kimberly jean

system design and flow is interesting to me (in a non-computer programming sense, but in a broader sense of logical design and intuitive flow of operations). i find that i put more and more systems under a microscope as they impress me. the world cup entered into my spectrum when i realized during the semi-finals that football is elegant. 

i like that.

allow me to explain. i am talking about football, not American football. the entirety the game is simple and deliberate. it is the universal sport. it is the purest sport. and i contest that this is why it is one of the oldest sports undertaken by man. especially when juxtaposed next to American football, where the rules are embarrassingly long, complex, difficult to understand and arbitrary - here's the hand signal guide just for a laugh.

unlike the players needed to throw a pigskin, in real football ("soccer"), players are interchangeable on offense and defense. in American football we see a kicker, a quarterback, linemen of various sorts, a running back, a safety, the guy who holds the ball for the kicker, and don't forget the wide receiver with corner- full- and half-backs just in case. these men comprise the offensive, defensive, and special teams. also, remember even though there can be up to 53 members on a single American football team, only 11 men are allowed on the field at one time.

now for play to advance, the offensive end must advance at minimum of 10 yards within 4 "downs". the ultimate goal is to advance to the end-zone, which will result in a "touch-down".

one can first gaze upon the field to begin to understand how unencumbered fútbol truly is. the field, or "pitch", is a clean palate. there exist no numbers listing yardage, no hash marks, no symbols, nor ridiculous logos. in true american style, we baptize our fields with sponsors and team branding, as if there is a lack of action to engross the viewer.

speaking of which... play in american football is stopped every 5 seconds, then the resume of play takes another agonizing lifetime to begin. the invention of "instant replay" and referee consultation of it provide endless commercial opportunities and one never has to wait long before one can take a bathroom break. the game is theoretically an hour in duration (four 15 minute periods). however, in practice, the game is typically 3+ hours. now, as if for nothing but comic relief, there exists a "back judge" who determines if players qualify for a time-wasting penalty between plays - the maximum allowed stoppage being 40 seconds, barring time-outs. of which three of these will be allotted each half (not quarter).

i'll spare you explanations of the "line of scrimmage", "safetys", field goals, point values and rules for penalties. if up for a needlessly complex read with no pay-off, you can read the NFL's official rulebook.

a goalie, defenders, midfielders, and strikers comprise the "soccer" line up. and arguably, these roles are interchangeable. because of this relative interchangeability, we are relieved from hearing about the "psyche" of a certain important character in the game; think of the QB or a pitcher in baseball. real football is uncomplicated. everyone is important. 

our lives are notoriously digital and recorded. why hasn't soccer, ehem, football embraced the instant replay or a "goal cam"? FIFA has stood strong against their use. not only FIFA, but the fans, as well. so much trust is placed in the officiating of true fútbol refs, one has to wonder why. [especially on the world cup stage -- america might have been allowed their goal against ghana and uruguay's handball might be disallowed.]

the truth is absurd to my american mind: they respect the game too much to allow game stopping additions to taint the sanctity that is their religion. the focus is purposefully placed on the play and not the rules. in this decision, FIFA is preserving the spirit of simplicity in the game, and i respect that. 

now to address the rules governing the game. the basic gist is that you cannot strike the ball with any part of your arm, including hand.

that covers most of the game.

the exception is the goaltender who is immune to this by virtue that he has the job of keeping the ball out of his temple. the game is sectioned off into two periods of 45 minutes with no stoppage of the clock. the refs, cunningly aware that play is delayed with injuries, corner-kick and side-kicks, as well as free kick staging, time is added on to the end of the period accordingly (as determined by the referee). again, there is the something sacred in keeping the play moving without complicated time-outs. 

various penalties are experienced as either red or yellow cards, or allocation of free or penalty kicks. red cards are reserved for the most heinous of fouls. yellows are those viewed as less so, but are also of a deliberate nature. a red will see you out of the game and will result in a permanent "man down" for your team - think "power play" in hockey. free kicks are for those incidents of unintentional nature. penalty kicks are for fouls occurring on a striker in the "penalty box" area -- rather intuitive.

if more systems were designed this user-friendly and simple, i think productivity would go up. overall. for everyone. this is something that i keep very much in the forefront of my mind while tinkering with school design. a process or system with as little of a learning curve as possible and least chance for exploitation, is most likely the best implementation (i realize i'm not re-inventing the wheel with these remarks, but this has been a feeling heavily internalized in me so, now, i desire elegance in all things).

when we play in a system that values the user experience i wager that we will have less of the American football phenomenon of "killing time/stopping the clock" and users will enjoy and even appreciate the care that was put into designing the game.

