Miracle on Grass

Will history repeat itself?

This is the million-dollar question that has gripped soccer aficionados in America as the 2010 World Cup Soccer kicks off.

On June 12, the United States will face England in Rustenberg, South Africa. Sixty years earlier, in June 1950, the underdog U.S. team beat heavily-favored England 1-0 in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, in what is still considered the greatest upset in World Cup history. (For details, see Sports Illustrated, March 8, 2010, The New Yorker, June 7, 2010).

England was led by Stanley Matthews, regarded as the best player in the world at the time. Winning the World Cup seemed to be the English team’s birthright and the match with the Yanks, as the U.S. team was called, would be no more than a demonstration of English superiority.

So it appeared to be. The American goalkeeper, an Italian-American from St. Louis named Frank Borghi, made one desperate save after another as England attacked. English strikers hit the crossbar and the posts several times, but nothing went in.

Then, thirty-seven minutes into the game, Walter Bahr of the U.S. sent a shot toward the far post from about 25 yards on the right side. English goalkeeper Bert Williams moved to his right, anticipating a routine save. But Joe Gaetjens, a Haitian émigré who worked as a dishwasher in New York City and who was a last-minute addition to the team, laid himself out in a dive around the penalty spot through a cluster of defenders. The ball grazed his head and went past Williams into the back of the net.

When the goal stood after 53 more unbelievable minutes, the 15,000+ Brazilians at the Independencia Stadium erupted in wild celebrations, less because of the Yank’s victory and more because Brazil’s nemesis had been defeated.(Uruguay ended up winning the Cup, shocking Brazil 2-1 in the final.)

The “Miracle on Grass” did nothing, however, to popularize soccer in the U.S. For the next forty years, the Americans did not make an appearance in World Cup and didn’t win another World Cup match until 1994 when it defeated Colombia 2-1.

Sixty years later, England would like to erase the ignominy of its 1950 defeat. Led by Frank Lampard, Steven Gerrard, John Terry and its mercurial striker Wayne Rooney, the English team knows that its chances of winning the Cup against Brazil, Argentina, Italy or Spain is slim but that to defeat the Yanks would still be a national redemption.

The U.S., of course, has plans of its own. With world-class players like midfielder Landon Donovan and goalkeeper Tim Howard, the team would like to prove that it can face any team in the world with confidence and a fierce desire to win.

On paper, however, the Americans are the lesser team against England. But just as Frank Borghi did 60 years ago, they are counting on the superb Howard (who suffers from Tourette’s Syndrome, a disorder of the nervous system) to thwart the English attack and capitalize on counterattacks led by Donovan to pull off another monumental upset. For the U.S., a draw would be a victory. For England, nothing but a decisive victory will be enough.

The world will, of course, be riveted by the anticipated wizardry of Lionel Messi of Argentina (although how he will fare under the unpredictable coaching of soccer legend Diego Maradona is anybody’s guess), the playmaking flair of Brazil’s Kaka or the explosiveness of Ivory Coast’s Didier Drogba (who may unfortunately miss the World Cup because of a dislocated elbow).

But the first match of the beautiful game – U.S. against England - will be compelling in its own right, given the burden of sixty years of history. Both teams are aware of its significance, and while Bill Jeffrey, America’s coach in 1950, described his team before the match as “sheep ready to be slaughtered,” no such inferiority complex infects the current U.S. team. No question about it: 2010 World Cup Soccer should get off to an explosive start in more ways than one.

There is a tragic postscript to the 1950 Yanks. Joe Gaetjens, hero of the American team, returned to Haiti in 1953 and became a soccer coach for kids. He kept away from politics but politics found him. In 1964, the dreaded Tontons Macoute militia of Dictator Francois (Papa Doc) Duvalier picked up Gaetjens on bogus charges of rebellion and took him to a place from which he never returned.

For eight years, the world knew nothing of what happened to the lone goal scorer against England. Then, under pressure from Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the Haitian government finally confirmed in early 1972 that Joe Gaetjens had indeed died at the hands of Tontons Macoute.

