Your Own Personal Education

Passive vs. Active Approach to Building a Life

By Amy Barr with The Lukeion Project

Which do you enjoy best: a tough game played without directions or goals, or the same tough game but with access to instructions, tips, and a clear view about what you must achieve to win? Those that even have interests in challenging games typically prefer to have the basics in place so that they can enjoy the game with a reasonable hope of succeeding. The toughest games in life can be your own education.
Most of us begin well before we know we are playing and, mid-game, are expected to excel before fighting the “final boss” graduation. Many decide to endure bonus rounds with apprenticeships, college, internships, or graduate school.
Some of us love this educational process and rally around the various challenges and opportunities! Some of us look at the future and despair. So many variables! So much work! It is easy to become prematurely weary about all the demands and expectations.
Students come to love the game of education more when they are given directions and have relative control over their goals. On a scale ranging from a rigid education (like a boarding school) to a fluid education (like unschooling), any approach that gives the student increasing autonomy and self-determination works best to bolster focus and optimism for the future. A student who has room to make choices about classes and topics will enjoy more opportunities to try things they might want to do for a living before they pay for college. Students who had a rigid earlier education will struggle to know what interests them enough to study further. Though most eventually find their path, they might change majors and careers many times since they delayed the process of test running new things until they became an adult.      
When framing goals, start by exploring your general interests to see if they mesh with any realistic goals. You don’t need years in botany, medicine, or art to know that those things light your fire.
 Depending on your life experiences, you may wish to continue what you already enjoy (art, music, writing, science, sports). This first tricky step is where many of us stall out. It is FAR more normal to have no idea what we want to be “when we grow up” until we are really pushed to make some type of decision. Over-thinkers worry they won’t be good enough at something they like to do, or they have concerns that their choices are unattainable, or that others won’t agree that their chosen path is worthwhile or realistic.
Instead of pushing non-stop over top academic marks and taking impressive academic courses that aren’t particularly interesting to you, be intentional about trying classes (or camps or workshops or programs) on topics that interest you. At all stages of our education, diversions from the programmed educational path are called electives, classes we picked “just” because we liked the subject. I can’t imagine a better topic to pursue than one we enjoy. How many geniuses would have remained anonymously unimportant if they’d rigidly stuck to the regular program?
There’s a lot to navigate before you might be willing to talk about your educational path with others. Some students don’t enjoy much choice. Perhaps family expectations make it clear where you’ll end up. Maybe your family boasts several generations of engineers or maybe everyone graduated from the same school. Perhaps a family business dictates where you’ll work once you graduate. Sometimes what you enjoy plays no role in what you must do educationally.
I had a friend in college who was happily finishing a degree in information technology when his mother insisted that he apply to medical school. Though he had no interest in medicine, she was willing to cut off all communication if he didn’t choose a medical path. On the other hand, I’ve known many who receive no guidance at all. Families can be a bit tricky to navigate.
Once you explore your goals, run your ideas past the most dependable people you know. Some public and private schools have guidance counselors when dependable people are in short supply, but I recommend you find somebody who knows you well and will be honest with you. Perhaps you see yourself becoming an online influencer but the person who knows you best might suggest a path that gives you multiple options. Getting a background in public speaking, marketing, journalism, and even graphic design would foster such interests without giving you too narrow a goal. Don’t despair if your objectives remain elusive. Sometimes your “aha!” moment arrives serendipitously. Observe yourself when you get excited about a particular subject or skill. Do more of that and see how things shape up.
Once you envision a path, take an active approach to your education from that moment on. Most of us, for very practical reasons, are very passive about our education until, one day, we want to take the steering wheel. Whatever you like to do, work diligently at being the best at it and you’ll never lack opportunities.

The Limber Brain

 Stretch Your Mind

 By Amy Barr with The Lukeion Project

Some students never get a break! I’m not talking about the variety of students who have especially bad luck or suffer an especially bad time with academic subjects. I am talking about students who choose to or are expected to maintain a year-round academic schedule. Thankfully, you’ll survive as long as you remember to limber up and stretch your brain.

The year-round approach works well for some and poorly for others. What’s the secret? Those that successfully “do school” year-round, or nearly so, tend to maintain a limber brain. Those that enjoy the positive results of year-round education habitually incorporate certain non-academic habits in their otherwise academic lifestyle.

Work-Life Balance

This is the minimum addition required to make year-round academics possible, but it is the most overlooked. Nobody, no matter their age, thrives in a situation in which they work all day and some of their evenings as well. A schedule that requires full attention all day followed by hours more work at night is necessary from time to time but never full time. The brain and body require balance, variety, and stretching as new experiences break the monotony of hyper concentration needed to master new concepts. Reserve portions of every day to do different things besides academics. This will sharpen the mind and improve retention. Becoming an excellent student is more than just overloading yourself on academic subjects.

