33. Rubin, “Afghan Women Fear Loss of Modest Gains”

July 30, 2010

Afghan Women Fear Loss of Modest Gains

By ALISSA J. RUBIN

MAHMUD-E RAQI, Afghanistan — Women's precarious rights in Afghanistan have begun seeping away. Girls' schools are closing; working women are threatened; advocates are attacked; and terrified families are increasingly confining their daughters to home.

For women, instability, as much as the Taliban themselves, is the enemy. Women are casualties of the fighting, not only in the already conservative and embattled Pashtun south and east, but also in districts in the north and center of the country where other armed groups have sprung up.

As Afghan and Western governments explore reconciliation with the Taliban, women fear that the peace they long for may come at the price of rights that have improved since the Taliban government was overthrown in 2001.

"Women do not want war, but none of them want the Taliban of 1996 again; no one wants to be imprisoned in the yards of their houses," said Rahima Zarifi, the Women's Ministry representative from the northern Baghlan Province.

Interviews around the country with at least two dozen female members of Parliament, government officials, activists, teachers and young girls suggest a nuanced reality — fighting constricts women's freedoms nearly as much as a Taliban government, and conservative traditions already limit women's rights in many places.

Women, however, express a range of fears about a Taliban return, from political to domestic — that they will be shut out of negotiations about any deals with the insurgents and that the Taliban's return would drive up bride prices, making it more profitable for a family to force girls into marriage earlier.

For many women, the prospect of a resurgence of the Taliban or other conservative groups is stark. "It will ruin our life," said Shougoufa, 40, as she sorted through sequins and gold sparkles at the bazaar in the city of Pul-i-Khumri in Afghanistan's north.

"I am a tailor and I need to come to the bazaar to buy these things," she said. "But if the Taliban come, I will not be able to come. Already we are hearing some girls cannot go to their work anymore."

In teachers' tea-break rooms, beauty shop training sessions, bazaars and the privacy of their homes, young women worry that their parents will marry them off early, so they will not be forced to marry Taliban.

In the Pashtun-dominated district of Taghob, east of Kabul, girls' schools have been closed and any teaching is done at home, the provincial education director said.

That does not trouble some local officials.

"Look, our main priority is to feed our people, to provide rest and to protect their lives," said Haji Farid, a local member of Parliament. "Why are people focusing on education and sending girls to school? Boys walk three, four, five kilometers to their school. How can a girl walk two, three, four kilometers? During a war you cannot send a girl beyond her door. No one can guarantee her honor. So it is hard to send your daughter to school."

In Kandahar, Helmand and Zabul, all unstable southern provinces, there are girls' schools open in the provincial capitals, but in outlying districts there are few, if any. In Zabul Province, there are just six schools for girls, four in the capital and two outside, but few families send their girls to school because of the fighting, said Muhammad Alam, the acting head of the provincial education department.

In Baghlan Province, in northern Afghanistan, the situation for women has steadily worsened over the past year. Ms. Zarifi, the Women's Ministry representative, has endured assassination attempts and demonstrations against her work. Three months ago, a female member of the provincial council was paralyzed in an attack, and a woman was stabbed to death in the daytime in the middle of the provincial capital earlier in July.

By contrast, most of Kapisa Province, which lies northeast of Kabul, is peaceful. There is a mediation program in the capital to help women and girls when they face domestic violence. In the predominantly ethnically Tajik north there are large, lively schools for girls, where families even allow those who are married to complete high school.

Women's advocates are concerned that they are increasingly being shut out of political decisions. At an international conference in Kabul on July 20, which was meant to showcase the country's plans for the future, President Hamid Karzai said nothing about how women's rights might be protected in negotiations.

The very first meeting on negotiations, held by Mr. Karzai on July 22 with former leaders who had fought the Taliban, did not include a single woman, despite government pledges. When asked, government officials said that women would be included in later sessions.

Although Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has also pledged that she will not desert Afghan women and that any deal with the Taliban that traded peace for women's rights was "a red line," women remain wary.

"Right now it's a big challenge for women to go to school and work, but at least according to our Constitution and laws they have the right to do so," said Nargis Nehan, 31, an Afghan women's advocate.

"If the Taliban come back, by law women will be restricted and not allowed to leave their homes," she said, adding, "Maybe not everywhere, but in those districts where they are in power."

There is also the real possibility that a deal with the Taliban could stoke the anger of non-Pashtuns who once fought and still fear them, raising the prospect of renewed fighting.

Afghanistan's women have long led exceptionally constrained lives. The combination of a male-dominated tribal culture in which women have been often treated as little more than chattel, combined with a conservative practice of Islam and a nationwide lack of education, meant that long before the Taliban arrived in the mid-1990s, women had few opportunities beyond the home.