Farmers' Markets and Locavores

The Sunday Farmers' Market at Evergreen Village Square near the Evergreen Valley College in San Jose has become a magnet for the local community. More and more, Americans are saying no to processed and fast foods. You can get a sense of it in the bustling bazaars that farmers' markets have become, now over five thousand, across the nation. Organic, locally-grown food is healthy, delicious and sustainable. Prices are no higher than in the large grocery store chains, and often lower. But it is the fact that you feel you have a direct link to the farmers who produce your food that makes the difference. You know them and so you know your food, forging a trust that no grocery chain can replicate.

On this particular Sunday, on the eve of Summer, our farmers' market is overflowing with produce and people. There are fresh mustard greens, sweet peas, fava beans, carrots, tomatoes, potatoes, artichokes, red and white onions, radishes, cucumbers, lettuce, celery, beets, carrots, lettuce, broccoli, chard, squash, leeks, basil, garlic, cilantro, parsley, scallions, cauliflowers, spinach, yams, bok choys, and pumpkins. For fruits, there are cherries, blueberries, oranges, nectarines, apricots, peaches and strawberries. Producers are offering generous helpings of their fruits to persuade buyers to buy. A ten-pound bag of oranges cost $5 dollars, a basket of ripe, fat blueberries $4. Products are flying off the, well, tables. There are also jalapeno, hot mango and ginger chutnies, vegetable-stuffed bread, pita bread, and spicy black-bean hummus.

Women in colorful saris and kimonos abound. Smiling fathers in straw hats adroitly maneuver their babies in strollers around crowds. Children scoot around the fountain at the center of the market, laughing hysterically as they splash water on each other. A musician is coaxing mournful sounds from his violin while a guitarist is strumming and singing his heart out next to a table of orchids. Friends and families are animated. Strangers are no longer strangers as they freely discuss the benefits of this and that green. "Each bunch for just a dollar! What a bargain!"

A sociologist has estimated that people have ten times as many conversations in farmers' markets as they do in the supermarket. It must be more than that, if this market is any indication. No one is in a hurry. There is time to chat, pause, smile, and appreciate food grown locally with love and care.

Farmers' markets are helping to bring the family meal back. Children are learning where the food that they eat come from, which is more than enough reason why you should visit your local farmers' market with your family every week if you can.

Martin Gardner, Renaissance Man

Martin Gardner, who passed away today (1914-2010), was a renaissance man, a rarity in our times of specialization. His scientific American column that ran for a quarter of a century introduced the beauty of mathematics, logic and science, particularly physics, to ordinary Americans and others around the world. He accomplished this through puzzles, games, palindromes and teasers. He sometimes used words with deliberate double meaning that reminded one of Vladimir Nabokov. He hated pseudo-science with a passion that reminded one of Richard Feynman.

For about 14 years, I edited a magazine for a non-profit organization. I introduced a feature in it called "Two Puzzles" that had nothing to do with the magazine's objectives. I lifted these puzzles shamelessly from Gardner's books such as "The Unexpected Hanging" and "Perplexing Puzzles and Tantalizing Teasers." Readers took the "Two Puzzles" more seriously than the main articles and sent me their solutions with glee, proving that intellectual fun was more compelling than earnest discourse on this and that.

We are unlikely to see the likes of Martin Gardner again. The culture and the narrowness of interest in disciplines exclude this possibility. But his more than 50 books will continue to delight generations with their mix of seriousness and playfulness, and with their unique brand of humor and sense of wonder.

Harvesting Solar Energy

The Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster - 200,000 gallons a day - that currently threatens America’s coastline from Louisiana to Florida and the livelihood of millions is a wake-up call for developing clean and renewable energy sources. The havoc the spill is wreaking on the environment will pale in comparison to the havoc that continued dependence on fossil fuel can wreak on the nation’s economy and security.

Of all the renewable energy sources, solar energy is drawing the most attention for its potential to wean America from its addiction to oil. Solar technologies use the sun's energy to provide heat, light, hot water, electricity, and even cooling, for homes, businesses, and industry. But while their environmental impact is minimal, their cost is the great drawback.

Although sunlight is abundant and free, solar cells and the equipment needed to convert their direct-current output to alternating current (panels, inverter, charge controller, storage batteries) is expensive. Electricity generated by solar cells currently stands at about $4 per watt for full installation, more than twice as expensive as electricity from fossil fuels. Also, solar cells can operate only during daylight hours. In contrast, a coal or natural gas plant can run around the clock, which means the cost for building the plant can be spread over many more hours of use. Only when the solar cost comes down to about $1 per watt will large-scale adoption become a reality. Unfortunately that can take anywhere from 10-15 years, unless the urgency is translated into national policy.

