Improving Your Playing: Drumming and Relaxation

The best drummers are relaxed when they play. Watching videos of Steve Gadd and Buddy Rich, you can't help but notice the passion and technique but also the easy, fluid movement. Total relaxation is the goal, and, despite the unlikelihood of absolute relaxation, the goal remains a key element of proper playing.

Relaxation means minimal tightness of muscles involved in drumming--the fingers, hands, wrists, arms, legs, and torso. These parts of the body would feel at ease as you floated on your back under the warm Hawaiian sun, or, less imaginatively, lounging on a comfortable leather chair.

Yet, drumming is a transformation of musical ideas into bodily energy and consumption of calories—not sloth. We hit things, sometimes very hard and very fast. The art takes a lot of physical effort and mental concentration. Our heart rate rises, we perspire, and often become mentally as well as physically exhausted, especially on engagements that require a lot of sight reading, instant creativity, and recorded perfection. If our muscles are tight, usually due to nervousness, they won’t work as well. To demonstrate this to yourself, try gripping the sticks as tight as you can and playing a fast double-stroke roll. Then try doing the same gripping the sticks loosely. Which grip allows you to play with better technique, and which is more fun?

So how does one resolve the opposing forces of keeping relaxed while performing on a physically and mentally demanding instrument? The following techniques have worked for me. My teacher, Greg Sudmeier, taught me many of these.

1. Breathing: in sections of the music that demand less concentration, such as 12 bars of straight jazz time, I monitor my breathing, making sure my breaths are slow and deep, pushing my stomach out as I inhale.
2. Visualization: I visualize the Hawaiian scene mentioned above, feeling my muscles as completely relaxed. Now my muscles won’t become so loose that I drop the sticks, but they will relax considerably.
3. Internal singing: singing the melody helps me internalize the time and like an old friend, puts me on familiar ground, acting as a relaxation device.
4. Hearing the beat as tension and release: I try to hear the music’s pulse as half notes instead of tension-producing 16th notes. I hear in my head a surdo high-low or tension-release pattern. Listen to Brazilian music for examples of the surdo pattern.
5. Lastly, I avoid alcohol and drugs as they may relax the body but dull the mind and always leave side effects, often a rebound of anxiety.

If you found this post helpful, please let me know.

Dim-Witted Eaters Need Government Help: Taxes on Unhealthy Foods

The following interview is a fictional account inspired by an article in the July 24, 2011 New York Times--Bad Food? Tax it and Subsidize Vegetables and the scholarly report, The Potential Impact of Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Taxes in New York State. However, my satire is looking more and more like political reality. The Harvard School of Public Health has come out with taxation schemes to combat obesity. See half of U.S. population will be obese by 2030 experts predict... Also see Plan to Tax Soda Gets a Mixed Reception.
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The president has just appointed a head of the newly created federal agency, Assisting (Preferred) Races (with) Rice, Oranges, Greens and Needed Taxes, acronym--ARROGANT. A journalist, interested in the scope and goals of this new agency, interviewed him. Here is the transcript: 

