Friday, November 21, 2008

Questions of the Day--#1

A commenter on one of yesterday's postings asked me what types of questions I give my students to research. She also asked if they were only English related. No, they do not all have to do specifically with English; in fact most don't.

I've got fairly eclectic interests and a huge and widely diverse library in my home. I also tend to haunt the public library. And yes, I spend a lot of time doing research online as well. I make up the questions I have the students answer based on my informational voyages. I'm going to share some of those questions, just in case any of you are hankering for something to do. Please keep in mind that, as I warn my students, some of the answers to the questions are not straightforward. So, on to today's questions.

What criteria must be met for a snowstorm to be rightfully called a blizzard?

If the mayor of New York should die, who would become mayor?

Which former President was later elected to Congress?

From where were the earliest Jewish immigrants to North America?

What two individually lethal elements from the Periodic Table combine to improve the taste of food?

Of Tortellini and Pagannini, the one associated with cuisine?

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why are those research questions? Except for the one about mayor of NY, which I suppose I would know if I lived in NY, these are things one should know before entering high school much less leaving it. (I assume from your pen name that you teach at the college level.) I guess if you're not a Jewish American you might be excused for not knowing that one either. But to not know the chemical formula for table salt? Or to be unable to distinguish music from pasta?

ProfK said...

Mike,
A newspaper poll a few years ago asked New Yorkers who would take over in case the mayor died. The correct responses were less than 30%. If this information was ever covered in school it was long out of memory.

Chemistry is not a required subject in every school. You would first have to know that 1)sodium and chloride are both chemical elements and 2)that they were lethal when ingested in pure form individually. Again, plenty of "educated" adults who have no idea about how to answer this question.

Maybe a high school teacher gave this interesting fact about the president who became a congressman and maybe that teacher didn't.

The further right you go and adding in that you are a male school, the less chance that any Jewish history is taught out of what appears in Chumash or in the Gemorah, hence the answer to the Jewish immigrant question is not necessarily known.

Re the pagannini/tortellini question, it's both a matter of vocabulary and of broad exposure. Some of my students have never eaten tortellini, as I would imagine a number of adults in the outside world have not done either. Nor is tortellini something that would be covered in a school curriculum. The same goes for Pagannini. Outside of Beethoven and Bach and perhaps a few others such as Mozart and Chopin the classical composer's names are not well known. Not every school gives music history. And today's yeshiva students are far more interested in and exposed to Jewish singers and/or today's pop music then they are to classical music.

Let me ask you this: do you play classical music for your children? Going back how far? I did so for my kids and I know lots and lots of people who did not do so.

And there is also this: the college I teach in has lots of students who come from other countries, hence other cultural histories, and some who come from divisions of Klal where secular cultural history is not considered important, is in fact guarded against, and is just plain not known about.

G said...

What criteria must be met for a snowstorm to be rightfully called a blizzard?

--Enough so that an elemnetary school aged child starts considering whether school will be canceled.

If the mayor of New York should die, who would become mayor?

--Trick question, everyone knows that Derek Jeter is immortal

Which former President was later elected to Congress?

--I don't know but I DO know that 'President' Obama is nothing but bad news for the yidden.

From where were the earliest Jewish immigrants to North America?

--Somewhere past exit 7 on the NJ turnpike.

What two individually lethal elements from the Periodic Table combine to improve the taste of food?

--Ketchup & Cumin

Of Tortellini and Pagannini, the one associated with cuisine?

--Sorry, I don't eat Italian.

Anonymous said...

Implicit in your answer is that students are not expected to learn anything not covered in class. Aren't children expected to read beyond specific class assignments? Don't kids take music lessons anymore in New York? There is much good juvenalia published in science and history; can we no longer assume kids have read some of it? I am getting depressed at the thought of a generation reared in such ignorance.

Anonymous said...

And are there really high schools in which one doesn't need to take chemistry to graduate? I am astonished.

ProfK said...

Mike,
Even with the changes that have been phased in for the NY state Regents diploma, Chemistry is not a requirement, merely an option. And even if you have taken Chemistry as your third science course you are not required to take the Chem Regents, since only two science Regents exams are required to get the Regents Honors diploma, and most students take only the Earth Science and Biology Regents exams.

Re the kids reading outside of what is assigned for the classroom, that is going to depend strictly on parents who encourage such reading and encourage using a library. It is the rare student who will come to the decision of reading a lot all on his/her own. And let's not assume that they are doing all the class-required reading either. Cliff Notes and their ilk are still alive and well, as is plagiarism and cheating of all types. And these students are being aided and abetted by their parents in far too many cases. One of the worst excuses for this is the "the day is too long and my child has to have a life outside of school too so if they take a shortcut don't blame them, blame the school for giving too many assignments, too much homework, just plain too much work."

As I've mentioned on the blog before, we have generations coming up that are less well educated than the preceding generations rather than better educated. It's not a trend I'm happy about. I teach seniors in college, although sometimes it seems that I am teaching elementary school or high school as there are so many gaps and blanks that need filling in before I can get to my own subject matter.

Anonymous said...

My kids had to take Biology, Physics and Chemistry. And one of them twice. (Actually the school only required a 4th year of science. It was my wife and I who insisted on a serious class for the 4th)

I hire plenty of very well educated college grads (science and engineering.) I haven't given them this quiz but I am pretty sure every last one of them would get the salt, pasta/music and blizzard questions, and I am pretty sure most would know that John Quincy Adams served in the House after being president. And for that matter that Taft was on the Supreme Court.

