Montebello E-News

 October 2, 2008 

I am not one of those who in expressing opinions confine themselves to facts.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835 – 1910,
better known by the pen name "Mark Twain", was an American humorist, satirist, lecturer and writer.  Twain is most noted for his novels Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which has since been called the "Great American Novel", and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. He is also known for his quotations. During his lifetime, Twain became a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists and European royalty.

 [What a splendidly humorous way to rebuke those of us who think that the ends would justify the means, who distort reality to fit within the frame of our personal idealism.]

 1. Unkind Words or Reality Bites?     

2.  The Beat of a Different Drummer, Part 4

3. Announcements

4. Not-So-Fun Facts about Our Fears

5. The Flashback Quarterback:  Disturbing Data about America

6. Be Aware and Share:  A Teacher Comments

7. About Montebello E-News and “My Montebello”

Unkind Words or Reality Bites?

Are we dumb and getting dumber?  The July 24, 2008, E-News essay “Social-Impact Report, Part 5”, spoke to this.  Now we read more on this.

Stoooopid .... Why the Google Generation Isn’t As Smart As It Thinks

The digital age is destroying us by ruining our ability to concentrate

…David Meyer is professor of psychology at the University of Michigan. In 1995 his son was killed by a distracted driver who ran a red light. Meyer’s specialty was attention: how we focus on one thing rather than another. Attention is the golden key to the mystery of human consciousness; it might one day tell us how we make the world in our heads. Attention comes naturally to us; attending to what matters is how we survive and define ourselves.

The opposite of attention is distraction, an unnatural condition and one that, as Meyer discovered in 1995, kills. Now he is convinced that chronic, long-term distraction is as dangerous as cigarette smoking. In particular, there is the great myth of multitasking. No human being, he says, can effectively write an e-mail and speak on the telephone. Both activities use language and the language channel in the brain can’t cope. Multitaskers fool themselves by rapidly switching attention and, as a result, their output deteriorates. ...

Chronic distraction, from which we all now suffer, kills you more slowly. Meyer says there is evidence that people in chronically distracted jobs are, in early middle age, appearing with the same symptoms of burn-out as air traffic controllers. They might have stress-related diseases, even irreversible brain damage. But the damage is not caused by overwork, it’s caused by multiple distracted work. One American study found that interruptions take up 2.1 hours of the average knowledge worker’s day. This, it was estimated, cost the US economy $588 billion a year. Yet the rabidly multitasking distractee is seen as some kind of social and economic ideal. ...

... Television was the first culprit. Tests clearly show that a switched-on television reduces the quality and quantity of interaction between children and their parents. The internet multiplies the effect a thousandfold. Paradoxically, the supreme information provider also has the effect of reducing information intake.

Bauerlein is 49. As a child, he says, he learnt about the Vietnam war from Walter Cronkite, the great television news anchor of the time. Now teenagers just go to their laptops on coming home from school and sink into their online cocoon. But this isn’t the informational paradise dreamt of by Bill Gates and Google: 90% of sites visited by teenagers are social networks. They are immersed not in knowledge but in “gossip and social banter”.

“They don’t,” says Bauerlein, “grow up.” They are “living off the thrill of peer attention. Meanwhile, their intellects refuse the cultural and civic inheritance that has made us what we are now”. ... http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/
tech_and_web/the_web/article4362950.ece

If you answer the multiple-choice questions below and e-mail to lessonanswers@mymontebello.com with “Lesson answers” in the subject field, you will be credited toward a “certificate of recognition in community affairs” to be awarded in 2008 by a local nonprofit organization.

1. What is psychologist David Meyer researching?

(a) The danger of cigarette smoking.

(b) Chronic distraction.

2. Why is chronic distraction harmful?

(a) It can cause irreversible brain damage.

(b) It can cause accidents.

3. What is a cause of chronic distraction?

(a) Multitasking.

(b) Television.

(c) The Internet.

If a man loses pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured, or far away.
Henry David Thoreau, July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862,
 was an American author, naturalist, transcendentalist, tax resister, development critic, sage writer and philosopher. He is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay, “Civil Disobedience”, an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state.

…We have valued grades and scores more than learning. We have forgotten to teach you that all understanding begins with wonder and with following unexpected discovery in unknown directions. We have tried to stomp the wonder out of you by getting you to choose a track and stick with it. We have asked you to excel in every endeavor and to avoid anything that might diminish your record of excellence. When we rewarded you only for following all of our rules and not for making any of your own, we did more to close your minds than to open them. … I am sorry that we have taught you to value economic success over passionate engagement with your work. … http://www.theroot.com/id/46623
Melissa Harris-Lacewell

If you were to combine the two quotations above, what would you conclude?  That we have taken the “different drummer” out of the classroom?

Let us continue our respite from talking about problems by talking about solutions.  Another story from Tactics of Hope:

In founding the first Brazilian NGO committed to tackling the digital divide, Rodrigo Baggio has created a franchise model with the Committee for Democracy in Information Technology (CDI), in which communities receive donated computers to be used for lessons in finding employment, as well as social and civic engagement.  Like so many entrepreneurs in this book, Rodrigo reaches people’s heart with dogged determination for results, taking only “yes” for an answer.  Bill Drayton documented that when Rodrigo first began CDI, he managed to convince Japanese businesses and the Inter-American Development Bank to give him their used computers, then persuaded the Brazilian Air Force to fly the computers home, then won over customs officials to accept the imported machines when his country was blocking most computer products at the time.  Having now graduated over 700,000 CDI students, Rodrigo’s methods for fighting what he calls “digital apartheid” are being adopted globally. ...

