My Climate Story

Climate Reality Project Leadership Corps

I invite you all to join me in my climate reality projects.

I have just completed the training course to become a leader for Vice President Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project. This provides me with a tremendous set of resources for educating students of all ages about the challenges of Climate Change and the ways we can meet these challenges. I invite all of you to join me in participating in my mentorship project and my archaeological project to educate all those interested in the realities of Climate Change and what we can do about it.

VP Gore summarizes the Realities of Global Warming.

Why must we learn about climate change? Because the planet is nearing the maximum average temperature for sustaining life as we know it.

How can we mitigate global warming? By using existing the technologies of renewable energy, conservation and the social strategies of empowering of women and decentralizing energy production for poor communities in order to increase food and energy production and efficiency for everyone.

Can we get this done by 2050. Yes, if we continue to collaborate as a planet through climate accords to set a pathway and listen to the younger generations who have been living within the world of internet technology and climate change for their entire lives. “My Climate Story” sets out my story as an environmentalist as a first installment of blogs, presentations and zoom panels that I intend to create to forward the Climate Reality Agenda.

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My climate story goes back to the first earth day in 1970, which I attended as undergraduate anthropology student at Stony Brook University.  My ecological interest was peaked by a curriculum that focussed on the study of how human communities culturally adapt to the diverse set of this planet’s natural environments. I had the privilege of learning from professors who had studied cultures from Borneo to the US and other other professors who were among the first to tackle the problems of human ecology. I recall lectures by Prof. Roger Peranio who described how  kinship and family underlay the adaptation of farmers from Borneo; by Prof Louis Faron who was a leading thinker on cultural ecological theory; and Prof. Lawrence Slobodkin about the population dynamics of all biological communities including humans.  I was even privileged to hear from Prof. James Watson the discoverer of DNA with Frances Crick. All of this inspired me to study human society through the eyes of the anthropologist, the biologist and the methodology of science.

My undergraduate career was capped off by a commencement speech by the first director of the newly created Environmental Protection Agency.  President Richard Nixon, following the lead of President Teddy Roosevelt, acknowledged the fundamental need to conserve the natural environment.  Ironically,  this was the same corrupt, war-mongering Nixon who I had spent a good part of my college life protesting. But no Nixon, no EPA.  Russell Train, the EPA’s first director spoke somewhat boringly but nonetheless profoundly about the need for citizens to care for the environment.  Politics indeeds creates strange bedfellows. 

My subsequent archaeological education focussed on the relationship between human communities and their natural environments.  My dissertation research was my first original foray into human ecology. I travelled to Copenhagen to begin a study of  the ecological impact of the first farmers in Denmark on the forests of 7000 years ago. I investigated this human-ecological dynamic between farmers and forest through both theoretical computer simulation and the empirical  paleoenvironmental history of Danish forests surrounding the archaeological sites of Neolithic Farmers.  The computer model predicted the impact of farming under agro-ecological scenarios ranging from slash and burn farmers who burned a forest patch, planted it and let it re-grow, to more intensive farmers who continuously planted fields surrounding their villages.  The parameters for these simulations were derived from the ecological and demographic studies of forest succession by leading population ecologists like Likens, Boorman and Horn.

My empirical study of the archaeological and paleoenvironmental study of Danish forests started with learning about pollen identification (via many hours over a microscope) and  participating in bog excavations to collect archaeological evidence and stratigraphic pollen cores.  I then statistically analyzed the pollen counts in the layers of these cores to look for patterns of forest succession and farming. In simple terms, through tby counting the numbers of pollen grains from tree, weed and grass species, I was able to ‘see’ the decline of primary the oak forest in the vicinity of prehistoric farming communities and the patterns of succession after such clearing.  For example, an increase in the pollen of ‘weeds’ such as plantain (Plantago lanceolata) and decrease in Oak pollen indicated forest clearance. This was usually associated with the appearance of the pollen of barley, wheat and rye grasses.   If these fields were left to regrow as in slash and burn agriculture, fast growing trees such as willow, hazel and birch, would succeed the farming episode and eventually yield to the high topped dominance of oak, linden, and maple. If the fields were farmed intensively, no such forest succession occurred. All of these patterns leave their traces in the numbers of pollen grains left in the peat bogs.

I have since applied my I research interests to my archaeological teaching of university students in the southeast and northeast US as well as Ireland.  Archaeology to me has always been relevant to solving modern ecological problems because there is, in my opinion, nothing more powerful than our understanding of the past to cope with the present and plan for the future.  But it was not until around 1980 when I saw the direct connection between archaeology and climate change, by attending a 3 day workshop by Dr Amory Lovins sponsored by the National Science Foundation/Chautauqua Institute. Lovins led the way for understanding how alternative energy and conservation were the answers to the slowly emerging recognition that we could not continue to keep up with a fossil fuel based economy without destroying the planet. And more than this, he showed the economic benefits of what he called “soft energy paths” and energy conservation.

I have since taught all of my courses from an human ecological perspective.  I have had the privilege of teaching 1000’s of undergraduates and 100’s of graduate students over the past 4 decades and the thing I am most proud of is helping them understand how the health of human communities natural environments.  This cultural ecological relationship changed qualitatively when we as a species t we shifted collecting our food from gathering, hunting and fishing to planting, cultivating and planting our food through farming. Everything we are currently doing to our planet is the result of this dramatic and traumatic change, which from the start effected challenging consequences in human health, ecology and human economics. Put simply, we transitioned from being “a part of nature” to being apart from nature.

Flash forward to today.  Having just this past June retired from teaching, I am commiting my professional expertise, experience and hopefully wisdom to two major culture-environmental, climate change projects.  First, I am co-directing a major eco-heritage economic development plan in southeastern Ireland and western Wales. The research goal of which is to understand the environmental and cultural history of the first settlers of this region, who arrived shortly  after the most recent glaciers receded  some 10-12,000 years ago. This archaeological and paleoenvironmental understanding lays the foundation for creating this region as a eco-heritage educational tourist destination. I invite professionals, students, and everyone who wants to participate in this project to contact me.

My second professional endeavor is working as a mentor of students and young people on how to build Green-Careers.  Being a Leader in the Climate Reality Project allows me to join my experience, expertise and love of mentoring students to help promote a Green Future.  Using my organization Out of the Box Education Solutions (www.outoftheboxeducation.org) as a platform, I am planning on connecting students with career advisors who are knowledgeable about the Green Economy and corporations, NGO’s, state agencies and education who are seeking employees skilled in the Green technology and knowledge.  Please contact me if you want to be a mentor, an advisor, or a mentee?

see www.outoftheboxeducation.org for my complete CV, resume, my blogs, samples of my interviews, podcast and even my Ted Talk on the history of baseball (my research avocation!).

Clean, Safe Too Cheap to Meter:

Is There a Role for Small Modular Nuclear Reactors in the Planet’s Energy Future?

Stanton Green, PhD

Professor Emeritus of Anthropology

Monmouth University

Out of the Box Education Solutions

www.outoftheboxeducation.org

Global Warming and the  Human Demand for Electrical Energy

The realities of global warming has spawned a spate of news stories and professional articles on a new generation of Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) as part of the alternative energy mix needed to meet the planet’s future energy demand.   To skeptics like myself these promises sound an awful lot like those made in the 1960’s and 1970’s for nuclear power produced electricity that is “clean, safe, and too cheap to meter” (Harry Shearer, Our friend the Atom, Le Show Podcast). Most experts agree that 1960’s style nuclear power is no long viable. Bill Gates considers nuclear power to be at an inflection point. 

“Without this next generation of nuclear, nuclear will go to zero,” Gates said during an interview in Washington last month. Germany is shutting 22 nuclear plants, France — a leader in clean-burning nuclear power — has plans to shut down some of its reactors and a similar trend is underway in the U.S. due to economic conditions, said Gates, before adding with a sigh: “So yes, it is daunting.”(Harder 2019)

Dan Mathers of the National Nuclear Laboratory presentation to the International Framework for Nuclear Energy Cooperation in Bucharest states the challenges for these newly designed nuclear reactors simply and directly.

By definition, any new design starts off with all the advantages. The question is whether these advantages will remain once engineering reality intervenes (Mathers 2014).

To get to the heart of this complex matter, let’s simplify things a bit. Nuclear and fossil fuels produce electricity in the same manner: they produce heat to boil water, produce steam, which in turn moves turbines within magnets to produce electricity. The advantage of nuclear energy over fossil fuels is that it does not produce carbon dioxide. This is countered by its billions of dollars of up front costs and its  production of voluminous amounts radioactive and toxic waste.  

Hydro-electric dams and windmills offer the tremendous advantage of using natural sources of motion to turn turbines and therefore not producing toxic effluent waste or atmospheric pollutants.  Solar panels are yet one further step removed from fossil fuels and nuclear power because they produce electricity directly by absorbing solar energy into photovoltaic cells that create current. From a design perspective, solar cells and windmills are the most simplet followed by carbon, oil and then nuclear., which are the most complex.

Can Green Energy Fulfill Energy Demand without Nuclear Power? 

Nuclear Power has played a rather ambiguous role in Green New Deal Proposals.  At the federal level, congress has sought to find a role for nuclear reactors.  Forbes Magazine, for example, describes the roll-out of the GND as follows.

Congressional members rolled out their "Green New Deal" in February that calls for a rapid shift to carbon-free energy. At first, the proposal called for all nuclear plants and not building any new ones. They also released a fact sheet nixing the possibility of building new nuclear power plants. Then they backed off and referred to future energy sources as clean, renewable, and zero-emission, which allows nuclear in.

Before drilling deeper on the nuclear option, let’s look briefly at the fundamental premise used to even consider nuclear power: That a non-nuclear Green New Deal (GND) set of strategies cannot meet the futre energy needs of our planet.   I would argue that this  assumption seems underrates the effectiveness of perhaps the most essential technological planks of the alternative energy platform:  energy conservation.  As far back as Amory Lovins’ 1979 study “Soft Energy Paths, ” Green New Deal advocates have demonstrated that energy conservation technology may well be the most important element of  Green New Deal.  Conservation technologies exist that signifcantly increase energy consumption efficiencies in the production, distribution and use of electricity. I think nearly everyone would agree that if we continue to produce and use electricity at today’s level of (in)efficiency, we will be unable to turn back Global Warming. That is why it is essential that we pay attention to the energy savings of such available technologies as smart thermostats  gauge usage, smart grids to distribute electricity, and smart buildings (Lovins 1979, Hawkin 2017).

