Frozen Hell

(Partly) Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Books of the Month

We continue our reading of history and society—reading books is one of the best ways to broaden your learning about everything!  This week, we have two books to share:

• Frozen Hell: The Russo-Finnish Winter War of 1939-40, by William Trotter. It’s all too easy to think that war is so rare that it will never happen. When war does happen, then, countries can be blindsided by their own naivete.  Such was the case with the brutal, hellish Winter War between the Soviets and the Finns in 1939-40 as Stalin sought to make an “easy” expansion of the Soviet Union to prepare for the coming conflageration with the Nazis.  Much as with Ukraine today, the Russians were surprised and lost tens of thousands of men due to poor leadership.  Frozen Hell gets right into the nitty-gritty of what happened. A quick read and a good reminder of the dangers of lack of preparedness—and the value of Finnish grit. 
• Red Roulette: An Insider’s Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in Today’s China, by Desmond Shum.  This is a fascinating look at the inner workings of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) by a brave man who stands out from the many others who gain privately as they enable and support mass public harm.  The CCP enabled Shum and his wife Whitney Duan’s rise into China’s billionaire class as the couple used their insider connections and natural smarts to built a massive air cargo facility at Beijing International Airport, as well as one of Beijing’s premier hotels.  But, much as with Bill Browder’s experiences in Putin’s Russia, (as told in Red Notice), Shum and his wife gradually became inconvenient for the CCP, and she was to disappear even while Shum himself escaped to the West. A riveting cautionary tale of how one superpower can operate.  

Neural Manifolds

Anybody who is interested in the latest developments from neuroscience should try their best to understand neural manifolds—a VERY hot topic!  One of the best introductions to this complex topic is that by  Artem Kirsanov,  a computational neuroscience student and researcher. Artem’s enthusiastic and beautifully illustrated video will leave you hungry for even more information about this fascinating topic! 

“Mob Mentality” Podcast

A fascinating development in programming is when small teams work to program together. This is beneficial not only in helping good code develop more quickly, but also in helping programmers have a bit more fun while they’re working.  An excellent podcast about this approach is “Mob Mentality,” by remarkable senior programmers Austin Chadwick and Chris Lucian. Barb was fortunate to be on the show to share ideas and to learn more about this fantastic approach to programming.  Enjoy the episode!

(Here also, incidentally, is a great article about using Agile to teach students to work effectively in teams.)

The Controversial California Math Framework

After an approximately year-long revision by State Board of Education staff, the final California Math Framework was recently approved by the California State Board of Education.  Diligent mathematics professor Brian Conrad is on the case, noting in his most recent comment on the controversy “Given that the [California Math Framework] is going to be influencing math education in this country for the next decade, it is unacceptable that the State Board of Education is providing such an extremely short time period (including a weekend followed by a federal holiday) to review the Framework.  Critical concerns remain, and the CMF does not live up to the standards of a document that sets state-wide education policy.”  

“Citation misrepresentation persists.  Despite objections from more than 440 STEM faculty from across the state, guidelines have still not been developed for data science to be in alignment with math education content standards.  The document also has critical inconsistencies that open up the possibility for public schools to implement the CMF in contradictory ways.  Finally, the CMF still invokes a UC policy on data science courses substituting for Algebra II that has been challenged at multiple levels, including its recent outright rejection by the entire California State University system. All of the above are critical shortcomings, due to which the CMF cannot be approved in its current form.”

In short, the public is witnessing the consequences of regulatory capture of a state governmental agency. On a side note, Stanford University, associated with the problematic developments in the CMF, has recently witnessed the resignation of its president in relation to the disgrace of falsified data.

But there was also a positive development. As Stephanie Lee reports in this perceptive article for the Chronicle of Higher Education: “[F]aculty members across California have expressed concern that the UC system is rubber-stamping courses that bill themselves as “data science” but that do not impart the algebra needed to major in data science or other science, engineering, math, and technology major… Those courses, especially ‘Introduction to Data Science’ and Youcubed, should not have been approved as an advanced math course or a replacement for algebra II.” 

“The vote throws into question California’s math framework, which gives guidance to the state’s K-12 schools about how to teach math.”

There is hope for those who care about legitimate, solidly research-based approaches to teaching and learning!

Noam Chomsky

Don’t miss this spot-on review of MIT linguist Noam Chomsky’s corrosive effects on linguistics as well as politics. What’s sad is to realize that no matter how deceitful or duplicitous their researchers can get, major universities tend to whistle and look the other way.  

“The Autism Surge: Lies, Conspiracies, and My Own Kids”

Jill Escher, the president of the National Council on Severe Autism, writes that in our well-meaning efforts to understand and support neurodiversity, the very groups that should be supporting research into understanding the causes of this sometimes devastating condition are abrogating their duty. Escher’s hard-hitting piece is a must-read at a time when rates of autism are unquestionably skyrocketing. (Again, pathologies of altruism rear their head.)

That’s all for now. Have a happy week in Learning How to Learn!

Barb, Terry, and the entire Learning How to Learn team

• Uncommon Sense Teaching—the book and Coursera Specialization!

• Mindshift—the book and MOOC

• Learn Like a Pro—the book and MOOC

• The LHTL recommended text, A Mind for Numbers

For kids and parents: Learning How to Learn—the book and MOOC. Pro tip—watch the videos and read the book together with your child. Learning how to learn at an early age will change their life!