Game-play

Games of all kinds have come to occupy more and more entertainment time in our schedule because there are options for every personality and taste. Games that are especially helpful for keeping your brain limber (neuroplasticity) require logic and reasoning. Excellent game choices require you to play a comparable or slightly superior opponent so that you stand a reasonable chance at both winning and losing on a regular basis. Pick a game that isn’t too repetitive so that you learn to just take shortcuts. A good game requires you to make incremental improvements in your skills as you continue. Chess ticks all these boxes but there are other options available that suit your interest. Avoid over focusing on any game that requires you to work alone. Limit those to occasional interactions. 

Exercise

Some of us shape our whole schedule around sports and exercise. Others of us? Not so much. Everyone, regardless of preferences, needs exercise. My favorite type of exercise tends to be working in my garden or taking care of outdoor animals like my chickens or goats. Others consider such things “chores” rather than exercise but no matter. I work myself to the point of exhaustion while enjoying some excellent veggies as a reward. Exercise doesn’t have to be expensive or specialized or even competitive. Pick but don’t omit. Look at your DAILY (not weekly nor even monthly) schedule to add some exercise. I especially recommend doing something outside early in the day and towards sunset for a bonus benefit to your brain and sleep options.

Music

There are few physical activities that are more effective for fostering a limber brain than becoming proficient at a musical instrument or training yourself to use your voice effectively. The tricky bit about learning to play an instrument or singing is that it can take some time, expense, and commitment. Sometimes we are expected to get started on an instrument before we are ready to make that commitment. This can build a mental wall that blocks our success. Timing is everything. Some are asked to start so early they lack the maturity needed to practice. Some are told they can’t learn a new instrument because now they are too old with the assumption that all great musicians started very young (look up Wynton Marsalis if you want a good example). Contrariwise, those that develop a passionate desire to pursue music into adulthood are often discouraged because “becoming a musician won’t make enough money.”

Parents: fostering the love of music in your younger child is like nursing along a tiny ember into a fire. Go easy but be ready to help when interests arise.

Music, especially the ability to create it for oneself, is one of the most satisfying skills one can develop! Obviously buying a grand piano for a disinterested child makes no sense but waiting a few years and trying again with an inexpensive keyboard might make sense. Not everyone is going to become a musician just because they develop a passion for playing drums or flute at age 10. Keep going anyway. Now you have a passionate young musician in your house (maybe it is you) who has developed a special skill to stretch the mind.    

Movement

As far back as we can look back into history, human beings have loved to dance. Depending on where your ancestors lived and what they believed, there might have been some social constraints about how, when, and where dance is ok, but all our ancestors – at least in theory – danced every chance they got.

If you randomly gathered 50 teens in a room today (at least modern America) and asked them to dance, you’d likely enjoy limited success at first. Many of us have been robbed of an activity that served as a core behavior to the rest of the human race right up until the last couple of generations.

Adding rhythmic movement to your regular schedule will drastically improve your mood, your ability to learn, and your neuroplasticity. In Harvard’s study of the effects of movement on the human brain, they cite an early look here:

In a small study undertaken in 2012, researchers at North Dakota’s Minot State University found that the Latin-style dance program known as Zumba improves mood and certain cognitive skills, such as visual recognition and decision-making. Other studies show that dance helps reduce stress, increases levels of the feel-good hormone serotonin, and helps develop new neural connections, especially in regions involved in executive function, long-term memory, and spatial recognition.

All work and no play leads to a crunchy, stiff and stuffy brain. Make it limber through balance, music, movement, and games.

The Trained Brain

You Need Mental Exercise

by Amy Barr with The Lukeion Project

Walk through any big box store in January and you’ll see two types of things: bottles of health supplements and exercise equipment. Yesterday I saw a lady who appeared to be in her 80s trying out a very expensive piece of weight training equipment because we humans love trying to make a new start. As the new year starts, people feel motivated to get healthier and start exercising in response to feeling less than their best after a few long weeks of eating extra treats and lounging about more than often.
Starting a new semester is the perfect time to consider our mental health routines. We all likely do things differently in the deepest part of the winter and feel less than our best mentally. How do we get our mental health back and start training our brain? Enjoy three steps that anyone can do for free.