The mujahedeen leaders who forced out the Soviets in the late 1980s were as conservative as the Taliban in many places, keeping women at home in order to preserve family honor instead of educating them or integrating them into the government.

"Families want to send their daughters to school, but it is hard for them to decide to do so because of the fighting and insecurity," said Mr. Alam, the head of provincial education in Zabul Province.

The families of women who work in offices are threatened, said Rahima Jana, who heads the province's Department of Women's Affairs. And the group Human Rights Watch documented instances of night letters meant to scare women into staying at home.

"Security is a big challenge, and we cannot work when there is bad security," Ms. Jana said. "Last year was much better than this year."

In Mahmud-e Raqi, 12 teenage girls sat around a small trunk filled with beauticians' tools — combs, boxes of hair dye, scissors, nail polish, hair spray — and watched closely as the instructor sat one of the girls in a desk chair and demonstrated how to cut off split ends evenly.

In most places in the world this scene would hardly be a sign of women's liberation, but in this corner of Afghanistan, it meant a great deal. The girls, ages 15 to 17, had been allowed to come from their villages to the provincial capital; they will take home a trunk of beauty goods and can earn their own money in their homes by offering beauty services to women in their village.

This chance at determining a little of their future is what they fear will be threatened if the Taliban return through a negotiated peace settlement.

"They will beat us and forbid us from this freedom, the freedom to come here, to this class; they will stop us from doing things," said Biboli, 16, a girl with long brown hair barely covered by a thin white veil.

The greatest fear is that no one is really listening, said Habiba Shamim, one of the instructors.

"Please," she pleaded. "Carry our words to people."

 

Taimoor Shah contributed reporting from Kandahar, Afghanistan.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/31/world/asia/31women.html?_r=2&hp=&pagewanted=print

32. HARTOCOLLIS, “Getting Into Med School Without Hard Sciences”

July 29, 2010

Getting Into Med School Without Hard Sciences

By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS

For generations of pre-med students, three things have been as certain as death and taxes: organic chemistry, physics and the Medical College Admission Test, known by its dread-inducing acronym, the MCAT.

So it came as a total shock to Elizabeth Adler when she discovered, through a singer in her favorite a cappella group at Brown University, that one of the nation's top medical schools admits a small number of students every year who have skipped all three requirements.

Until then, despite being the daughter of a physician, she said, "I was kind of thinking medical school was not the right track for me."

Ms. Adler became one of the lucky few in one of the best kept secrets in the cutthroat world of medical school admissions, the Humanities and Medicine Program at the Mount Sinai medical school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

The program promises slots to about 35 undergraduates a year if they study humanities or social sciences instead of the traditional pre-medical school curriculum and maintain a 3.5 grade-point average.

For decades, the medical profession has debated whether pre-med courses and admission tests produce doctors who know their alkyl halides but lack the sense of mission and interpersonal skills to become well-rounded, caring, inquisitive healers.

That debate is being rekindled by a study published on Thursday in Academic Medicine, the journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges. Conducted by the Mount Sinai program's founder, Dr. Nathan Kase, and the medical school's dean for medical education, Dr. David Muller, the peer-reviewed study compared outcomes for 85 students in the Humanities and Medicine Program with those of 606 traditionally prepared classmates from the graduating classes of 2004 through 2009, and found that their academic performance in medical school was equivalent.

"There's no question," Dr. Kase said. "The default pathway is: Well, how did they do on the MCAT? How did they do on organic chemistry? What was their grade-point average?"

"That excludes a lot of kids," said Dr. Kase, who founded the Mount Sinai program in 1987 when he was dean of the medical school, and who is now dean emeritus and a professor of obstetrics and gynecology. "But it also diminishes; it makes science into an obstacle rather than something that is an insight into the biology of human disease."

Whether the study's findings will inspire other medical schools to change admissions requirements remains to be seen.

Because MCAT scores are used by U.S. News and World Report and others to rank schools, the most competitive ones fear dropping the test, admissions officials said. And at least two recent studies found that MCAT scores were better than grade-point averages at predicting performance in medical school and on the series of licensing exams that medical students and doctors must take.

"You have to have the proper amount of moral courage to say 'O.K., we're going to skip over a lot of the huge barriers to a lot of our students,' " said Dr. David Battinelli, senior associate dean for education at Hofstra University School of Medicine.

But, Dr. Battinelli added, "Now let's see how they're doing 5 and 10 years down the road." The Mount Sinai study did not answer the question.

There are a few other schools in the United States and Canada that admit students without MCAT scores, but Mount Sinai appears to have gone furthest in eschewing traditional science preparation, said Dr. Dan Hunt, co-secretary of the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, the medical school accrediting agency.

The students apply in their sophomore or junior years in college and agree to major in humanities or social science, rather than the hard sciences. If they are admitted, they are required to take only basic biology and chemistry, at a level many students accomplish through Advanced Placement courses in high school.

