The Elements Unearthed

This page includes my final reflections on my experiences traveling to Indonesia to teach as part of the Teachers for Global Classrooms program. These are my take-aways from the experience; what I learned as a result. Although these reflection posts are also part of my Home page, they are duplicated here to provide easier access.

Finding Common Ground

Reflections Part 1

My trip to Indonesia has been an extraordinary adventure in every way. I have truly been blessed to have this experience. It is a major milestone of my teaching career, and I suspect things will not ever be the same. Or at least I hope this will be true; this should be a life and career changing experience.

I’ve been fortunate. Although I’ve won some awards on the state, regional, and national levels, I feel I am not any better at teaching than many others I’ve met and seen in action. There are many ways that I could be a better teacher.

I do have some strengths. I have a high content knowledge from both study and experience. That is not as strong a selling point as it used to be. Three years ago I realized that any student with a smart phone could find out more information than I had gained on any subject with a swipe of a finger, so my vaunted subject knowledge was now obsolete. Perhaps I understand all that information and how it fits together better than the average Wikipedia article, but understanding isn’t too marketable of an accomplishment. What I do have going for me is passion. I truly love the subjects I teach and dig deeply into all the knowledge I can find. This blog site is my attempt to share that passion.

I also share that passion with my students through stories. I come from a small town where we didn’t have many entertainment options (actually, we didn’t have ANY entertainment options), so we would go to people’s homes and visit. That is to say, we would talk. About anything – the weather, how the crops were doing. But mostly we’d tell stories. I wasn’t particularly good at it, certainly not as good as Bruce Western, who could take the most mundane thing we’d done and turn it into a grand adventure. On a warm summer’s night we would sit under the streetlight on the corner (there was only one corner in my town) and tell stories while moths fluttered around the light, and I was amazed at his talent for spinning tales. My older brother Craig had the same talent, and could make anyone feel at home through the stories he told and his manner of talking. As a pediatrician, he helped many scared children feel calm and cared for. I don’t have that level of talent, but I try.

When I started this series of blog posts about the Teachers for Global Classrooms program, I stated that I would choose to tell generative stories about my experiences in Indonesia, the kind of stories that drew people together and built bridges of understanding between our countries. In a world that seems obsessed with differences and division, I hoped to find common ground and shared perspectives. That is the core of my guiding questions: How do humans find common ways to solve life’s problems? In what ways are we more alike than we are different? I specifically wanted to look at four areas: (1) how materials are used to provide for basic needs of shelter, food, clothing, etc.; (2) how people express themselves through the arts: painting, sculpture, crafts, dance, music, etc.; (3) how the mysteries of existence lead to a variety of cultural traditions and religions; and (4) how technology is bringing us all together. I’ve addressed some of these ideas in previous posts, but let’s look at each of these four areas in more detail now that I am home and have had time to think about what I’ve learned. We’ll start with the first area in this post, then examine the others in later posts.

1 – The Use of Materials to Provide Basic Needs

All humans have a common need for basic survival, including food, clothing, shelter, and safety. This is the bottom level of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. How we solve this level of needs depends on the circumstances we live under, the materials at hand, and the technological sophistication of our culture. With worldwide trade and communication, certain materials (such as concrete, cotton, silk, leather, metals, glass, etc.) are ubiquitous. In Indonesia, I saw motorcycles and trucks carrying bags of cement powder (semen in Bahasa Indonesia) to construction sites where it was being used just as it is in America or anywhere else in the world. Portland cement is universal now. We may not have completely discovered how the Romans made cement that could last for 2000 years, but it is an ancient material still used extensively today. And that is merely one small example of a global distribution of materials and ideas.

In the past, ideas took longer to spread at the speed of ground or ocean transportation, but now the pace of discovery and dissemination has sped up. My students in American and the students in Borneo have the same need to communicate and stay in touch. Smart phones are everywhere now, and they have become a force for peace. The Arab Spring of revolutions a few years ago was made possible by cell phone cameras and global satellite networks spreading news about the tyranny of dictators, which could have been kept secret before. Yet we’re trying to ban them from our schools when we should be trying to embrace them.

Yes, there are regional differences in materials because of differences in climate and plant species. Americans don’t have access to galum trees or ironwood for building houses in wet environments, and the style of our houses is different, but the need for houses will not change and the conveniences we use are becoming more universal.