Journalist: What are you doing?
Leader of ARROGANT: Congress and the president gave me powers to tax foods that cause obesity and other health problems. I’ve slapped a two-cents tax per ounce tax on soda. You won’t find a six-pack of Coke on sale for $2.09 any more. My $1.44 tax makes that Coke six-pack sell for $3.53.
Journalist: The tax almost doubles the price.
Leader of ARROGANT: That’s right. Demand is highly elastic, highly sensitive to price changes. People will purchase much less unhealthy soda. They will immediately lose weight and be healthier. I’ve also imposed a fifty-cents per serving tax on McDonalds french fries.
Journalist: A medium fries used to cost $1.79. Now it’s $2.29. That’s a 28 percent tax.
Leader of ARROGANT: It’s a bargain for the nation! We will lower consumption of soda alone by 20 percent, prevent 1.5 million Americans from becoming obese and prevent 400,000 cases of type 2 diabetes, saving $30 billion dollars.
Journalist: Those projections are based on…
Leader of ARROGANT: a study by Dr.Y. Claire Wang, an assistant professor at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health for the State of New York. Those numbers she gave for the state were then scaled nationally.
Journalist: Dr. Wang states in the above reference that the “health benefit and medical savings are larger among African-Americans and Hispanics than among non-Hispanic Whites. Lower income individuals are expected to accrue a disproportionately larger share of the health benefits.” The money from the tax could be “used to support education programs and infrastructure designed to promote healthy eating and active living…” (Executive summary) Is that right?
Leader of ARROGANT: That is correct.
Journalist: So you are saying that minorities and the poor are too stupid to know how to eat healthily.
Leader of ARROGANT: We would guide them to make the correct choice through school programs, advertisements, and putting subsidized produce in more available locations.
Journalist: You would put grapes instead of soda in vending machines?
Leader of ARROGANT: Yes, just like what’s already in place in Japan and Iowa. Next we will train kids to eat steamed broccoli instead of pizza.
Journalist: I’m not sure that you will be successful. What percentage of over consumption of calories comes from sugary beverages?
Leader of ARROGANT: 40 percent
Journalist: So you have addressed less than half the problem here.
Leader of ARROGANT: We are working on the rest—a tax on french fries as I mentioned earlier and taxes on doughnuts are in the works. Denmark has a saturated-fat tax starting in October. That is our next step. This is the role of government.
Journalist: I don’t recall setting the people’s diet patterns as a constitutionally prescribed function of the federal government.
Leader of ARROGANT: I represent the people. The general will is the rule of law.
Journalist: Do you have a precedent for your actions?
Leader of ARROGANT: Yes, the war on tobacco has worked. Cigarette taxes comprise about half the cost of cigarettes. Less people smoke, and the people’s health is more important than the rights of those doing the wrong thing.
Journalist: As less people smoke or drink soda, don’t the tax revenues eventually drop?
Leader of ARROGANT: Yes, but slimming people down is more important than providing the poor with subsidies on vegetables.
Journalist: So the poor will be priced out of enjoying a burger with fries and a coke and eventually get less benefits from the tax revenues.
Leader of ARROGANT: Yes, in the long run we know what’s good for them.
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Postscript: Your Federal government is working hard to protect you from making poor food choices. See USDA Secretary: We Must ‘Create Appropriate Transition’ for What Americans Eat here.
Those that want to research the link between obesity and fast food should read Don't Eat This Book. Fast Food and the Supersizing of America by Morgan Spurlock. See a link here. Cato's research on big government and obesity is here. Libertarian sites examine the civil rights issues connected to taking away people's food choices. The huge Cokes are not the cause. As of June, 2012, researchers have found more important factors than soda (link here).

How Students Can Remember the Transcendentalists: Use a Skit

Name_______________________________ Period __________________

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Instructions: If you were picked for a role, please come up to the front of the class. If not, please listen carefully to the skit and fill in the correct names below.

Characters
Ralph Waldo Emerson: Philosopher and writer
Josiah Holbrook: Founder of Lyceum movement
John Brown: Abolitionist militant
Henry David Thoreau: Philosopher and writer
Margaret Fuller: News reporter and intellectual
Walt Whitman: Poet
_______________________________________________________________
Setting: Emerson’s home, Concord, Massachusetts, 1854

Holbrook: Americans love to learn. Look how well they attend Lyceum lectures! I noticed that in addition to Emerson, Margaret Fuller was an especially popular speaker. I’ve never seen a woman make a living as an intellectual before.
Whitman: Emerson lit an intellectual fire under all of us, and we all changed American culture in some way. It’s too bad that Margaret died so young. Look, here’s an unopened letter from her.

Fuller: “My father educated me in Greek and Latin even though I was a girl. To overcome the odds against my sex, I worked so hard in learning languages that I became ill. I am living proof that women are the intellectual equal to men.”