They forgo organic chemistry, physics and calculus — though they get abbreviated organic chemistry and physics courses during a summer boot camp run by Mount Sinai. They are exempt from the MCAT. Instead, they are admitted into the program based on their high school SAT scores, two personal essays, their high school and early college grades and interviews.

The study found that, by some measures, the humanities students made more sensitive doctors: they were more than twice as likely to train as psychiatrists (14 percent compared with 5.6 percent of their classmates) and somewhat more likely — though less so than Dr. Kase had expected — to go into primary care fields, like pediatrics and obstetrics and gynecology (49 percent compared with 39 percent). Conversely, they avoid some fields, like surgical subspecialties and anesthesiology.

But what surprised the authors the most, they said, was that humanities students were significantly more likely than their peers to devote a year to scholarly research (28 percent compared with 14 percent). They scored lower on Step 1 of the Medical Licensing Examination, taken after the second year of medical school, which generally correlates with scientific knowledge. But over all, they ranked about the same in honors grades and in the percentage in the top quarter of the class.

Humanities students were also more likely to take a leave of absence for personal reasons, which could reflect some ambivalence about their choices, the study authors said.

Typically, 5 percent to 10 percent of the class drops out before getting to medical school. Those students cannot handle the science or they have changed their minds about their intention to be a doctor, said Miki Rifkin, the program director. One who dropped out was Jonathan Safran Foer, who became an acclaimed novelist.

Dr. Kase founded the Mount Sinai program shortly after a national report on physician preparation questioned the single-minded focus on hard science.

He began with a few students from five colleges and universities that did not have their own medical schools — Amherst, Brandeis, Princeton, Wesleyan and Williams — because, he said, "we did not want to poach."

It has been going full tilt for the past 10 years, and received nearly 300 applications last year from more than 80 colleges across the country, though admissions heavily favor elite schools.

Among undergraduates accepted in 2009, the mean SAT math and verbal score was 1444, and the mean freshman G.P.A. was 3.74. About a third of the class had at least one parent who was a physician; among all medical schools, about one in five has a parent who is a doctor.

Among the current crop is Ms. Adler, 21, a senior at Brown studying global political economy and majoring in development studies.

Ms. Adler said she was inspired by her freshman study abroad in Africa. "I didn't want to waste a class on physics, or waste a class on orgo," she said. "The social determinants of health are so much more pervasive than the immediate biology of it."

She added that her parents, however, were "thrilled when I decided to go the M.D. route, because they were worried about my job security."

A classmate in the program, Kathryn Friedman, 21, graduated from the Chapin School in New York City, before going to Williams, where she is a senior, majoring in political science. Her mother and uncle are doctors at Mount Sinai; her father, Robert Friedman, who works in the entertainment business, is on the Mount Sinai Medical Center board.

The humanities program has allowed her to pursue other interests, like playing varsity tennis and going abroad, she said. When her pre-med classmates hear about the program, she said, "a lot of them are jealous."

She added, "They are, like, 'Wow, I wish I had known about that.' "

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

 

Correction: July 31, 2010

Because of an editing error, an article on Friday about a program at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine through which a limited number of students who did not take pre-med courses or the MCAT can gain admission to the school misstated the given name of its dean for medical education. He is Dr. David Muller, not Robert.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/30/nyregion/30medschools.html?_r=1&ref=general&src=me&pagewanted=print

31. Wayner, “Learning a Language From an Expert, on the Web”

July 28, 2010

Learning a Language From an Expert, on the Web

By PETER WAYNER

The message from the 14-year-old Tunisian skateboarder was curt. "Totally wrong," he said of my French. My conjugation was off and I should study spelling. On a scale of one to five, he said, my French practice essay was worth a one. Then he disappeared into the anonymity of the Internet.

If there is any truth to the old Russian proverb that enemies parrot yes while friends say no, then it is easy to form fast friendships on Livemocha.com, a Web site devoted to helping people learn languages by swapping messages over the Internet and then correcting each other's messages.

As my young Tunisian tutor was showing me, the Internet, with its unparalleled ability to connect people throughout the world, is changing the way that many people learn languages. There is no still way to avoid the hard slog through vocabulary lists and grammar rules, but the books, tapes and even CDs of yesteryear are being replaced by e-mail, video chats and social networks.

Livemocha, a Seattle company with $14 million in venture capital financing, mixes a social network with lessons for more than 38 of the world's more common languages.

The initial lessons are free, but unlocking some of the additional features requires a fee to Livemocha (starting at $10 for a set of lessons) or an agreement to correct the work of others, something my friend in Tunisia was doing for me. The lessons, whether they are flashcards, quizzes, audio recordings or written and spoken essays, are delivered through a Web browser. Michael Schutzler, Livemocha's chief executive, says the Web site's advantage is the ability to practice with a real person.

