Category Archives: Problem Practices

Communication behavior or analysis that is often counter-productive

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Other Uses of the Pitch Clock

The new baseball clock requiring a quick turn-around of pitches made me think of some other uses.

As you probably know, a new rule in baseball requires that a pitcher and hitter take no more than 15 seconds between pitches.  A few more seconds are allowed if there is a runner on base or if there is a new hitter coming to the plate.  The goal is to speed up the game.  And, indeed, pitchers are getting a workout to be ready to send a ball to the plate so frequently.

This clock requiring a quick turn-around made me think of some other uses.  It could help whip the rest of us in shape to ‘get on with it’ in good order. Laggards in the ballpark can have a penalty of a ball or strike added to the count, depending on whether they are a pitcher or hitter.  In lieu of a “ball!” called on the rest of us, we might learn to live with a marine horn that sounds when we’ve drifted over our allotted time.

Some possible applications:

  • Aches and pains are always good for comment from those of us who’ve been around a while.  But the “organ concert” that results can get mighty tedious. A limit of 20 seconds seems like enough time to recite a recent medical calamity.

 

  • I have a friend who likes to tell long stories that we’ve all heard before. We could give these jokes numbers to save time. Or there could be a limit of  20 seconds to get to the end of what we already know.

 

  • We have all encountered speakers who pause excessively between words or thoughts. The comics Bob and Ray had a classic illustration of it in their radio bit entitled “Slow Talkers of America.” As a variation, some of us use “silence fillers” before meandering on to an additional thought. This can make us all sound like our brain has hit a molasses patch. The clock and horn might help move things along.

  • Phone solicitations are never fun. If you get dragged into one, it would be nice to point out that they, too, are on the clock. There would be no time for lengthy verbal fogs that try to conceal their sales intent.

 

  • Helpful servers in some restaurants are required to recite all the specials of the day. The fussier the establishment, the longer the list. This tableside oration needs to be done in 20 seconds or less.

 

  • I have colleagues in education who like to lecture. I do too. But we are given way too much class time by our institution: about 80 minutes.  Most lectures would be more focused if the time were cut in half.  And all should be required to come with a preview of no more than 20 seconds. If a person can’t pull that off, the rambling lecture that follows probably has no central theme.

 

  • Unfortunately, vacation pictures don’t fade like they did in the last century. We collect them in abundance on our  phones.  15 seconds per shot would be generous. A picture with a story to go with it might get 20.

 

  • Dinner parties are still a thing with my generation.  The food is always good, but a wooden chair can get mighty uncomfortable after two hours. Changing places every 20 seconds would be fun to try, but probably result in quite a mess to clean up. Even if the pitch clock is probably too short to be of much use, it is clear that a long evening assigned to the same broken chair should not run longer than a baseball game.

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Disturbing Roadblocks to Educational Freedom

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Fighting back against our modern thought-police

A year ago it was apparent that the headwinds against progressive schooling were getting stronger. This post written at the time reflects that problem.  Since then, a group of mostly of states have sought to legislatively impose all sorts of restrictions on teachers, professors, librarians and school boards.  As I noted then, we could reach a point where scholars and teachers may need to pass over job offers because of draconian state laws. Reduced academic freedoms and free expression are central to the academic workplace.

In particular, Florida, Alabama and Texas have passed legislation that would prohibit academics from teaching about the social and political histories of the nation. Many would also not allow discussions or facilities provided for trans students.

We do not yet know how many of these hate laws will withstand court scrutiny.  But the very thought should send shudders down the spines of those familiar with the attempts of German Fascists to purify their society of “decadent” art and “alien” ideas. Most of the homegrown pinheads proposing this censorship may have never learned that the United States and the West did the world a favor by sheltering a important German academics fleeing to safety from authoritarians.  Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik and Herbert Marcuse are only a few intellectuals that found their way to the United States. They fled the Nazi’s thought police who found their teaching and religious beliefs alien to the culture. All focused their scholarship on culture and society, making advances in American explorations of philosophy, psychology, sociology and cultural analysis.  Indeed, Adorno and Frenkel-Brunswik’s explorations of “The Authoritarian Personality” remains relevant in this era of populist-fascist dictatorships. What they described as theory we now understand as fact.

The “problem” that social conservatives think they are addressing includes ostensibly “dangerous” leftist ideas, and the teaching of what most misunderstand as “critical race theory:” a phrase that triggers fantasies that chain out past what are useful historical and theoretical probes. The goal is to prohibit teachers in history and the social sciences from confronting the fact of American racism first institutionalized with slavery and then embedded in nearly every corner of our national life. Tina Descovich, of “Moms for Liberty” sets out very narrow guardrails: “To say there were slaves is one thing, but to talk in detail about how slaves were treated, with photos, is another.”

Really?

No one alert to the challenges facing modern nations can ignore the enormous effect that racial and religious bigotry has had on its victims. The most advanced societies have made amends. But we are still easily upside down if the classroom is subjected to gag rules imposed by non-expert and misinformed politicians. Legislating away American attempts at necessary reckonings with the past is truly a fool’s errand.  And ghosting services for gay and trans citizens is its own nightmare.  Legislators would do well to acquaint themselves with Nazi programs in the 1930s and 40s to purge public spaces of supposedly “degenerate art,” including pieces by Picasso, Henry Moore and Jewish painters.  Some of their work was officially hidden away, even though societies need the revitalization of those who may seem to be on the fringes.

The best educational communities do not impose curricular guidelines that would muzzle the insights of authentic scholarship. If it were possible to do so, such limits would empty out academia of its best and brightest in the fields of media theory, American history, modern criticism, American literature, philosophy, sociology, ethnic and religious studies. It’s one thing for a church or private organization to impose a-priori “doctrines,” that allow only narrow pathways for exploration. It’s quite another for non-expert legislatures or school boards to set rules that would restrict the free discovery of ideas that is the very reason for a university. We could reach a point where professional bodies representing various disciplines may need to issue warnings to teachers and scholars to reject job offers in states that have decided to turn their backs on the hard truths of the American experiment.

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