The resurgence of the nuclear power option derives from the fact that nuclear generated energy is ecologically preferrable to coal and oil and that it provides 24 hour production as opposed to the daily and seasonal variation of solar and wind energy.   This pitch ignores two facts.  First,  nuclear produced electricity’s cost continues to steeply rise while the alternatives fall.   Second, “there is similar rapid development of energy storage.  This is being driven on by electric automobiles”  (Wagonsell, personal communication; The Economist 2020). 

As Meigs (2020) points out, while  “virtually every other form of energy has gone down over time, nuclear is four to eight times higher than it was four decades ago..”   According to Drawdown’s analysis, a $200 billion dollar upfront investment in nuclear power can maintain itat around 10 percent of the energy mix and save approximately 3 gigatons of greenhouse gas emission compared to fossil fuels. For these reasons, Project Drawdown considers nuclear “a regrets solution.”

“At Project Drawdown, we consider nuclear a regrets solution. It has potential to avoid emissions, but there are many reasons for concern: deadly meltdowns, tritium releases, abandoned uranium mines, mine-tailings pollution, radioactive waste, illicit plutonium trafficking, and thefts of missile material, among them.”

Can SMRs solve this Dilemma Economically? 

So what does a future of small nuclear reactors look like and how might it fit into a future of alternative energy economies? We know it produces lower carbon emissions (at least in the production process). But how does it compare with respect to construction, operations and waste management costs?   Here are two expert opinions. 

Irena Chatzis (2019) notes many advantages of Nuclear power.  

“Advanced SMRs offer many advantages, such as relatively small physical footprints, reduced capital investment, ability to be sited in locations not possible for larger nuclear plants, and provisions for incremental power additions. SMRs also offer distinct safeguards, security and nonproliferation advantages.”

James Meigs (2020) offers the following “what if” scenarios for implementing SMRs a safe, clean and affordable way.  

“… what if there were sources of zero-carbon electricity that didn’t require heavy- handed regulation to make them viable in the marketplace? What if we could produce more power—and do it affordably, with minimal environmental impact? That’s the almost utopian vision that some backers see for the next generation of nuclear power.”

Using a typical nuclear pitch, Meigs posits the economic boogy-man of “heavy handed regulation as the reason nuclear energy cannot  be timely or  affordable.  But what regulations are not necessary? Clearly, the short and long term management of  nuclear waste needs to be regulated. So, are we talking about regulations concerning: Where plants can be sited?  Specifications for materials and manufacture? Rules constraining the transportion of radioactive and other toxic waste?  In addition to the seemingly logical need for these kinds of regulations, the immense cost over-runs and awful environmental disasters of nuclear plants over the past 5 decades do not afford confidence to decrease the legal rules guiding the safety of nuclear power plants.

The advocates of small reactors claim that SMRs could make an impact on the American electricity market within the next several years. This again harkens back to the promises of nuclear plants over the past decades to for expeditious construction, approval and production. Meigs (2020) cites an MIT study that predicts that global electricity consumption will grow 45 percent by 2040 and will therefore require nuclear power as a bridge to a more efficient green future. Even if we concede that SMRs could help bridge this gap  between energy demand and green energy production, there is scant history or other evidence that it could do so in a timely fashion that is safe, clean and affordable?  Mathers  points out quite directly that this affordability argument is totally theoretical.

“All drivers in favour of SMR economics are currently theoretical and need to be demonstrated to work in practice…. No current (2014) SMR has a complete engineering design which is needed before a full engineering cost estimate can be made. Economic figures for SMR designs are often just projections with little supporting base.”

But let’s grant SMRs one more benefit of doubt by assuming that these theoretical designs actually do pan out economically.   Meigs’ indicates that SMR plants will produce enough electricity for 40,000 households.  This would  thereby require 1,000’s  of these reactors to be scattered around the country.  Medium-size cities of 500,000 people like Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania  or Columbia,  South Carolina, for example, would themselves require around a half a dozen such plants. Major metropolitan areas could require 50.  Since Meigs does not provide a cost or timetable for the construction of these plants, this estimate of how many plants would be required would seem to be economically and environmentally daunting.  One advocate cited by  Meigs summarizes the possibility of using small nuclear reactors by saying, “… I think these reactors could fit into the future energy mix quite well. The big question is how economically they can build them.”  By “economically” I assume he is referring to up-front, ROI, and environmental cost analysis.  Again, we are dealing with theory, here.  

In contrast to  theoretical SMRs the ROI of solar panels for residences, schools, and commercial properties are well known.   Today, most home systems can be paid off within 5 years, producing ‘free’ electricity for the remainder of its 25-30 year lifespan. Homeowners also gain an  increase the value of their  homes. In California, for example, appraisers have an industry rate-chart of increased home value per KWH of installed solar. The installation of solar panel systems is easily retro-fitted to exisitng homes, and even more easily incorporated into the building of new homes. If purchasers cannot afford the upfront costs, solar companies offer no cost lease programs with decreased fixed electricity rates.  Large buildings, both residential and commercial have the same advantages. 

Can an SMR Future Be Safe and Clean?

Meigs (2020) proposes that small nuclear plants could (his emphasis) have “minimal environmental impact.”  We know that nuclear reactors do not emit carbon. But we cannot let that distract us from the existential problem of producing large amounts of radioactive fuel rods, liquids, solid waste and toxic chemical effluents  Cost estimates for mitigating these environmental pollutants are really not possible since the required waste management technology remains unresolved. To its credit the nuclear energy industry no longer denies that it has a waste management problem. 

Although small modular reactors are designed to produce less radioactive waste than standard, bigger reactors for the same amount of power, the issue of where to safely dispose of nuclear waste remains unresolved (The Conversation 2019) 

We can add to this a few additional thoughts of some nuclear industry experts.

Mathers  (2014) notes that the new generation of reactors “assume fuel is pond stored for approximately 20 years followed by dry store or repro.”   Christopher Xerri (Chatzis 2019) describes SMRs as an opportunity to find solutions for nuclear waste management. 

“Engineers and designers have a unique opportunity to work on solutions for the improved  management of spent fuel and radioactive waste for SMRs in the early stages of development. “This approach will help address uncertainties related  to the back end of the fuel cycle, reduce costs and enhance societal acceptance of nuclear power.”

Nuscale (2018) one of the leading firms developing  SMRs breaks down waste management as into the following stages (nuscale.com, 2018).  

NuScale reactor building and plant design incorporates a proven safe, secure and effective used fuel management system. A stainless steel lined concrete pool holds used uel for at least 5 years under 60 feet of water.

After cooling in the spent fuel pool, spent fuel is placed into certified casks, steel containers with concrete shells, on site of the plant. The NRC Waste Confidence Rule states that this is a safe and acceptable way to store used fuel for an interim period at the plant up to 100 years. 

The NuScale’s standard facility design includes an area for the dry storage of all of the spent fuel for the 60-year life of the plant.

These company waste management solutions ultimately yield to the same theoretical governmental safety net for the final disposal of used fuel. 

“The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has responsibility for the final disposal of used fuel under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. Under the Act, the generators' of electricity from nuclear power must pay into a fund for the long term disposal of this used fuel; over $35 billion is currently in the Nuclear Waste Fund.”

Let me respond to these claims about waste production and storage considerations with a personal story from one of my earliest classes on the history and future of energy production and use. 

Forty years ago I took my university class, called Culture and Energy: a comparison of how Societies Produce and Use Energy,   on  a tour of of the Savannah River Plant (SRP) in Aiken,  South Carolina. This plant was built in the 1950’s to produce bomb-making radioactive isotopes and research on nuclear reactors. The SRP reservation covers 310 square miles and employs 10,000 people. It is an understandably highly regulated federal reservation with one public throughway that does not permit stopping or photography.  Cars are given a strict time limit to drive through the reservation.  My class was generously given permission to tour the reservation, beginning with a walk and talk through a section of the forest surrounding the actual plant.  During this walk one of the  students began to put his hand into one of the tributaries of the Savannah River to cool himself.  The tour guide immediately shouted for him to back off and announced to the group that it was not safe to expose themselves to the polluted river.  A second wake-up call with regard to the plant occurred during   a tour of the labs where scientists were trying to develop methods to turn liquid nuclear waste into inert glass. This process of ‘glassificaton’ was promised to be available soon. We are still waiting for this technology to be invented, let alone implemented. The Savannah River Nuclear Plant still stores nearly all of its waste in tanks that were meant to contain nuclear materials and liquids for a maximum of 10- 20 years.

How Safe can Small Nuclear Reactors Be?

Nuclear Reactor safety remains a huge problem for SMRs. That this is the case is clear from the fact that the nuclear industry continues to ask for regulatory exemptions and liability limits for all nuclear plants. Again from Meigs’ (2020) article: 

“Not everyone is happy with the push toward new reactor designs. The Union of Concerned Scientists, a perennial nuclear critic, is not convinced that new plants will be safer. “My concern about NuScale is that they believe so deeply that their reactor is safe and doesn’t need to meet the same criteria as the larger reactors, that it’s pushing for lots of exemptions and exceptions,” says Edwin Lyman, acting director of the group’s Nuclear Safety Project.”

Although most SMRs use fuel that that is not usable for bomb-making, some new models require more potent fuel than earlier models.  This leads to the not insignificant problem of keeping the fuel secure and out of the hands of domestic and foreign terrorists.  This would be especially true given the 1000’s of small reactors located throughout the United States.

“… most SMRs run on mildly enriched uranium, which isn’t suitable for making nuclear weapons. But a small number of next-generation reactors do entail handling more potent isotopes.”  This brings up the issue of terrorist acquisition of plutonium fuel for use in so- called “dirty bombs.” 

Putting it simply, Mather state, “Small size does not necessarily improve safety.”