"The great irony is that even if you have years of classroom Spanish, you don't have a lot of confidence to go into a bar and have a conversation," he said.

The casual connections with real people throughout the world, however brief, are not just fun and surprising but reveal more about how the language is really used. The boy from Tunisia, while knocking my conjugation, passed along slang and attitude, something rarely found in textbooks.

I doubt that many traditional students of French find their way into conversations with so many diverse people. Maria, an older woman from Brazil who speaks French, was kinder and offered slightly different corrections. Melina, a woman from Southern France, used blue to emphasize her corrections to my work. It was a kind touch.

"What actually cements the ability really comes down to interacting with human beings." Mr. Schutzler said. He added, "My mom aced all of her English Lit before coming to the U.S., but when she came to the U.S., she couldn't get a cup of coffee at the diner."

Livemocha is experimenting with a variety of ways to motivate people that resemble the social games found on Facebook. The flashcard exercises, for instance, are scored, and the totals earned by studying and teaching appear on the front page. I earned a bronze medal, actually an icon of one, on my first day for helping many people with their English. The site even hopes to help its best contributors to sell their services to the more serious students.

Not every service is as well structured. MyLanguageExchange.com just maintains lists of people who know certain languages and want to learn others. Anyone can search the database, but only gold members, who pay $24 a year, can send e-mail easily to others.

Each person sets up a profile and includes a short description of age, location and what he or she would like to talk about. There is a big demand to practice English, and I found many possible pen pals.

Marie, 40, was born in Spain but lives in France near the Bordeaux region. She wants to improve her English and "perhaps find a job in sales export." Serge, a Parisian who is retired, studies genealogy and wants to improve his English, Spanish and Swedish.

MyLanguageExchange.com claims it has more than 1.5 million members studying 115 languages.

I find the right partner through what are essentially classified ads. If I wanted to study Luxembourgish, the Germanic tongue of Luxembourg, there were 11 people looking to study English. There are 32 willing people who are fluent in Tswana, a Bantu language generally spoken around Southern Africa, mainly in Botswana. An e-mail or two is all it takes to find a study partner.

Maria, one of 113 people ready to help with Uyghur, which is spoken in western China, says she is also fluent in Mandarin but wants to practice Russian, Hindi and English. It is a big database.

"Our site tends to attract more of the serious language learners," said Dan Yuen, who helped found MyLanguageExchange.com in 2000. "They are also more likely to be effective language partners. In turn, this helps to attract more language learners to our community."

Some of the other choices are more limited but still useful. RhinoSpike.com set up a market for recordings spoken by native speakers. Anyone can post a selection of text and anyone can post a recording.

"The problem for many people learning a language is that they can't hear what the text is supposed to sound like," said Peter Carroll, one of the founders. "We built RhinoSpike to get native speakers to read the text that we post, so that we can both see and hear what is being said." Almost 2,500 recordings have been posted since the site opened in March.

Companies like RosettaStone.com, GermanPod101.com, ChinesePod.com and a surprisingly large number of other Web sites are competing to offer lessons and tutoring to students throughout the world. I found dozens of others offering what was found only on PC software a few years ago.

There are even more casual approaches that come with even less infrastructure and fewer of the protections for consumers that it may offer. It is easy to find, for instance, people who want to practice languages with a free phone call through the forums run by Skype. One click and you can talk free with someone who wants to practice another language. The standard protocol is to spend half the time on one language and half the time with the other.

Some sites, like UsingEnglish.com, englishcafe.com and Englishbaby.com, are devoted to helping people practice English but add the elements of sharing photos and interests like a dating service.

The depth and quality of random conversations like these vary greatly, but they are generally easier and more free than meeting people in bars, stores or in public.

Orlando R. Kelm, a professor at the University of Texas, Austin, who uses Livemocha and other tools in his language classes, says he finds that working with a partner on written words is often easier than with spoken conversation.

"A lot of times people write better than they speak," he said.

Still, he finds it ultimately worthwhile to work with others on the Web and search for the better partners because that provides a real connection that cannot be found from a book or a simple computer program.

"When I have to do an exercise and submit it to the world, when I know that real people are going to look at it and comment on it, it really jacks up my brain," he said.


 
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/29/technology/personaltech/29basics.html?_r=1&ref=general&src=me&pagewanted=print

30. Onishi, “As English Spreads, Indonesians Fear for Their Language”

July 25, 2010

As English Spreads, Indonesians Fear for Their Language

By NORIMITSU ONISHI

JAKARTA, Indonesia — Paulina Sugiarto's three children played together at a mall here the other day, chattering not in Indonesia's national language, but English. Their fluency often draws admiring questions from other Indonesian parents Ms. Sugiarto encounters in this city's upscale malls.