Emerson: I am honored that Margaret was in my intellectual circle. Our movement, transcendentalism, was built on the idea that every individual, by searching within, can encounter the truth. I am sure that Henry and Walt would agree.

Brown: There are limits to your glorification of the individual, Emerson. In times of national crisis, we need to work as one. Today, we need to destroy the evil institution of slavery. Radical measures are needed. Who is with me?

Emerson: We all are. I have modified my views on radical individualism and have become less eager for the individual to stand apart from society. We all need to cooperate in this time of national urgency.

Thoreau: I went to jail rather than support the Mexican War. I knew that a consequence of that war would be the expansion of slavery. I will break the law now to oppose the evil institution of slavery on our shores. It is time for civil disobedience!


Which character espouses the following policy or idea? Pick the one best answer.
1. Civil disobedience:____________________
2. Amazed by American lecture attendance:___________________________
3. Men and women are intellectually equal:_______________________________
4. No longer interested in radical individualism.:_____________________________
5. Grateful for Emerson’s inspiration:__________________________________
6. Radical abolitionist:_____________________
________________________________________________________________________
7. What ended up happening to John Brown? What was Emerson’s reaction?
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________________

8. What was the significance of Brook Farm?

_______________________________________________________________________
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9. Would you have preferred to be educated in Margaret Fuller’s day or today? Why?
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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10. Should the State be subservient to the wishes of the individual or should the individual be subservient to the State? Why?
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Colonial History--Now You'll Remember It!

I've composed mnemonic aids to helping AP US History students remember chapters one to five in the textbook, American Pageant.

Background material from The American Pageant, Twelfth Edition, is followed by Spinrad mnemonics in italics.

1. New World Beginnings

Three sister farming: beans growing on the trellis of the cornstalks and squash covering the planting mounds to retain moisture in the soil. The rich diet produced the highest population densities in the North American continent, among them the Creek, Choctaw, and Cherokee peoples.

Beans, maize, and squash,
Sister farming of three
Sustained the Creek, Choctaw, and Cherokee

New world exports: gold and silver; corn, potatoes, pineapples, tobacco, vanilla, and chocolate; and maybe syphilis. Old world exports: wheat, sugar, rice, coffee; horse, cows, pigs; African slave labor; and smallpox, measles, bubonic plague, influenza, typhus, diphtheria, and scarlet fever.

The new world exported syphilis, silver, and gold.
Europeans sent horse, cows, pigs, and slaves in their ship holds.
America received sugar, rice, coffee, and wheat.
She gave to Europe corn, potatoes, tobacco and a chocolate treat.
But European diseases were also sent.
Indian deaths—ninety percent!

2. The Planting of English America

Virginia Company of London chose a location on the banks of the James River—Jamestown. The Virginia Company was saved from utter collapse by Captain John Smith and new governor, Lord De La Warr.

From Virgin(ia) (queen) then James.
After Smith then War(r).

John Rolfe, husband of Pocahontas, was the father of the tobacco industry and economic savior of the Virginia colony.

Rolfe loved an Indian,
Perfected a good smoke.
To grow it needed lots of men.
Virginia didn’t go broke.


Maryland—Catholic haven,
Supported Act of Toleration

Carolinas exported rice and imported slaves.
CERIS

Georgia served as a buffer colony against Spanish Florida and French Louisiana.
Georgia is in the way of Flo and Lou.

3. Settling the Northern Colonies

Puritans were English religious reformers who wished to undertake a total purification and de-Catholicization of the Church of England. Separatists vowed to break away entirely from the Church of England. The Pilgrims were a group of Puritans, including some Separatists, who secured rights to settle under the Virginia Company’s jurisdiction. Their ship, the Mayflower, missed its destination, and they settled on the shore of Plymouth Bay, New England. All signed the Mayflower Compact, a step toward self-government.