Indonesia is working hard to become a developed nation. They are the fourth most populous country in the world, with huge challenges for infrastructure. Just trying to widen the one major highway through southern Borneo is proving to be difficult; it is too narrow by far for the traffic that now uses it, but it has become more than a transportation system between cities or provinces. Many houses and businesses are now crowded along it, and as smaller roads radiate out from it, the patterns of settlement follow the roads, putting more demands upon them. So the roads will never be adequate – you build a better road, and more settlement comes so you still need a better road. Infrastructure enables growth, which demands more infrastructure in a never-ending spiral. Here, the climate and the separation of Indonesia into thousands of islands make the challenge especially difficult.

One such infrastructure challenge is education – providing quality education is essential for a rapidly developing country that is in great need of engineers, scientists, and leaders. From what I have observed, the country is willing and working hard to improve its education system but they are too entrenched in a top-down hierarchy to make necessary innovations. They provide a centralized set of chemicals and equipment, but the professional development to use them is spotty, so they sit unopened. Innovation often comes from the bottom up, but there isn’t a mechanism for teachers to develop their own ideas with such centralized curriculum. Schools are not free to create their own models; there are no charter schools in Indonesia.

But I see incredible dedication and a willingness to embrace change by the teachers I’ve met, and even if the mechanism isn’t systemic, individual teachers and schools are trying to innovate. Even in American, changing our education system has been a slow and painful process. We’ve been stuck in the factory model for over 100 years now, a model that no longer trains students in the critical skills they will need in a world where information is now freely available. Our current schools are obsolete, but we’re too entrenched to see it.

A final note on materials and infrastructure: I think we have lost something in America in the rush to industrialize and automate everything. Much of what is beautiful and valuable doesn’t come from the materials in it, but from the craftsmanship and skill put in by the people who create it. Call it value added, if you like. I do not believe that technology can produce true art or beauty, only utility, and as such, human artisanship can never by replaced or automated. When I saw the lady at the Ubud silver shop creating the filigree pendant, I saw artistry as she made the wire curls, glued them into the pendant with piling-piling glue, and worked one curl at a time over days. Yes, she is working to recreate an exact replica of the first pendant as a set of earrings, and has perhaps made hundreds of these, but each one is a work of art even if it isn’t unique. This is because she did it with her own hands and eyes and skill. A machine might duplicate the pendant and speed up the process, but it can’t add artistic value.

The Need for Self-Expression Through Art

Reflections Part 2

Abraham Maslow developed a Hierarchy of Needs, shaped like a pyramid with basic needs for survival (food, shelter, clothing, safety) at the bottom and needs of self-actualization at the top. He did this by studying people who were highly creative and productive. Most people, including educators, would consider this model to be too simplistic to explain all human motivation, but I think we can at least use it as a starting point. We talked about basic needs in my last post. This time I’d like to look at the top of the pyramid: the need for self-actualization, which Maslow contended few people ever reach.

The second area of common ground that I studied on my trip to Indonesia was how humans everywhere have a need to express themselves through art. This may be a uniquely human characteristic. I have seen an elephant drawing with chalk on a chalkboard and the trainer called it art. Elephants are highly intelligent, but without training, they won’t spontaneously pick up chalk and start drawing with it, even though it is within their repertoire of responses. They don’t seem to have a need to express themselves this way, although I did feel they have a sense of humor. They seemed to really like spraying the audience.

Art appreciation and an aesthetic sense require a level of sophistication that humans uniquely have. The cave paintings of France and carvings of stylized fertility figures show that even primitive societies had this need, and that the invention of art, not tools, is where we can identify the first humans. Chimpanzees use tools. Humans create art. All human societies do. Art, in general, is universal. It is a common ground. But what forms this art takes are unique to different cultures; the diversity of art forms is one of the most fascinating areas to study.

