Question – What concerns would you have about school rankings like those of the Fraser Institute based on achievement test results? If you are passionate about education and feel like you need some quick adrenaline check out this video by the same organization. Holy not educators Batman…

Here are some thoughts I expressed on this.

Point 1 - Academics are only a fraction of what makes a good school. As a parent and an educator, I am most concerned that my own kids and my students learn how to learn and how to love learning. While some fundamental skills are undoubtedly necessary, I would argue a case for the “intangibles” of a school as making the key ranking differences.

Such typically unconsidered factors would include: how interested are students (yes even high school) in going to school. How all school community members would rate the rapport between faculty and students. How satisfied the teachers are with their jobs. The quality and number of the extracurricular activities offered. The access the school provides to technology and web 2.0 tools. How varied the classroom practices are. Among others…

Point 2 -If the goal of education is to create people who perform well on standardized tests, then a system that is oriented toward that outcome is exactly what should be created. Performing well on standardized tests, however, is a near useless life skill as far as I am concerned. At this point, I am almost sick of the hype around 21st century education but considering the arcane nature of ranking schools based solely (soulessly) on test performance doesn’t the following make more sense?

“21st century education is flexible, creative, challenging, and complex. It addresses a rapidly changing world filled with fantastic new problems as well as exciting new possibilities” (Possibilities for 21st Century Education, 2008).

I am not worried about professional evaluation. I can teach students to do well on a test or I can help people develop into imaginative, motivated, voracious learners who know how to learn what they will need to know when they create the future. Unfortunately the differences between the two with regard to style of teaching, learning, and what it means to perform do not work well in tandem. One is teaching people how to succeed in a box that was created in the past. The other is teaching people how to succeed outside the box that hasn’t been created yet.

Possibilities for 21st Century Education. (2008). Retrieved July 05, 2010 from 21st Century Schools: http://www.21stcenturyschools.com/​what_is_21st_century_education.htm.

Images: As far as I could tell these images are open source. If I am mistaken please post a reply to this post indicating that and I will take them down.

Like many others I am working on finishing my masters degree. As such, there is a heap of required reading much of which is in the form of academic journals in pdf. Due to the design of my program, I am carrying two courses at present which is a nightmare at the end of the school year not to mention two small children and a high need for physical exercise. I regularly struggled to get the reading done then I had an idea about using technology for the visually impaired for my own gain and found Ghostreader.

This program simply converts text files to audio mp3 files to play on my blackberry or ipod to listen to as I wash dishes, drive, or walk the dog. It is sophisticated enough to phrase words and sentences naturally (listen to the file). It makes long academic journals or any other text you don’t have time to read accessible. When I am really exhausted and my mind tends to wander, I find I can study later and with more focus if I play the audio and read the pdf along with it.

Ideally I wouldn’t need this but like many I am stretched too thin. This program has given me back not minutes but hours of sleep. It has a free 2 week trial and is only $50 if you decide it is useful for you.

Scene from my daily run in Yamanashi

When I was on faculty at Hopkins School in New Haven, CT, I worked with a guy called Dean Nicholson. He was an avid NORBA Masters class racer and 15 years later probably still is. At the tender age of 24 he taught me to schedule an appointment with myself every day. I still remember him giving me an overview of the strategy.

Think about it, he said. If people call up and ask if they can meet you at 1pm and you have a conflicting appointment, it is easily accepted when tell them you aren’t available – after all you have a conflicting appointment. The same thing doesn’t hold if you tell them, ’sorry I can’t make it, I’m going cycling, running, or climbing’ take your pick. None of those reasons fly. People take offense to being turned down so you can work out. Why is that so? Why are we any less important than other people? The solution is to schedule in an immovable appointment with yourself.

Don’t tell anyone what you’re doing and honor it as if it were an appointment with the dean of faculty from Yale University. You wouldn’t miss an appointment with an administrator from Yale and why are they any more important than you are.

Dean was a very fit and very wise man. I haven’t forgotten his words and in this self-change project I have taken “the appointment with yourself idea” further with Prestwich, Perugini, and Hurling’s (2009) smart-phone reminders.