Start

Choose your biggest distraction and decide to defeat it. I’ll help. If you have unfettered (or even just slightly reduced) access to technology (phones, tablets, games, TV, etc.) presume it is your biggest obstacle because app developers have made it their business to make you hyper-focused on their product while you become hyper-distracted from completing much else. Most of us know it is a problem while at the same time we don’t really want to change. That’s what an addiction is! Imagine regaining 30-40% of your time each week. “What good is that,” you might opine, “if I’m missing out on everything online?” If you want a trained brain—one that is far more efficient at reading what you like to read and thinking what you prefer to think—it is indeed a very good thing to regain your time.
If you live in a digital-free home or a relatively digitally diminished life, congratulations. You can skip to the next step because no other distraction is as debilitating as technology.
First, don’t change anything but do track your time for at least three days. One of those days should be a weekend and two should be weekdays. Work out how you distribute your time. Be precise because you are doing this for yourself, not somebody giving you a grade -- though you’ll soon find that it makes a difference in that area too. Track yourself in terms of 10-minute blocks rounded up.  If you wake up but spend 23 minutes looking at your phone, don’t count those as 23 minutes sleeping but 30 minutes on screen time. If you are on the phone every time you eat a meal, count that time as screen time, not eating since it is likely you didn’t even taste your food or keep track of how much you ate. If you can’t take a walk without looking down at your phone the whole time, don’t count that as exercise but as screen time.  Do a little math and find out your average daily time investment on different tasks. Remember, anything that you do that includes screen time only counts as screen time. Most will quickly discover why your life is passing by with limited returns. The five hours you claim you are spending on mental work is closer to around 32 minutes.
It is time to train your brain. The fastest way to reprogram yourself away from distractions is to find a good book, preferably one that has more than one volume in a set. Moving from one type of distraction to another will simplify your predicament while extending your ability to focus. Depending on how deep your addiction is to digital distractions, you may need to start at 2 minutes, but most can make if for 5. Use your phone or device as a timer. Set it for 5 minutes and 10 seconds. The extra 10 seconds is added so you can set the device and leave it in the next room while you go to a part of your home that has no digital entertainment whatsoever. For some, this might be your closet. Pick up your book and read it for five minutes without getting up to check any device. Some will have few problems. Others will only make it a minute or two before they want to grab their phone. Repeat this 5-minute process as many times as you need until you find you are a bit surprised when the timer goes off. Next try 10 minutes, then 20, etc. Once you can keep reading for an hour without reaching for a device, maintain that level for at least a week or, better, two. Congratulations! You’ve now restored your ability to focus and you might even want to finish reading the whole series now.

Advance

Now you can concentrate on a different entertaining distraction but that doesn’t mean you are mentally productive yet. Cajole yourself into reading something you do not yet enjoy. Instead of just using the timer to get yourself to read more about calculus or history or 18th century literature, engage further by taking notes. What you write, how you write, or the elegance of your letters makes zero difference. If all you do is write out a proper name, date, fact, or important term on your chicken-scratch notes for each page you read, you are training your brain. Do not replace note-taking with highlighting the book nor underlining things. Doodlers: don’t just doodle unless your image relates to the text. Writing out relevant words and very short descriptions means you must track with the material to a greater and extent. You don’t need full sentences (unless you find words to live by). Expect to be irritated at first by how slow you write. You might have to train your hand as well. You’ll quickly discover why people used the almost lost art of cursive. Printing takes a lot longer than cursive writing which was the original point of cursive.  Once you can get all the way through an assigned reading without getting distracted, well done! You’ve come a long way.

Enjoy

So now you’ve trained diligently and won a few victories. How do you know when you have a nicely trained brain? Success is when you stop craving the petty distractions (for most alive today that would be something on a phone, gaming, or TV but some are hooked on sports or music or a zillion other things). If you swap zillions of 2-minute videos of people doing dumb things for being able to ready for an hour without interruption or distraction, you are going to begin to do things that will surprise you. As your taste for reading expands, you’ll begin to think and communicate in more and more complex ways that mimic the type of things that you like to read. Vocabulary will grow, ideas will increase, and your writing will speed and improve in quality. Maybe your new focus tool is building something. Congratulations! Now you have a useful skill! Perhaps you decided your focus tool is art, animals, exercise, or writing. All of these things will continue to develop your ability to enjoy life in ways that are far more meaningful than watching strangers on short videos.
It is worth it to train your brain. Try it.
   

Keep Technology Caged

AI Isn’t Your Academic Friend

By Amy Barr with The Lukeion Project

At least in theory, students can now grab their essay or paper prompt from their educators, load that prompt into an AI (artificial intelligence) text generator, add a few specifications and— voila— their essay or writing project is finished to perfection! Now, some students might suppose, there’s plenty of time left in the day to do other things in their now cleverly cleared schedule. Is this a win?

The obvious answer to this question is no. Let’s explore why.

The simplest reason why having AI complete your assigned writing projects is NOT a win is that you are cheating when you do so. Having anyone else, even if that person’s “brains” are made of the digital input of hundreds of thousands of documents stolen from the internet, is cheating because you completed none of the work and none of the thinking needed to address the assignment. This is literally a no-brainer.