America’s technology companies spend between 5-15% of revenue on research and development while energy companies spend only one-quarter of 1 percent on renewable energy R&D. To put the figures in global perspective, the U.S. spends a little more than $18 billion on research and investment in clean energy while China spends more than $34 billion.

The result? In 1999, China made 1 percent of the world’s solar panels; by 2008 it was the world’s leading producer, with a 32 percent market share, and its solar-panel exports were valued at $15 billion.

Still, nothing can justify the fact that solar energy currently provides less than 1% of U.S. energy needs. Oil accounts for a whopping 37.1% while all renewables combined – hydroelectric, biomass, solar and wind – contribute a mere 4% The rest comes from coal, natural gas and nuclear.

President Obama is determined to increase the renewable percentage through new and more efficient solar technologies. By 2012, clean energy must contribute 8% of the nation’s energy needs. So far, the administration is on target.

Particularly in California, the trend is clear. Residential solar installation was 78 megawatts in 2008 but the Golden State installed 220 megawatts of solar electric systems in 2009, followed by New Jersey with 57 and Florida with 36. (One megawatt of electricity can power 750 to 1,000 homes.) California has also created a Renewable Portfolio Standard, or RPS, that requires 20 percent of its power to be obtained from renewable sources like solar and wind by 2010 and 33 percent by 2020.

China, far more serious on clean energy than the U.S., is on a furious global expansion. A Chinese company called SunTech, the world's largest producer of photovoltaic (PV) cells, has recently opened a subsidiary in San Francisco, and will open a manufacturing plant in Arizona this summer. In 2009, the company sold 65 megawatts in the U.S. The target for 2010 is 200 megawatts.

China’s resolve to become the global leader in clean energy is driven not by its concern for the environment but by its urgent need to create jobs and sustain the rapid rise in the living standard of its people. No business offers more potential to meet these needs than the clean energy business. China will not stop burning coal for the foreseeable future, neither will it stop importing millions of barrels of oil for its power-hungry industries. But the country’s leaders are farsighted enough to know that outspending every other nation in the clean energy sector is critical to its economic ascendancy.

The U.S. is aware of the Chinese priority but is not as focused as its rival on clean energy, mostly because of partisan politics. In spite of the offshore rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, many Americans still sway to the mantra of “Drill, Baby, Drill.”

But change is coming. Americans are switching careers to become renewable energy entrepreneurs. In San Jose, California, for example, an institute called Workforce offers solar training to people eager to get into the clean energy business. Along with classes on solar engineering fundamentals, they get hands-on training on solar system installations. Here’s an example of a photovoltaic system sizing calculation that is part of California’s solar installation certification test: Suppose the annual electric usage of a household is 9,125 kWh (Kilowatt-hour). If 50% of power is to be generated from a PV system with 70% efficiency, and if there are 5.5 sun-hours per day, and if the rating of a PV module is 150 watt, how many PV modules will be needed?

As a consultant to Workforce, I have seen firsthand how the excellent solar curriculum and hands-on training have enabled some students to launch their own solar service businesses while others were snapped up by local solar companies.

The Nobel Peace-laureate and conservation icon Al Gore wrote that the time will soon come for "21st-century technologies that use fuel that is free forever: the sun, the wind and the natural heat of the earth."

No question about it: we must transform the solar challenge into clean energy opportunities for all.

Balance in a Wired World

For two days this week, Internet service to my home was disrupted. A rogue cable somewhere baffled technicians and repairmen for 48 hours until they were able to locate and fix it. But what this unplugged state from the wired world revealed to me about myself is a lesson I am determined to heed for the rest of my life.

It wasn't as if I wasn't on the Web during these two days. Sitting in front of a computer at work, there's always time for checking email from friends, catching up with news, posting a subversive thought or two on Twitter.

It's when I returned home that I realized with a shock that I had become used to repeating what I did at work: Head straight for the laptop, start checking email, catch up with the news, post more stuff on Twitter.

