Lying metaphors and prime numbers

Since finishing my last book, I have moved on to a book I have wanted to read for ages, Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. As a parent of a child with autism, I have heard interesting things about the fact that this story is written from the point of view of a person who has autism and speaks frankly about it. I can’t speak directly to how an autistic person sees the world, but I think that the way Haddon approaches the writing is very authentic, and it is written with first-hand experience of autistic individuals: Haddon had worked previously with autistic children. It’s a very compelling work; I started it today and am already about 75% done with it.

So far, two very interesting topics have jumped out to me. The first is a literary issue, concerning metaphors:

The word metaphor means carrying something from one place to another, and it comes from the Greek words μετα (which means from one place to another) and φερειν (which means to carry), and it is when you describe something by using a word for something that it isn’t. This means that the word metaphor is a metaphor.

I think it should be called a lie because a pig is not like a day and people do not have skeletons in their cupboards. And when I try and make a picture of the phrase in my head it just confuses me because imagining an apple in someone’s eye doesn’t have anything to do with liking someone a lot and it makes you forget what the person is talking about.  (p.15)

And shortly thereafter in a footnote concerning the sentence “It looked as if there were two very small mice hiding in his nostrils”:

This is not a metaphor; it is a simile, which means that it really did look like there were two very small mice hiding in his nostrils, and if you make a picture in your head of a man with two very small mice hiding in his nostrils, you will know what the police inspector looked like. And a simile is not a lie, unless it is a bad simile. (p.17)

Forgiving some obvious errors – the phrasing “a pig is not like a day” indicates a simile, which is explicitly not problematic according to the narrator Christopher, and “the apple of my eye” is not so much a metaphor as an idiom – I find the evaluative distinction between a metaphor and simile to be fascinating, mostly because both are examples of figurative language, language that is explicitly not meant to be taken literally. (Of course, one can reliably assume that an autistic narrator will be prone to errors of hyperliteralism; it’s a stereotype. Christopher in particular is also very opposed to lies in general, so bringing out this point isn’t surprising.) It should give us pause, however, in our own language use to consider those disadvantaged groups that may have problems with comprehension: language learners and those with linguistic delays or deficiencies.

(I also had never really thought about the etymology of the word metaphor: it is definitely very meta.)

The second is more contemplative, which is Christopher’s musing on prime numbers:

Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them. (p.12)

Dead on, in my opinion.

I don’t even have to finish reading this book to tell you, faithful reader, that you should read this book if you haven’t already. If nothing else, it will give you some insight into a more diverse way of seeing the world, and you will find yourself entertained in the process.

 

Why the subjunctive mood is important

If one can be considered a fan of some grammatical artifact, I am a fan of the subjunctive mood, for some undefinable reason. Maybe it’s because the subjunctive is somewhat of an endangered species, having all but disappeared from modern English. I’m not a stickler about it – I don’t know that I can really be called a stickler about anything grammatical other than the bare essentials for communication – but I have been known to advise students in feedback about its formal use. Yes, it might be acceptable in general to say something like “If I was six feet tall, I would be much better at basketball” even though the subjunctive would call for the construction “If I were six feet tall…”

However, I suggest that there are instances where understanding of the remaining uses of the subjunctive mood or at least the underlying reasons for its existence are useful, since it does still exist but is rarely ever taught explicitly. Generally, this should consist at least of an understanding that the subjunctive can be used to express a state or proposition that is contrary to fact.

Some real-life situations:

1. A student in one of my classes was talking about something gender-related (I don’t recall the specifics) and asked me, “Mr. B, if you were a guy–”; at this point, I interrupted and said, “Whoa, wait a minute: are you saying that I’m not a guy?” He didn’t intend (I think) to communicate this piece of information, but it was communicated nonetheless through the construction.
2. Similarly, my wife recently started out a sentence, “If I were me,” at which point I remarked that she must have some severe identity (and logic) issues.

So even if the subjunctive is on its way to extinction, despite my affinity for it, understanding the remnants of this mood can in fact be useful. And don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

 

Why we gotta do this: A book review

I finished the book I’ve been reading this week earlier today, Why Do We Gotta Do This, Mr. Nehring?: Notes from a Teacher’s Day in School by James Nehring, and I have to give it my highest recommendations for any junior high or high school teacher (although it will be more topical for the latter). It is a very compelling book, equal parts narrative and commentary but all contained within a narrative framework that is very approachable. Nehring does a great job of telling the story of education – not a history, but the way things are. I say “are” because I don’t think things have changed a whole lot in the 20 years since this book was written and published; in fact, if you replaced all instances of “Walkmen” with “iPods,” there would be virtually no dissonance with the reality of education in 2009.

There is much that can be said about Nehring’s commentary – perhaps the most important part of the book, although the narrative is entertaining and engaging – but I want to return to that dreaded question that I wrote about a few days ago*.

 

Victory of the day

It’s not really a victory in the classroom, but I count it a victory nonetheless.

One of my professional duties is lunch duty, which probably sounds ridiculously boring but which I find to be a very useful time. This is for several reasons: first, it’s non-instructional time, and the amount of actual supervisory work is incredibly low. I also have duty for the first period of lunch (out of two), and this period happens to be almost the exact disjunction of the set of students I currently have in class – that is, I teach 10^th-12^th graders (well, most of them), and this period covers 7^th-9^th grades – so I have been able to get acquainted with a number of students who I will (most likely) have in class in the next few years. Consequently, I think I have begun to build positive relationships with many of these students, and I think this will work out in my favor.

But these aren’t even the best things about having lunch duty. My favorite part is, to be blunt, basketball.

