讀書

讀書，看時，順地，應人。
時不分早晚，只求興至，一分鐘也是一個故事。
書房是常地，厠所也是與孔子對話的好地方。
讀書，是一個人的事，是學習與孤獨相處。
讀書，也可以是兩個人的事，甚至是眾人的事。
兩個人在咖啡店，一起看雜誌，是樂趣；各看各的，也是情趣。
地鐵上，報紙可以與人分享，有些書則不敢張揚地看。
我看過兩本這樣的書。
看London Call Girl，一是坐著看，二是站著看，但不會站在跟前是OL的位置。現在留在辦公室話旁，美其名為教材。
第二本，是終於讀完幾乎不敢在地鐵上看的《中女解毒》。不論是坐著還是站著，都不要。我試過，甚尷尬，面紅紅的是我。
讀書，還是一個人好。

讀書五失

近讀香港《文匯報》一篇關於讀書的文章，所引用的清代資料，言簡意賅，值得分享。

文章引用清代詩人阮葵生的《茶餘客話》，讀書有「五失」：

一、「泛觀而無所擇，其失博而寡要」；又引用明代理學家蔡清的話：「欲為一世經綸手，止熟數篇緊要書。」

二、「好古人言行，意常退縮不敢望，其失儒而無立」；又引用明代榜眼湯賓尹道：「讀古人書，會古人意，並可不用古語也。」

三、「纂錄故實，一未終而屢更端，其失勞而無功」；又引用明代詩人吳與箕說：「蘇子容聞人說故事，必令檢出處。司馬君實聞人言新事，便抄錄，且必記所言之人。故當時謂：古事莫語子容，新事莫告君實。」

四、「聞人之長，將疾趨而從之，輒出其後，其失欲速而好高」；又引用明代思想家陳獻章說：「以我觀書，隨處得益，以書博我，則釋卷茫然。」

五、「喜學為文，未能蓄其本，其失又甚焉者也」；又引用北宋諫官呂誨說：「讀書不須多，讀得一字，行取一字。」

共勉之。

Mickey Mouse degrees

Here are something I copied from a free literary magazine in Britain some time ago about the Mickey Mouse degrees? Don't have a clue about the degrees? Find it out yourself:

I often hear people grumble about the Mickey Mouse degrees that our young people pursue at university these days. How they have no practical or economic value. How our nation doesn't create enough engineers and how too many students do subjects such as English that can't get you help you find a career except as an English teacher.

After all, Mickey Mouse has done rather well for himself, earning far more than most engineers. The degrees pursued by so many in his name have perhaps not let our economy down as much as people think.

I say this because when you look at our long-term national performance at producing things, we don't do too badly. Sure, we don't make as many cars ad the Germans but we do manufacture more dreams. That's what creativity is all about and we can be proud that we contribute so much of it to the world.

It is important for us all to understand our strength in the creative industries so we don't underrate ourselves. I think too many people do. I not only hear them dismissing university degrees, but I also hear them writing off our entire economy as somehow unworthy of the living standards it has delivered to us. Their tendency is to associate production with physical output. As they observe Britain is not quite the manufacturing powerhouse it once was, they assume that we have somehow been lazy in trying to make ourselves rich without getting our hands dirty.

the first western museum in China

The first western museum in China was founded in Macau in 1829. (not very surprising I guess)

From A Companion to the Anglo Chinese Kalendar; For the Year of Our Lord 1832: Corresponding to the Alexandrian Year of the World 7334; And the Chinese Cycle Æra 4469; Being the XIIth Year of the Reign Taoukwang (Macao, China: Printed at the Honorable East India Company’s Press, By G. J. Steyn and Brother, 1832), here I quote (p. 51-2):

The British Museum in China

        This Institution was established, in consequence of a resolution, passed at a meeting held among members of the British Factory, on the 21^st February 1829. The object of the Institution is th collection of specimens of Natural History and of the productions of art.  it is fixed at Macao, and is supported by annual subscriptions of thirty dollars each, the subscribing members being British subjects alone. Natives of other Countries are eligible as honorary or corresponding members. The Museum is under a Committee of management, consisting of a Treasurer, a Curator, and a Secretary.

Officers

Treasurer. F. I. Morris, Esq.

Curator. John Russell Reeves, Esq.

Secretary. Rev. G. H. Vachell, B. A. 

China: An International Journal

I just received a notice email of the latest issue of China: An International Journal, which is a special issue on the 18th party congress and future of the Communist Party of China. I think anyone interested in China should take a look of the articles.

Why don't students like school?

