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One of my favorite podcasts, EconTalk, presents a diverse range of topics that the host, Russ Roberts, somehow finds a way to adeptly navigate through. One recent example of this was Roberts hosting Doug Lemov as a guest on the subject of the central importance of critical reading. The implications are of tremendous importance as it relates to personal growth and development, as a parent raising young children to love reading and that singular activities’ critical foundational importance in developing knowledge and understanding all other subjects, and as members of a broader community in fostering within our school systems and educational models the most effective modes of learning. Lemov is a well-known author on teaching methods and also runs many successful charter schools in poorer communities throughout the Northeast. In other words, his theories have found a useful and meaningful practical home to great ends.
There were several key insights from the episode I wanted to write down and commit to my own practice and that I also wanted to share with anyone who has an interest on the topic:
I think a lot of parents, one of the first questions they ask about their school is, ‘Is the school infused with technology? How will my kids have access to technology?’ My concern is the opposite. If I could have anything from my school, it would be a place where my kids sustain their focus in conversation, in reading, in writing, without being interrupted with a technology for as long as possible.
Indeed, one public school that I toured focused very little on academic rigor in their “pitch” and much more on the modernity of the facilities, use of iPads, and use of electronic voice amplifiers that more effectively connect teachers to their students. My personal observation is that my own children pick up and adapt to technology in the home at an incredible pace without need of my aid. Thus, they have little need of a school teaching them how to adapt to smart devices. At best, technology access adds some ability to quickly reference some key concept, while vitiating the critical life skill of research and exploration. My fear, in addition to what Lemov discusses, is that it serves such a distraction and takes away from the deep meditative aspects of what a school should be that it erases any benefit that could be derived from it.
There are more great insights and practical ideas in the podcast, therefore I highly encourage the listen of this particular episode, which takes no overt ideological stances and is rather thought-provoking. I also recommend EconTalk in general for those who are interested in learning and hearing more about the philosophy of faith in the free individual working in a free market undergirded by a limited government applying the rule of law that is not arbitrary. In short, it is a tremendous podcast in defense of traditional classical liberalism/libertarianism.
“It was as if we were living in the tale about Zmey Gorynych, the dragon that required yearly tribute of twelve fair maidens and twelve young men. One might well wonder how the people in this tale could have carried on, how they could have lived with the knowledge that a dragon would soon be devouring the finest of their children. During those last days in Moscow, however, we realized that they too had been rushing from one little theater to another or hurrying to buy themselves something from which to make a coat or dress. There is nowhere a human being cannot live. With my own eyes I have seen sailors taking a man out onto the ice in order to shoot him – and I have seen the condemned man hopping over puddles to keep his feet dry and turning up his collar to shield his chest from wind. Those few steps were the last steps he would ever take, and instinctively he wanted them to make them as comfortable as possible.
We were no different. We bought ourselves some ‘last scrap’ of fabric. We listened for the last time to the last operetta and the last exquisitely erotic verses. What did it matter whether the verses were good or terrible? All that mattered was not to know, not to be aware – we had to forget that we were being led onto the ice.”
The quote is taken from the first chapter of Teffi’s account, Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea. Teffi, the pen name of Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya, was a well-known and celebrated humorist, satirist, and author in early 1900s Russia. Memories is her personal account of her last months spent in Russia and the Ukraine as she fled from the collapse of the Tsarist regime and the Bolshevik revolution, along with most other intellectuals and artists of the era. What makes the narrative unique is that Teffi is largely reticent on political statements and instead puts journalistic focus on the personal narratives and stories of everyone she meets during her harrowing journey. Along the way, she always believes she will make it back to Moscow within a matter of months, but that dream ends years later as she stays in exile in Paris. Memories is described by one reviewer as, “A vividly idiosyncratic account of the disintegration – moral, political, strategic, – of Tsarist Russia after the Revolution, as alive to the farcical and the ridiculous as it is to the tragic.” I am just diving into the book myself and expect to pull many more such powerful and vivid depictions of what life must have been like for Russians in these perilous and harrowing times. Thus far, Memories is the indispensable book that I am currently reading that I can’t put down.
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