PILGRIMS

Puritans
Icy first winter killed half
Left England and then Holland for America
Good leadership in William Bradford
Refused to be discouraged
In fur, fish, and lumber found prosperity and a thanksgiving celebration with the Indians
Mayflower Compact
Separatists influenced the group.

Massachusetts Bay Colony started off on a larger scale than any other English settlements. John Winthrop believed, “We shall be a city upon a hill” and a calling from G-d to serve the new colony as its governor. The purpose of the government was to enforce G-d’s laws. Only “visible saints” could vote.

Massachusetts Bay Colony,
Not a true democracy.
Votes only for Puritans,
Not rabble that sins.
Governor Winthrop had inspiring skill:
“We shall be as a city upon a hill.”

Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams challenged the Puritan orthodoxy of Massachusetts Bay. Hutchinson was banished and Williams fled to the Rhode Island area where he built a Baptist church and established complete freedom of religion.

Who Ceri Arf
Williams, Hutchinson, orthodoxy challengers. (He) escaped (to) Rhode Island and religious freedom.

Indian King Philip (aka Metacom) forged an Indian alliance and mounted a series of coordinated assaults on English villages throughout New England, but he was captured and killed. King Philip’s War inflicted lasting defeat on New England’s Indians, and thereafter they posed only sporadic threats to the New England colonists.

King Philip organized in order to fight,
But his head ended up on a pike.
New England’s last serious Indian attack
Set the tribes’ numbers back.

Residues of Charles II’s effort to assert tighter administrative control using English officials aggravated Americans.

Charles’ judges sent
Were viewed by New England with contempt.

William Penn’s colony included an elected assembly, freedom of worship, no restrictions on immigration, and benevolent Indian relations.

Pennsylvania assembly worship, Immigration, Indians
Paw II

4. American Life in the Seventeenth Century

Malaria, dysentery, and typhoid (MDT) cut ten years off the life expectancy of newcomers from England that left for the Chesapeake. Half the people born to early Virginia and Maryland settlements did not survive to celebrate their twentieth birthdays.

Virginia 1600s=MDT minus ten. With luck, ten again.

Both Virginia and Maryland employed the “headright” system to encourage the importation of servant workers. Whoever paid the passage of a laborer (and Britain had a labor surplus) received the right to acquire fifty acres of land. The laborer, an “indentured servant,” voluntarily traded several years of labor for the cost of the transatlantic passage and later clothes, provisions, and maybe a small amount of land. The planters became great land holders. The indentured servants often became low-wage laborers. Bacon’s rebellion showed the tension of the landless former servants against the plantation gentry. African slaves solved the problem for the gentry as the pool of available English laborers shrank in the late 1600s.

Bacon replaced indentured with African slaves.
Brid Africans

Slave life was most severe on rice plantations in the deep south and slaves there didn’t live long. Blacks in the tobacco-growing Chesapeake region had it easier, and by the early 1700s family life and natural increase was possible.

Slave life wasn’t nice
In the deep south growing rice.
Slave health was a great lack,
To import more, slave ships had to go back.
Chesapeake tobacco had more spice
And allowed slaves an easier family life.

Southern society in the seventeenth century was characterized by a few great merchant planters who owned most slaves and land and monopolized political power. Beneath the planters were the small farmers. They tilled modest plots and might own one or two slaves but lived as subsistence farmers. Beneath them were landless whites, most of them former indentured servants. Under them were indentured servants. Black slaves were on the lowest rung of society.

Planters, small farmers, landless whites, indentured servants, black slaves
Pretty Sally Finch loves when I sass brother Sam.

Healthier New England life on average added ten years to an Englishman’s lifespan. A stable family was the center of New England life, and early marriage encouraged a high birthrate.

If on this earth you wanted to stay,
Best to live in Massachusetts Bay.
Strong family units were partly how
People lived almost as long as they do now.

The Puritans’ Congregational Church government led to democracy in political government.