Everyday I get a message on my phone thanks to google calendar and google sync for blackberry that corresponds to an open block of time. Depending on the time availability and location I either do a simple workplace stretch or a more full-blown flexibility workout. Also included in these messages are various motivational phrases such as Tommy Lasorda’s

“The difference between the impossible and the possible lies in a person’s determination.”

Dean gave me an easy to implement tip on facilitating determination. Google Calendar and Blackberry makes is easy to remember and even lets me know if I try to schedule something over one of my workouts with the simple phrase, “Conflict with another appointment on this calendar”. This is every bit as matter of fact and firm as Dean would have loved to see. I’d like to write more on the topic but I have another appointment.

Prestwich, A., Perugini, M., & Hurling, R. (2009). Can the effects of implementation intentions on exercise be enhanced using text messages?.

The Before and After Speaks for Itself

As a slightly tech addicted docomo customer I wanted to keep the rock solid signal docomo provides even in the hinterlands of Japan. As the negotiations began back a few years ago between Apple and the mobile service providers in this country, I watched in dismay as they set up something with softbank. I spend a good portion of the year out in the countryside and am well aware of the softbank customer disclaimer, “I’ll see if I can get a signal and call you when I get there.”

I waited for iphone to get set-up with docomo. There were rumors but nothing happened…so I waited some more and waited a few months more until I couldn’t take not having a smart phone anymore. One chilly evening in December I found myself in Yodabashi Camera buying a blackberry and switching over my account from the pricey Sharp 906i touchscreen mobile with a 5mg digi cam I had been using. Over fancy camera features, I wanted wifi. I wanted to sync with my google calendar, contacts, and gmail. I wanted to stop beating my way through the Japanese language only i-mode websites and have full web browsing. I wanted a twitter app, wordpress app, evernote app, and flickr app. Basically I wanted my phone to catch up to web 2.0.

I’m a big mac fan and a sucker for the bells, whistles, and endless app options for the iphone but I am having a great time with this blackberry bold. While I imagine I’d get used to the iphone touchscreen, the tactile nature of the keyboard is a real bonus. I have also found enough available for me to get it to do almost everything I want it to, including sync podcasts from itunes. I am more than a bit annoyed with how long it is taking Skype and RIM to come out with Skype for blackberry but it probably won’t be too much longer now.

While I like it’s overall appearance, I did find the full black look a little unimaginative. Coveroo out of San Francisco, California has a whole heap of battery cover solutions to pimp out a blackberry. Mine now resembles something of a college dorm tapestry which I’m pretty happy with. It’s not an iphone but I love this device and in addition to all the web 2.0 stuff, it does radical things like make phone calls wherever I happen to be.

Like a cultural detective I have been piecing together elements of this rising trend since arriving in Japan almost 9 years ago. The first clues of the mystery for me was the attention I saw younger men paying to their appearance – openly preening themselves in mirrors on the train platform clearly giving their eyebrows more attention than even the highest maintenance women I’d known. Conversely, it was a good day for me if I was shaven and had thought to look in the mirror before leaving our small three room appartment. Were Billy Bragg writing these lyrics today, he might’ve said, “the busy boy buys beauty, the pretty boy buys style…”

Entering Japanese society already in a committed relationship but before kids, I was also interested to learn how my relationship with Asako fit into the local topography. I saw our level of commitment as unique but then again many of my friends back home hadn’t married yet either. I was 29 when we married and Asako was 26 so we were just ahead of the curve slightly. In international relationships, however, visas and working papers are hard to come by without marriage so there are other factors to consider.

Unlike many of the younger adults that I saw on the train in the morning dressed casually for “albaito” or part-time jobs, Asako and I were also full ahead into our careers. She was teaching at a prestigious private school in Tokyo and I was full on into my career in the experiential education field with Project Adventure. Both of us were dedicated to work, each other, and “my” becoming “our” Chesapeake Bay Retriever, Biko, who moved with me to Japan.

