He's Gonna Eat the Goat?!

Have you noticed? Goats are ubiquitous. I noticed right after viewing the Doritos Superbowl ad (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4d8ZDSyFS2g) conceived by two Connecticut gents from Simsbury. (Spoiler Alert) I can't get enough of the human screams emanating from the angry goat (wait for it at :18) and apparently neither can three and half million other people who have since viewed that spot again. I immediately shared it with my media class (for our unit on advertising, no really) who simultaneously erupted into deep guttural laughter and high pitched shrieks of surprised joy then asked for more. That spot seems to have struck a chord with a whole herd of humans out to milk the joke for all its worth. Graze through the goat oeuvre on youtube and you'll find goats screaming like humans, goats yelling like humans, goats screaming like humans (compilation), goats that sound like people, goats talking like people, goats singing happy birthday, goats singing Christmas carols, and the latest craze, goats yelling in the middle of Justin Bieber and Taylor Swift songs (although there is some recent controversy over whether it's actually a goat or a sheep.) At any rate, it seems a great portion of our nation is obsessed with goats.

Perhaps the nation's greatest obsession with goats came in the form of the US government's 1979 experimental training program First Earth Battalion, which aimed to tap the psychic potential of soldiers to kill debleated goats using only their minds. This military foray into the paranormal is thoroughly documented in the Jon Ronson book, The Men Who Stare at Goats (film adaptation starring a bearded George Clooney). Those who could kill a goat simply by staring at it for weeks on end were poised to be our greatest generation of perfected soldiers, which perhaps explains why all wars since the 1970s seem to have gone slightly awry (though one participant claims to have successfully stared both his goat and hamster to death). Most assassins don't have the luxury of staring at their target for weeks on end. People with that kind of time to spend with goats tend to be lonely goatherds whose primary goal is corralling, not staring, at them as they graze.

Speaking of corralling, my brother the maple syrup king of Massachusetts (Windsor Hill Sugar House), corrals his hobby farmer goats in the former dog run attached to the back of the house. His goats readily come up to the kitchen window for occasional pass through scraps and also proudly stand atop the dog house from which the dogs have been evicted. One Thanksgiving we were gathered round the table in the dining room with non goat acculturated friends when one of the goats meandered through the house in search of food, having butted in the back kitchen door to gain entry. After chowing down on the available dog food in Bandit's bowl, Peanut (or maybe Spike) climbed up onto the couch for a nap. We were unfazed, our guests not so much. In the best of Thanksgiving traditions, goats, like humans, consume everything in their path. Sometimes they even become the consumed.

Remember in Jurassic Park as the visitors, including the lawyer, the paleontologist, the mathematician, and the grandchildren, sit astride the empty T-Rex paddock waiting to view Mr. Hammond's reluctant to appear genetically enhanced phantasm? In an effort to entice the beast, a trap door is raised to which is chained a pure white goat. It takes a second for the intention to register but we see the terror dawn on young Lexie as she realizes what's at stake. In tremulous voice she utters, "He's gonna eat the goat?" You said it, baby. Trouble. (Click play) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLI4EuDckgM

 

 

It's one thing to eat a bleating goat. It's quite another to eat that goat's Doritos.

My "Last" Lecture

Randy Pausch died July 25, 2008 and although I didn’t personally know him, we shared a certain kinship (me and 3.5 million readers and 16 million youtubers http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo). Randy was a teacher as am I. Randy’s bestselling The Last Lecture has now become his legacy in much the same way I like to believe that my teaching, with its combined learnedness, quirky self-disclosure and passion, serves as a continuous series of last lectures.

Facing imminent death, Randy questioned the lasting impact he could have on his young children, the youngest of whom may not even remember him in a few years. As a teacher, I similarly question my lasting impact on students. After all, it is the ultimate goal of teachers to reach students beyond the school day, beyond the semester, beyond school itself. Certainly, Randy wanted to be sure his children, his “defacto students” as I think all teachers’ children are, knew his wisdom and passions long after his death. The Last Lecture stands as testament to those, defining the values and habits of mind we as teachers and sometimes parents, wish to pass along, the legacy we hope will self-perpetuate across the generations to create a more learned, more compassionate, more fully developed, fulfilled, and successful populace.

Success in education is for some teachers (students, administrators, Boards of Education, parents and communities) defined by students scoring 5s on the AP test, or surpassing minimum requirements on the CAPT or acing the SATs and subject tests. Success is defined by National Merit Scholarship, landing in the top 10% of the class, 4.0 GPAs, quarterly grades of 98 or 99 or even 100. Success is attending an Ivy League. In and of themselves, these are not shallow, meritless goals to be belittled though many in America find it sport to do so (see Barack Obama labeled elitist for his thoughtful, highly educated approach). Ironically, aspiring to such achievements in America is laudable while achieving them is frequently a source of derision.

But too often, teachers, students, parents, administrators and Boards of Education, and the occasional Admissions Office, do not have formal tools by which to measure other forms of success in valid, reliable ways, and so the measurements we do have are decidedly incomplete. Therefore, these traditional (and traditionally) scored measures cannot be the types of benchmarks by which we solely define success. They represent what is captured within only the frame of a snapshot at a fixed point in time, providing us with a moment of focus at the expense of greater context. Five, ten, twenty years from now, do I want my students to remember my class as the 98 on my midterm exam and the resulting 5 on the AP test? Or would I prefer they write powerfully and precisely from the most romantic poems to the most elegant public policy speeches to the most clear legal documents to the most inspired civic minded letters?

Clearly, I want my students to know the difference between what is worth being familiar with and what is important to know and do. I want my students to be able to live and think independently using the structures, skills and knowledge of the past as starting blocks. Then I want my students to recognize how to use those strategies when confronted with new situations and problems because 21^st century students must be able to tackle big ideas and manage unfamiliar transfer tasks.  I want my students to know the difference between recall and application, between regurgitation and innovation. I want my students to tell me what they think and feel in elegant, concise, beautiful language. I want my students to create.

I want my students to think before judging the homeless person on the street, to recognize when and how political speeches, advertising and sound bites on the evening news manipulate their thoughts and emotions. I want my students to recognize and value the incredible freedom we have to put our thoughts on paper, and share them. I want my students to know how to heal themselves, their loved ones, and even complete strangers with their words. I want my students to care for strays, and root for the underdog, to be honest and kind, to weigh the facts before making a decision, to honor the lessons of history, and to judiciously employ the preciseness and power of words. I want my students to compassionately approach the neighborhood feral cat.

I recognize that these are a lot of wants. And yet here we’ve merely reached the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Late at night, when I am inconsolable and insomniac, as I often am, I take odd comfort in my wants, in my idealistic hope that my students will honor me, our time together, each other, and the privileged learning opportunities they have, by developing intellectual curiosity and a lasting love of learning, by developing  the intellectual habits of mind which lead them to discover knowledge in many disciplines, creating a constant thirst for knowledge and self-discovery, one that might keep them awake at night, too.

Oh, and one more thing. I want my students to go into the world feeling compelled to dine at the world’s smorgasbord, as if there were no other choice but to do so, as if by doing nothing but passively ingest, they would indeed starve.