Why do your mean-old educators insist that you personally employ brain and hands to write when AI can oversee such time-wasters for you? Is technology not here to help us? There will come a day when AI has its place in your life that will be helpful rather than a hindrance. My prediction is that AI will have its moment in the sun for a while longer until thinking-humans begin to yearn for bespoke, hand-made, human originated music, art, video, and literature. AI will eventually find its spot in more helpful areas than creating more genuinely human activities and, of course, cute cat videos. For now, AI isn’t your academic friend.

While it goes without saying, I’ll say it anyway: those who never learn to read (because AI summarized your whole reading assignment in a single simple paragraph) nor write (because AI took only 60 seconds to finish your assigned task) are consigned to the sorts of lives led by people who are illiterate. Those that don’t read and write are no better than those who can’t. The implications for the future of humanity are, to say the least, bleak if most students hand off all major tasks of academic development to something that is not much more than a fast complex database filled with other people’s words and ideas. Even if something like the plot-line of the movie Terminator unfolds once Skynet takes over, nobody would notice. They’d be too busy generating weird cat videos or deepfake videos of your siblings.

What’s in store for those who insist on using unsanctioned AI in coursework? As quickly as AI is being promoted as a grand new way to improve education, human educators are developing ways to catch its use and stop it. AI has plenty of useful applications in the real world, but its use must be consigned strictly to learning enhancement not knowledge replacement.  

One might argue that nobody really needs to learn algebra or calculus (that’s what calculators do) or chemistry (the periodic chart is handy online) so why learn to read or write if AI will take care of these tasks for us? We are on a rapidly swirling whirlpool towards our own demise if we relegate our future to the menial chores of cleaning up after our more intelligent AI overlords.

For now, you should know this:

·        All your educators can check for your use of AI in written projects of all sizes. A bloated database of word soup will read that way because that is how most AI has been trained to write.

·        If your work “reads” as AI, we will offer diminishing benefits-of-the-doubt in our responses. Applying a grammar checker or a spelling checker doesn’t change your work to read as AI generated content. None of your educators are buying that excuse. There are, at least for now, very specific tells when work isn’t written by a human. If your work is scanned as digitally generated, you will be removed from classes for cheating.

·        If you have dabbled in using unsanctioned AI for your submitted coursework, stop now. When your honest peers have progressed in their studies by mastering assigned skills through use, you’ll be trapped at whatever level you achieved before you started turning to digitally enhanced “help” to finish your work for you.

Only time will tell if my distrust of AI diminishes or increases but, so far, I’m not encouraged by what I see coming at us down the road. We are all going to be targeted relentlessly with fast, cheap, easy ways to remove humans from needing to accomplish the basic tasks of thinking thoughts and recording them skillfully and responding to others thoughtfully and cleverly. When all of that is gone from us, what will there be?

The Winter Brain

Your Brain Needs Renovation

By Amy Barr with The Lukeion Project

The modern world has provided even average people countless luxuries. We have light and climate control on command. We have entertainment at the push of a button. We have food available when we like with very little effort involved plus all the benefits of easy chilling, heating, and preparation or even delivery. Any kind of food is available year-round with little thought about what is in season and when it tastes best. Clothes are washed and dried at the press of a button. What we do in an average week would be unimaginable 75 or 100 years ago, but would our ancestors consider us more, or less, fortunate for all our innovation? Riddled with issues like anxiety and depression, I’d say we’ve missed out on a few things that used to be normal.

Before our days could be extended by turning on lights and our food ready the instant we are, we were governed by the seasons and natural changes that used to program our behavior throughout the year. Warmer months offered physical exertion and longer days to grow and prepare food that would need to last all year or firewood that would keep us well later in the season.  Colder months used to let us regain our physical balance while we had the chance to use our brains differently. Winter used to be the season for restoration.

While we can’t go back to the days before electricity offered the luxuries we have today (nor would most of us want to), we can go out of our way to find a few ways to restore ourselves and our winter brains. Here are four things you can do in the winter months to help yourself regain equilibrium plus mental calm and health.

Sleep on a Consistent Schedule

When enjoying some days off in the winter months, have you ever spent several days in a row up late as you tried out the newest released game or “binge” watching some favorite show? Maybe you are finally going to get the chance to read that new release or perhaps you’d like to watch all 12+ hours of some movie series! Fun…right? Here’s a tip. If you have the chance for activities that make you happy, still stick to a consistent sleep schedule. Just swinging back and forth between late nights and even later mornings and then back again as your schedule dictates will increase feelings of unease. Your body and brain really appreciate regularity so, if anything, add more sleep to your schedule instead of less.

Even very poor families who struggled for resources looked forward to the part of the year when physical labor was diminished and, due to weather changes, people needed to attend to tasks inside. While you might “make hay while the sun shines” all summer long, you looked forward to relatively effortless winter hours when you could put on a pot of food to simmer and then enjoy a nice power-nap before dinner. Naps are now a rarity as our every minute is scheduled. That’s why the winter brain craves them. Find a good spot and snooze when you can.   