Concluding Remarks

Since the 1950’s nuclear energy has largely been given a pass on issues of safety, environmental impact and cost. This would seem to be at least in part the result of a governmental attempt  to provide a positive spin (pun intended) for humankind’s splitting of the atom, which Einstein simply and powerfully explained “changed everything”.   Somehow using nuclear fuel to produce electricity seemed to  balance out its use for building and using nuclear bombs. Today’s  awareness of the existential threat of continued carbon emissions and its resultant global warming has heightened the call to eliminate the use of  fossil fuels and to reconsider interest in nuclear power.   Nuclear advocates are vying to capture the narrative of the energy future by proposing a new generation of reactors. These narratives attempt to erase the enormous environmental and economic failure of the nuclear industries for the last 50 plus years and replace it with promises of new mini-reactors that are clean, safe and affordable. Their case remains theoretical and with significant red flags such as the industry’s call for  enormous governmental subsidies, regulatory exemptions, restrictions on liability, and above all safety.  Moreover, the same red flags of time extensions and huge cost overruns with the new reactors portend a re-telling of 1970’s nuclear failures.

France’s new energy minister has called a major French nuclear project “a mess” in public interviews. The European pressurized reactor (EPR) that was commissioned for t the Flamanville nuclear power plant, where it joins two existing pressurized water reactors, has been delayed and plagued by problems. The latest extension takes the project timeline from 13 years to 17 at least , 

That puts Flamanville 10 years past its original due date. One of the more alarming causes for delay is a break in the “main secondary system penetration welds,” which has contributed to a budget that’s bloated from a planned $3.9 billion to $14.6 billion.(Delbert, 2020)

  Advocates of a future that relies on conservation and green energy have done due diligence over the past 50 years to assess the environmental and ecological ROI of a wide variety of energy production and conservation options including nuclear produced electricity.   Solar, Wind and related ways to produce electrical energy can no longer be dismissed as too expensive and not productive enough.  They are proven safe and clean.  And now they have demonstrated that they are not only more affordable  than oil and coal and natural gas (when you include the enormous environmental costs of fracking)  but they provide the kinds of ROI required to contribute toward mitigating global warming by 2050. The proliferation of third party energy providers has lowered the prices of electricity by allowing consumers to choose their electricity supply providers.  Among the choices 100% of solar and/or  wind electricity are among the lowest priced options, in some cases costing  half the price of the power company’s offer of oil, gas, nuclear and a smattering of wind and solar (often less than 10%). 

The Green New Deal has also been transparent in its evaluation of cultural and behavioral changes required to mitigate global warming.  Quantitative measures have been applied to changes in diet, socio-economic equity, and conservation minded social programs. The bonus of such reforms of course is the granting of human and civil rights to women, and economically disadvantaged communities.  The beauty of these strategies is their positive self-enhancement. Improving the standard of living of women and girls decreases population growth, while the decrease of eating meat improves health.  We can begin to see at little sunshine here if we turn the global climate crisis into an opportunity to improve the quality of life for millions of people. 

It is now up  to governmental authorities and the people they represent to summon the political will to make decisions based on science and economics and not yield to unsupported narratives of special interests.  Politics in its most basic sense is the way communities make decisions. This all begins at local levels like school boards and  borough councils, and winds its way to city mayors and councils, to state and federal legislatures and finally global collaborations.  The biggest difference between the politics of today and the 1950’s when nuclear power was introduced is that climate change is now being experienced as  a real time process. It is not historical and it is not theoretical.  Superstorm Sandy really did disrupt many peoples lives.  The Fukishima Tsunami did breach major nuclear plants and kill many people as it destroyed large swaths of the Japanese coast. Global Warming as it is expressed in extreme climate change is “known” to  everyone who has experienced severe weather, flooding and wildly changing weather patterns. 

And this is especially true for the members of the millennial generation (born in the early 1980s’ to the mid 1990’s), who are the first planetary citizens  to directly experience climate change and its consequences for their entire lives. They are the first Real Time Generation where climate change and technology change is constantly experienced.  They are also the first generation to always have had access to personal computing which appeared in the mid 1970’s.  This has in turn allowed them to take full advantage of the world wide web, which was coincidentally made public in the mid 1980’s. They have always been  globally connected to  nearly every person on the planet and  they have always had real time scientific and cultural information at their finger tips via computers and smart devices.  Millennials “know” about severe weather and global warming through direct experience and thereby “comprehend” the daunting challenge of not meeting the challenge to stop global warming.   Again, global warming is not theoretical or historical to them,  it is real and it needs to be addressed immediately, There are many alternatives that are either already being implemented and many that can be immediately initiated.  SMRs, however,  do not appear to be one of them. 

I will end as I began: the promises of new nuclear options sound an awful lot like those of the 1970’s.  I remain a skeptic. I believe that the billions of dollars being put into nuclear energy research and engineering design for this a very expensive and dangerous gamble.  Even more worrisome is that the SMR technology fix might distract us from  investing in proven alternative energy.   If momentum maintains the push for SMRs, we have to rely on data science to hold the industry to its projected budgets, and make sure to limit investment appropriately.   We cannot again be blinded by the nuclear industry’s pitch that atomic reactors are better than fossil fuel reactors. Nuclear power is at best a small part of a possible sustainable energy future.

References

Irena Chatzis (2019) Small Modular Reactors: A Challenge for Spent Fuel Management? International Atomic Energy Association Bulletin

James Conca (2019) Any Green New Deal Is Dead Without Nuclear Power. Forbes. March 2020. 

Caroline Delbert (2020) France's Revolutionary Nuclear Reactor Is a Leaky, Expensive Mess. Popular Mechanics.

Amy Harder (2019). Bill Gates faces daunting nuclear future. Axios.

Paul Hawken (2017) Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming Paperback, Penguin Books.

Amory Lovins (1979) Soft Energy Paths: Towards a Durable Peace (Harper Colophon Books 

Dan Mathers (2014) Small Modular Reactors and Waste Management Issues.  International Framework for Nuclear Energy Cooperation - Infrastructure development working group meeting. Bucharest.

Donella Meadows, Jorgen Randers, et al (2004)  Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update

by Donella H. Meadows , Jorgen Randers 

Economist (2020) What the million-mile battery means for electric cars. August.

James Meigs (2020) Next-Gen Nuclear Power Magazine, Manhattan Institute

Winter 2020 Infrastructure and energy

Scott Montgomery (2018), The nuclear industry is making a big bet on small power plants. The Conversation. Conversation.com.

Harry Shearer (2020) Our Friend the Atom, Le Show, Podcast episode August 2020. 

Ross Wagonsell (2020) Personal Communication

NOW IS THE TIME TO TRANSFORM HIGHER EDUCATION I: THE ACADEMIC STRUCTURE

The Problem

The pandemic has exposed the financial instability of most higher education institutions. University Presidents are under tremendous pressure to announce Fall campus openings for the same reasons as restaurants and other businesses.  Higher education institutions need to recruit and maintain students in order remain financial sustainable. Yet the social realities of welcoming students to a safe campus presents a near impossible task.  

Financial sustainability is not a new issue. It has been problematic for all but the most elite and well-known institutions for the past several decades.  The rising price of higher education and its academic and fiscal consequences have led some educators to predict  that as many as 1/3 of America’s colleges and universities will be closed or be merged within the next several generations of students.  In addition to rising prices, enrollment is expected to diminish as the  number of  high school graduates decreases as the population ages. Although there is not much we can do about the demography (except perhaps by liberalizing immigration), we can make college more accessible and affordable and thereby sustainabe.

We can list variety of fiscal reasons that underly the dramatic increase in a college degree: state cutbacks for education, increases in energy costs and of course the increased price of health insurance and healthcare. To make matters worse, these price increases self-reinforce. Increased  costs require many students to drop out and extend their time to graduation. On average less than 1/2 of today’s full-time undergraduates graduate in 4 years.  Even more startling is that less than 2/3 graduate in 6 years. The latter increases the cost of a degree by 50%.  The cost issues, of course, need to be addressed and I will do so in a subsequent article.   But what I want to propose in this essay are ways we can change and improve the academic structure of higher education that are also cost saving.  

Crises call on communities and instituions to do things out-of-the-box. The Covid pandemic has evoked an extradordinary effort by faculty and administrators to change from live campusses to  virtual communities. I have never in my 4 decades in higher education seen universities change so quickly and  smartly as I observed this past spring and summer.  Curricular and course delivery changes that would take months if not years were done within weeks as campusses were forced to close.  Many of these changes had been in the works for years.  I propose that If we so choose we can adapt  many of these innovations to meet the long standing problems of fiscal stability and meet the educational needs of the 21st century student. 

Many of the pedagogies and technologies needed to do this are are not new.  Our job is to  invest in them so that they can be more broadly applied.  The opportunity to scale these changes into the new normal is now real. This year’s prospective first year college cohort, for example, has spent at least a part of their high school senior term  learning on-line and in modular formats  The same is true for most university faculty and students. Administrators and IT staff have been busily adapting and increasing the virtual capbilities needed to extend cutting edge technology and pedagogy  to all students.

Innovations in the academic, technological and financial aspects of education are are mutually reinforcing.  The primary mission of providing high quality learning opportunites can be enhanced if we carefully apply some of the lessons we have learned from this period of crisis and change.  I offer these proposals as examples. 

Some Proposed Solutions

I. Mainstream online with face-to-face learning into affordable high-quality  learning evironments. 

The classroom/online hybrid model has been pioneered at numbers of institutions.   Most  institutions have now  increased their capacity for high quality on-line learning in order to respond to the mid-term closing of campusses last spring.  We now need to scale up the hybrid model into the new normal. Hybrid courses can be highly effective and flexible learning models with regard to faculty and student talents and needs. There are many versions of hybrids, ranging from alternating face-to-face and online teaching on a weekly basis to low residence programs where faculty meet with students once or twice a term and regularly communicate via the on-line exchange of written assignments and exams. 

Hybrid courses have several benefits.  First, they make class scheduling and classroom space utilization more flexible by freeing, in some cases, doubling the amount of available classroom space. Second, since many students work at least part time during their college careers, hybrid classes allow them to betterr flex their class time, study time and work time. Students can pursue online learning according to their personal schedule. Finally and not insignificantly, on-line learning prepares students for their lives and careers, where  they will be required to use online communication and learning technology and to critically assess virtual sources of information. 

II. Increase the flexibility of academic programs to improve graduation rates. 

We have to acknowledge that many if not most students change their areas of study during their college careers. That 16-18 year olds do not know what they want to be when they grow up and what to study should come as no surprise to educators and parents.  Traditional curricula assume students have 4 years to complete a particular academic majors. This often leads to extended time  to graduation. We need to make room for students to explore the curriculum and change majors. This would include easing the  transfer of credits between disciplines and schools and assessing prerequisites and the sequencing of courses. 

