Tag Archives: circumlocution

The Road to 65, Mile 226: The Measure of A Man

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Posted by on in Personal goals, Social

July 12, 2015, Prescott- I went to the high-end downtown shoe store, yesterday, to be properly fitted for a more stylish pair of black shoes, which will stand me in good stead in the workplace, this coming academic year.

I learned that my feet were different sizes, and that the size I had been buying for the past twenty  years, no longer fit.  I have experienced late-onset foot expansion (my term), with the left foot being larger than the right, to boot (no pun intended).  So, I settled on a size 10 1/2 pair, and will replace the smaller pairs, one at a time, until my shoes are in compliance with Foot Reality.  This, of course, means that my sneakers will be larger, by week’s end.

It got me to thinking:  How do I measure, in other ways.

Health-wise, my teeth, which could be replaced by a full set, are stable, and I won’t worry about the full set unless it becomes a deal-breaker, in an otherwise budding relationship.

That brings me to the notion of relationships.  We’ve discussed this here before, and almost ad nauseam.  I am in a good place, right now, and have several fine friendships with women, based on mutual respect and regard for each other’s well-being,  just as my friendships with men, or with children, happen to be.  None of us sees any reason for that to change, and several of the several are in good marriages, or other committed relationships.  Those who aren’t, are happy being where they are.

I am honest, by nature, and almost to a fault.  This sometimes causes problems with people who communicate with circumlocution, or roundabout speech, subtle hints, etc.  I never was very good at that, even when an offended party screams at me or slams the door, as has happened a few times.  I have to be true to my own soul, though I do make an effort to be gentle about it.

Work-wise, I finish what I start.  So, once this academic year gets on, I will be very conscious of doing all that’s needed to ensure the success of any students with whom I happen to work.  A commentator on another post suggested “take the money and don’t concern yourself too much with the outcome.”  That may be the person’s way of “avoiding burnout”, but to me, it is a recipe for crashing.

I will continue to measure myself, in various ways, knowing that the path should always be, as Jack Kornfield wrote, “with heart”.

The Road to 65, Mile 84: Arcaneness

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Posted by on in Personal goals, Social

February 20, 2015, Prescott-

There has come out of Phoenix, over the past several months, a concern with Common Core- the Federally-initiated set of loose education standards, which are intended to be tweaked to the needs of states and localities.  Because the Federal guidelines are so general, Common Core has appeared, to the average person, as a mishmash of convoluted lesson plans and circumlocution.

In most instances, Common Core has been fit to the state levels by panels of local educators.  The overriding concern, however, has been the mere fact that it is a byproduct of FEDERAL initiative.  There has been a fair amount of obfuscation and deliberate taking things out of context, so as to change education back to- “Heck, I don’t know.  Just make it something patriotic, adulatory of the Founding Fathers, pro-sports, useful for getting minimum-wage jobs, keeping the riff-raff in their place, and making Might the Master of Right.”

The only move the critics of Common Core have made thus far, here in the Grand Canyon State, is to institute a mandatory Civics Test, for those wanting to graduate high school.  That’s fair enough.  People who master Civics are less likely to be bamboozled.  All the same, there is nothing in Common Core that forbids or discourages mastery of Civics, or of any other subject.  We had a few years ago, in the Dysart Unified School District, in Surprise, AZ, west of Phoenix, something called Core Learning.  There were, in the social studies classes in which I taught, off and on, specific units on which it was felt everyone should focus:  The War for Independence, Slavery, the Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Great Depression.  I filled in the gaps, though it was discouraged by the administrators.  Several students, though, were more than glad to examine the Industrial Revolution, Gilded Age, the Spanish-American War and the Dust Bowl.

My point is that Common Core is a basic framework, not United Nations mandated indoctrination.  There are frivolous, off-center lesson plans being advanced in its name, but these have occurred in the names of any of its predecessors, from “A Nation At Risk” to “The First Days of School”, as well as “No Child Left Behind”.  Arcaneness is a peculiarly American aspect of education, more reflective of our freedom of expression, than of any Globo-stomp, Monolithic control of what kids learn.

I had these thoughts as I supervised groups of middle school students, who were working on learning somewhat arcane computer design applications, during the course of today.