Mindless Tasks and Manual Chores

Winter is the right time to address mindless tasks. It used to be the best time to mend broken items, craft items (wood, knitting, sewing), or read a favorite book. Most of these chores were communal. Mimic such times today by picking mindless tasks and inviting a friend or family member to join in. Settle in to make, cook, craft, read, paint, play music, or whatever could be done while you caught up with the thoughts and jokes of those you love.  Want to learn a new instrument or clean your room? Maybe your chess skills need brushing up or your violin needs extra practice. Maybe you have a group of friends who want to hang out, get a bit festive with them and cook dinner together from scratch and laugh at or (better) love the results. Winter is the right time for mindless tasks and manual chores but there’s no need for dread. These can be quite pleasant plus they keep you inside off icy streets if you get them!

Most importantly, don’t resort to the easiest time wasters like movies, games, or scrolling online. If you don’t already limit your screen time (or if you resent those that try to do on your behalf), give it a try. If you’ve let yourself get too habituated on phone or tablet time, it will be a big struggle at first to give it up. Most of us are addicted and it isn’t pretty. Track how much time you spend on the blue screens for a regular day in your schedule before you dial it back. You’ll probably be shocked unless you and your family have had the good sense to never get hooked.

Almost a third of Americans are online or on a blue screen full time from the moment they wake up until the minute their tired hand drops their phones as they fall asleep at night.  The percentage of “constantly connected” is nearly half of our population if we only count people under age 50. Getting screen time down to something more manageable (something more like an hour instead of 16 hours) will be a major battle but, for the sake of your mental health, I strongly recommend it. Screens won’t go away without a fight so look for ways to walk away from technology by leaving phones, tablets, and televisions far away from your temptation zone. Start by sitting at a table for dinner with no television going. If you have other family members willing to cut back screens, stack any phones or devices in another room and then just talk. I guarantee you’ll start to feel better if you normally just stare at a screen while you chew.

Don’t Neglect Going Outside

If you live somewhere that gets cold or wet during the winter months, don’t use that as an excuse to hole up in your hidey-hole for several months. Your winter brain needs light (especially early morning and late afternoon) and fresh air. Besides, your dog needs a walk, your friend needs a visit, and your health needs you to move and breathe. If you are fortunate, you’ll even get to do something that is seasonally unique. When I was young, we didn’t have the money for anything too formal, but I lived near the Rocky Mountains. We’d find somebody willing to drive us and then we’d blow up some innertubes (those rubbery things that used to go in every car tire) and shoot down snowy mountains with reckless abandon. Sure, we’d have a few bruises and even a little sunburn as we’d crawl home soggy and cold after dark, but we’d sleep perfectly for a week afterwards.

Cook and Eat Well

I’m a big advocate of eating with the seasons. Winter is about restoring our bodies with soups, broths, root veggies, slow cooked winter greens, and anything else that is available this time of year. Most modern people have no idea what’s still growing this time of year or why we should often limit ourselves to such local things, but a little garden plot will soon help you learn.  Even as I type I think about my own patch of winter carrots, kale, sweet potatoes, and crunchy greens along with other foods I’ve grown or fostered. Our bodies appreciate the nourishing wealth of slowly cooked food in the winter months while it is cozy to run an oven for long periods or simmer something in a big pot. Find a good cookbook and learn how to make these tasty but humble winter items that are true to you (and your family’s) tastebuds and preferences.

Winter, if done well, should nourish and restore our bodies and brains. We have much to do. Feed your winter brain well with all these healing habits.You'll find that everything--from mental acuity, academic excellence, and social acumen--will all improve with a bit of winter rest.

Learn as Much as You Can

You'll Have it to Use

By Dr. Susan Fisher with The Lukeion Project

There is a recurring trope circulating among the old and crusty about things they learned in school and never had to use in real life. Two of the popular topics are math like algebra and oddly enough learning to play the recorder. As is the way of social media, these tropes are met with a cadre of people who agree that they have never once in their adult lives used algebra or have played the recorder. Then there is the other side that will tirelessly list out the myriad ways in which they have used algebra and what their nascent recorder learning ultimately did for their music careers. The two sides then have a useless argument and ultimately everyone leaves until the next time the trope comes around. What always amazes me about these futile internet fights is that both sides seem to miss the bigger picture. And that is, whatever skill you learn, be it algebra, the recorder, or something else, you will use it because you’ll have it to use.

Huh?