  We also need to acknowledge that aside from some  healthcare and educational professions most careers require technical and communicative skills that can be learned via most any area of study.  The myth that certain majors connect with certain jobs and careers needs to be busted. Students learn best when they are studying something that relates to their interests. We can accomodate these realities of the 21st century student, by increasing the flexibilty of academic programs and curricula through the simplificaton  of academic majors, and  general education and very importantly consider ‘buckets of learning” in addtion to the traditional  3 credit course.  I would propose, for example, that we examine that we can better align learning goals through a flexible array of 1,  2 and 3  credit learning modules that can be stacked according to the needs of students.  In my experience, as an example, I include a module on genetics in Introduction to  Anthropology. This module could be designed to meet any number of majors or general education goals.  Or perhaps the biology department would offer such a module that Anthropology majors could avail themselves to? 

III Restructure student and faculty course load to 2-3 courses per term to allow students to immerse in their learning and more successfully complete their programs of study

European universities have long used this structure without sacrificing breadth of learning and general education.  As a professor, I often found myself falling into the trap of forgetting that in addition to my “extremely essential”  Anthropology class, students were taking 4 or even 5 other courses.  This course load forces students to have less time for each  course while requiring them to constantly shift gears from one set of material to another. Put simply, they do not have time to think.  I have some experience with the European model as a lecturer in Ireland.  There I could assume that students were indeed focussed on the material I presented since it was one of 2 or 3 courses that they were simultaneously taking. This also allowed for better coordination between some of the courses, such as Anthropology and Geography.  

Conclusions

The pandemic has exposed weakness in the structure of higher education.This has required some rather quick adaptation in the traditional curricular, pedagogical, technological aspects of colleges and universities. Necessity being the mother of invention has drawn out the best in us, and I believe we need to build upon this foundation to transform higher education into a more effective and sustainable enterprise.

SHOULD COLLEGES OPEN IN THE FALL?

SHOULD MY KIDS GO BACK TO CAMPUS?

SHOULD I TEACH ON CAMPUS THIS FALL?

NO, BUT THAT IS NOT ALL BAD.

I have been asked these questions by colleagues, friends and family. My answer is simple: no. It is not safe. And I cannot see how it could be made safe. Moreover, why not take advantage of time, on-line educational resources  and the saved money and become better prepared for next semester?

I say this with a deep understanding about how a university operates institutionally, and as a anthropologist about how a community of students, faculty and staff interacts. In fact, it is such interaction that is the core to  being  a part of a college campus that  directly conflcts with what is needed to stop the the spread of the pandemic. All you have to do is to think about  any typical situation on a college campus to realize that the particulars for protecting people from the spread of this highly contagious virus is near impossible. From the filling and emptying of parking lots, to participating in classroom activities and labs, playing sports, making music as members of the university band, eating and living in dormitories, interaction is central to  being a part of a campus community.  

But learning does not begin and end in the classroom or on the college campus. My advice to students is to take advantage of the amazing resources available in the interactive world in which we live. Millennials are the first generation to have always lived within the matrix of the internet.  Today’s students have always been connected with the world literally at their fingertips.  We may use the antiquated name of “phone” for the technology most of us carry in our pockets, but these devices are really multi-dimensional connectors to a multi-mediated world.  So  students take advantage of amazing learning resources at hand.  For example, you can: 

1. Take on-line courses from your college to meet requirements and explore new areas of study.

2. Take advantage of courses from top tier schools that meet your interest and ask for credit at your institution (all schools have a process to do this).  

3. Watch Ted Talks about subjects that interest you

4. Use Khan Academy web-videos to brush up on and advance your mathematical skills.  Khan’s lessons on statistics are excellent

5. Practice your art.  Write poems, stories, play your instrument, paint, draw.

6. Read. Set up a realistic number of novels and/or non-fiction that speaks to or  extends your interests.

7. Enjoy some time off. Most of you have been working academically or 12 years. Relax. Watch some movies. 

I realize that it is disappointing to move back home, but the real world requires it. So find some space to virtually interact with friends and speak with them from a safe social distance.  And define some time to learn on your own terms.   

Upside Down Trees: My Personal History with Computer Models

April 1, 2020

The incessant News-talk these days about the  COVID simulation models has gotten me to think about the lessons I learned from writing computer programs and how they are helping me to understand  and personally cope with the numbers Drs. Fauci and Birx report on a daily basis.  During the 1970’s I learned to write simple computer models in FORTRAN, punched on cards and printed on green-bar machine-punched-perforated computer paper. It was during my initial set of exercises  that I learned my first lesson about computer models: programs are largely If/then statements.  These statements are what scientists call hypotheses.  If ‘this’ happens then ´that’ is the outcome.   So lesson #1: We all want absolute dates, numbers, predictions but scientists can only answer our questions with hypotheses.

My second lesson was that for a program to be worth its weight in punch cards, it needs to acknowledge a particular event almost never leads to only one outcome. Outcomes can be more or less likely. Computer simulations help solve this problem by incorporating probability into their program. If x is less than or equal to 5, then y occurs. If x is greater than 5 and less than 10,  then z is the likely outcome. We have to tell the computer the likelihood that x is less than or greater than 5.   We can do this simply by putting numbers in a hat.  If all numbers are equally likely, then each gets its own slip of paper.  That way all of the  numbers have the same chance of being chosen. If one number is more likely (probable) than another, you simply put more slips of paper with that number in the hat.  For example, x is twice as likely to be greater than 5,  we simply put 2 slips of paper in for the numbers 6,7,8,9 and 10 into the hat.   

The third lesson I learned is the one that most profoundly connects with our current individual, societal and global need to project the future of the viral pandemic.  In the 1970’s I used a computer language called DYNAMO to simulate the ecological impact of the first farmers of some 6000 to 7000 years ago had on the temperate forests of Denmark. And here is the connection with COVID:   I was studying a colonization process. In my archaeological case, people were colonizing forests. In the COVID case, viruses are colonizing human communities. 

The results of my forest-farmer simulations baffled me and my fellow students. Under certain conditions, my model forest ended up with negative numbers of certain species of trees. Sometimes it was elm, sometimes linden, and sometimes as I recall, it was birch.

What on earth (pun intended) was a negative tree? Well, it was suggested to me as a playful critique that perhaps the  trees were growing  upside down? (I consequently became known as the upside-down-tree-guy). I solved this problem pretty easily by not answering the question: what is a negative tree? I  simply inserted a new assumption into the model that the number of trees could not go below zero.  I thought I was done, and luckily so did my advisory committee.  But was I finished?

Forty years later, I realized that I was not.  And I confronted this in a very unexpected place: a music festival sponsored by the band Wilco.  The band-members of this group are known as being especially socially and ecologically conscious. So they hold their "Solid Sound" festival on the grounds and in the galleries of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MOCA) in western Massachusetts to contribute to the economy of the region through visual art and music. 

As my wife and I entered the Festival  a few years ago, we were taken by a large environmental art installation that consisted of a line of live trees hanging from large pots on a line held between two telephone poles. We looked at each other and said: “Upside Down Trees!” (3). It was not until then, 40 years after I completed my studies that I understood that my solution to the problem of negative trees was incomplete.

My simple resolution for dealing with ‘negative trees’ was to put in an assumption that clearance and planting crops could not produce a negative number of trees. But the MASS MOCA experience actually challenged this resolution. No, it did not change the fact that a tree species population cannot go below zero. But recall, the first reaction to this mathematical impossibility, was to characterize the negative numbers of trees as “upside down” trees. 

This was probably not of course a serious consideration for characterizing a danish forest, but it was not an impossibility. What I had thought was a full resolution of negative trees turns out to be partial. And here is why.

What I did not fully comprehend until I saw the art exhibit was that I was making the assumption that trees cannot grow upside down. Now is it possible for trees to grow upside down under certain conditions? Off of a cliff face perhaps? Or perhaps even underground in response to being colonized by prehistoric farmers? Not likely. But consider the Quaking Aspen (2).  Known as the planet's largest organism, this Aspen adapts to its environment by growing  underground to connect colonies of trees. Part of this huge tree is in fact growing down. The point here is not that any of this was likely for prehistoric Denmark. But perhaps it is pertinent to our understanding viruses multiply and colonize the planet. In point of fact, as the number of asymptomatic cases increases, the number of people with COVID immunity increases. So increased cases can lead to a diminishment of disease over the course of the viral spread. Are these immune people, "negative trees"? How do we write them into the computer model?

We have to continuously remind ourselves that a model is an imperfect representation of a real world system. In point of fact the Mass Moca installation empirically demonstrated that trees can grow upside down. For the purposes of my computer model I had to assume away a real possibility, something that could happen. I obviously had good reason to do so for my project. But it was not a good assumption for the artist. For her, upside down trees was both an empirical demonstration (because they were alive and growing) and a metaphor for the complex relationship between the environment and people. Again, are immune people conceptually upside down? For complex processes, like forests and viruses,  we can never forget that we are always assuming something.

Nearly every day scientists do their best to give their best model projections of COVID cases and deaths. And every day journalists do their jobs to best report to the public the latest projections of the virus. They ask a lot of “how many” and “when” questions. Reporters want ‘facts’ about the future. But facts do not exist in the future. So scientists can only answer our questions with hypotheses. With If/then statements.  This often leads to scientists and reporters  becoming frustrated and a citizenry that just wants to how to conduct its everyday lives. But we all have to remember:

Upside-Down trees  can mean different things to medical professionals, artists

and anthropologists. 

Footnotes:

1. For the purpose of this essay, I am not bringing in the use of the model by politicians  because of the ideological and partisan bias many of them bring in ways that offend scientific thinking. 

2. Quaking aspens, weighing 13 million pounds, Pando is the world's largest organism by mass (Oregon's “humungous fungus” spans a greater distance). Quaking aspens can reproduce by disseminating seeds, but more frequently, they send up sprouts from their roots and form a mass of trees aptly known as a “clone.”

3. Tree Logic (1999) at MASS MoCA (in which six live trees are inverted and suspended from a truss, displaying the contrived growth responses of the trees over time).

