Grand Theft Auto: Bangkok

August 10, 2008 in Reading Response
Tags: auto, bangkok, catalyst, douchebag, driver, frustrating, grand, jack, kill, specious, taxi, thailand, theft, thompson

It was bound to happen someday. No longer does the media have to force down our throats a connection between violent killings and video games, because some Thai kid went out and explicitly said he killed a guy because of such a game.

An 18-year-old high school student, now in custody pending further investigations and a trial, faces death by lethal injection if found guilty of robbing and killing a 54-year-old taxi driver with a knife at the weekend.

Police said the youth, an obsessive player of “Grand Theft Auto”, showed no sign of mental problems during questioning and had confessed to committing the crime because of the game.

“He said he wanted to find out if it was as easy in real life to rob a taxi as it was in the game,” chief police investigator Veeravit Pipattanasak told Reuters.

It’s going to be a lot more difficult to discredit the argument that violent video games inspire violence because of this story. We can’t blame the parents, because he was 18 years old and legally entitled to make his own decisions, even if he was in high school. He wasn’t wildly insane when apprehended — instead, he appeared lucid. His copy of Grand Theft Auto IV wasn’t just found in his apartment, and police didn’t ex post facto suggest it might have been a catalyst.

I mean, the case against violent video games is usually specious at best. They’re so easily written off as a guilty pleasure, or a healthy outlet for frustration among the sane, decent 90 percent of humanity.

Jack Thompson‘s going to have a field day. Murder simulators, indeed.

Some Districts Learn Motivation from Alec Baldwin

June 25, 2008 in Personal Reflection, Reading Response
Tags: alec, baldwin, cadillac, classroom, edublog, edublogosphere, education, film, fired, glen, glengarry, jack, knives, lemmon, metaphor, motivation, movie, not safe for work, nsfw, rant, ross, speech, steak, teacher, teachers, you're, youtube

Technically, the following video is not safe for work. Personally, I think it’s perfect for work.

During Alec Baldwin’s tirade against the failing quality of this particular office, salesman Jack Lemmon responds with excuses.

The leads are weak, Lemmon says.

You’re weak, Baldwin says.

In this short clip from Glengarry Glen Ross — spoilers ahead — this exchange describes much of the working world, and most professions.

Let’s use education.

So many educators make excuses, as they try to make do with the alleged students in their classes. Some favorite excuses: It’s the family life at home; it’s the socioeconomic level; it’s that they’re learning English as a second language. Alec Baldwin character, transposed to education, could care less about these excuses.

In the movie, it’s Lemmon’s job to sell real estate. In education, it’s your job to teach children content, at the very least. but you’re having trouble with the group of kids you have, over at that urban school district. In this transposition, you are Lemmon.

Baldwin comes from downtown. He doesn’t care. Why aren’t your kids passing? You are a teacher: Teach. It isn’t that hard. They’re showing up, and are just waiting to learn. He knows: He has years of experience in education.

In the movie, when Lemmon gets a lead, he is paid to sell property to that investor. When you get children — sometimes you even get students — you are paid to teach them, whoever they are. That’s the bottom line, says Superintendent Baldwin.

Professionals can do it easily. If you can’t do it, you aren’t a professional.

No ifs. No ands. No buts.

Even late in his rant, Baldwin’s mentality easily translates to the teaching profession: I do have some positions at Glen Ross Unified, that golden, trouble-free district in a wealthy part of Florida — but you can’t have even interview for them. That district is for teachers, and you peons aren’t very good teachers at all if you can’t teach who you have, already. If your students right now aren’t learning, you can’t teach anyone.

There are a lot of Baldwin characters angry at education in this country. They don’t care about your excuses. They care about your results. If you don’t have results, you’re worthless. Excuses just prove it, and so Lemmon does himself a disservice by offering up his excuses.

Yet some excuses are legitimate. Sometimes, just sometimes, the cards are as stacked against you as you claim they are. That students have a rocky home life is important, and does affect the effectiveness of your teaching. That students can’t speak much less read English, yet, will affect their score on the test. When the cards are stacked against you, you really can’t do anything about it.

As Lemmon finds out at the end of the movie, this was exactly the case. The cards were almost purposefully stacked against him, and Baldwin isn’t his enemy. He had been all-but doomed even before Baldwin showed up and made all that noise.

To wit: In both the movie and the field of education, Baldwin’s appearance didn’t raise the difficulty of success. It raised the stakes of failure.

First prize: Cadillac. Second prize: steak knives. Third prize: you’re fired.

That’s motivation.

Out of Print, and Still the Best, Part 2

March 5, 2008 in Reading Response, Reforms in Education
Tags: 1944, 1960, 1966, adlai, advice, also, american, barry, book, copy, democracy, dewey, election, goldwater, government, history, jack, john, kennedy, moral, nixon, out of print, part, part 2, photocopy, presidential, ran, richard, stevenson, text, they, thomas, u.s., world history

The book contains mini-biographies of each never-president — the author calls them Also Rans — and a rundown of each of their runs for president and a final section that compares them to the man who did ascend to the presidency.

Owning to the nature of lifetime political careers, the biographies can help my students review the major political issues over time, and, better yet, they put a personality behind the portrait and name they see in their book.

Horace Greeley help found the Republican party following the death of the Whig party. He will never be on the Advanced Placement test, but knowing that the journalist was so disgusted with the graft and incompetence of Ulysses Grant that Greeley accepted a Reconstruction-era Democratic nomination reviews the following information:

1. Former Whigs were the earliest Republicans.

2. Ulysses Grant’s administration had legendary graft and incompetence.

3. Reconstruction was so hard on the mostly Southern Democratic Party that a founder of the Republican Party was nominated in its ticket.

Though the reading level is a little high for lower-level students, I love the book for it. He closes a section on Henry Clay with this jem.

He blamed his defeat on fraud, foreigners, Catholics, abolitionists, Tyler-ites, renegade Whigs — on everything except the life, career and character of Henry Clay.

William Jennings Bryan was even better liked.

His mind was like a soup dish, wide and shallow; it could hold a small amount of nearly anything, but the slightest jarring spilled the soup into somebody’s lap.

When I teach AP U.S. History, this book will be transformed into copyright-infringing packets.

I’ll buy my own reams, if I have to. I’ll probably have to.

Moral of the story? Teachers know their subject can be interesting, and an outside text hammers that point home.