Hear me out on this one. Say I decide to start learning Portuguese today, which honestly sounds like a fantastic idea because who wouldn’t want to learn Portuguese? Once I begin learning that language a whole host of things seen and unseen will open up for me. I’ll be rewiring my brain. I’ll become able to converse with people I would not necessarily have been able to converse with before. I will get a richer understanding of my own language and culture. I might start thinking about visiting Portugal or Brazil or Guinea-Bissau or Mozambique when I might not have considered it previously. Those are just a few of the obvious things. More subtle things will happen too. I will start noticing Portuguese-related things in the world that I missed before and that will open up a host of other interesting things. The list goes on and on. Most importantly, I will have a skill that I will be able to use. This is the important part because none of us knows where life will take us.

People who scoff at learning different things because they can’t see a practical application for them in their lives are working under the false assumption that they know exactly where their lives will take them. It’s a great idea to dream and plan for a specific life path but talk to anyone who has been around a few decades and they will tell you that things rarely go exactly how you plan them. In fact, often they go much better. You will live beyond your wildest dreams or imaginings and do things you never thought you would do.

Back when I was teaching Latin in private school, I had a student whom I adored but was self-admittedly the consummate goof-off. He did fine, but not great, despite having the ability to do so. The fact was that he just didn’t see Latin as having anything to do with his future plans. All my talk about rewiring your brain, beefing up your logic skills, how cool it is to learn about another culture and how that can give you real insight into your own, yada yada yada fell on completely deaf ears. Well, three years into college he emailed me and told me he was taking Greek because he had a calling and was heading into ministry. He said it was going okay but that he really wished he had taken Latin more seriously because it would have helped so much with learning Greek. I didn’t say, “I told you so,” even though I kind of wanted to, because he already knew it, plus that’s just mean. What I did say, though, was, “Isn’t it funny where life has taken you?” Not ha ha funny, but ironic. He knew what I meant, and he agreed. He had no idea just three years before that Latin of all things would be a skill he would need for furthering his life’s work. We just can’t see everything that is going to happen for us.

Returning then to the old and crusty people on the internet. How did they get so crusty? Surely people with more years of life experience should know that life rarely takes us where we think we’re going. Are they failing to see how the different things they learned over all their years allowed them to do the things they did? Are they missing the connections? Probably. After all, so many of the benefits of what we learn are unseen. What’s more disturbing, though, is the thought that their failure to learn things, because they saw them as inapplicable to their lives, actually kept their worlds small, their paths boring, and their opportunities few. In short, they didn’t use skills because they didn’t have them to use, and their lives have become an internet crust-fest about elementary school recorders.

Ultimately the choice is ours in what skills we learn and how well we learn them, and there certainly isn’t enough time to do everything. But it pays to keep in mind the fact that the skills we learn, whatever they may be, will be of use to us because we will have those skills to use. And no matter how dull, weird or inapplicable they may seem, they will bring us interesting and meaningful opportunities. To completely mangle a wonderful poem by Robert Frost, I personally am choosing the path less crusty: not scoffing at learning new things but embracing them and learning them well, even if I don’t see a direct application for them in my life. For I know it will make all the difference.

 

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

 

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

 

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

 

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

 

Robert Frost

 

Step Away from the Screen

The Demise of “Focus”

By Regan Barr with The Lukeion Project

Has this ever happened to you? You’re out to eat with friends or family, and someone whips out his phone and begins scrolling. Recently we visited a restaurant where we were seated next to a group of ten friends. By the time we left the restaurant, over half of them were staring at their electronic devices and not interacting with the group. We assumed they’d planned this outing as a “hey, let’s get together and catch up” time, but most of them weren’t really interested in catching up. They were instead being fed a constant stream of entertainment.

When was the last time you read a book cover-to-cover in under a week? …mastered a new skill, discipline, or body of knowledge? …got through an entire movie even though the first 10 minutes moved a bit slowly? If you’re like many people today, the answer might be “it’s been so long, I can’t remember.”

Lately, I’ve been noticing a lot of articles on how high school and college students have never read a single book. They’ve appeared in The Atlantic, AP News, The College Fix, and The Hechinger Report (which focuses exclusively on education-related topics). We’ve noticed the same thing in our classes at The Lukeion Project. For some students, just reading the instructions for an assignment is too big a task! This is a sad commentary on our society. We no longer exercise our imagination, like we do when reading a book; we’re just fed a constant stream of visual content.

All of these are signs of a modern ailment: we’ve lost the ability to FOCUS.

How did we arrive at this point? One of the answers is that “social media” is NOT “social.” Often, it’s just the opposite. We watch people on a screen whom we’ve never met, while ignoring the friend or family member that is in the room with us. A recent poll from Gallup found that teens spend an average of nearly 5 hours a day on social media. An article posted on Exploding Topics found that the average American checks her mobile device 159 times a day. We’ve gone well past “connected”; we’re now officially “distracted.”