Summer vacation began. A relief to you, my fellow teachers? Not yet. Strike while the iron is hot. Thinking back to the year past, was teaching getting tougher every year? Have you ever had a class that students tend to remember the characters and scripts of Gossip Girls or Big Bang Theory than any content of your brilliant lectures, even the subject is of great importance for them to graduate. Here is a book I want to share with you: Why don't students like school? : a cognitive scientist answers questions about how the mind works and what it means for your classroom by the cognitive psychologist Daniel T. Willingham at Virginia. He outlines nine principles derived from cognitive psychology to help teachers connect with students


Before looking at the nine principles, ask yourselves:
1. Why Don't Students Like School?
2. How Can I Teach Students the Skills They Need When Standardized Tests Require Only Facts?
3. Why Do Students Remember Everything That's on Television and Forget Everything I Say?
4. Why Is It So Hard for Students to Understand Abstract Ideas?
5. Is Drilling Worth It?
6. What's the Secret to Getting Students to Think Like Real Scientists, Mathematicians, and Historians?
7. How Should I Adjust My Teaching for Different Types of Learners?
8. How Can I Help Slow Learners?
9. What About My Mind?


Difficult to answer, ain't they? Willingham began his discussion of nine principles following a well-organized style by setting the questions, in-depth discussion, and finally outline the relevant cognitive principle (CP), its significance, and teaching implications (Is) in each chapter as follows:


Ch. 1 Why Don't Students Like School?
CP: "People are naturally curious, but we are not naturally good thinkers; unless the cognitive conditions are right, we will avoid thinking." "People are naturally curious, but curiosity is fragile."
Is: 1. Be sure that there are problems to be solved; 2. Respect students' cognitive limits; 3. Clarifying the problems to be solved; 4. Reconsider when to puzzle students; 5. Accept and act on variation in student preparation; 6. Change the pace; 7. Keep a diary.


Ch. 2 How Can I Teach Students the Skills They Need When Standardized Tests Require Only Facts?
CP: "Factual knowledge must precede skill." "Knowledge is essential to reading comprehension." "Background knowledge is necessary for cognitive skills."
Is: 1. How to evaluate which knowledge to instill; 2. Be sure that the knowledge base is mostly in place when you require critical thinking; 3. Shallow knowledge is better than no knowledge; 4. Do whatever you can to get kids to read; 5. Knowledge acquisition can be incidental; 6. Start early; 7. Knowledge must be meaningful.


Ch. 3 Why Do Students Remember Everything That's on Television and Forget Everything I Say?
CP: "Memory is the residue of thought." "Putting story structure to work."
Is: 1. Review each lesson plan in terms of what the student is likely to think about; 2. Think carefully about attention grabbers; 3. Use discovery learning with care; 4. Design assignments so that students will unavoidably think about meaning; 5. Don't be afraid to use mnemonics; 6. Try organizing a lesson plan around the conflict.


Ch. 4 Why Is It So Hard for Students to Understand Abstract Ideas?
CP: "We understand new things in the context of things we already know, and most of what we know is concrete." "Understanding is remembering in disguise."
Is: 1. To help student comprehension, provide examples and ask students to compare them; 2. Make deep knowledge the spoken and unspoken emphasis; 3. Make your expectations for deep knowledge realistic.


Ch. 5 Is Drilling Worth It?
CP: "It is virtually impossible to become proficient at a mental task without extended practice." "Practice enables further learning." "Practice makes memory long lasting." "Practice improves transfer."
Is: 1. What should be practiced? 2. Space our the practice; 3. Fold practice into more advanced skills.


Ch. 6 What's the Secret to Getting Students to Think Like Real Scientists, Mathematicians, and Historians?
CP: "Cognition early in the training is fundamentally different from cognition late in training."
Is: 1. Students are ready to comprehend but not to create knowledge; 2. Activities that are appropriate for experts may at times be appropriate for students, but not because they will do much for students cognitively; 3. Don't expect notices to learn by doing what experts do.


Ch. 7 How Should I Adjust My Teaching for Different Types of Learners?
CP: "Children are more alike than different in terms of how they think and learn."
Is.: 1. Think in terms of content, not in terms of students; 2. Change promotes attention; 3. There is value in every child, even if he or she is not "smart in some way"; 4. Don't worry - and save your money.


Ch. 8 How Can I Help Slow Learners?
CP: "Children do differ in intelligence, but intelligence can be changed through sustained hard work."
Is: 1. Praise effort, not ability; 2. Tell them that hard work pays off; 3. Treat failure as a natural part of learning; 4. Don't take study skills for granted; 5. Catching up is the long-term goal; 6. Show students that you have confidence in them.