We have a need for clothing to protect us from the elements, so weaving has been developed along very similar technologies worldwide. I can recognize a loom whenever I see one, whether it’s a Banjarnese loom or a Navajo one. There is no “need” at the basic level to dye or decorate cloth, yet everyone does it. This is a form of self-expression. And all cultures have solved this need by finding plant, animal, and mineral substances that will stick color to cloth. A common problem, with similar but local solutions. Only certain materials work well for fabric, so cotton, silk, linen, and wool are universal or have been traded for so long that we don’t know where they originated. And dyes have been prized and traded for just as long. I’ve seen some local differences, such as making the bark hats and pants we saw in Borneo or using different grasses, reeds, or leaves to weave hats or baskets, but again the solutions are remarkably similar.

I saw tie dye in the sasirangan fabrics of Banjarmasin, the same basic process that I used in my own classes, but much more sophisticated and beautiful. Now it may be that tie dye was developed in the 1960s by someone who had seen sasirangan; this could be an interesting historical study. But the forms have changed even if the technique remains similar. There is great cultural diversity here, just like there is everywhere. But the common human need to create and express ourselves is a constant between cultures across the globe and the centuries.

I didn’t take the opportunity to see the kecak dancers of Bali (I only had two days there, after all), but I did see plenty of dancing in the Ramayana ballet and elsewhere in Indonesia. The instruments of the gamelon orchestra and the styles are quite different from anything I’m used to (except maybe Bejing opera), but the human need for expression through rhythmic movement and music remains constant. Everywhere in the world, people play musical instruments, sing, and dance.

My college, Brigham Young University, has an amazing international folk dancing program. My sister in law, Sarah, was on the team and traveled around the world performing traditional dances in folk costumes, everything from the Austrian ländler to the Navajo hoop dance. Even in my hometown area, there are folk dances. If you grow up in Oak City, Utah (which is near my hometown of Deseret), you will learn to dance the Quadrille at weddings. And, of course, there’s always the hokey pokey. I tried to dare one of the elementary teachers to teach the hokey pokey to an Indonesian class, but no one took me up on it. It would have been an interesting experiment . . .

BYU has also won the international ballroom dance competitions at Blackpool, England many times. I took several classes in ballroom dancing, and even though I wish I had two left feet, I can do a passable waltz or triple-step swing. Even I have felt this same human need for rhythmic movement.

To answer my guiding question: Dancing, music, and song are forms of human self-expression. The styles and rhythms may differ, but the underlying need is part of what makes us all human.

The Mysteries of Life

Reflections Part 3

My Guiding Question for my trip to Indonesia has been to look at how people in diverse cultures approach life in similar ways; how we come up with similar answers to the questions and problems of life.

One thing I saw from teaching science classes in Banjarmasin was that science and math are truly universal languages. I was able to recognize the periodic table hanging in the back of the chemistry class and the elemental symbols were the same and the basic shape of the table was the same, because science is the same between cultures. It is a unifying force, mostly for good, in the world. I might have had to learn a few extra words in Bahasa Indonesia for copper, iron, silver, and gold, but I knew where in the table to look for them and their symbols remain Cu, Fe, Ag, and Au. I was able to communicate (with some excellent translation from Nazar) my lesson plans for the human orrery and the parallax lab, two concepts that are difficult even to native English speakers. I was able to understand what the chemistry and physics teachers were teaching because the mathematical structure of their lessons was the same as when I teach those same subjects.

I am a student of religions, and have been since my experiences as a Mormon missionary in southern Taiwan 36 years ago. While there, I saw how a combination of religions is practiced in the daily lives of the people. They are Taoists, Buddhists, Confucianists, and ancestor worshippers all at once, with a little bit of Feng Shwei, palmistry, face reading, and Earth gods (Tu Di Gong) thrown in. The Chinese people tend to absorb whatever aspects of different religions they feel are positive and don’t really have a concept of exclusivity of religion: that there is only one God and one way to worship.

This was hard to sort out from my background in a small farming town in Utah, where we have a strong concept of “one true religion.” So I took courses in Mormonism and World Religions and Mormonism and the Christian Tradition at Brigham Young University upon returning to college. I even wrote my major research paper (a BYU graduation requirement) on comparisons between major messiah figures in Hinduism, Islam, Zoroastrianism, and Buddhism. You would be surprised to see the similarities.