The first night of disconnection made me restless, edgy. My wife asked me to calm down but I couldn't. I was angry at my ISP and began mentally composing the tough words I would use against them. I would post my thoughts on Yelp and other sites. I would let the world know to what darkness my ISP had thrown me into.

It was only when I was feeling so utterly lost that I realized I had a become a prisoner of my deadening habit. The truth was, there was nothing important waiting for me on the Web. Nothing.

I stepped out of the house. A full moon had risen over the brooding hills, surrounded by diaphanous clouds. It had rained in the day and the evening was cool. A night bird called from the dark interior of a tree. Deep silence. Only the leaves stirred in the small wind.

How could I have become so mechanical, so data-driven, when the real world lay about me, richer and more magnificent in every way? Without even being aware of it, I had traded the real for the artificial.

My wife and I took a walk around the block, our path lit by magical moonlight. It was like returning to earth after being away in a cold and distant planet.

Wordsworth wrote:

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune ...

So this is the promise I have made to myself. No more Web after work. Family, book, laughter, nature, food, music, conversation. Real people and real stuff for the replenishment of the real soul.

Secrets

"How can you live a life full of nothing?"

From this existential question flows a film of lust, loyalty, revenge, justice, passion, redemption and love, so intricately woven that you wonder if a movie like this will ever come your way again. I found myself in its grip from beginning to end, and then some. The Argentine thriller won the Oscar this year for the best foreign movie, and having seen it on the first day of its release in San Jose, I now know it was the most deserving Oscar of them all. In "The Secret in Their Eyes," director and co-screenwriter Juan Jose Campanella has created a movie of layers upon subtle layers that cinephiles can savor again and again.

A retired prosecutor named Benjamin Esposito (Ricardo Darin) is haunted by a crime committed a decade ago in the Buenos Aires of the '70s. A housewife was brutally raped and killed. The criminal was never caught and it ended Esposito's career. By writing about the crime, the prosecutor wants to take a final shot at bringing the killer to justice. He interviews the bereaving husband Ricardo (Pablo Rago) and is struck by the "secret" lurking in the eyes of a man caught in a family snapshot that includes the slain wife Liliana Coloto.

Esposito is assisted by his sidekick, a wise-cracking drunk whose insight into human nature (we may change with time but the one constant in our life is our passion) begins a chain of events that fuses menace and mystery with logic and imagination. Argentinians live and breathe soccer. The cinematography and the sheer audacity of the soccer scenes seamlessly integrated into the narrative is breathtaking. The dark days of Argentinian military regimes and their fascistic practices are suggested with an economy of words and scenes that make them all the more chilling.

Our Hamlet-like prosecutor is burdened in his investigation by his unrequited love for the current prosecutor and judge, Ms. Villamil (Irene Hastings). Their unspoken feelings for each other only add to the tension. And just when we think that the murder-mystery has been resolved comes the shattering climax, worthy of the best of Le Carre. There is redemption as well, when "I fear" turns into "I love you."

What is unfathomable is why the movie has been subjected to "limited release." In San Jose, this means that it is playing in only one small theatre. Then I realized why.

Hollywood honchos have figured out that if Americans see movies of the calibre of "The Secret in Their Eyes" in mainstream theatres, they will reject the mindless, asinine fare that the studios routinely inflict on them. Produced in Argentina, "Secret" dialogues are obviously in Spanish but the English subtitle helped me enjoy the movie as much as a Spanish-speaking person would. Besides, San Jose has a large Hispanic population, so tickets would have sold briskly even if it opened in multiple theatres.

The Hollywood-Industrial complex has to keep movies like "Secret" away from popular cinema complexes and mainstream movie-goers. Otherwise, they know that their cookie-cutter fares will take a huge hit. The dumbing down of America continues even with movies.

There is one way you can beat this vicious cycle. Go see "The Secret in Their Eyes" and spread the word through Facebook, Twitter and other social media. We owe at least this much to this brilliant film and what it can teach us about the art of making and enjoying movies. The message may even reach Hollywood.

Earth Day Call to Action

How to sustain the spirit of Earth Day throughout the year? This is the concern of students at a local College in San Jose, California.