 

An instructional prediction

Post now updated with post-data – see bottom of entry.

I have often been disappointed at the reaction that some students have had to activities I’ve prepared, especially the ones I’ve been excited about. I once tried to do an activity with eighth graders that was essentially an improvisational exercise utilizing an understanding of the four types of sentences – declarative, exclamatory, interrogative, imperative – based on an improv bit that was done on the late great improv show Whose Line Is It, Anyway? where the participants are given a certain type of sentence and can only use that type of sentence to carry on a dialogue. (The Whose Line? bit focused on questions, and they also did something similar with song titles.) I thought it would be fun and it would engage current knowledge – well, it bombed, badly. Part of it was a lack of understanding of what they needed to do, and part of it (I think) was a lack of motivation to be creative.

So when I started planning an activity today, I decided to temper my enthusiasm with a little cynicism about how well it will be received.

 

Dealing with the dreaded question

As noted recently, I’m currently reading James Nehring’s wonderful book Why Do We Gotta Do This Stuff, Mr. Nehring?: Notes from a Teacher’s Day in School. It’s a fascinating book, written in a sort of stream-of-consciousness style that focuses on one day but jumps back and forth between the (somewhat) hypothetical events of this single day and the very real issues that affect teachers, such as groupwork and leading discussions. I’m enjoying it immensely.

I wondered when looking at the title if Nehring would discuss that dreaded question – “Why do we have to do this?” – and I wasn’t disappointed:

 

Current reading

I have actually been on somewhat of a roll with my personal reading lately: in the past three weeks or so, I’ve finished the novel A Separate Peace – which was excellent – and read through Dave Barry’s History of The Millennium (So Far) (a fake history in Barry’s normal vein of humor – absolutely hilarious) and Ernest Hemingway’s early short story collection In Our Time, which contains a number of Nick Adams stories. (Both of these were, coincidentally, bargain buys at a local Waldenbooks.)

Tonight, I started reading a book that came to me by way of a rummage sale, something that my mother (who is a fanatic about these kinds of things) picked up for me because it’s about teaching and…well, you probably know how mothers can be.

The book is “Why Do We Gotta Do This Stuff, Mr. Nehring?”: Notes from a Teacher’s Day in School by educator James Nehring (now an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell), published by Fawcett Columbine in 1989. I’ve read a couple of books by teachers about their experiences (most notably Educating Esme by Esmé Raji Codell, a fine read from an elementary teacher’s perspective), so I thought I knew what to expect.

But I have to admit that this is the first book of this sort that I’m reading as a full-time teacher, and it struck me when I started reading the first chapter that I have a much better point of reference now. For example, the major controversy in this first chapter (and keep in mind the time): kids having Walkmen.

It has to be said – Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. (For those of you who, like me, don’t speak French: The more things change, the more they stay the same.)

I’ll keep you posted as I read through this book.

Faithful readers: What are you reading? Anything good?

 

TGFSW

That’s “Thank God For Short Weeks.”

Today is the last day of instruction, and only the first half of the day meets for classes (so no juniors – hoorah!). It couldn’t come soon enough.

The last few days since I last posted anything have been extremely trying. Notable moments (good and bad):

• Tuesday: Celebrated the National Day on Writing in a few classes by doing writing of some kind, and I taught a mini-lesson on six-word memoirs; several of the students really got into it, giving me such gems as “Promises are made by truthful liars.” Also, sophomore hits me in the head with Dan Brown’s latest novel (I wish the student had better taste in smaller books). Oh, and I had to correct my seniors on the true etymology of the F-word (it’s from a common Indo-European root with analogues in several Germanic/Scandinavian languages; it has nothing to do with acronyms like “Fornication Under Consent of  the King”), which is, um, not something I had ever really expected to come up…
• Wednesday: Discussed evaluation with principal, which by and large was good; asked for some feedback on how I could improve and talked that out a little. A sophomore class really pushed me over the edge, and I gave another detention to one student in particular who has repeatedly pushed me too far.

I need the break, and I wish I were getting one: tonight is my older brother’s wedding rehearsal (I’m in the wedding party, my first time in that experience), and tomorrow is a few parent-teacher conferences in the morning (that might give me some new material to write about) and the wedding in the late afternoon. I am going to be wiped out, most definitely.

Wish me luck.

 

Teachers and ASD

My recent post on autism has apparently sparked some interest (hello Trinity students!), which I’m not altogether surprised at: autism is a hot topic these days, and for good reason. It’s especially a matter of concern for teachers, who are now faced with a greater likelihood of having a student on the spectrum mainstreamed into one of their classes.

Well, besides all of the nice comments that the last article sparked (despite the fact that it was mostly about my own personal dealings with autism as the parent of an autistic child and not really about education in general), I happened to get a message through facebook from a former classmate of mine who student taught and graduated at the same time as I did back in the spring. This message, however, was not about teaching and ASD but instead about teaching with ASD.

 

More garbage in the teachers’ lounge

Seriously, I get tired of writing about the teachers’ lounge. If it weren’t for the fact that I do like socializing with my colleagues during the one real time I get to see any of them (besides my lunch duty, which I share with another new teacher), I think I would avoid it. It seems like when I pay attention to what’s actually in there (which I do somewhat out of necessity, since my lunch period starts 15 minutes before the rest of the group), I inevitably find something that makes me go through what seems like the stages of grief: anger that someone in my hallowed profession would applaud something so stupid, depression that someone would actually disseminate bad information when our job is to promote knowledge and understanding, and finally acceptance (or maybe resignation) that I can’t change everything.

But then the idealist in me says, What do you mean, you can’t change everything? How will you know if you can’t do something about this if you don’t make an effort?