 

But the children's ability in English obscured the fact that, though born and raised in Indonesia, they were struggling with the Indonesian language, known as Bahasa Indonesia. Their parents, who grew up speaking the Indonesian language but went to college in the United States and Australia, talk to their children in English. And the children attend a private school where English is the main language of instruction.

"They know they're Indonesian," Ms. Sugiarto, 34, said. "They love Indonesia. They just can't speak Bahasa Indonesia. It's tragic."

 

Indonesia's linguistic legacy is increasingly under threat as growing numbers of wealthy and upper-middle-class families shun public schools where Indonesian remains the main language but English is often taught poorly. They are turning, instead, to private schools that focus on English and devote little time, if any, to Indonesian.

 

For some Indonesians, as mastery of English has become increasingly tied to social standing, Indonesian has been relegated to second-class status. In extreme cases, people take pride in speaking Indonesian poorly.

The global spread of English, with its sometimes corrosive effects on local languages, has caused much hand-wringing in many non-English-speaking corners of the world. But the implications may be more far-reaching in Indonesia, where generations of political leaders promoted Indonesian to unite the nation and forge a national identity out of countless ethnic groups, ancient cultures and disparate dialects.

 

The government recently announced that it would require all private schools to teach the nation's official language to its Indonesian students by 2013. Details remain sketchy, though.

 

"These schools operate here, but don't offer Bahasa to our citizens," said Suyanto, who oversees primary and secondary education at the Education Ministry.

 

"If we don't regulate them, in the long run this could be dangerous for the continuity of our language," said Mr. Suyanto, who like many Indonesians uses one name. "If this big country doesn't have a strong language to unite it, it could be dangerous."

 

The seemingly reflexive preference for English has begun to attract criticism in the popular culture. Last year, a woman, whose father is Indonesian and her mother American, was crowned Miss Indonesia despite her poor command of Indonesian. The judges were later denounced in the news media and in the blogosphere for being impressed by her English fluency and for disregarding the fact that, despite growing up here, she needed interpreters to translate the judges' questions.

 

In 1928, nationalists seeking independence from Dutch rule chose Indonesian, a form of Malay, as the language of civic unity. While a small percentage of educated Indonesians spoke Dutch, Indonesian became the preferred language of intellectuals.

 

Each language had a social rank, said Arief Rachman, an education expert. "If you spoke Javanese, you were below," he said, referring to the main language on the island of Java. "If you spoke Indonesian, you were a bit above. If you spoke Dutch, you were at the top."

 

Leaders, especially Suharto, the general who ruled Indonesia until 1998, enforced teaching of Indonesian and curbed use of English.

 

"During the Suharto era, Bahasa Indonesia was the only language that we could see or read. English was at the bottom of the rung," said Aimee Dawis, who teaches communications at Universitas Indonesia. "It was used to create a national identity, and it worked, because all of us spoke Bahasa Indonesia. Now the dilution of Bahasa Indonesia is not the result of a deliberate government policy. It's just occurring naturally."

 

With Indonesia's democratization in the past decade, experts say, English became the new Dutch. Regulations were loosened, allowing Indonesian children to attend private schools that did not follow the national curriculum, but offered English. The more expensive ones, with tuition costing several thousand dollars a year, usually employ native speakers of English, said Elena Racho, vice chairwoman of the Association of National Plus Schools, an umbrella organization for private schools.

 

But with the popularity of private schools booming, hundreds have opened in recent years, Ms. Racho said. The less expensive ones, unable to hire foreigners, are often staffed with Indonesians teaching all subjects in English, if often imperfect English, she added.

 

Many children attending those schools end up speaking Indonesian poorly, experts said. Uchu Riza — who owns a private school that teaches both languages and also owns the local franchise of Kidzania, an amusement park where children can try out different professions — said some Indonesians were willing to sacrifice Indonesian for a language with perceived higher status.

 

"Sometimes they look down on people who don't speak English," she said.

 

She added: "In some families, the grandchildren cannot speak with the grandmother because they don't speak Bahasa Indonesia. That's sad."

 

Anna Surti Ariani, a psychologist who provides counseling at private schools and in her own practice, said some parents even displayed "a negative pride" that their children spoke poor Indonesian. Schools typically advise the parents to speak to their children in English at home even though the parents may be far from fluent in the language.

 

"Sometimes the parents even ask the baby sitters not to speak in Indonesian but in English," Ms. Ariani said.

 

It is a sight often seen in this city's malls on weekends: Indonesian parents addressing their children in sometimes halting English, followed by nannies using what English words they know.

 

But Della Raymena Jovanka, 30, a mother of two preschoolers, has developed misgivings. Her son Fathiy, 4, attended an English play group and was enrolled in a kindergarten focusing on English; Ms. Jovanka allowed him to watch only English TV programs.