Church democracy to town meeting

By conferring partial membership rights in the once-exclusive Puritan congregations, the Half-Way Covenant weakened the distinction between the “elect” and others, further diluting the spiritual purity of the original settlers’ G-dly community. Strict religious purity was sacrificed somewhat to the cause of wider religious participation.

Partial church membership—
Half –Way covenant
Diluted spiritual purity
Of Puritan Community.
Infused the congregation
With more religious participation.
A group of adolescent girls in Salem, Massachusetts claimed to have been bewitched by certain older women. A hysterical ‘witch hunt” ensued, leading to the execution in 1692 of twenty individuals.

Salem hunt executed “witches”—“bewitched girls of adolescence in Massachusetts.
Shew B Gam

5. Colonial society on the Eve of Revolution

The 18th century American population boom shift the balance of power between the colonies and Britain. In 1700 there were twenty Englishmen for each American colonist. By 1775 the ratio had fallen to three to one.

America grew
To many from few.
In 1776 the British were undone
Partly by a ratio that had fallen to three to one (British to American).

Ethnicities of (non-native) Americans in 1790 were predominantly (in order of population, greatest to least) English, African, Scottish, German, and Scotts-Irish.

English, African, Scottish, German, and Scotts-Irish.
Eat all sweet grapes—stuff it!

Scotts-Irish led the armed march of the Paxton Boys on Philadelphia in 1764, protesting the Quakers’ lenient policy toward the Indians. They also led the Regulator movement, a rebellion against eastern dominance of the South Carolina colony.

The Paxton Boys protested Quakers’ lack of fight.
The Regulators rebelled against South Carolina eastern might.

The colonies’ economy in the 18th century could be explored by region. New England specialized in fishing, whaling, shipbuilding, rum, and trading. The middle colonies grew grain, raised cattle, and traded. The south grew tobacco, rice, and indigo, and traded.

In New England you might trade some fish,
Drying cod for a Spaniard’s dish.
Middle colonies made the bread
Or had cattle in the shed.
Southerners made their dough
From rice, tobacco,
And indigo.

Parliament passed the Molasses Act, disallowing crucial North American trade with the French West Indies. American merchants bribed and smuggled their way around the law.

The Molasses Act didn’t stick to the rum American smugglers bought from the French West Indies.

Two “established” or tax-supported churches in 1775—the Anglican (Church of England) and the Congregational (Puritan) —were strongest in different parts of the country. The Anglicans were established in the south and a part of New York. The Congregationalists were formerly established in all the New England colonies except Rhode Island.

The Anglican or England’s church
Held a strong southern perch.
The Congregational—Puritan—
In New England sermonized sinful men.

Clerical intellectualism and more liberal doctrines set the stage for the religious revival during the 1730s and 1740s known as the Great Awakening. “Old light clergy were skeptical of the emotionalism and theatrics of the revivalists. “New light” clergy defended the Awakening for its role in revitalizing American religion. The Awakening led to the founding of “new light” centers of higher learning such as Princeton, Brown, Rutgers, and Dartmouth and was the first spontaneous mass movement of the American people, unifying them over sectional and denominational boundaries.

Whitefield
Wrath Hellfire ITinerant (preachers) Emotional (in open) FIELD

Peter Zenger’s newspaper assailed the corrupt royal governor. The mere fact of printing, irrespective of the truth, was enough to convict. The jurors defied the judge and declared a verdict of not guilty—a blow for freedom of the press.

Attacking corruption, Zenger’s paper did tell.
The governor put Zenger to trial for seditious libel.
The judge told the jury that whether truth or tale
Just making the statements should send Zenger to jail.
Zenger’s defense—opposing arbitrary power
Won, permitting press freedom to flower.

Compared to Europe, 18th century America offered unusual opportunities for social mobility and a greater level of democracy.