Bite-sized information is now the norm, so we never get to practice focusing. We read headlines instead of articles. Editors have learned they can influence people’s opinions simply by writing a good headline. This has spawned a whole industry of people who now actually READ the article looking for bias in the headline. Sometimes there is contradictory evidence in the article itself.

So how do we begin to rebuild focus?

1. Disconnect from the electronic world. You might be surprised at what your mind can do when you’re not connected to your TV or phone. Try having a real conversation. Ask your children if they learned anything that surprised them today. Have a game night with the family. Perhaps have a “reading hour” where your entire family agrees to read (a book printed on paper!) for at least an hour. And make sure everyone gets through their book.
2. Go outside and connect with nature. Take a hike. Go to the zoo. Go to a park. Buy some goats. Do some gardening. Take your dog for a walk. 
3. But most important: Practice focusing. Be fully engaged at your dinner table. Take up a creative hobby that requires your full attention, like woodworking or welding. See how long you can go without checking your phone.

The people who accomplish great things have learned to focus. The future belongs to those who can focus!

Looks Dangerous . . . You Go First

Roman Political Terms in Modern America

By Amy Barr with The Lukeion Project

The Romans loved traditions, ceremonies, and rituals. We cannot be critical. We borrowed a lot of their pomp for our political circumstance. If you know a little Latin, you can easily demystify several important words that we find in American government. Now, good luck with demystifying the rest of it.

An inauguration was the Roman method of checking in with the gods before any elected official took office after votes were tallied. Serious-looking men in togas would stand in one spot and watch for bird behavior. The type of bird and direction or flight style helped Roman officials say “yea” or “nay” to the newly elected official. Inauguration comes from the Latin verb inauguro meaning “to take the auguries.”  The verb can also be used to indicate consecration or installation, a difference I suppose that was based on whether you enjoy the winning candidate…or not so much. The persons tasked with looking at birds following elections were called augurs which we might benignly refer to as a priest or less so, a soothsayer or seer.

Inauguration was a term applied so early in Roman politics that the ancient writer Livy included it in his description of Romulus and Remus. The twins decided to settle who would name their new city when they picked vultures to help them decide. Spoiler! The name is Rome not Reme. Romulus, it seems, was popular with vultures. Remus was also popular with vultures but wasn’t so popular with his brother who ended the discussion with a fist fight. Thus, birds (in this case a pack of vultures) and fisticuffs determined state policy.

If the birds agree with you (and your policies) you proclaim that it is all auspicious (from auspex, Latin for “bird watcher”). If your plan was deemed inauspicious, you made a fast contribution to the Roman Audubon Society found in the pockets of the pontifex maximus and called for a bird recount.

The precedent for having a president also started with the Romans. Praesidens was an all-purpose term for a leader and means literally “guy sitting out front.” The Romans would argue that the job description “guy in front” was way better than being a king or tyrant. I think that it is simply concise Latin for, “that looks dangerous...you go first” or maybe “they’ll come at you first if they grow angry with us.”

The Romans considered most politicians to be old and set in their ways, so they named the major governing body in Rome the senate. Though the word sounds dignified or important to the modern ear, senatus is just Latin via the word senex for “pack of old guys.”  Congress, alas, simply means “a group of people.” The Romans really preferred to keep their politicians humble. It is their lack of Latin knowledge (among other things) that keeps our politicians from toning things down.

Our founding fathers were well versed in Classical languages. They were not ignorant. On the contrary, they were realists. With all the austerity that Latin can muster, they established that our nation would be governed by a pack of old guys, a group of people, and somebody sitting out front. Meanwhile in reality, a bunch of vultures and other bird brains are the ones calling all the shots. The more you know!

What about other weird governance terms? I love the adjective gubernatorial. We use it today in the U.S. to describe the election of the top State leader. The English word comes from the Latin term gubernator (or gubernatrix) meaning a helmsman or pilot of a ship. The verb guberno comes from a Greek word that means “steer a ship safely.” If you say the word carefully, you will notice that it did not take much to go from the word guberno to government and governor. Our governors are meant to steer the ship of state no matter what storms or icebergs come our way.

The next time a pack of vultures chooses your pilot, your assembly of old guys, or the guy out front, think fondly of Latin.

Study of Words

What is Linguistics?

By Dr. Kim Johnson of The Lukeion Project

Linguistics is defined as “The study of language.” It might seem as though human beings are experts in language. In every human culture across the globe, people communicate using spoken or signed language. There are around 7,000 languages of various types and relationships around the globe. Human beings typically speak and listen to language for their entire lives.

How do we think of concepts and then use our mouths to create sounds that are then translated into similar concepts in the hearer’s brain? How do the mechanics of language work? Why is the plural of mouse “mice,” but the plural of house isn’t “hice”?  Even when we make the plural the same way for two words, why do we pronounce the s in “dogs” differently than the s in “cats?” 