 

The result was that her son responded to his parents only in English and had difficulties with Indonesian. Ms. Jovanka was considering sending her son to a regular public school next year. But friends and relatives were pressing her to choose a private school so that her son could become fluent in English.

 

Asked whether she would rather have her son become fluent in English or Indonesian, Ms. Jovanka said, "To be honest, English. But this can become a big problem in his socialization. He's Indonesian. He lives in Indonesia. If he can't communicate with people, it'll be a big problem."

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/world/asia/26indo.html?_r=2&ref=world&pagewanted=print

29. Rockquemore, “Writing IS Thinking”

Given that perfectionism is just one of the demons that underlie resistance to writing, we should keep moving forward. This week, I want to describe a problem that is often experienced but rarely discussed: disempowerment when it comes to writing.

Many of us hold an incredibly limiting set of beliefs about the writing process, the relationship between our thoughts and the physical act of writing, and what it takes to sit down and write. When I ask people to describe their writing process, what often surfaces is the idea that writing is what happens AFTER they have read everything there is to read, clearly and thoroughly worked out an idea in their heads, and have large blocks of time to empty the fully-developed idea onto the page (or into the computer). In other words, "writing" is simply the physical act a scholar engages in after she's gotten everything figured out internally. Hand-in-hand with this exclusively mechanical understanding of writing is the sense that particular emotional states are a prerequisite for writing. In other words, people frequently tell me they need to FEEL _________ (inspired, excited, energized, confident, clear, etc.) before they can sit down and write. As you can imagine, people who need to feel perfectly inspired and have a fully formed article in their head before sitting down at their desk rarely write.

I'm describing this as problematic for three reasons. First and foremost, it's a highly inefficient way to write and often provokes anxiety. That's because you don't know when inspiration is going to strike and you can't control it. So if you're sitting around waiting to feel inspired to write, it's no surprise that you might experience some anxiety about writing. Secondly, if you're on the tenure track, the length of time between completing a manuscript and its publication is just too long for you to abstain from writing until you've figured everything out AND feel inspired. Finally, and most importantly, when we set a broad array of conditions that are beyond our control for what must occur before we can start generating pages, it reveals a deep sense of disempowerment, distrust, and confusion about what happens when you write. In other words it suggests that writing controls you when in reality, you control your writing.

"Writing IS Thinking!"

Last year I attended a conference for faculty developers that rocked my world! In part, it was exciting to learn about the newest research on faculty productivity and inspiring to meet the energetic, knowledgeable, and infinitely resourceful set of practitioners who work with faculty on campuses across the U.S. But what's directly relevant for this column is the workshop I took with Joanne Cooper and Dannelle Stevens. I remember Dannelle (a walking ball of energy) getting very animated when some of us described writing as what we do after our thinking is complete. In fact, I remember her exclaiming: "NO! Writing IS thinking!"

I'm a little slow in the presence of new ideas and I couldn't really get my head around the concept that writing IS thinking during the workshop. But I have come to believe that understanding the fundamental truth of this idea is the key to overcoming disempowerment. If writing is thinking, then you don't have to wait until you're done reading, analyzing data, or figuring everything out to get started. You can write before, during, and after the research process. In fact, it's the best justification for daily writing imaginable: writing every day enables you to think about your project, generate new insights, and move forward every single day! It's also the case that it eliminates the need to feel any particular way as a prerequisite to writing because you can think about your project if you're happy, sad, inspired, or flat-out cranky. Finally, it lowers the bar and puts you in the driver's seat. If writing is thinking, then it feels a lot less scary to sit down for 30-60 minutes every day. I don't have to produce a perfect first draft, I don't have to capture a sophisticated argument on the first try, and I don't have to generate elegant prose -- I only have to get my half-baked ideas onto paper and once they are the page, I can see them for what they are and proceed to question, massage, and play with them while remaining perpetually open to the surprises that occur when I'm actually engaged in the writing process.

Now that I've described the big picture, let me suggest some specific strategies that may allow you to release yourself from any flawed beliefs you have about writing, sneak around your resistance, and slowly but surely ease into daily productivity:

Commit to daily writing

I know I say this every week, but it bears repeating. If you're not writing, block out 30-60 minutes every day, Monday through Friday, for writing. Don't just say you'll do it, really try it for two weeks. And don't forget to build in some accountability because trying to start a new habit alone is a recipe for misery and isolation. Whenever I work with people whose resistance comes from feeling disempowered about writing, I ask them to write every day for 30-60 minutes. When they actually write every day consistently, they are astounded to learn that: 1) they can write no matter how they feel, 2) a lot can be accomplished in a short amount of time, and 3) it's deeply intellectually satisfying to be close to their work on a daily basis.