Those three elements of men paying unabashed attention to their appearance, a decline in weddings, and a lack of career focus are among the characteristics ascribed to the herbivore male. Connected to this, young men are now reported to be the leading consumers of beauty products, more adverse to commitment and responsibility, and more content to live at home with their parents as “parasite-singles”. While I go through my share of toothpaste, I recognize these characteristics not only don’t apply to me but comprise those that I was socialized to view as shallow and unfulfilling in both men and women.

At the same time I was out of my native surroundings trying to sort out what it meant to be in my new setting as a man, I also felt safer and less threatened than in any place I had ever lived. The feeling of safety went beyond the lower crime and murder rates into something more primal as if the frequency I was on was different than many of those my same age around me. Back in North America the rat race was in full swing but in Japan I felt like I was in a field all my own.

Two days ago at my doctor’s office I got into a conversation about snowboarding with his son who was home from university. 5 min into the discussion, this 21 year old son of a man with charisma and confidence oozing from every pour was open in sharing with me how scary the whole prospect is from the sport itself right through the height of the lift.

A lot of people have private fears but they typically stay concealed in casual conversation. I’d like to think it was my Rogerian aura of unconditional positive regard that enabled this man to disclose his weaknesses but I think it was linked more to men not feeling the same need to appear tough and infallible. If his father had been listening around the corner I imagine he would have been shaking his head.

Along the way there have been other surprises like the bras sold for men. After receiving the link from a female friend, I checked those out with some humor noting how Seinfeld’s “mansierre” had finally found it’s real life consumer audience. As a counselor, that product left me wondering what the psychological needs were that were driving enough demand for a bra for men to enter production. Perhaps it is as some argue, a reaction to the pressure of traditional manhood with hidden lingerie removing the internal stress to be macho.

Other trends such as men sitting down to pee or the decline in sales of hard alcohol and sports cars serve as ready fodder for the media to emasculate the Japanese male. Looking to western fashion magazines briefly, however, the images of men are very consistent with the herbivore male of Japan with impeccable hair, make-up and manicures. This is not a trend from which western men can claim impunity although I imagine standing urination still has a future.

I’m the last one to be nostalgic about the loss of the stoic salaryman absent from his family or the rough and tough emotionally isolated outlaw that informs many archtypes of the western male. As alternatives, an over-emphasis on physical appearance regarding women hasn’t been of benefit so I don’t see it of use for men either.

Similarly, independence away from your parents at the expense of meaningful connections with others is equally detrimental for either gender. Cast in a light of self-reliance, however, indepedence is made possible by living in community with others. It demands a broad range of skills as certain obstacles are sorted out alone and others are managed as a community of family and friends. The same potential for self-fulfillment may not exist without that richness of experience. I worry about the future if the leadership and fabric of society is made up of people who lack the initiative and drive to at least fold their own socks or sort out dinner.

Perhaps the phenomenon of the herbivore male is due, as proposed, to the social disruption and delusion left in the wake of Japan’s broken bubble economy- the emotional remnants of lost financial promises and security. The media has painted a larthargic bovine picture of anyone not towing the company line. An underlying message for me comes through clearly. The Japanese kaisha is no longer able to guarantee lifelong financial “happiness” for its employees so the companies of Japan need to integrate other qualities of life that will make employees content. Shorter work days, better maternity and paternity leave packages, and vacations on par with the rest of the world’s leading economies are a few ready suggestions.

Perhaps most shocking, however, is the sexual passivity of this new species of man reported to favor platonic relationships with the opposite sex and failing to summon the gumption to approach women. From a biological perspective this is deeply troubling. Japanese culture has proven to be extremely resilient in the face of increasing globalization but already faces declining birthrates and an aging population without the social impotence of its young males.

It is hard to find fault in the individual lifestyle preferences of a few men. Further, were I still single I would very likely rejoice in any hetereosexual men self-selecting out of the dating pool. However, Infinity marketing firm in Tokyo claims that approximately 65% of men 20-34 identify to some degree with the herbivore male. Rather than passively graze in an infertile field of societal apathy, I’d encourage younger men to engage in a gender war to redefine what it entails to be a man on their own terms but not clinging to their mother’s apron strings.