The Power of the Past

The Power of the Past

Remarks on NJ National History Day

Keynote Remarks  To Middle and High School students, teachers, and families

Monmouth University

February 2018

I would like to begin my remarks by telling you a bit of my family’s New Jersey history:

My wife is a direct descendant of Penelope Stout, the first European woman to have settled in New Jersey. In point of fact, Stout remains a given name in my wife’s family. Although details of Penelope Stout’s life are still debated, the story goes as follows:

In 1643 Penelope and her husband took a ship from the Netherlands to New Amsterdam, which had to land at Sandy Hook to pick up supplies. When the ship left, she stayed behind with her husband in New Jersey, who was too ill to travel. They were subsequently attacked by a native American group and left to die. She survived and was rescued by the Navesink tribe of Leni Lenapi. When she was well enough to travel she was then traded to the Dutch.  In new Amsterdam (NYC) she married Richard Stout, where they had a rather large family of 7 sons and 4 daughters who were mostly born at Gravesend in the area of Coney Island, Brooklyn. (where by the way, my immigrant family summered around 300 years later). The Stouts eventually moved to Middletown Township, New Jersey around 1665.  This story as you can imagine reigns powerfully in my wife’s family heritage. And I want to build on this personal history to make the broader, and perhaps provocative assertion that:    

There is nothing more powerful than History

 in shaping people’s beliefs, values, behaviors and decisions.

William Faulkner the laureate American writer is famous for having said:

 "The past is never dead. It's not even past."

By this I believe he meant that the past, present and future are all tied together.

Today I would like to challenge you all to take this perspective one step further by considering the following assertion:

The past can be either an opportunity for positive cultural change

or a rhetorical tool to rationalize social injustice

            I started by offering a story from the 1600’s. now I would like to turn to an historical moment recently published. In an article titled: “Is America a ‘nation of immigrants?’ immigration agency says no”, the New York Times reported that he director of US Citizenship and immigration services – the agency that issues green cards and grants citizenship to prospective immigrants, has removed, from its mission statement, the phrase: “America’s promise as a nation of immigrants.”

This turn of phrase immediately brought to my mind my own family’s immigrant experience, when they left Europe at the turn of the 20th century with the rise of antisemitism.  I began thinking about my presentation to all of you young historians and how this seemingly simple omission was an example of the power of history – in this case by re-writing history. I put on my archaeologist hat and thought about my archaeological research in South Carolina at the Native American Mulberry mound atop and around which lies the historic 19th century Mulberry plantation. Over the past 40 years, my colleagues and I have supervised scores of students at the University of South Carolina field school to research at this site for the answer to two seemingly simple questions:

Who built the Mulberry mound?

Who built the mulberry plantation?     

The Mulberry site, records the answer to these questions through its layers of archaeological artifacts. The story begins with the founding of the site as a hunting and fishing camp some 5000 years ago, which it remained for several millennia. It continues similarly until around 1000 years ago with the building of a large earthen mound that was the center of the village of Coffitichiqui the prehistoric capital of what is now the southeastern United States. This town of perhaps 5-10,000 people was ruled by a queen and subsequently visited by Desoto and his colonizing conquistadors in the 1500’s. The site’s history then continues through the building of the plantation at the end of the  late 18th when the slave master’s house was built on the original mound and surrounded by slave cabins. For the purposes of this paper I will focus on the historic occupation of the mulberry site.

So, who in fact, built the mulberry plantation?

The answer to this question lies in the artifacts excavated by students such as yourselves and documents – including the iconic Diary from Dixie written by the landlady of the Mulberry Plantation Mary Boykin Chestnut. Both of these sources of information reveal a perhaps unexpected answer: The plantation was built by enslaved Africans. 

Early South Carolina history was in fact was essentially an African based culture and economy. The 100’s of enslaved Africans built the  slave master’s house, their own cabins houses and the main plantation house. Perhaps more impressively they also built miles of levees that formed the economic geography for the rice economy, which they imported from Africa.  Slaves imported their African technology to make their ceramic kitchenware. This latter point might seem inconsequential until I tell you until the 1970’s and work of Prof. Leland Ferguson, archaeologists and historians had assumed that slave ceramics was made by Native Americans.

If  Africans built Mulberry plantation;

Then who then built South Carolina?

Let me conclude by telling you another story that illustrates the power of how we come to answer this question.

Shortly after moving to South Carolina I took a carriage tour of the beautiful, historic city of Charleston, which lies  out 100 miles downriver from the mulberry plantation.  The tour guide described the beautiful architecture of the city, which is the among the top 5 most visited cities in America, as he told a history of Charleston and south Carolina.  For the most part this was a pretty informative pitch. But when he He closed the tour he characterized Charlestonians in a way that took my breath away: He proclaimed that

“Charlestonians are a lot like the Chinese,

we speak with a funny accent and grow and eat a lot of rice.”

Although I did not say anything at the time as this would have been quite rude:  I remember very clearly thinking:

“This characterization is an amazing revision of South Carolina history. It completely eliminates the African presence in colonial South Carolina and even more than this it denies the total reliance on African culture for the state’s initial survival and subsequent economic prosperity.

Who in fact built South Carolina?

Who Built new Jersey

Who built America? 

Is America a land of immigrants?

I hope that all of you future historians (and hopefully archaeologists) keep in mind the Power you hold as you pursue your interests in answering these types of questions as you research  American history.

 

 

 

 

The Archaeology of Classrooms

The Archaeology of Classrooms

I learned Physics along side 299 other biology first year students. We sat in a tiered auditorium with a mezzanine as a Professor of Physics demonstrated the Doppler effect, the speed of light, momentum, force, speed and acceleration on a stage full of  speakers on wheels, strobe lights and various flying and falling objects. There wasn't a bad seat in the house as this master teacher-performer kept all of us engaged.

This large dynamic learning environment has stayed with me through my forty years as a professor and dean. Time and again I have thought about this formative learning experience during discussions (and arguments) about the assumed negative relationship between class-size and learning.

Despite this assumption, most educators would agree that good teaching can and does happen in a variety of settings. My first anthropology teaching assignments were in 52 seat “discussion” classeswhere students sat  facing me listening to some version of a lecture/presentation, taking an occasional note and answering a question now and then. The magic number 52 was simply the number of tablet chairs that could fit into the assigned classroom. Architecture rather than pedagogy determined class size.  I have since taught Anthropology in large Irish lecture Halls of 250 students as well as small seminars, archaeological field settings, labs and even in  Irish Pubs.  The challenge has always been to fit the learning to the setting.

I have been thinking about my teaching experiences  as part of assessing my return to the classroom after 20 plus years of studying classroom learning and observing educators across most disciplines as a liberal arts dean.  As part of this evaluation I have developed an archaeological perspective of the classroom to contribute to understanding how classrooms work.

The Archaeology of Classrooms?

When I teach archaeology I ask students to imagine our classroom as a 4 dimensional archaeological site.  We envision the classroom asa cube that passes through time as classes proceed through daily, weekly, semester and annual schedules.  The beginning of each class is a snapshot that reveals the 3 dimensional spatial relationships between me and the students within the bounds of the classroom. The use of the classroom changes during the class-time.  Artifacts (e.g. pens, books, backpacks, and chalk) as well as site furniture such as chairs and tables move. Relatively permanent features such as worn out spots on the floors,  walls, and black boards change from repeated use.

This behavioral archaeology methodology helps me to understand  the learning flow of a class. My thesis is that while the size and spatial set-up of a classroom may set up constraints, its dynamics can also contributes opportunities for learning: Therefore, it does not prescribe or predict the effectiveness of the learning that will occur. This may appear obvious as most educators understand that classroom pedagogy is the most determinant factor for student engagement and learning. However, archaeology teaches us that it is the relationship between the physical and social environment of a site and the use of these environments that determines what actually happens at a site. An archaeological approach helps us test this thesis. For example, in my experience (anectdotal but extensive), the best learning experiences have been at the two ends of the class-size spectrum.  Let’s look at the behavioral archaeology of the three main types of classrooms (leaving field sites, labs and pubs aside for another time) to explore  this thesis,

Lecture Halls are set up for performances.  I began this piece by describing my physics professor’s outstanding performing skills.  I could also cite an art history professor who took to standing on tables and shouting to the mezzanine when he wanted to make a provocative point. I also attended lecture hall performances that werelimited to reading from scripts projected on screens and pre-fabricated power-point presentations created by the textbook publisher.  In between these extremes were classes that interspersed films and  videos and a few that  used  feedback clickers where  students  answer short questions during the course of the lecture to provide the instructor with ongoing feedback. Here, Often bar graphs or pie charts of correct and incorrect answers reveal a running measure of how much students are ‘understanding’.  I have also seen demonstrated the Harvard Assessment Model of dividing a class of 300 into study groups of 4 within a large lecture hall, so that students could interact during and between classes.

Seminars and labs are meant to provide intimate settings for learning. They are set up for conversations.  I have usually taught research andmethod and theory courses in these settings where 10-15 students intensively read and discuss materials and write within a weekly schedule of edit-revise-edit. Sitting around a table may be necessary to have a conversation, but it is not sufficient to guarantee one. I have been a part of and witnessed seminars that resembled lectures within a conference room.  A basis for the expected conversation has to be explicitly developed and maintained short termto spark a conversation for a particular class as well as longer term to meet course goals.  We have all been at ‘deadly’ meetings where interaction was not even expected around a conference table.

Discussion rooms of 30-50 students seem to present the most difficult physical setting for an interactive learning environment. These  classes are usually set up with rows of seats or tables facing an instructor. When students are asked to participate they  look at and speak to each other's backs. To add insult to injury, linear discussion classes often suffer from the use of tablet chairs, perhaps the most uncomfortable piece of furniture ever invented. ( Lecture Halls and seminar rooms usually offer upholstered furniture).  

The dynamics of my classroom  was in my mind each week during a recent seminar on archaeological research methods.  The assigned classroom was filled with long but moveable tables. Each week my class arrived to an arrangement of three rows of tables that stretched across the classroom. Each week we rearranged these into a seminar setting of one conference table that accommodated our seminar.  When they arrived for their first class, the students were happy to sit in back-to-back rows. I have to admit that I was somewhat annoyed when I first had to ask the students to move the tables and chairs in this so-called seminar room before that first class.  Interestingly, there was a note on the blackboard after the second week that asked us to rearrange the tables and chairs to their normal positions. This continued for another week or so after which one student questioned, what in fact was the normal arrangement of the classroom.  By this time, the physical re-arranging of the classroom-site had become a part of our seminar and as such helped shape the behavior of the students into a seminar. The students automatically rearranged to tables as they arrived, settled in and conversed with each other.  It was, to me, similar to setting up a campsite where the placement of ‘things’ were contingent upon their anticipated use.  In my archaeological eye, I could imagine the classroom as a prehistoric Irish fishing camp that was re-inhabited over time by various groups, who perhaps, had different ideas of how a fishing-camp should look and function.