Ch. 9 What About My Mind?
CP: "Teaching, like any complex cognitive skill, must be practiced to be improved."
A method for getting and giving feedback.
Step 1. Identify another teacher (or two) with whom you would like to work
Step 2. Tape yourself and watch the tapes alone.
Step 3. With your partner, watch tapes of other teachers.
Step 4. With your partner, watch and comment on each other's tapes.
Step 5. Bring it back to the classroom and follow up.
Smaller steps: 1. Keep a teaching diary; 2. Start discussion group with fellow teachers; 3. Observe.


The bibliography of each chapter is useful because it includes less technical and more technical references.


Come back and read the above again in September. Enjoy the summer.

failure and success

A retired NBA basketball player once confessed:


"I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career.
I've lost almost 300 games. 
26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed."


It sounds like a daunting confession. He concluded:


"I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."



Who is he?



Michael Jordan, who won 6 NBA Champions, 5 NBA Most Valuable Palyer (MVP), and many more awards and records. The greatest NBA legend of all time.

Historians old and new

I am not a historian of medical history, let alone on eighteenth-century men-midwives in England. A recent heated debate between a professional (Helen King) and an amateur (Don Shelton) in this field (see references), however, has drawn my serious attention to the ideas history (good or bad), the definition of historians (trained, amateur, or 'new'), and the benefits of the internet (good or bad?).


Qualifications define profession, provide credentials, create authority, and at the same time exclude amateurs. I am a historian because I was trained to be so in a History department while I am not a literary critic because I have never received relevant training in university. History is about evidence and analysis. Evidence proves and/or rejects, more often, and/or sheds light on new analysis. Historians having access to rare documents, for example, and bringing us new understanding about the past are great historians. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries produced many great historians of this kind when historians in general had had limited accessibility to rare and more often not quite rare documents.


Rareness is sometimes not about rareness in its strictest sense but more about accessibility. Geographical barrier, limited library funding, or even political instability could easily lead historians into dismay at the lack of access to the most common documents or latest research in their related fields let alone really rare documents only held in the British Library or the Library of Congress.


Thanks to the internet, Google Books, Internet Archive and other free online academic resources, in Shelton's words to adopt Thomas Friedman's invention, "levelled the playing field". Millions of rare books have been made freely available in the internet.  "Digital resources," Shelton says, "allow any historian to conduct original research by remotely accessing source material which previously required physical access."  An eighteenth-century book printed in London and previously only available in a few university libraries in the world, for example, can now be read, full-text searched, and downloaded by a high school history student in Hong Kong.


Suffice to say, historical analysis is more than evidence. A document tells us nothing until a storyteller joins in to speak it out. Our society needs more storytellers than ever before. Google has done the most part of it. Let us, old and new historians, do the job professionally. 


---   ---   ---   


References:
Helen King's "History without Historians? Medical History and the Internet," Social History of Medicine, Vol. 24, No. 2, 2011, pp. 212-221.
Don Shelton's "The Internet and 'New' Historians," Social History of Medicine, Vol. 25, No. 1, 2012, pp. 222-231.
Helen King's "Response to Shelton," Social History of Medicine, Vol. 25, No. 1, 2012, pp. 232-238.

Recent readings XXIV

Anthony Webster's "The Development of British Commercial and Political Networks in the Straits Settlements 1800 to 1868: The Rise of a Colonial and Regional Economic Identity?" Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 45, No. 4 (2011), pp. 899-929.

Terence Chong's "Manufacturing Authenticity: The Cultural Production of National Identities in Singapore,"  Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 45, No. 4 (2011), pp. 877-897.

Ray Yep, "'Cultural Revolution in Hong Kong': Emergency Powers, Administration of Justice and the Turbulent Year of 1967," Modern Asian Studies, 2011, 26 pps.

Kristin Burnett, "Race, Disease, and Public Violence: Smallpox and the (Un)Making of Calgary's Chinatown, 1892," Social History of Medicine Advance Access, September 30, 2011, 18pp. "Municipal authorities used racialised ideas about health and cleanliness to discursively create sites of meaning, delineating strict spatial boundaries between the Chinese and non-Chinese community." Soc Hist Med 2012 25: 362-379

Representing foreign in Modern China

Inspired by a open invitation for a volume on the role of Paris in American Literature but instead of following the track about the American authors' literary ventures in Paris, I am thinking of Britain/America/France/Japan in modern Chinese Literature to consider the ways in which these countries and its peoples were depicted, represented and shaped by Chinese authors.