Expand your sense of what "counts" as writing

I get lots of questions about what types of writing are acceptable during your daily writing time. If the pen is moving on the page (or your fingers on the keyboard), then you're writing. Drafting a manuscript "counts," but so does freewriting, generating field-notes, editing and revising, outlining, mind-mapping, describing a new idea, preparing a bibliography, consolidating reviewer comments into a list for revision, etc. In other words, anything that helps move a manuscript out the door "counts" as writing. Expanding your notion of what constitutes writing should help you reduce your resistance by making daily writing feel like a normal part of your every day routine.

Freewriting

I think freewriting has a bad rap among academics. I often hear people demean and belittle freewriting as just "writing about nothing" and I have to admit that at first, I rolled my eyes in the workshop when we did a freewriting exercise. But, according to Dannelle Stevens, the reason it works is because the initial writing "clears the dust off the road" and bring our attention to writing. When we then shift to focused freewriting, we inevitably experience up all manner of surprises. Your job is to get your butt in the chair and the pen moving. Once the writing starts, that's when the thinking (and the creative magic) happens. If you would like to make a game of it, try Dr. Wicked's Write or Die. Ten minutes on "kamikaze" mode is how I started writing this column!

Switch it up

I'm not sure how to explain it, but there's something that shifts in your brain when you move from writing on the computer to good old-fashioned pencil and paper. Many people find it helpful to change the mode of writing when they get stuck. It's really quite simple, just push your keyboard off to the side, grab a pencil and paper, and start writing longhand through the problem. The changed format and tactile stimulation will help you to think differently. Personally, I keep a can of markers and a giant newsprint pad next to my desk. When I'm stuck, I just lay on the floor with my markers (kindergarten style) and start mind-mapping. This technique never fails to produce remarkable surprises and often generates a breakthrough in my thinking.

Don't stare at a blank screen

If sitting down to write feels scary because you get locked up when you see a blank file on your computer screen, then don't look at it. Turn off your monitor or throw something over it (a sweater, a towel, a pillowcase, or whatever is handy). Remember, you control it, not the other way around. Then just start typing. Sometimes, just blocking the debilitating image of the blank screen can help you get started, and once you get started the ideas begin to flow. This technique also will help you to separate drafting from editing (a toxic combination). You can't see what you're writing, so you'll be less tempted to edit it as soon as it hits the page. You can also record your voice talking through the issue and transcribe your chatter as a means of getting words onto the page.

Ultimately, the goal of each of these strategies is to disrupt and undermine the flawed beliefs that writing happens after thinking and that you must be inspired to write. Instead, I'm urging you to understand your writing and thinking as inextricably intertwined so that you can quickly begin moving on your summer writing project.

Weekly Challenge

This week I challenge you to:

• Write 30-60 minutes each day.
  
• If you experience resistance, ask yourself: What is stopping me from writing? As a first step, try some organizational tips and tricks.
  
• If your resistance continues, ask yourself: What's going on here?
  
• If the answer is that you just don't feel like writing, or that you can't write because you're still figuring out your argument in your head, try 10 minutes of freewriting as a way to get yourself started.
  
• If opening a new document and staring at a blank page intimidates you, turn off your screen or cover it up.
  
• If you find yourself stuck during your writing time, try turning away from the computer and writing longhand, recording your voice, or mind-mapping for a little while.
  
• Try joining some community of writers to support you as you establish new writing behaviors and beliefs.
  
• Get to know the faculty developers on your campus! They are a tremendous resource to help you teach effectively, publish prolifically, and find some balance in your academic career.
  

I hope that this week brings you a renewed commitment to your daily writing, a sense of clarity about the connection between writing and thinking, and the confidence to know that you have the power to write every single day this week. No matter how you feel or where you are in your project, you can choose to sit down and get started today!

Peace and Productivity,

Kerry Ann Rockquemore

 

http://www.insidehighered.com/advice/summer/summer6

28. Lewin, International Program Catches On in U.S. Schools

International Program Catches On in U.S. Schools
By TAMAR LEWIN

CUMBERLAND, Me. — SAT, ACT, A.P. ... I.B.?

The alphabet soup of college admissions is getting more complicated, as the International Baccalaureate, or I.B., grows in popularity as an alternative to the better-known Advanced Placement program.

The College Board’s A.P. program, which offers a long menu of single-subject courses, is still by far the most common option for giving students a head start on college work — and a potential edge in admissions. But the lesser-known I.B., a rigorous two-year curriculum developed in the 1960s at an international school in Switzerland, is now offered in more than 700 American high schools.

To earn an I.B. diploma, students must devote their full junior and senior year to the program, which requires English and another language, math, science, social science and art, plus a course on theory of knowledge, a 4,000-word essay, oral presentations and community service.

Here in Cumberland, Greely High School adopted the I.B. this year to make students more aware of the world beyond the United States.

“When our grads would visit from college, they’d tell us that while Greely gave them great academic preparation, they’d had no idea there was a big wide world out there,” said David Galin, Greely’s I.B. coordinator.