I did give your quiz to my sixth grader, she didn't know the mayor of New York, and took two guesses for the table salt. She also had to ask which Adams it was. She knew the other ones. My college senior knew them all except for the NYC mayor.

If your experience is indicative of what is going on in the NY frum community, it is a little frightening to me.

Lion of Zion said...

"From where were the earliest Jewish immigrants to North America?"

that is a trick question. the "correct" answer depends on a number of qualifications, including (but not limited to) what you consider:

a) north america
b) jewish
c) an immigrant

(and the traditional answer of brazil would not be correct based on the specific wording of your question.)

shavu'ah tov

ProfK said...

MikeS,
If your sixth grader knew that "Blizzards are severe winter storms characterized by the following: snow or blowing snow with winds of 40 km/hr or more, visibility reduced to less than one km. in snow and/or blowing snow, windchill of -25 or colder. All of the above conditions are expected to last for four hours or more to be officially classified as a blizzard" then you or her school are to be congratulated. This info is not part of the standard curriculum here.

Lion,
I stated up front that the questions were not straightforward. Students have to read them carefully. "Immigrant" was certainly a key word. "Jewish" comes into question when you are dealing with Maranno descendants. "North America" is only problematic if you don't know where to put the islands of the Caribbean.

One purpose in giving this research project is for the students to come to the realization that sometimes there is not one acceptable answer to what they are researching. There may be more than one answer. There may be a "machlokes." They need to know this too.

Lion of Zion said...

""North America" is only problematic if you don't know where to put the islands of the Caribbean"

or the american southwest

nu, so did anyone give an answer other than the "standard" answer of brazil?

ProfK said...

Lion,
Again, a machlokes. The student who got this question to answer has turned up a record that a Jew of Portuguese origin arrived to settle in Maryland in 1633. Most other writings that he found give 1654 as the date that Jews fleeing from Recife, Brazil, which hade gone from being under Dutch control to under Portuguese control, arrived in what is now the US. What is not made clear is whether that 1633 arrival came from Brazil or from some different point.

Lion of Zion said...

"a Jew of Portuguese origin arrived to settle in Maryland in 1633."

1634. from barbados.
and no evidence he was jewish except for a surname that was common among portuguese jews. at best a descendant of conversos ("marannos"). (and there were probably communities of crypto-jews, or descendants of conversos who still practiced a form of judaism, in the southwest).

"Most other writings that he found give 1654"

open jews definately visited north america before 1654 (back to the czech Joachim Gaunse in 1584) and there were 2 in nieu amsterdam when the 23 from brazil landed in 1654.

the 1654 date is generally given because this is the first time there were a jewish group presence. personally i think it's an important date because this was the first time that a jewish presence in north american was legally defined. but they were not immigrants nor did they found the american jewish community. they were refugees who inadvertenly wound up in niewu amsterdam (a long story) and eventually moved on. at most only one of the 23 remained permanently. shearith israel (the spanish-portuguese shul in manhattan) claims to have been founded by these 1654 refugees, but they have no real direct history back to that date.

(we can ignore the various jewish-indian theories, although a modification was advocated by the famous linguist cyrus adler)

ProfK said...

Lion,
Re "refugee" and "immigrant." a refugee is "an individual seeking refuge or asylum; especially : an individual who has left his or her native country and is unwilling or unable to return to it because of persecution or fear of persecution (as because of race, religion, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion); First applied to Fr. Huguenots who migrated after the revocation (1685) of the Edict of Nantes. The word meant "one seeking asylum," till 1914, when it evolved to mean "one fleeing home" (first applied in this sense to civilians in Flanders heading west to escape fighting in World War I).:

An immigrant is "a person who comes to a country where they were not born in order to settle there." The definition of immigrant is intent neutral; it does not say if the migration was voluntary or forced.

Today we tend to think of immigrants as having had a choice of going to another country rather than being forced to go there, yet that definition doesn't hold across the board. Refugee status has more to do with there being no choice to return to the place of birth or of residence prior to migrating.

Both categories should be considered exiles: "One who lives away from one's native country, whether because of expulsion or voluntary absence."

Point to ponder: if person X flees his "patria," his homeland, because of fear of annihilation and goes to country Y then we might call person X a refugee. But if later person X chooses to leave country Y and voluntarily goes to country Z is that person still a refugee or should he/she be called an immigrant? Or should exile be used to cover both situations. When the Marannos fled to the Netherlands were they refugees? But when they chose to go to North and South America were they immigrants? During the Vietnam War and immediately thereafter we spoke of Vietnamese refugees. Shortly after that we were talking about Vietnamese immigrants. The Cubanos living in the US don't refer to themselves as refugees or immigrants but as exiles.

The devil is in the details and the definitions.

Anonymous said...

To be fair, my 6th grader is in the middle of a unit on weather in her science class right now. She would not have known that 1 month age.

Anonymous said...

Is the answer to the first question the first deputy mayor? I tried to look it up online and this is the only possible answer I could find.

ProfK said...

Frayda,
According to the nyc.gov website, the Charter revision of 2002 says the following: "This proposal would provide that a special election generally be held in sixty days
after a mayoral vacancy occurs in order to fill the vacancy. The procedure would be
similar in format to the procedure already set forth in the Charter to fill vacancies in the
Offices of Public Advocate, Comptroller, Borough President and City Council member,
except that in the special election for the Office of the Mayor, where no candidate
receives forty percent or more of the vote, the two candidates receiving the most votes
would advance to a run-off election to be held on the second Tuesday following the
special election. Pending the result of the election, the Public Advocate would act as
Mayor."