American mobility and democracy
AMAD

The Classicists Versus The Relativists

The Classicists Versus The Relativists: Robert M. Hutchins Versus Antonio Darder

John Dewey

Since the ancient Greeks, men and women of the West have looked at the world through critical eyes. No longer content to rely on Aristotle and the Church for knowledge, since the Renaissance empiricism has held sway. For example, American scientists of the 21st century are not satisfied with a Newtonian view of the physical world. Instead, science has evolved and theories have changed over time. According to Kuhn (1973), science progresses because scientists scrutinize and change their belief systems. A new paradigm replaces an existing paradigm. Einstein has replaced Newton’s paradigm in physics. Likewise, those involved in Western social sciences, working in disciplines such as philosophy, psychology, history, economics, literature, political science, and art, demand fearless scrutiny of reality, both inner and outer. It has been so for thousands of years in the West. To illustrate, let us pick a few great thinkers from the Western tradition. The historian Plutarch, the Stoic philosopher Epictetus, and religious philosopher Maimonides dispassionately investigated their personal feelings, their culture, other cultures, and the concept of truth. Plutarch gave us an unbiased, detailed, anatomized, and synthesized history of Rome. He wrote history so his people, in search of truth, would not repeat mistakes. Epictetus showed how one could choose to react to life’s traumas. One was not a slave to her emotions. Maimonides aligned faith with reason. All these thinkers asked and answered the great questions of life. William Bennett (1992) writes:

The classics of Western philosophy and literature amount to a great debate on the perennial questions. In the end, the study of the seminal works of Western civilization is … a case for philosophy and for thoughtfulness….The West is the most self-critical of cultures. Reason is exalted and reason leads to a look, a second look, and, where necessary, readjustment, redefinition, and change. It is one of the distinguishing features of Western civilization, in fact, that it has engaged in this dialogue, self-examination, and correction over the centuries (pp.173-174).

Robert Hutchins (1953) defends these “seminal works of Western civilization” not simply because these works promote reason and powers of judgement over irrationality and one-sidedness but because studying them makes people morally better. Hutchins states that the “aim of an educational system…is to improve man as man” (P. 11) through the teaching of moral virtues. He does not reveal a Western canon but would probably include The Bible, writings of Greek philosophers such as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, and the later Skeptics, Cynics, Epicureans, and Stoics. The great Jewish, Christian, and Muslim philosophers would also be on the list. He would also include Western economists, psychologists, sociologists, historians, political scientists, writers and artists, too many to catalog here. All of these great thinkers thought logically and critically, basing their ideas on values, on absolute values.

Cultural relativists challenge Hutchins’ aim of an educational system. If values are relative or not important, a good person yesterday may not be a good person today. The relativist does not think that goodness is an absolute but is dependent on culture and the historical situation. Even more extreme, some cultural relativists would ask, “Who cares if someone is good. All that matters is that she is useful to the State.” John Dewey (1938) is more interested in effective classroom technique than debating whether values are absolute. Therefore he would not necessarily be opposed to Hutchins’ views, especially if students were interested in learning about good values. The “static aims and materials” (P.5) that Dewey rails about could apply to the pedantic memorization of Latin grammar or some other ineffective and boring pedagogy. Dewey is not necessarily against the learning of useful classic works simply because the authors died a long time ago. He is against outmoded, traditional pedagogy. Learning must be presented in a palatable fashion, connected to the lives of the students. A student can benefit from improved pedagogy while studying Greek philosophy. Dewey and Hutchins are not opposed to each other’s views.

Antonio Darder (1991), not John Dewey, is a real cultural relativist and true critic of Hutchins and teaching the Western canon. Drawing from the writings of Pablo Freire, Darder states that

since knowledge is socially constructed, culturally mediated, and historically situated, dominant discourses function to determine what is relegated to the arenas of truth and relevancy at any given moment in time. Thus…[critical educators] hold a view of truth as relational, in that statements considered true are seen as arising within a particular context, based on the relations of power operative in a society, discipline, or institution (P.92).