I’ve always had a deep passion for computers and social work.  Growing up in Brazil, I would visit my father, who directed the Department of Information Management, at work during school holidays, and was fascinated by any of the new machines I could get my hands on.  I got my first computer, a TK82, when I was twelve.  Getting a computer at such a young age, I was affected by the reality of what I had when there were so many parents in my area who could not even afford school clothes for their kids.  As my Methodist education inspired a strong desire for me to give back to the community, I started to volunteer at a young age, coming into contact with families of all social classes. …

At the end of 1993, I had a dream in which I envisaged poor youth using computers as a means to discuss their reality and to solve their problems. ...

... with our early efforts, we opened people’s eyes to the fact that in big cities the underprivileged do not die from hunger, but rather from lack of hope and opportunity, leading them to crime, violence, drugs and sometimes death.  In March of 1995, our first school was founded in Santa Mart, one of Rio de Janeiro ’s slums.  In two years, we had begun a campaign to change our country’s approach to digital education.  With the hard work and donations of many, and with the approval of the local government, my dream began to be realized in founding the first Brazilian NGO of digital inclusion, the Committee for Democracy in Information Technology (CDI).

CDI relies on young people for talents they already display every day:  organizational mobilizing, quick learning and entrepreneurship.  Young students need very little encouragement to get excited by the opportunity to use technology.  We simply channeled this excitement into efforts to mobilize job generation and investment in social projects.  As students unveil the world surrounding them, they also discover alternative possibilities for how to use technology.  This transformation is most achievable when the individual is empowered with community values while given control of technological tools they may then develop and explore on their own. ...

FOR EVERYONE.  Opportunity to serve.  The Breast Cancer Prevention Fund has two board vacancies.  If you have nonprofit experience and are interested in helping, please e-mail a biography to info@breastcancerpreventionfund.org.

FOR EVERYONE.  Get ready for Holloween.  Free Halloween make-up classes starting Oct 2, 2008.  Every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday till Holloween.  We have a great variety of techniques on this year’s schedule.  Franchesca Rodriguez, a Montebello High graduate from the class of 2007, will be teaching.  For details, 323.728.2728.

FOR EVERYONE.  City-council meeting.  The next regular meeting of the Montebello city council will be in the council chamber at city hall on Wednesday, October 8, 2008, at 6:30 p.m.  If you wish to speak during orals, come before 6:30 p.m. and sign up.  If you have more to say than there is time allotted, prepare a one pager, make copies, and hand out before you speak.  For more information, 323.887.1363.

What do people fear most? At the top of the list is death, the fear of which is necrophobia. Second, apparently, is the fear of failure, which is called kakorrhaphiophobia. ... http://www.didyouknow.cd/phobias/phobias.htm

As somebody who has seldom had health insurance as an adult, I am interested in where the current debate in America will lead.  Also, as my parents ask me to look at their Medicare statements, bills, and other health-care papers, I see that the present system is confusing and, therefore, costly.

Development: US Fails to Measure Up on 'Human Index'
by Ashley Seager, July 17, 2008, The Guardian

Despite spending $230m (£115m) an hour on healthcare, Americans live shorter lives than citizens of almost every other developed country. And while it has the second-highest income per head in the world, the United States ranks 42nd in terms of life expectancy.

These are some of the startling conclusions from a major new report which attempts to explain why the world's number-one economy has slipped to 12th place - from 2nd in 1990- in terms of human development.

The American Human Development Report, which applies rankings of health, education and income to the US, paints a surprising picture of a country that spends well over $5bn each day on healthcare - more per person than any other country.

The report, Measure of America , was funded by Oxfam America, the Conrad Hilton Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. It shows each of the 11 countries that rank higher than the US in human development has a lower per-capita income.

Those countries score better on the health and knowledge indices that make up the overall human development index (HDI), which is calculated each year by the United Nations Development Programme.

One of the main problems faced by the US, says the report, is that one in six Americans, or about 47 million people, are not covered by health insurance and so have limited access to healthcare.

The US has a higher percentage of children living in poverty than any of the world's richest countries.

It also reveals 14% of the population - some 40 million Americans - lack the literacy skills to perform simple, everyday tasks such as understanding newspaper articles and instruction manuals. …  Reprinted from “Quote of the Day” by Don McCanne, 7.23.08

With regard to the article which is the subject of “Unkind Words or Reality Bites?” above, a teacher comments:

Is our ability to follow long arguments, to process information well, and to meditate on the “big picture” suffering from a sea of triviality?  ...  [I]s the “middlebrow” class, those who read well and kept the republic moving, disappearing?

As a teacher, my experience with students indicates that this article (while a bit overstated) is mostly right in its analysis.

Mental development takes time and practice. What if nobody takes the time? Could it be that we are marketing habits to young adults that are not helpful?

Mental acuity and attention are skills that can degrade. If you don’t read a long book for a while, then it is harder to read a long book when you finally pick one up.

The usual reaction to such a piece (see the comments) is to respond “adults are always worried about such things and nothing ever comes of it.” There might be something to that, if this was not a problem that was progressive where a “tipping point” could be reached. ... http://www.scriptoriumdaily.com/2008/07/22/
are-distracting-ourselves-to-death-five-practical-tips-our-family-is-trying/. John Mark Reynolds, July 22, 2008.

To learn about this newsletter, Montebello E-News, and the accompanying, growing Web site, “My Montebello”, visit www.mymontebello.com.  Also, you will find instructions and contact information for submitting announcements for publication in this newsletter, and for submitting stories to “Montebello Memories” at the Web site.