to hold it.) POE what will happen to the paper when you push it carefully up-side down into a coffee can, plastic tub, acquarium, or other large container half full of water. (POEM) Measure how much water goes into the cup or jar. If possible, make measurements at different depths under the water. Plot a graph of how much water goes into the jar for each depth under the water. POEMA What use can you think of for the air trapped in an open container under water? Can you arrange for a cricket or other small animal to breathe that air while under water? Pour out the air trapped in a container while it is under water. Do you think you could catch it in another container under the water, pouring it from one to the other under water? Borrow another container and try.
  • Put a soda straw into water and place your finger or thumb over the open end. Raise it out of the water. What is inside? Can you do that with a piece of hose? (POE) What makes the water run back when you let go? (POEA) Homework (with parental consent and assistance): Can you do it with a wide tube like a cardboard tube waterproofed with rubber cement or melted wax?
  • If you can get a box that a drink (milk or juice) was in, and put the hose over the straw, can you blow and suck on the tube to make the sides of the box go out and in? What does it take to make a tight fit? What happens when the air can leak around the straw? What happens to the tube when you blow or suck on it?

Social Studies
Graphs

  • Sample people in your class to find out how many live with grandparents, aunts and uncles, with one parent, two parents, etc.
  • Find out who knows where various foods are produced, what kind of people produce them, etc.
  • Find out what children think about where adults get the money they need for food and rent if they work at a bank, a store, a restaurant, a post office, a police station, a school, as a house cleaner, a nurse, a doctor, a care giver, a university, a power company, etc. What do such people have to spend money for to do their work?

Science

For the following science activities, certain other things like wax paper, a mirror, a soda straw, a milk carton, a large bowl, etc. are mentioned as needed. Other things in the generic kit may be used, and POEMA may be used also. They come from: Science Games & Puzzles, by Laurence B. White, Jr. drawings by Marc T. Brown, Addison Wesley, 1975

  • Racing drops of water on wax paper.
  • Stand sideways against a wall. Push the side of your foot against the wall. Now try to lift your other foot.
  • Dip one end of a drinking straw in dishwashing liquid. Take it out. Blow in the other end. Keep blowing. Try cut ting your straw end like a cross.
  • Blow bubbles on a very cold day. Your warm breath makes them very light.
  • Push a thumbtack into a pencil eraser. Touch the thumbtack on your lip. Rub the tack hard 20 times on your sleeve and touch it to your lips again.
  • Try to drop a coin into a glass under water in the middle of a big bowl.
  • Collect and taste rain water. Does it taste different from other water?
  • Try printing your name while looking at the pencil and paper in the mirror.
  • Roll a little piece of foil in a ball and drop it in a funnel. You cannot blow it out unless you stop up the funnel.
  • Balance a ruler on your finger. with & without a ball of clay on top.
  • Have your friend lay his (her) head on a table or desk while you tap softly on the bottom.
  • Hold a pencil in your teeth while scraping on it.
  • Is your pet right or left pawed? Put some food in a jar. Which paw is used?
  • Can you freeze a penny in the middle of a piece of ice?
  • Can you turn yourself upside down with a teaspoon?
  • Can you eat an apple without tasting it?
  • Which is longer your forearm or your foot?
  • Can you tie your arms in a knot? Cross them and hold the two ends of a tube while uncrossing.
  • Write ‘A BOX’ on a card and look at it in a mirror several different ways.
  • Punch three holes in a paper cup or milk carton. Which hole will squirt best?
  • Can water stick to itself? Punch two holes side by side.
  • Can you separate pepper and salt that have been mixed?
  • Roll down a slope a full can, an empty can, a hollow ball, a base ball, etc. Which one wins?
  • Tie a string around a nail, then tie the string around another nail, and another. This is how to make a string nail xylophone, which you can play with another nail.
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Civil rights for the LGBT community, and for all

In his ‘Letter from the Birmingham jail‘, Martin Luther King placed the struggle against injustice in Birmingham in a larger context:

Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

While those lines are often quoted, they’re more often ignored. For many people, injustice means what happens to them directly, not what happens to others.

Countering that passivity, and calling on progressives allies to stand up, is a video made by one of my students, Phil Reese. It’s an excellent message about civil rights for all, including the LGBT community. In addition to conveying an important message, it’s done in a creative way, reminding us of the many silenced voices around us.