On the point of education:

"[to develop] a student's confidence that he can, that he is adequate to the nature of things, can proceed on his own initiative, and ultimately strike out on an unknown path, where there is no program, and assign his own tasks to himself." -Paul Goodman

I've been introduced to a new kind of social catharsis. I didn't realize it at first, but indeed, 80's Night has given me reason to pause and ponder why so many twenty-somethings flock to dance their hearts out every Thursday night.

Despite work the next morning, crowds of dance-hungry graduates line up to pay two dollars to drink cheap beer and dance to music from their youth. To be honest, I didn't get it at first... actually for years. It all seemed too hip for me. My typical response opted out. This week was different. 

Going in as a skeptic, the whole scene was a bit silly. Madonna impersonators and Billy Idols rounded out the experience with authenticity. I was going to need another beer. 

As morning drew near, the music turned up. Only once the moment was perfect was I lead to the dance floor. The air was sweaty and hot and the dance was addictive. I lost myself in the tangible joy of the crowd. Madness ensued and I. was. free.

What is it that makes this so appealing to me and countless other to-be-adults? I think there is more going on than meets the hipster eye. I think the key is in the total freedom that is had at dirty, dark, cheap, and forgiving 80's Night. 

It is no ordinary discotheque. There are no dress code rules. No one pays attention as you dance. It is pure self-indulgence and narcissism. Boys and girls come from all niches. There is everybody. There is nobody. There is you.

It is innocent freedom. Freedom to play. To escape the rules of your uninspired job. Your uninspired relationship. You can play and relive childhood in all your goofy glory. In fact, every person I've asked to describe the appeal of this night of nostalgia gave the same reason over and over: "You can do whatever you want."

In this way, in this freedom we are like the children of Summerhill in a sense. We are seeking out the same forgiving and liberating experience that is being true to oneself. Maybe the music is the catalyst. It is music from our youth, after all. Maybe it triggers the feeling of the inner child that was never really free to make believe and learn from its own mistakes. To adventure until limbs no longer allowed. The wish to be grown-up one day. To be successful and millions of miles away on foreign shores. 

Maybe all my comrades in dance had the same routinized childhood of little league and bedtimes, of homework and honor rolls, of groundings and detention. If we had our fill of play when we were young would we still be drawn to this glittering night of laughter and fun? Are we making up for stifled independence of our younger days?

Concerning me lately is the incessant topic of school reform. While I am a proponent of a healthy and overdue change, I don't see the necessary dialogue on the public stage being discussed. Namely: What is the purpose of education? 

Schooling is different than educating. This is the first massive oversight by reformists - the only aim in sight is to change the apparatus of schooling but not the philosophy towards education. All school reform efforts are focusing on achievement points, accountability of teachers by parents, accountability of parents by teachers, and other such "grammatical" issues of schooling, a term coined by edu-theorist John Goodlad.

By purpose, I mean the end goal to twelve years of formal schooling [to be followed by four more]. Education in a word is enlightenment. We like to think that we have been enlightened by all our years of "hard work" and "character building" in school. We like to think that we have come out on top of the massive battle against that behemoth, Idiocy. Have we? 

Children toil on pointless assignments and loose sleep due to overly tedious projects. What have they learned? How are they enlightened? They have learned, by my count, to push out desirable interactions in life for someone else's prerogative. They certainly don't come away confident, thirsty for more assignments. 

The reality of the current educational mindset is to focus on tangible goals. Most visibly, we are obsessed with how students measure up next to those around them. Not top of the class? Don't worry, work extra hard so you get the recognition and praise you envy, next week. Because in reality that's that the current point. To earn praise [and in some districts cash]. Praise gives the child a sense of purpose and meaning, and satiates the need to feel competent, closer to adulthood.

What if, as a first step, we remove grading from schooling in order to let education take place?

I am reading A.S. Neill's Summerhill and am coming away with re-inspiration towards democratic education philosophy. These are some of my ideas as of late and will be developing my points and thoughts in future posts. 

Here's an interesting essay written by Jerry Farber of San Diego State University in 1969. This paper is obviously controversial (looking at the title and to his ambivalence toward profanity) written with a similar philosophy to A.S. Neill's Summerhill. While certainly utopian, the contents of this work resonate with the fundamental downfalls of modern education in which I am so interested.  

forgive the fox news.

i've been informed that i've have made it to the interview process for one of my potential graduate schools.

Trying out a new format for the new year.

Sometimes the message is spouted from a "fair and balanced" news commentator explaining where school shootings come from. Other times, our kids' teachers reinforce the trend, correlating game use to aggressive tendencies. Parents might pass on their anecdotal knowledge: "You know, little Johnny acted different after he played Grand Theft Auto." Grandparents tell of how "in their day, children were more respectful - and walked uphill, both ways, to... everywhere." There have even been Sunday sermons on the evils of gaming. All these important figures are telling us how our kids are becoming terrors, so it must be true, right?

