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Poem: “Haec Fabula Docet,” by Robert Frost
Statement of the Whole: Anxiety can radically change behavior. This is a predominant issue in education today in part due to the over emphasis placed on the standardized test. What should home schooling parents do with this assessment monster? To test or not to test, that is the question raised and discussed by the Backporch crew on this podcast episode. Listen carefully; it will all be on the test.
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Poem: “Ode to My Goldfish” by Ogden Nash
“Oh, wet pet.”
Statement of the Whole: It is often through analogy and metaphor that we can see relationships between humans most clearly. The relationship between a tutor and his pupil is a hard thing to describe, but a wonderful thing to behold. In Mel Gibson’s directorial debut, The Man Without a Face (1993), Jason and Steve find much to discuss about the teacher/student relationship. Watch the movie; join the conversation.
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“Thoughts About the Covid Gap”
Poem: “On Nature,“ by Parmenides
Statement of the Whole: Given the current concerns about what happens when disease or some other factor shuts down education in the land, the Backporch boys go on safari throughout history to look at what happened in past instances of such. How does the purpose of education affect the practice of schooling? What have other groups done during times of pandemic? Join in the education.
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“The Dive into Digital Media” episode
Poem: “Bed in Summer” by Robert Louis Stevenson
Statement of the Whole: Education is now afloat in the digital sea. How have screens improved education and are there things that are better off without the screen involved? Steve and Jason download some thoughts on the new world of the digital classroom. Plug into the conversation.
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Poem: Quote from Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
“Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.”
Statement of the Whole: Talk to almost anyone in education and probably sooner than later, the discussion will turn to the hardest aspect of education: assessment. How do we know if we have taught a good lesson? How do we know if the student has caught our great lesson? Why are many forms of testing fraught with the language of suffering, hardship, and even death? The Backporch dives into this deep pool and swims about with broad strokes. Come on in, the water is warm!
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Poem: “November, 1806” by William Wordsworth
Statement of the Whole: Many today believe that success in education is determined by the budget given to it. The home schooling movement is pushing back on that adage. Jason and Steve conduct a thought experiment using the notion that a great year of home schooling can be done on a budget of just $100. Listen in as they describe ideas that may humor you, may shock you, but hopefully will convince you that education does not have to be an expensive endeavor.
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Poem: “To ____” by Edgar Allen Poe
Statement of the Whole: How does what you read affect how you write? Is it good or bad writing to see something of other writers show up in your writing? How does this question affect the teaching of the writing art? The Backporch boys take on a listener’s question and wind up meandering all through a number of sub-questions regarding the reading life, the writing life, and how the two are intertwined. Learn, laugh, and listen in as they consider this question.
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Poem: “How to Be a Poet” by Wendell Berry
Statement of the Whole: How do you find the right environment that promotes good learning? Is there just one type of such place? Does the place learning occurs matter any more or less than what is learned? The Backporch boys pursue these questions and others in an extended meditation on the poem they begin the episode with. As Berry put it, “Accept what comes from silence. Make the best you can of it. Of the little words that come out of the silence, like prayers prayed back to the one who prays, make a poem that does not disturb the silence from which it came.”
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Our Annual Incarnation Special
Poem: none (the whole thing is about Christmas lyrics, which are afterall, poems)
Statement of the Whole: What does singing Christmas songs have to do with education? A lot and very little. Jason and Steve think it has more to do with good learning than the opposite. They hum their way through various favorites from the Yuletide season and discuss their own views on how the Incarnation, and singing about such, is an important aspect of meditating on education. At the end you will wish to bring them some figgy pudding.
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Reading a difficult book
Poem: none, instead Steve reads a quote from the work:
“Comes again the longing, the desire that has no name. Is it for Mrs. Prouty, for a drink, for both: for a party, for youth, for the good times, for dear good drinking and fighting comrades, for football-game girls in the fall with faces like flowers? Comes the longing and it has to do with being fifteen and fifty and with the winter sun striking down into a brick-yard and on clapboard walls rounded off with old hard blistered paint and across a doorsill onto linoleum. Desire has a smell: of cold linoleum and gas heat and the sour piebald bark of crepe myrtle. A good-humored thirty-five-year-old lady takes the air in a back lot in a small town.” ― Walker Percy, Love in the Ruins
Statement of the Whole: What does a reader do with a difficult text? Steve and Jason take on the humorous and bizarre text of Walker Percy’s Love in the Ruins by discussing both the text and strategies for working with a text designed to put you off kilter. “I believe in God and the whole business but I love women best, music and science next, whiskey next, God fourth, and my fellowman hardly at all.” Join in the conversation.