Progressives can’t sit by while Civil Rights are taken away from Americans–help us and become a true ally in the fight for Equality! -HEY #p2 We’re talking to you! AFTER THE VID VISIT http://bit.ly/HEYP2ALLY for more!

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US advances to 83rd on the Global Peace Index

This year, the US advanced from 97th to 83rd on the Global Peace Index ( GPI). On this day of peace, it’s not just parochial competition that makes me wish that it ranked much higher. When the nation with the most powerful military and the largest weapons industry ranks low, the whole world suffers.

The GPI is a project of the Institute for Economics and Peace, which identifies some of the drivers of peace and then ranks the nations of the world by their peacefulness (or ‘absence of violence’).

144 countries are ranked on 24 measures within, as well as between, nations. These measures include levels of democracy and transparency, education and material well being, military expenditure, relations with neighboring countries, and respect for human rights. The data used come from the International Institute of Strategic Studies, the World Bank, various UN offices and Peace Institutes, and the Economist Intelligence Unit.

On the map, red indicates violence and blue the absence of violence. Yellow is in between.

References

Engelhardt, Tom (2009, December 22). In nightmares begin responsibilities: Why war will take no holiday in 2010. TomDispatch.com. “Excuse the gloom in the holiday season, but I feel like we’re all locked inside a malign version of the movie Groundhog Day…”

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Moving the world: A celebration of writing and community

Parc de la Tête d'Or, Lyon, Sergio Canobbio

Last Wednesday, I was fortunate to attend a significant literary event, called Moving the World: A Celebration of Writing and Community.

Over a three-hour period, I heard essays, letters, poems, and collaborative writing, but also saw drawings and paintings. I got to meet with the artists and to ask them questions about their work. The intellectual and artistic quality as well as the variety of the works were outstanding. The program was beautifully organized by Patrick Berry and Cory Holding.

An event such as this one is not uncommon; what made this one special was that it was held in the chapel of the Danville Correctional Center, and the artists were all inmates. They showed off the work they’ve done through courses offered by the Education Justice Project (EJP), led by Rebecca Ginsburg. EJP is a response to the abundant evidence showing that

College-in-prison programs reduce arrest, conviction, and reincarceration rates among released prisoners. Evidence has also linked the presence of college-in-prison programs to fewer disciplinary incidents within prison, finding that such programs produce safer environments for prisoners and staff alike. College-prison programs also have benefits for inmates’ families and, hence, their communities.

Captured Potential, Larry Brent

The EJP is an outstanding effort to help young men who want to become better family and community members. If you had experienced Moving the World, you’d at least have seen inmate-students focusing their energies on reading and writing, on reflecting about their lives, families, and communities, and perhaps most significantly, engaged in how they can make positive contributions to the world both inside and outside the prison.

As I said, the quality of the writing and the oral performances was superb. I was impressed with nearly all of the works. One, entitled “Progressive tears: A prisoner’s retrospective cry for Dewey’s help,” asked the philosopher John Dewey whether his progressive vision was still relevant today. Do we as a people still believe in equality and justice? Do we still see education as a means for building a better society? One may wonder, since the use of Pell Grants for prisoners was eliminated in 1994, and most prison college programs have closed.

Another essay asserts “We all want the same things.” It shows that both prisoners and ordinary people on the outside want prisoners to turn from crime to productive citizenship. Other works included letters to family members, poems, reflections on life. The painting, “Captured potential,” and its accompanying text, express well both the tragedy of prison and the possibilities. I doubt whether anyone made it through the event with dry eyes.

You can see some of the writing itself in the National Gallery of Writing.

An event like Moving the World makes the drudgery and nonsense of many other parts of life much more bearable. I not only enjoyed it in the sense of savoring, rather than counting, the moments, I was also impressed by the obvious thoughtfulness, organization, and high standards that went into it. I now understand why one instructor said that her participation has raised the standards back at the university.

References

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Howard Zinn’s “Three Holy Wars”

Howard Zinn spoke at the Progressive magazine’s 100 Anniversary Conference. He makes a persuasive case for questioning even the good wars, such as the “three holy wars” of US history.

It’s worth thinking about Zinn’s argument in light of Obama’s Nobel Prize lecture, in which he says “Still, we are at war, and I am responsible for the deployment of thousands of young Americans to battle in a distant land. Some will kill. Some will be killed.” Is the war in Afghanistan a more holy war than the ones that Zinn questions?