Simply stated, Darder states that there is no absolute truth, and the ruling class defines knowledge in such a way to continue its oppression of the poor, women and minorities. Darder’s arguments in favor of relative truth appear correct at first glance. However, neither the premises of his argument nor the conclusion of his thesis make sense.

Knowledge is not dependent on place, culture, or historical situation. Water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen, whether one is testing the water of the San Francisco Bay or the Red Sea. The laws of chemistry or physics are not dependent on culture. Additionally, knowledge, even of the social sciences, is not “historically situated.” Does anyone believe that the Ten Commandments are no longer valid since they were written 3,000 years ago? Does the Iliad still speak to us, even though we live in a postmodern, urban culture? These books tell us that murder is evil and friendship is virtuous. Heroism is a virtue. The ideas in these books resonate in us because the moral teachings are valuable in our day as well. The ancient Greek virtues are absolute and not dependent on time or place. Darder’s Marxist conclusion, that education merely another type of oppression is also invalid. The educated know how to control their emotions. Only the educated know how to be a good, virtuous, moral person. The educated know the value of freedom. Those who have had a Western education have control over their inner and outer lives.

Three Cheers for Teaching Summer School

High school teachers that spend part of their summer vacation teaching summer school provide a valuable service, giving kids a second chance in passing required courses and directing them back on the path to graduation. Teachers themselves benefit as well. Teaching and working with young people is a skill. Teaching skills must be practiced like any other, and summer school prevents a lapse in practicing. There’s still plenty of vacation time left for necessary relaxation and recharging after summer school is over.

Second, teachers can make some extra money. My district pays me at a higher hourly wage than I make during the regular school year. True, I can make an even higher rate consulting, teaching drums or playing gigs, but I can’t work nearly as many hours. And I would rather teach than engage in the seasonal work that most teachers do—retail, construction, herding, etc.

Third, and most important, summer school challenges a teacher’s classroom management skills. Students that take summer school are usually (but not always) the least skilled and attentive and worst behaved. They often have parents that don’t care about their academic performance or have given up on them. These students already consider themselves failures and work hard to keep that view consistent. Many have learning disabilities and read at a low level. If you teach summer school you will encounter bravado and defiance, clowning, and shut down behaviors every day. You will need to work out how you will react to these problems in advance, before summer school starts, both working with administration and alone in the classroom. Your classroom management skills will be quite sharp when you go back to the classroom in the fall.

The Business Model and the Education Model

Management consultant Peter Drucker taught the concepts “management by objectives” and “management by results.” An employee’s compensation, he wrote, should be linked to the company’s goals.

We teachers are managed by objectives, such as completing an AP training, preparing a new course, or observing a colleague’s lessons with English learners, but we are rarely managed by proper results—increasing student learning. To be fair, student learning is hard to measure. Do we, as most states do, use the questionably suitable but statistically reliable standardized multiple choice tests? Or should we use more valid but less reliable measures such as essay writing and projects showing critical thinking? And even if we can successfully measure student learning, teachers contribute to only a portion of the variance. Other factors such as home life, the student’s peer group, and need to succeed also influence the amount of learning that takes place. Yet, managers in private industry make little allowance for excuses. “Make your sales quota or you’re out!” Similarly, teaching quality is the most important predictor of student success.

Looking at state test scores as an example, what happens to teachers who do not increase and perhaps decrease student learning? Usually nothing. What happens to teachers who do increase student learning? Perhaps they will receive a community award, but these teachers do not receive an increase in salary commensurate with their value to the public. Perhaps individual teachers should not get an increase in salary, because teamwork as much as individual effort crafts good teaching. Intra-department competition damages a school. Inter-school competition benefits everyone. If a department works together and increases student achievement, it makes sense to reward that department with an increase in salary. Students and teachers would benefit. Teachers would have their interests aligned closer to the interests of the students. However, if the incentive program is designed poorly, like the New York program, it won't improve student achievement. (See http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/18/education/18rand.html?_r=1 here.)