[The research was so fascinating that I didn’t leave enough time to actually type up the final paper. I was still using a little Brother electric typewriter (it was the early 1980s, after all) that had a defective capital letter function due to the typewriter having been through a flood in my hometown. I had to write by hand all of the capital letters in the paper, and as a result my grade was not as good as I had hoped. I basically drop kicked my typewriter out the window after that and started using my roommate’s Kaypro 4 luggable computer with WordStar, then save the papers on a 5 ¼ inch floppy disk and print them out on campus. The start of my love affair with computers. Ah, those were the days . . .]

My research into various religions led to a life-long passion with history and cultures and ultimately to the third part of my Guiding Question: how do different cultures answer the great mysteries of life? Where did we come from? What is our purpose here? Where are we going?

I don’t want to get into a detailed discussion comparing the tenets of the world’s major religions here. I mostly want to look at the human drive to understand the universe, which leads to our religious aspirations. Please feel free to disagree with my reflections here, as long as you agree to not be disagreeable. Let’s maintain a civil discourse.

I study science, especially astronomy, in order to understand the grandeur of creation and to get a glimpse into the mind of God. There, I’ve said it publicly. You need to know where I’m coming from to understand what I will say now. I have met famous individuals, well respected in the scientific community, and heard them speak on how religious people are simply hanging on to superstitions. They claim that the world would be a better place without religion, and that the rationality of science should reign supreme. Although I do agree that our country needs a higher degree of scientific literacy, I disagree on their interpretation of religion. It is not an irrational superstition.

Every time I look at the stars on a clear night I am awed by the intrinsic beauty and variety of the heavens. That only a few natural laws and four (perhaps five) forces and a handful of fundamental particles could give rise to such complexity amazes me, and I have difficulty accepting that it could develop from chance alone. I feel the hand of a Creator, a driving force behind the beauty.

When I see the complexity of life on this planet, I wonder how mere chance or even “natural selection” could account for all of it. I can accept that evolution is a natural process that definitely occurs, but I believe there is a driving force behind it. This is because mutation is essentially a chaotic process that must follow entropy, or the second law of thermodynamics. This means that most mutations must be negative or neutral, and that the tendency of species would be to devolve rather than evolve. Even those mutations that are positive are not often useful until after many gradual iterations; they don’t give an evolutionary advantage until they have gone quite a distance through many generations.

For example, let’s look at bipedalism. You wouldn’t expect this to simply occur in one generation – there wouldn’t be an individual that walked on all fours giving birth to a child that only walked on two. That’s too big of a leap. So each generation would have to gradually use their front limbs less and less for walking. Yet there is no evolutionary advantage to using front limbs only a little bit less, only for using them a lot less. You have to have major changes in the structure of the organism’s hips, back, neck, and hands happening simultaneously for generations for bipedalism to give any advantage over quadpedalism, and the intervening generations are stuck in the middle with just enough changes to make natural selection less likely, not more. So successive approximations should not evolve, but fade away over generations, unless there is a guiding force behind them. Yes, I can see how a finch’s beak getting gradually longer gives it a slight advantage for finding seeds, but how much of an advantage is needed for a particular mutation to be selected for, given that any positive mutation would have to rise above the noise of neutral or negative mutations in order to be passed on? It seems to me that some major steps simply can’t occur naturally. Perhaps this shows my ignorance of the theory of evolution or how natural selection works. I would be happy to have it explained to me with kindness and without condescension.

One aspect of human intelligence (perhaps the most important) is our aesthetic sense, our remarkable consensus on what constitutes beauty. And yet, I can’t see an evolutionary advantage for us to have such a sense. How does appreciating beauty give us an advantage and lead to the natural selection of our genes? We all know of artists who are so driven by this sense of beauty, this need to create, that they ignore their basic needs. It therefore would be selected against, since you’ll be less likely to reproduce if you don’t eat or take care of yourself or bother to meet other people. We should be a species of pragmatists; evolutionarily speaking, the artistic dreamer would be a negative mutation. Since this sense doesn’t seem to be genetic in nature, and doesn’t follow family lines, why do we have it? Could it be that God gave us this gift that we might have joy in the world we are in?

I say all of this as an example of why I believe there must be a God and can also claim to be a scientist. It seems to me that belief in God as the architect of creation and evolution, the author of all that is beautiful, is a rational explanation of what I observe. Some scientists would claim that any “belief” must by definition be irrational. If that is so, then scientists are irrational as well. Let me explain. This will get a bit deep.