To study language we break it down into its component parts, mimicking how children learn to speak. We can talk about how to turn sounds into words, how to give words meanings, and how to turn words into sentences. In each of these areas, sometimes linguists focus on parts that are specific to one language and sometimes focus on universal traits of language.

How language sounds: Phonetics

The basic building blocks of language are the sounds we make using the tools of our mouth, tongue, throat and nose. Linguists have attempted to categorize all the sounds humans could possibly make according to what shape our mouth is, how the air is flowing, whether we are vibrating our nasal tract, and so on. Once we have these bits, called phonemes, we can study how sounds in one language vary across regions (accents) and how different languages use different sounds.

What makes a word:  Morphology

In The Lukeion Project’s word roots program, Witty Wordsmith, students join Wilbur as he examines words and their classical Latin and Greek roots. Word roots are one part of the area of morphology, the study of how we use words in a language.

There are more parts to words than just the roots, though. If I say, “I really flugged yesterday during class,” you would probably guess that “flug” is a verb. On the other hand, if I talked about flugition, you would know that flugition was a noun (and you would know how to pronounce it!) even though you wouldn’t have any idea what the word meant. The suffixes -ed and -ition are examples of morphemes, the smallest units of words that have meaning. The “s” that I added to cats and dogs is also an example of a morpheme. Studying how languages create words gives insight into how they work.

How language works: Syntax

In Barbarian Diagrammarian, students, along with the Barbarian Leland and his faithful Lemur, break down English sentences into their component parts and visually chart their relationships.

Syntax is how languages express relationships between words. Some parts of syntax are specific to a particular language but linguists also consider what is common to all languages. All sentences can be analyzed by breaking them apart into pieces which make sense together. For example, “The Lukeion instructor ate the delicious peach” can be broken down like this: “[  [[the] [[Lukeion] [instructor]]] [[ate] [[the] [[delicious] [peach]]]]”. To cut down on brackets, we can use trees or other ways to show the relationships between words.

In English, the constituents are typically right next to each other. In Latin the adjective “delicious” would belong to “peach” by virtue of its gender and case. Every language studied so far has two parts of a sentence: the subject and the predicate. Everything can be broken down into its constituent parts in different ways depending on the grammar.

And beyond!

In addition to these main building blocks, there are dozens of other areas that are parts of the subject area of linguistics. Linguists study the history and development of language such as how languages change and combine to make new languages. They also study how language is used in different societies and cultures. Psycholinguistics is the study of what is going on in people’s brains as they use language. Linguists study signed languages as well as spoken language. Any aspect of human interaction involves language, and therefore can be studied by linguists.

Why might you need linguistics?

If you are planning on learning more than one language, studying linguistics can help you make connections and highlight differences between languages. Knowing the history of how Latin morphed into Spanish, Italian and French can make learning those languages easier. Another joy of linguistics is learning about obscure or extinct languages and how their structure can be completely unfamiliar.

For those of you who are writers, linguistics can help you to create bold new languages for your stories. J. R. R. Tolkien is the premier example of a writer using language in his creation of a literary world. There are many other examples from Klingon (which is a language you can actually learn to speak) to even Parseltongue from the Harry Potter books.

These days, there is a great interest in trying to help computers understand and create language. It turns out that human beings bring a lot of complex background to understanding even simple sentences that cause computers a lot of trouble. To understand how to “teach” a computer to be better at understanding language, we must understand it better ourselves.

Of course, one of the best reasons to learn something is for the joy of learning something interesting and new. As I study linguistics to advise the Lukeion Linguistic Club, I am constantly amazed by the variety and complexity of the ways human beings communicate. My eyes are being opened to things that have always confused me but turn out to have rational explanations. Linguistics puzzles resemble mathematics puzzles in many ways. However, where competition math puzzles seem to rely on tricks and advanced knowledge, linguistics puzzles often rely on our human instinct as a speaker of a language.

What is the Lukeion Linguistics Club about?

Lukeion’s Linguistics Club serves a couple of purposes. First off, and importantly, it offers a space for students of Lukeion to get together in a less formal space and have some fun!  But that’s not all we do.

We talk some each week about various aspects of linguistics. So far, we have explored the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), some ambiguous sentences, and how to build meaning from words and suffixes. We plan on talking about constructed languages, language acquisition, and some of the history of English.

We also spend some time solving puzzles from the International Linguistics Olympiad. These are logical-language puzzles that highlight aspects of language like word order, declensions, affixes, and so on. Homeschool students can sign up to compete in these national and international linguistics competitions. The puzzles are fun for their own sake---they involve languages from across the globe and many interesting constructions.

If any of this strikes your fancy, all current Lukeion students are invited to join us for linguistics club. We meet on Fridays from 1-2 PM (Eastern time). Email me to join the mailing list, class web page, and address for our Adobe Connect meeting room.