To that end, Greely’s I.B. 11th graders read literature from India (“God of Small Things”), South Africa ( “Master Harold and the Boys” ), what is now the Czech Republic (“The Metamorphosis”), Chile ( “The House of the Spirits” ), Egypt ( “Midaq Alley” ) and Colombia ( “Chronicle of a Death Foretold” ).

“Our students don’t have as much diversity as people in some other areas, so this makes them open their eyes,” said Deb Pinkham, the program’s English teacher.

The I.B. is used in 139 countries, and its international focus has drawn criticism from some quarters.

Some parents charge that it is anti-American and too closely tied to both the United Nations and radical environmentalism. From its start in 1968 until 1976, the program was funded partly by the United Nations’ Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. It is now associated with the United Nations’ Economic and Social Council, and until recently, it endorsed the Earth Charter, a U.N.-originated declaration of principles of sustainability.

“When there is a program at the school with a specific agenda, which in this case is the United Nations agenda, I have a problem with it,” said Ann Marie Banfield, who unsuccessfully opposed the adoption of the I.B. program in Bedford, N.H.

Others object to its cost — $10,000 a year per school, 141 per student and $96 per exam — and say it is neither as effective as the A.P. program nor likely to reach as many students.

“We have 337 kids, and 80 of them take at least one of our 16 A.P. classes,” said John Eppolito, a parent who opposes the planned introduction of the I.B. in Incline Village, Nev. “If we switched to the I.B., the district estimates that 15 kids would get a I.B. diploma in two years.”

I.B. opponents have created a Web site, truthaboutib.com, to serve as a clearinghouse for their views.

Many schools, and many parents, see the I.B. partly as a way to show college admissions offices that students have chosen a rigorous program, with tests graded by I.B. examiners around the world.

“I don’t think there is anyone who does not respect the I.B.,” said Panetha Ott, an admissions officer at Brown.”

Fewer colleges give credit for the I.B. than for A.P., but dozens give students with an I.B. diploma sophomore standing and some offer special scholarships.

The I.B. first took hold in the United States in private schools, but now more than 90 percent of the American high schools using the program are public — including some struggling urban schools where educators say it helps put low-income students on par with their richer peers.

Last fall, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation gave the program a three-year, $2.4 million grant to prepare low-income and minority students to participate in the I.B.

California and Florida have the most I.B. schools, and New England the fewest.

In Cumberland, some parents questioned the I.B.’s cost, but none complained about the program’s content, according to Chris Mosca, Greely’s principal.

“No question, the people who founded the I.B. were sitting in Geneva, post-World War II, thinking about how to ensure world peace, so the clear philosophical bent is that by integrating learning and understanding issues from multiple perspectives, we can promote global thinking,” he said. “But what sold me on the program was that it’s good pedagogy, that it really shows kids how things go together.”

Still, Mr. Mosca has no plans to eliminate the school’s Advanced Placement offerings.

“A.P. is great for content-based traditional learning,” he said. “It’s great for kids who like to memorize. But for more creative kids, who want to make those connections, there’s nothing like the I.B..”

On a spring Tuesday recently, Greely’s I.B. history class was working in small groups, analyzing the Suez crisis with original source documents from Israel, Egypt, Russia, the United States and the United Nations.

Emily Hill, presenting a document from the Russian foreign office’s Middle East desk, reminded the group that it was a secret memo, translated several times.

Ms. Hill, who said she was bored with school last year, said the I.B. program had been more interesting and challenging.

Because it is so rigorous, the I.B. is not for everyone. At Greely, only 21 juniors started the full program this year, and three subsequently shifted to a mix of I.B. and regular classes.

But those who stayed with it seemed enthusiastic.

“It’s like a little club of scholars,” Maggie Bauer, a junior, said. “It seems more real-world than how we used to learn, and it’s changed how we look at the world.”

Down the coast, where Kennebunk High School just graduated its first group of I.B. students, Sue Cressey, the I.B. coordinator, said that most of the students in the program the first year had thought about dropping out.

“There was a bad period after everybody flunked a biology exam,” she said. “I had to send a letter home to parents, reassuring them. It’s a new way of thinking, but the kids grew into it. I feel better about sending these kids to college than any group I’ve ever sent.”

The graduates, too, say they feel well prepared.

“In our Theory of Knowledge class, when we debated health care, my role was to take Rush Limbaugh’s position, which couldn’t be further from my own,” said Michael Tahan, one of the graduates.

“I.B. taught us how to think through a position, and support it,” he added. “And while I understand why some parents might worry that the program is international-based, I think it’s good for America for students to learn how others nations think.”


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/03/education/03baccalaureate.html?_r=1&hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1278108013-Q1s2CeEFN8qTNpjcI0G8Xw&pagewanted=print