Concluding Remarks

Archaeologists traditionally re-create sites from material remains.  In order to do so, they have to infer the behavior of sites from the spatial arrangement of artifacts, furniture and non-moveable features.  Archaeologists are now using the techniques of virtual reality to re-recreate sites so that visitors can virtually imagine walking through an historic or prehistoric house or village to ‘see’ how people behaved in that place at a particular time.  At the core of this interpretation is an understanding that behaviour is dynamic and therefore that its remains are a summation of the varying ways the site was used.  I would offer that we can use this same ‘archaeological’ approach as we design our classrooms in ways that maximize the flow of conversation and learning.

Twenty Years After: Graduate Students

THIS IS PART TWO OF MY EXAMINATION  ON  MY FIRST YEAR TEACHING AFTER 22 YEARS AS DEAN OF LIBERAL ARTS.  PART ONE ASSESSED AN UNDERGRADUATE INTRODUCTION TO ARCHAEOLOGY COURSE.

 

The first thing I want to say to you who are students, is that you cannot afford to think of being here to receive an education: you will do much better to think of being here to claim one. One of the dictionary definitions of the verb "to claim" is: to take as the rightful owner; to assert in the face of possible contradiction.  - Adrienne Rich

I approached my first graduate class in over twenty years, Archaeological Methods, with an open mind and an open syllabus. The class included first and second year students, all of whom were ultimately aiming to write a thesis to complete their MA.  

I have long experience in graduate teaching and I have created two MA programs. However I did not know these new students. So I relied heavily on my prior experience, which  has taught me the primacy of mentoring students to think like an archaeologist in order to do archaeology. To me this translates into learning how to design research,  the hardest part of which  is formulating well-defined and answerable questions.

I was also guided by the practical concern of helping these students begin their careers. The Masters degree can be a highly marketable degree.  I have dozens of students who have had highly successful professional careers (some of whom have actually retired, while I still teach!). I assume and totally respect the personal and financial commitment graduate anthropology students have to  make to become professional anthropologists. The key to a successful professional graduate program is a curriculum that prepares students: 

• To think originally

• To apply disciplinary and interdisciplinary methodologies

• To write professionally and accessibly

• To present one's findings in dynamic and accessible ways.

The Syllabus

The syllabusfollowed a research design template that required students to: 

• Define a topic of interest

• Create an original question that speaks to their interest

• Set out hypotheses (i.e. hypothetical and testable answers to their questions)

• Define the type of information they would need to answer the question(s)

• Design a methodology to collect and organize an appropriate sample of  data  to provide the needed information

• Choose the appropriate qualitative and/or quantitative analytic techniques necessary to test their hypotheses

• Interpret their analytical results

• Write-up and present their results

The Seminar

Most of the students had not been asked to do original research. They knew how to write term papers that summarized and  synthesized what other people knew about a topic.    A few had had experience excavation, survey and basic data collection, and some had analyzed artifacts or databases. But  they hadn't been asked to do something original with this information. I viewed this class as their opportunity to  claim their own education. 

The class met once a week for three hours usually broken into 3 segments. We held this seminar around a conference table that we had to re-configure from a lecture classroom of smaller tables every week.   (In a sense this physically primed the students for discussion).  The first 3-4 weeks of the class concentrated on having students work on their research questions.  This resulted in a lot of conversation among the  students, which of course I encouraged.  For my part, I 'shadowed' student progress reports and their ensuing conversations with stories of my research,  that of  my previous students and classic archaeological projects and the readings.  I also used our excellent multimedia classroom to bring in the internet. In some cases, I planned particular videos, while in others I was able to queue up a video spontaneously in response to a question brought up in class.   I relied mostly on Ted Talks and Khan Academy lessons. The Ted talks provided outstanding illustrations  of original research through accessible and dynamic presentations. 

The Khan Academy lessons on probability and statistics proved invaluable for  discussions on methodology. Most students  had the  universal fear of statistics. They had little experience in sampling either quantitative or qualitative data and what experience they had  seemed to yield more fear than understanding. All of the students  needed to understand the concept of randomness as the foundation of sampling whether they were interested in measuring bifaces or interpreting interviews of children's interest in museums. They also needed to be exposed to some of the most widespread statistical concepts such as correlation, association and inference without being strangled by their formulas and calculations.  The Khan academy provided a series of excellent illustrations that I built upon to help students to apply  sampling and statistics to their own projects. As students refined their sampling and analytical methodology they in turn revisited their specific questions they were asking.

The Reading 

Student reading revolved around  Joan Gero's recently published archaeological case study "Yutopian." Gero  deconstructs the way archaeologists build knowledge through discussion of her Argentinian field research. The monograph provided students with a detailed reflective account of original research from its conception to its completion.   Students also read, "A Very Short Introduction to Archaeology" by Paul Bahn, which offers an historic context of the field.   Since all of the students were focussed on Public Anthropology, they read a beautiful little monograph, "Anguti's Amulet". This  illustrated  booklet  beautifully portrays the prehistory of an Inuit community through a  folk story as it relates to an indigenous archaeology community project  undertaken with the support of the Smithsonian Institution's Arctic Studies Program. Finally, Peter Haggett's iconic "Locational Analysis" was assigned as  a reference on spatial analysis.

The Writing

Students were required to write and re-write outside the classroom almost every week.   The writing assignments were kept short and focussed on each student's progress on their research design. I intensively edited the writing for its argument and its formal written structure.  The students quickly grasped my assertion that "there is no such thing as a good paper that is poorly written." Students learned  to take responsibility for  their writing and above all else understand that writing and thinking are creatively linked.  

I found critique in two areas to have the greatest positive impact on student writing.  The first was voice.  Most students wrote in passive voice.  I explained (until they were tired of hearing it) that in most cases passive voice buried their arguments.  I closely edited much of their writing into active voice. Second, most students had great difficulty in keeping antecedents clear. I emphasized that it was their responsibility to clearly reference  pronouns. Writing, editing and re-writing was a continuous semester long process. 

The Final

I used the final to pull the class together by having students write a cover letter application to a real job advertisement. I asked them to  describe their professional capabilities in terms of the job requirements.  I distributed a list of 15 job openings that were published on the internet for which they would be qualified after completing the program. The jobs ranged from project director to tribal anthropologist  (both of which were selected). They had a week to to write a cover letter (maximum 500 words) to apply for one of these jobs. Student presented their letters during our our final class, where we had a   freewheeling discussion on the intellectual and practical aspects of being a professional anthropologist.

Did the Class Work?

I can say this:  I learned a lot from this class and  greatly enjoyed mentoring the students and being kept on my toes by them.   

I would make the following observations on the effectiveness of this class for students. First, I believe the course gave the students a safe environment to learn how to think originally.  Their confidence grew as they began to understand that they were capable of doing original research and becoming a professional.  Their (final exam) job application letters clearly demonstrated a growing belief in the abilities. 

Second, I think that requiring students to develop their own research interests helped them grow in confidence.  Some students began afraid to air their interests. Many of them questioned the importance of their potential contributions. And all were pretty shy about their ability  to tangibly approach original research.  By the end of the semester, all of the students had at least a clear topic of interest and set of research questions, which they wrote in the form of a research design and presented to their classmates. 

Finally, I was pleased with the improvement of each of the student's writing. Most of them struggled indicating to me the centrality of writing and close editing in graduate education.   

How well did the class work?  When asked if he was a good teacher, Confucius responded: "How are my students doing?"  Time will tell.  Next semester: cultural anthropology.

Twenty Years After: Some thoughts on my first semester back to the classroom

Grades are nearly complete (save the "Incompletes") and I have decompressed after my semester back teaching Anthropology after 22 years as a dean. My previous blog post noted some apprehensions and expectations and some goals. So, how did it go, you might ask.

My first impression of my students was that they hadn't changed all that much in 20 years.  Sure, I was now the age of their grandparents, but their behavior seemed consistent with what I remember, especially for the undergraduates.

The Introduction to Archaeology students were mostly first year.  They were basically doe-eyed, not really knowing what to expect and carrying on the educational culture in which they had been immersed the previous 12 years. They were passive.  This showed up in politeness and deference, but of course as we all know, it also kept them from stepping forward to speak for themselves even when prompted.  I pledged to keep an active classroom, and for the most part I did.  I rarely stayed on one topic for more than 20 minutes (of an 80 minute class), and always gave them a break of 5 minutes to do whatever they liked.  As you might guess, they mostly turned to their smartphones and laptops.

The  issue of keeping them responsive to me and away from their screens became a force of wills.  I understand the addiction to smart phones and the derivative need to stay in touch with friends and even parents continuously.  I began the class by telling them that this kind of behavior was not allowed and that the 5 minute break would allow them to fulfill this need (although I suggested that they get up an walk out of the classroom for 5 minutes).   For the most part my strategy worked with regard to cell phones. However, I then began to see an increase in laptops, which were flipped open during class.  Several students indicated that they used these for taking notes. Each class I had to ask students to close their laptops; some held out and insisted that it was for note-taking at which time, I told them to write notes. I have to admit that I was frustrated about having to do this each class, and I intend to be be more forceful next semester.

As for active teaching, I found that the new multi-media capabilities of the classroom were extremely helpful in enhancing the didactic, conversational and group work parts of the classroom.  I often planned  possible videos (youtube, Ted talks, Khan academy) but I also found that I could bring one up within a minute if something came to me.  Most classes therefore had some sort of multimedia component, many times spontaneous. 

Perhaps the most effective technique I developed had to do with encouraging students to speak to the class.

For this I yielded to extra credit, indicating that any student who wanted to present a news article related to archaeology and write a short (250 word max) report on it would receive points toward their grade.  About 1/4 of the two clases (which totalled about 60 students) took advantage of this and the results I think were quite successful and even enlightening.  First, the range of articles chosen showed a great diversity of interests among students. They also proved that they generally used the internet well by drawing on peer-reviewed articles (which I had explained to them).  Their talks ranged from biblical archaeology to zoo-archaeology. And the appeared sincerely interested in their topic. Finally  no one asked to present an article on dinosaurs! 