In a study conducted by Gentile, Lynch, Linder & Walsh (2004), the authors stated that teens who play violent video games for extended periods of time exhibit the following:

*Tend to be more aggressive

*Are more prone to confrontation with their teachers

*May engage in fights with their peers

*See a decline in school achievements

Their paper would become very influential, being cited many times over, warning of the dangers of violent games. They cite the General Aggression Model which suggests that violent games may result in the "development, over-learning, and reinforcement of aggression-related knowledge structures." They are also concerned about the famously quoted "desensitization" argument.

This sounded convincing, then I actually read the report.

607 8th and 9th grade students were given self-evaluations of their gaming habits and preferences on a 10 point scale: 5 meaning moderate violence 1 being none. Surprisingly, the results weren't overwhelming.

On average, youth reported they preferred a moderate amount of violence in games. When asked of their favorite games, less than 40% favored games at or above "moderate" levels [let it be known, there is no distinction in this percentage between preferred games of '6' levels of violence and '10'. Let it also be known, no example of a game was given to each point level. Kids had to arbitrarily guess how violent their games were on a made up scale with no examples.] Less than 25% of the kids reported getting into arguments with their teachers with what they called "high frequency" - I'm not sure of the actual frequency because these researchers lumped the categories "About Weekly" and "About Daily" together when totaling their numbers; so again, no distinction there.

Hardly a revelation, less than 1/4 of kids had some sort of confrontation with a teacher every week. What about fighting? Well, 34% of boys reported getting into a fight -- within the last year! 8th and 9th graders, of which, about 1/3 have been in a fight within a year! I wonder what these figures were like 20 years ago? I'm guessing... oh, I don't know, about a third of all boys had been in a fight in middle school, given the period was over a year.

What's the best piece of information attained from this report? It was found that "Compared to time spent playing video games, adolescents spent more time watching television and listening to music!" Their words, not mine. There is scientific research, then there are papers like these.

Bunk science and agenda papers remind me of Penn & Teller's gaming segment on BullShit!. They found a boy who is obsessed with first person shooter war games and happens to be 9. Penn and Teller attempt to silence claims of desensitization, over-learning, and "training" acquired from these games by giving him a live semi-automatic weapon to shoot. Sorry, guys, the spoiler is: the kid shoots the rifle exactly once, then is visibly disturbed, cries, then holds his mom. What a hardened, trained, killer he was! Alright, maybe that wasn't so scientific, but let's see something that is.

Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl Olson, authors of controversial Grand Theft Childhood had a different take on video game violence. The married duo are the founders of the Harvard Medical School Center for Mental Health and Media.

There are critics who argue that "kids who do play games so much are prone to being social outcasts because of how much they play." Maybe this cautionary tale was believed in the mid 90s, but I would hope that researchers today could see through this. The truth is, many games involve multi-person play, with the players either in the same room or connected electronically. This is everything from Wii Tennis to a World of Warcraft LAN party, which often requires players to communicate so that they can coordinate their efforts. Kutner and Olson's research found that playing violent video games was associated with playing with friends. According to pair, "For younger children especially, games are a topic of conversation that allows them to build relationships with peers." Guy Cumberbatch, PhD, a British psychologist specializing in media research corroborates. As the director of the Communications Research Group he has been studying the effects of mass media on violent behavior for several decades. His terse opinion is:

The real puzzle is that anyone looking at the research evidence in this field could draw any conclusions about the pattern, let alone argue with such confidence and even passion that it demonstrates the harm of violence on television, in film and in video games. While tests of statistical significance are a vital tool of the social sciences, they seem to have been more often used in this field as instruments of torture on the data until it confesses something which could justify publication in a scientific journal. If one conclusion is possible, it is that the jury is not still out. It's never been in. Media violence has been subjected to lynch mob mentality with almost any evidence used to prove guilt.

Kutner and Olson also found that children were able to make clear distinctions between media violence and real life. They noted that video games often are a social tool, allowing kids to cope with their anger rather than turning to isolation.

The Harvard couple reported that of the kids who preferred and played mature content video games, rather than seeing the media-predicted mass murdering psychopath, they saw a correlated increase in bullying and fighting in school. While this is cause for attention, it is not one for alarm. Specifically because it is unable to be ascertained whether troubled kids are drawn to mature games or if mature games produce trouble kids. It's a chicken-egg scenario. All the more reason to try to understand the therapeutic outlet that games like these offer.

One interesting fact is that US teen violence has actually been on the decline since 1993. Since 1993, however, the mature game industry has grown by several order of magnitude. Currently the ESRB lists 1,363 games rated 'M' or above. This type of fear mongering is common with the introduction of any new media; it happened with paperback novels, comic books, TVs, and computers. This time, it would be nice for the media to calm down and realize that Call of Duty doesn't train future snipers, Grand Theft Auto doesn't make anyone a coke head, and Fallout doesn't prepare you to survive in a post apocalyptic wasteland... for that one, you're on your own.