Behind every scientific discovery lie two ontological assumptions that can never be proven and must therefore be accepted on faith. Without these two assumptions, science cannot exist or continue to function as a structure of knowledge or a human institution. The first assumption is that the universe is logical and runs on natural laws. This may seem to be obvious to everyone, but it isn’t. To the ancient Greeks, the universe was chaotic and ran on the whims of the Gods. It was a major shift when they started looking for the natural laws underpinning the universe; it was a shift that might not have ever happened, and required a leap of faith. I’ve talked with some experts on Greek history and philosophy, and they haven’t been able to give an adequate answer on how the Greeks made this shift, although Thales of Miletus was among the first. What there was about his time and place and personality that started us on this journey to science may not ever be known.

If you think about it, there is really no reason why logic and order should be more prevalent in the universe than random chaos. Yet once the first theories were laid down which tried to explain the origin, nature, and fate of the world through natural law, we were placed inevitably on the path to science. The successes of science show that the universe does indeed seem to follow natural laws. But way down deep, at the level of Planck time and space, in the realm of quantum foam and branes, logic doesn’t seem to matter. Causality doesn’t seem to work. The laws of nature break down and the fundamental truth appears to be irrational.

This brings us to the next assumption: that humans are smart enough to figure out the natural laws of the universe. We’ve been successful at laws like electromagnetism and can develop the quantum mechanical equations that explain it. We think we have a handle on the weak and strong nuclear forces. We’re beginning to understand gravity – at least we now know it definitely has wave properties. But the Grand Unified Theory of how all four (five?) forces fit together still eludes us. Perhaps we’ll never reach that understanding, unless we can build a particle accelerator the size of our solar system. And the complexity of the equations (or maybe the simplicity of the equations) may be beyond our intelligence as a species to comprehend. And as for that possible fifth force, which we are calling “dark energy,” it is a name for something we have no clue about. If you can figure it out, you’ll win the Nobel Prize for sure. There are many potential Nobel Prizes still out there that may never be handed out.

So the universe may be irrational and non-understandable. And even if it can be understood, we may not be up to the challenge as a species. That means all of science relies on a non-provable faith that the universe can be understood and we will be able to understand it. Scientists are every bit the believers that religious people are.

This was a longer discussion than I anticipated. Here’s where I’m going with it: despite our successes in science and engineering, we still can’t answer the truly fundamental questions of human existence. It isn’t very satisfying to think that humanity is simply an accidental byproduct of random processes. We have the ability to contemplate our place in the universe, and we’d like to think that place is central and important. I would like to think that we have more of a purpose (or at least can find a purpose) beyond bare existence and passing on our genes to another generation.

Religions have a place in the world because, ideally, they answer the big questions and provide a purpose for us; they teach us to be good parents and members of society. Where religions seem to fail is when they are used to promote differences and division instead of brotherhood and peace. This is usually the fault of certain extremists, not of the religion itself. Yes, there are extremists and terrorists in Indonesia (and in America, for that matter – look at what’s been happening in Charlottesville, South Carolina around the Confederate statues). But everyone that I met, including all of the Muslims and Hindus, were kind, open, positive people trying to make a difference in the world and build bridges, not walls. I never had an argument or failed to find common ground. Perhaps people would be this way on their own without religion, but it is their religious beliefs that inform and enlighten them and teach them to be good people.

In the Indonesian philosophy of Pancasila, the central unifying principle is the belief in a central god or power, whoever that god may be or however he/she/it is worshipped. I did not see any anti-religious sentiment in the daily lives of the people I met. The only protest I saw was a pro-Palestinian rally outside a mosque in Banjarmasin; it is possible that there was some anti-Semitism going on – we didn’t stop to find out more of what was being said. Certainly religions haven’t always had easy relations in Indonesia There has been violence perpetrated between religions and between ethnic groups. But all that I saw promoted the ideal of a peaceful co-existence, a common cultural heritage that builds a nation instead of dividing it. Those that were devout Muslims didn’t denigrate those that weren’t; you could wear a hijab or a bhurka or not and no one seemed to worry about it; the Hindus of Bali seemed to be fine with the Muslims who were a minority there. They insisted that you had to wear a sarong to visit a temple, but no one seemed to mind following this requirement, except a few foreign tourists. Respect was the norm, not hatred or distrust. I wish America could be as unified and have similar strong common goals. Instead, we seem ever more divided and polarized. Some day soon, we may find ourselves surpassed by Indonesia. I will not be surprised.