I then improvised off of these talks. After the talks for that day were completed, I gave the students a break, and dug up some video clip or imagery that related to each of the student talks.  They had all developed some visual with their presentations (usually a powerpoint), so I found something else on the web concerning their exact issue, or something related.  I then presented these drawing out the connections between each student's interest and topic and the class at hand.  I engaged most to the presenting students in some conversation with regard to their topic, thereby reinforcing their ownership and knowledge of the subject.

The other interactive aspect of the class involved software developed by ThinkingStrings.com in an e-text called Revealing Archaeology.  This comprehensive 'text' was the students' main reading and included short but rigorous exercises after each of 8 modules.  For example, after a module on how to excavate a site, students were asked to 'dig' a virtual site  and then describe and interpret the archaeological remains they recovered. They had to do this within a budget so they could not just excavate the entire site, thereby learning about sampling.  Students were responsible to meet the due dates of the module completion, a record of which was available to them and to me.  I assigned 5 points for modules completed on time, and 2.5 credits for late submissions.  The e-text offers an interactive grade book that automatically records their submissions and award points based on the due dates I choose. This e-text allowed me to flip the classroom, so each of the classes was about the topics in the modules, but focussed on the conceptual bases, with many examples from my experience in the field of archaeology.

For example, one of the modules was on the dating of artifacts. The question of how old something is, of course, key to understanding its cultural and historical context.  The modules discussed the two main ways to date things, relative (e.g stratigraphy) and absolute (e.g. radiocarbon).  My classroom discussion could then focus on the concept of time. My idea was to get them to think reflectively on what time means to western society; the various ways we conceptualize it and measure it.  I pressed them to think "Einsteinian"  by introducing the space-time continuum  and the measurement of time in terms of the spatial movement of the earth and moon and how this underlies our daily rhythms and activities. We talked about seasonal time (the semester), linear time (the solar revolution) and daily time (the analog clock on the wall).  We then related this to excavating back in time and interpreting seasonal archaeological sites. 

The midterm and final were also somewhat out of the box (if I may say so), although I borrowed the concept from an Art History at the University of South Carolina. Students were handed out a series of questions (6 for the midterm, 8 for the final) about a week before the in-class exams.  The questions focussed on conceptual  (e.g. time and space), methodological (e,g. excavation, dating) and 'real life' issues (e.g. explaining to their parents why taking an anthropology course was not a waste of time and money). The students were divided into groups, where they discussed one of the questions, and presented their thoughts to the class as a whole.  The midterm was subsequently comprised of 2  of the handed-out questions, and the final 3 questions, which were announced at the time of the exam.   The goal here of course was to have the students study the cumulative course material as an integrated whole. I am still assessing this method, but my preliminary thoughts are that this technique not only encouraged students to pay attention to the reading and class materials, but it also allowed them to process it so that their essays for the most part were coherent and even well spelled despite the fact that they were timed and in class.

So that is a first draft of my return to the undergraduate classroom. Stay tuned to part II: the Graduate (M.A.) students. 

Back to the Classroom After Two Decades as a Dean

In two days, I will return to teaching after over twenty years as a liberal arts dean.  This has spurred some serious thinking and to be honest, rigorous assessment of the educational outlook I have developed over the past 20 plus years.  In other words, I need to hold myself accountable - i.e. practice what I preach. 

My teaching in archaeology spanned almost 20 years at the University of South Carolina.  I taught at BA and MA levels in Anthropology and Archaeology.  I taught in the classroom, the lab and the field.  The latter was by far the most intensive learning environment as I spent 24/7 with undergraduates and graduates in South Carolina and in Ireland.  Most of this 'teaching' involved students in my research, where I directed major archaeological projects in South Carolina and then Waterford County, Ireland. 

I had  honestly  not aspired to (or expected to) return the classroom, but circumstances have indeed made this necessary.  So my first hurdle was to get used to this turn in professional career  beginning in my 41st year in higher education.  

My apprehension soon turned to trying to prepare for a new generation of students and a seriously evolved classroom technological environment.  I spent a good part this past year thinking about this and conceptualising how I would approach the class.  I rehearsed syllabi for undergraduate and graduate courses, and in fact found my anticipatory mood shift between apprehensive to excited.  

But the really interesting part of this period was my coping with the accountability I had in fact created, through my years as an academic administrator.  During the past 20 years or so I have reviewed college programs, general education, Honors programs and faculty teaching.  Through out this all, I have developed an educational outlook that focusses on engaging students in their own learning.  Archaeological field schools have greatly flavored this outlook, as my projects have always required students to take responsibility for some aspect of the field project and its laboratory components. In addition, teamwork and work delegation is central to archaeological research. In my classroom teaching I attempted to avoid lecture and content presentation, as I have always argued against this type of passive education.

So now, in Fall 2016 (my first semester teaching was Fall 1976) I find myself creating an Introduction to Archaeology class for undergraduates, and theory and method seminar for graduate students with the challenge of putting these together as active learning environments. 

In response, I have just submitted syllabi for these courses that require classroom and outside classroom interaction and active learning.  The undergraduate class has as its reference a  cloud based interactive text.  It is the students’ responsibility to complete this reference on their own while bringing questions to class as needed.  My role in the classroom will be to lead discussion on the weekly topics in ways that brings my experiences to them in an engaging way.  Many of you will recognize this as a flipped-classroom approach.

The graduate course is even more interactive and active.  The class will spend its first class developing a syllabus with me that speaks to Archaeological Method and Theory in ways that meets their diverse interests and professional aspirations.  I have provided them with a Course Plan that lists goals and a general list of topics that we need to cover. Woven into these goals will be career mentoring, and writing critiques that will prepare them to move in the professional world of archaeology with an MA, a credential that gains them entrance to many areas of environmental and archaeological professional employment.  

I want to work with them, not teach them. Their first writing assignment, for example, requires a short piece (100 words) on the personal significance aspects of their own material culture. What would they carry with them if they had to evacuate their home?  This assignment, as I explain to them in the Course Plan (which of course is on-line),  both speaks to their interest in Archaeology. and gives me a chance to see their writing and allows them to see w my expectations  In other words, to get used to each other.

Throughout the semester, I will update my blog to share my experiences, but also a way of holding myself accountable.  Wish me luck!

The importance of Empathy in Healthcare

 Over the past 3 decades I have had the pleasure and privilege of visiting Ireland many times. where my wife and I developed and implemented a 15 year archaeological project in Waterford County. 

What soon became clear to us was how much we liked being Ireland; how much we liked the Irish people.  It is true that there are special connections between the Irish and Americans founded in the immigration of many Irish to Chicago, New York and Boston beginning the middle of the 19th century. And or course many the Irish citizen's revere John Fitzgerald Kennedy. But there was something deeper that was reaching us and making us feel at home; making us feel that people cared about us even though we were just visiting their communities.  As anthropological observers we began to see the roots of this empathic basis of Irish culture in the simple fact that Irish people often talked with each other and in so doing maintained an oral culture. In addition to this, they continue to proactively tie modern day culture with its historical precedents and very importantly tie history strongly to the literary traditions of the of Irish society. 

My wife and I just felt more relaxed and more at home when we touched Irish soil.  And this is despite the fact that neither of us has any historic Irish ancestry. (When asked if I have Irish ancestry, I often note that may grandparents came from central Europe and in so doing I might have Celtic bronze age links that date a few thousand years ago).

But all kidding aside, the oral culture, historical awareness and literacy of the people we met every year convinced us that Ireland is a special place.

And this past summer 2016 made this clear under some pretty terrible circumstances when I had a major spinal disc herniation and ended spending almost 2 weeks in two Irish hospitals.  The stress of this time played out quite differently for Claudia and me, but the empathy of the Irish caretakers and others who helped us showed us again a special cultural attitude that got us through this situation.

The Irish approach to our continuous emergency was simple, yet profound. At all levels of medical care, each sequential problem by focused on us as people first.  They were not focused on the situation, but rather on what would help us most.  Irish empathy and their reliance on face to face culture was the basis of prioritizing our comfort as the key to solving the situational problem.

There are many examples.  At one point, Claudia drove me across country to the Shannon Airport Hotel to see if we could work out getting me on a flight home.  When we arrived at the hotel, she spoke to hotel manager to describe the situation.  "I can't move my husband out of the car,' she explained. Can you help me?"  "Of course," responded the hotelier, but before we move to that, I want you to sit at that table, and I will bring you a cup of tea."  She then came to see me, and called the EMT, who again had a humane response to my predicament.  "Not to worry, Mr. Green" we will get you out of the car."  To do this they offered me an inhaler of nitrous dioxide to relax me and then moved onto the logistics of moving me.

When I was subsequently moved to the University of Limerick Hospital, I noted the communal nature of the wards.  I was among about 8 people within a large room, that was attended to by nurses and other caregivers, who regularly walked through asking if anyone needed anything.  The caregivers worked together, sharing duties.  There was not much need for the emergency nurse call button (although there was one), because the nurses and their assistants were generally among us.  The nurses station was at the far end of the ward.

Meals were served communally as well.  Every meal was prefaced by the delivery of tea with biscuits. The tea cups were ceramic and the silverware metal.  The main course came in a steam table rolled into the center of the ward.  We were asked our entree preferences, but most meals came with the required 3 scoops of mashed potatoes and root vegetables.  Dessert was served in the same manner, and again with tea.

In all of these interactions, nurses cared for the person as the key to solving a problem.  I have always felt that nurses and other caregivers that serve doctors, are the key to healthcare. But there is something different in the Irish way of doing things and again this stems from a continued oral, face to face culture and the empathy that rides along with this cultural proclivity. 

So this was my hypothesis when I arrived in NYC for back surgery straight from my flight home:  The empathy built into the Irish culture results in improved healthcare.  And I had the immediate test situation when I was ambulanced from JFK airport to an NYC Hospital for spinal surgery.  

Everything went well in the hospital and the surgery was successful.  But the difference in the way I was spoken to, responded to, and in general cared for was based on solving particular situations rather than caring for me.  Where I never had to use the nurses call bell in Limerick, this was the only way I was able to get someone to help me.  People were in general polite, but their connection to me was cursory. 