First of all, administrators should not measure student achievement strictly through state test scores. Instead teachers and administrators should work together, creating a formula combining three components: state test scores, student grades and work product, and the teacher’s teaching process. The last component, teaching process, examines progress toward standards and analyzes lesson plans, class engagement, classroom management, and assessment.

Bad Behavior and the Medical Model

The American public has shown interest in a recent scandal involving a married male politician getting into trouble by texting inappropriate messages and pictures. The politician found it impossible to remain in office and resigned and entered “rehab,” leaving open the possibility of running for political office again when “cured.”

This case interests me because it illustrates a societal shift in attitudes about deviant behavior. Bad behavior is no longer “wrong.” It is “sick.” Sickness can be cured and this politician’s career may be rehabilitated. On the other hand, when a mature individual is not ill but merely makes poor choices, the public considers the perpetrator to be morally flawed, and this flaw will last in perpetuity.

A quick examination of the history of the treatment of severe mental illness shows a similar, and I argue, laudable shift in attitudes. What used to be considered bizarre behavior has now been reframed as mental illness in many cases. In biblical times, behavior was viewed through the lens of morality. Deuteronomy reads: “Choose life (good behavior) so that you and your descendants will live…”Similarly, the Bible is fairly agnostic (pun intended) about the causes of King Saul’s depression and self-esteem and anger-management issues, but the moral lesson is clear—the king’s character defects bring his dynasty to an end. A few thousand years later, we can use the character of Sabbatai Tzvi as another example. This 17th-century false messiah had moments of rapture and times when “G-d hid his face from him.” (See the wonderful biography by Gershom Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah.) With 21st-century eyes, we would say that Sabbetai Tzvi was bi-polar. In the 17th-century, however, this man was viewed as a messianic figure by much of world Jewry because of his alleged closeness (and distance) with G-d and exemplary character traits. He was not evaluated as a man with a medical condition.

Similarly, Europeans suffering from schizophrenia during the middles ages were treated as victims of demonic possession and later as creatures to be put on display at a madhouse such as Bethlam hospital. The United States finally saw a change of social attitudes after the pioneering work of Dorothea Dix, a woman who worked for better treatment of the mentally ill—releasing them (literally) from their chains and insisting on humane treatment. Still, those we describe today as insane were characterized as capable of only limited (animal-like) capacity for human reason. Ms. Dix worked for their compassionate treatment. The insane were characterized as mentally ill more recently.

Today little controversy remains in calling many types of mental illness an illness. Most who have worked with schizophrenics or depressives will attest that a medical model fits—certain parts of the brain, down to the cellular level, function abnormally in these patients. We can measure differences in brain structure and levels of neurotransmitters between healthy and ill patients, and these patients benefit from psychotropic drugs. Like any other medical malady, professionals can give schizophrenics and depressives a diagnosis, a prognosis, and prescribe a cure. Treating schizophrenia or depression as a moral failing sounds barbaric.

Why stop there? Why not view all deviants as victims of an illness, best treated by treatment and the language of medicine instead of moral suasion and the language of morality?

Though it may appear that looking at behavior this way is a radical paradigm shift, looking at bad behavior as a medical problem can be traced back to Hippocrates’ four humours or the determinism and atheism of 18th-century Enlightenment thinkers or to the developmental theories of Sigmund Freud. Modern psychiatric research on anti-personality disorder (ASPD) supports the medical view. These psychopaths, unable to feel any empathy for another’s suffering, may have a biological problem, a brain malfunction.

Yet we are a long way from confidently naming what parts of the brain are altered by ASPD and even farther away from a prospective cure. Additionally, perhaps these severe maladies mentioned here—psychiatric (Axis I) cases such as schizophrenia and depression and a personality disorders (Axis II) such as ASPD—remain the only examples where the medical model fits. In most human behavior most of us want to believe that people have free will and are responsible for their behavior. Perhaps people simply make bad choices at times.