In the meantime, I am an active, practicing Latter Day Saint. My scientific studies complement, not contradict, my religious beliefs. Maybe I am naïve. But I find joy in my beliefs, and they teach me to be a better person. My life, and the people whom I have influenced, have benefited from these beliefs. They teach me to look for the common good in all of us, and to make a positive difference in the world. Islam teaches the same, as does Hinduism, Buddhism, and all religions properly interpreted. I try to promote understanding and faith, because they drive away fear.

The Extraordinary Adventures of an Ordinary Educator

Reflections Part 4

 

This will be my final post on my Indonesian adventure, at least for now. I appreciate those of you who have read through all of this. I didn’t intend to write such a novel, but this experience has touched who I am at many levels and will change much of what I do from here on. I’ve heard it said that we learn nothing unless we reflect on our experiences. So I’m really doing this in an effort to learn more, mostly about myself.

One thing I continuously marvel at is the role that technology is playing at bringing us all together; that anyone with an Internet connection anywhere in the world can read these blog posts. That you would want to read these posts is another issue, but my point is that you CAN read them.

30 years ago there was no Internet and we were at the mercy of the slow pace of printed publications. Those who had built up knowledge over long study were valuable, because it was a knowledge economy. Now knowledge (facts, figures, dates, even analysis and opinion) is readily available with a few keystrokes, basically for free. This has many implications as to what I should be doing as an educator, which I will address in future posts, but for now let’s look at the freedom all of this gives us to share what we’ve learned.

If you’re reading this, you know a bit about me. You know that I traveled to Indonesia for four weeks through the U.S. State Department in a program that wants to promote understanding between cultures. Understanding leads to peace, and peace is good for business and good for countries. If you read further, you’ll discover that I am a science and technology teacher at a public charter school in Utah, and that I’m very active in science education as a profession. And that I like to write. A lot.

I don’t know much about you. I can see the aggregated statistics of who visits this blog site and what countries you are from, what posts you read, and what links you click on. I can guess, based on the stats, that most of you are chemistry teachers or students. Beyond that, I don’t know how much this site has influenced you or what your needs or interests are. I am basically writing blind, without much knowledge of my audience.

If someone had told me, 30 years ago, that my experiences as a teacher in Indonesia and elsewhere would be shared and read by thousands of people, I would have not believed it. I’m just a kid from a Podunk town in western Utah called Deseret (look it up – you won’t find much). My father was a farmer and cattle rancher. I’m a high school teacher, and there is nothing remarkable about me. Yet somehow, through a series of coincidental events and opportunities, I have experienced extraordinary adventures. I’ve tried to tell some of those stories in this blog and my other site (http://spacedoutclassroom.com).

I hope this account of my adventures in Indonesia has been entertaining and useful for you. I believe I’ve met my goal of telling generative stories that build bridges of understanding between the United States and Indonesia. Certainly I have come to understand our two countries better. When I planned out the possible blog posts for this adventure, I listed some 50 things I hoped to experience and write about. I thought that was being quite optimistic and overly ambitious. But I experienced so much more than I ever dreamed possible, and have tried to share it with you. If you’ve enjoyed any of this, please let me know and write some comments.

I hope you will read more of what’s coming up as I teach at American Academy of Innovation. It’s going to be a great year! My students are always my greatest adventure; seeing them go from knowing next to nothing about a subject to where they are experts; seeing them learn how to ask and answer questions for themselves, to work with real data, to have their eyes opened on how the world really works. This is what drives me.

Someday, soon, I hope to put all of this together into a more cohesive form, perhaps a book called The Extraordinary Adventures of an Ordinary Educator. I hope to publish books, videos, and posters on the lesson plans and units I’ve tried in my classes. I hope to see students continue to present real science results at professional conferences, and to become teachers themselves as they develop their own educational content. I’m not doing this for fame or money, just the deep satisfaction of knowing that I’m making a positive contribution to the world.

In the meantime, I will continue to post here and elsewhere and add more to this vast store of ideas, trivia, and knowledge we call the Internet. Please continue to read on.