The point I want to make, is not that Irish health care in better than the US (or vice versa); but rather Irish Culture is special because it is built upon people interacting with each other.  This interactive empathy is indeed what many people are now calling for in such books as Putnam's "Bowling Alone." where he points out the human cost of social fragmentation.  DharmaPunx (Josh Korda) recent podcast (DharmaPunx, Brooklyn) describes the biological need for social connections to fulfil the right side of the brain's need for mammalian gregariousness.  The need for people to connect, indeed, appears to be brain science.

Critical Thinking and First Century Palestine

Count me in as one of the skeptics when it comes to critical thinking. Notification of conferences on this topic seem to come about as often as Pottery Barn catalogs and most definitions of critical thinking seem vague and nonoperational.  Despite this few educators would argue against the idea that critical thinking is central to education. 

I was thinking about these conflicting thoughts (suffering from some cognitive dissonance)  as I was reading Reza Aslan's Zealot and Colm Toibin's Testament of Mary two books that present very different descriptions of the same historical time period -   first century Palestine. Though both accounts were gripping, it was not really the subject matter that I found most provocative. Rather it was the vastly different literary perspectives the authors took to write their stories.   Aslan's Zealot re-creates an ethnography of the first century from historical sources. He intentionally ignores the biblical and apostle accounts as evangelical stories and looks to primarily historic accounts to synthesize his narrative.  Colm Toibin creates a fictional narrative of Mary's perspective of her son's execution.  He re-imagines her perspective from an understanding of both myths and history and his literary artistic ability (he is an incredible writer)  to paint a humanistic picture of what Mary 'must' have been thinking and feeling. 

The sequential reading of these books made me think about the space between author and reader and the task authors take on to bring the reader into their story.  In the non-fictional account, Aslan set out to convince the reader that his historic description is a fair interpretation of reliable sources.  My critical reading of Zealot, therefore, required me to consider Aslan's story through his sources. Aslan engaged me through a gripping detailed description of the extreme social inequality and physical brutality of the era. Toibin's fictional account required no citations (and he had none). He required me to empathize with Mary and her heartbreaking story of a mother's loss. His tools as a fiction writer were metaphor and analogy and his task to engage my feelings. 

Both Aslan and Toibin present stories the success of which depend upon filling the space between the author and the reader. The historical space they attempt to fill is the same. Their goals are very different.  Aslan's is an ethnography of a society while Toibin's is the story of a person.  So despite the fact that they present their understanding of first century Palestine, they literarily fill the space between author and reader in very different ways.  Readers are asked to critically read their stories in different modes and to learn about first century Palestine in very different ways. 

I think it is helpful to consider this space between author and reader as analogous to that between teacher and student.  Our success as educators depends on our ability to create provocative spaces for students to critically fill-in.  We try to do this by forming well articulated questions that require students to creatively formulate answers. We can create these spaces and present these questions in many different ways, such as discussion prompts, lab exercises, projects, and even exams. The goal is to provoke students to think in ways that inspire them to interpret and synthesize information to fill the learning space we have presented. Their syntheses we hope will turn into their own knowledge.

Here is another way to think about this.   As educators we tell stories to teach students how to critically connect what we know and what we want them to know.   These stories come in different forms depending upon the learning environment and content of the class. Sometimes our stories are in the form of arguments, where we may ask questions about a particular subject that require students to answer.  We  ask them  to answer these questions through a variety of pedagogies in classrooms, labs, studios, projects and seminar discussions. The space between the stories we present, and the arguments we ask the students to consider are analogous to the space between author and reader. Just as a successful story requires a critically engaged reader, so to a successful classroom requires a critically engaged student. 

Good writing engages a  reader to critically read. Good teaching engages a student to critically learn.  When educators provide a well articulated argument  (be it an historical account or a description of a biological process) students engage because they understand why they are being asked to think about it.  The responsibility to think critically and 'learn' then becomes theirs (just as a book becomes a reader's). 

Critical thinking then can be thought of as the process that allows students to  bridge the gap between a teacher's question and a student's answer.  This space between teacher and student represents potential learning.  If a writer is successful in creating a well-formed and well-informed story, readers will read their book (or essay or poem). Going back to my two examples, Aslan filled the space through the synthesis of historical sources.  Toibin filled this learning space with a literary picture (a painting made of words)  of a mother's  intimate feelings for her son. Both books inspire learning.

This literary analogy, I think, can help  educators consider teaching and learning as  mutual and creative processes and critical thinking as the link that connects them. Our tasks as educators is to inspire students to cross the learning spaces we create so that they can enhance their critical thinking skills and begin to learn on their own. 

Learning as Poetry

Today I would like  to talk  about the critical differences between data, information and knowledge.  This speaks to a pet peeve of mine: As educators we  spend too much time  passing on disciplinary  content and too little on why we need to know such content and how we actually have come about to know it.  

Data is sensory.  Humans have five  inputs - sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste. We oftentimes supplement these senses through technology (microscopes, microphones, telescopes and telephones, for example.)   The packets of sensory data we collect have to be made sense of.   First we  organize  sensory data into patterns.   Visual data, for example,  is put together from the perception of  such things as  color, brightness and contrast to form visual patterned information. This allows us to conceptualize or give  meaning to these visual patterns, which we call knowledge.   We 're-cognize' our material surroundings. Our brains combine the new perceptions with what we have previously recognized (what we know) to allow us to perceive our environment. 

So what does this have to do with education?  Well, I think everything.  Most generally education is  the method by which we use to pass on cultural knowledge between generations.  in order for successive generations to be culturally literate and thereby adaptive and successful,  educators must pass on relevant traditional knowledge from previous generations and the rationale and method underlying the creation of this knowledge.   if we see education as a means of primarily passing on cultural content in the form of data and information, then we are short-circuiting the education process. In my over 3 decades as an educator,  content driven coursework continues to dominate higher education. Content driven 'learning' provides our generation's answers without revealing the questions that we posed and methods that were used to arrive at these answers. Answers in themselves are relatively meaningless without their methodological context.  Knowing requires the ability to sense, organize and create, This is why many students only want to know facts that will be 'on the test.' They are looking for answers without knowing the questions.

Let me approach my argument from a different direction by citing Farmer/Philosopher/Educator Wendell Berry's "Paragraph's from a Notebook" in his 2015 book of Essays "Our Only World."  He laments our educational propensity to overemphasize  breaking things down in order to know things. In his terms,  we analyze sensory perceptions  to  study their anatomy.  He astutely notes that  "(n)either (analysis or anatomy) suggests a respect for formal integrity and that this distracts us from 'learning or teaching a competent concern for the way parts are joined." Understanding the formal integrity of our environments is an essential aspect of knowing about them. We need to understand ecosystems not just eco-facts. 

Berry concludes that we should turn to the Greek term for creating  'poeisis' (from the same root as poetry)  as a way  for  understanding  formal integrity and completing the educational cycle.  Knowledge requires building and building requires creativity. In this way, all learners are poets.   

Education to be complete must include  a mix of passing on content (what we know)  and building (why and how we know it).  It requires an understanding that knowledge and its endgame cultural literacy is a creative process that requires moving from data to information to knowledge.  

Welcome to Out-of-the-Box Education Solutions.org

The world of higher education is experiencing white water change.  Students approach college with perspectives and aspirations that challenge the fundamentals of higher learning.  

This blog will discuss the myriad aspects of contemporary higher education through my anthropological eye and over 30 years of experience in university teaching and administration.   

To start off consider this simple scenario that was proposed by Margaret Mead 40 years ago in her treatise on what was then known as the Generation Gap (Mead 1971, Culture and Commitment).

Imagine yourself as a young adult in a pre-industrial society. What would be your educational goal? Put more generally, who would be your model of an adult? Mead proposes that to be successful in such a society, a young person's goal would be to 'become' their grandmother or grandfather.

Now imagine yourself in early 20th century America.  Perhaps a first generation child in an immigrant family?  Ask yourself the same questions?  To become your grandparent (if you even knew who they were) would ill-prepare you for your future in America. Might your  goal be to become your father or mother?

Now consider yourself a high school baby boomer, like myself.  Would you imagine yourself well prepared for the late 20th century with your parent's education?   My father graduated New York Printer's High School in the 1940's. He was well educated to utilize a linotype machine that printed lead 'slugs' of words and phrases that were used to print the NY Times.  He assimilated into American society as an upwardly mobile middle class adult, who eventually owned his home on the Long Island suburbs. He worked until the 1970's when he was re-trained to use computers to create text and headlines. As a baby boomer, the  computer became a part of my life at that same time in the 1970's when I was a graduate student in Anthropology.  It has of course since become central to my professional life, and not without its costs, my personal life.  

Now consider today's students.  Their world revolves around hand-held smart phones that combine the power of personal computers with  an increasing variety of virtual communication media that connect them to an increasingly comprehensive and in some cases dangerous internet.   Their face-face world is increasingly encapsulated in a world of  virtual communication. The professional world they are facing is really unknowable, although its direction will include robotic manufacturing, 3 dimensional printing, and driverless electric cars.   Technology is probably the easier part to predict. The real unknowable is the kind of society and culture they will be building and living in, and their learning needs  to be able to work and adapt to this new world. 

In the classroom, it is again not so much technology that is changing our students' learning environment, as much as the information explosion, both in terms of amount and the way it is disseminated. Content driven education, that is learning what happened and when, can be obsolete by the time it reaches the student notebook (be it electronic or composition).  Higher learning has evolved into a seemingly  ever-challenging  process of learning how build knowledge in a  world of changing media  and an explosion of information. 

To an anthropologist education is a medium for passing on culture.  Going back to Mead's scenario, pre-industrial society relied on the passing of traditional knowledge face to face, often through inter-generational conversations and rites of passage that included poems,  songs and rituals.    Industrial society conformed education into formal  content driven and technical learning.  Students learned to be their fathers and mothers something that was already disappearing by the time my generation, the baby-boomers came along.

The big question that I will  approach in subsequent postings is: "How do we educate today's and tomorrow's students, with a future that is basically unknowable?"   The way we as individuals and groups interact and communicate is transforming  us individually and collectively; psychologically and culturally. And this means our students have different learning tasks than we did.  

In forthcoming posts, I will continue to explore culture change and its implications for higher learning.  I intend to weave in a little anthropology and theory, but I will do so in order to lay a foundation  for more practical recommendations, some big and some small, for the university and college classroom.