Alvarado feels that Earth Day should be advertised more so people can get educated on what it is about and what kind of things can be done to help. He feels that everyday should be Earth Day. He plans to educate the people around him such as his mother, girlfriend and others about what they can do to help. He is hopeful that some of the actions we take on Earth Day will become everyday habits.

Nancy has learned from her sisters to go green everyday, not just on April 22. Her older sister is an environmentalist and her younger sister is a marine biologist. She avoids using plastic bags and unplugs home appliances like the microwave when not in use. "I have learned that little things make a big difference, so I will instill this idea in my little daughter."

Hameed has planned a family gathering to emphasize the importance of conservation in all aspect of his and his family’s lives. In the long run, he feels that children will educate their parents on how to preserve the earth’s environment.

Yvette is part of the Earth Day committee promoting awareness at O'Connor Hospital where she works. She and her group emphasize recycling and going green every day. She will be giving away reusable shopping bags and other Earth Day tokens. She has made a poster of all the things that the departments are doing, for example, saving two cases of paper for board meetings by going digital. Instead of printing graphs for meetings, she makes PowerPoint presentations. She and her colleagues use scratch paper for notes, always print double-sided and makes sure that there are recycle bins on every floor.

For Garcia, Earth Day is a reminder of how contaminated the earth has become because of all the chemicals and the pesticides and man-made pollutions. “Too many people never bother to recycle. They can begin by taking shorter showers. There are many ways to help this beautiful planet. I recycle all the time. I collect cans, bottles and paper and give them to my mom so she can sell them.”

On Earth Day, Rafael plans to do three things. First, he will email all his friends to remind them to recycle every opportunity they get. Second, he plans to buy a bicycle so that he can reduce his carbon footprint by using his car as little as possible. Third, he will pledge some money to a conservation group to help in their efforts “to save our beautiful planet.”

Sindi helps the environment by carpooling five days a week with two other people from work. This helps with gas and parking fees. She and her friends have been doing this for almost four years now and it has worked out great for all of them.

Jessica likes to think Green everyday. She knows that we are ruining our planet but that it is also up to us to save it. She talks to her son about the environment and the little things he can also do to help. She uses cloth bags, reusable drink bottles and bigger home appliances after 7 P.M. But she feels that she can do more as a mother. With her son, she picks a day to use only the bike. That way they both get exercise and get some quality time together. "We also pick a night when we don't use electricity but only candles. My son loves this because he gets to light the candles."

Josephina is happy that there is a day called Earth Day dedicated to celebrating our planet. “I love to learn new ways to become more earth-friendly and learn more about the issues that can be harmful to the planet and can be particularly hazardous to me or my family, including my future family,” she says. “Currently I have no children but it is nice to know that we are taking steps to help them grow up in a clean environment.” Josephina has started to recycle more. “I used to recycle only cans; now I recycle glass, paper and everything else worth recycling. I have also recently bought a bike and have made the commitment to ride it to school at least once a week, weather permitting. I also try to buy food from local farms and farmers’ markets. I do other little things like turning off lights when not in use and not waste water by leaving it running unnecessarily.”

A Reminder to Practice Humility

When Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D., it buried the city of Pompeii under ash and pumice. The Roman Empire was at its height then but against Nature’s fury, it was defenseless.

Time and again we are reminded of our fragility in this connected world when Nature breaks out of her bounds (as we imagine them to be) and clarifies who is really in charge. A shift in the plates here, a buildup of pressure inside the earth there, and suddenly business as usual comes to a halt. All our technology and ingenuity and scientific advances become irrelevant. We are mere spectators gazing at something terrifying and indescribable. Sure, we can pick up the pieces after the fact to study and investigate and add to our knowledge but then suddenly there’s another cataclysm of one sort or another and we are back to where we began.

The volcano in southern Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull glacier sends ash and silicate into the air. Born of ice and fire, the plume travels across land and ocean and soon the airspace over most of Europe is closed. People enjoying their spring vacations are stranded all over the world. Business deals are delayed. Artists are unable to perform. Crucial meetings are postponed. Home seems farther than it has ever seemed before. Even President Obama has to cancel his trip to attend the Polish president Lech Kaczynski’s funeral. Volcanic ash does not distinguish between an ordinary plane and Air Force One.

Natural calamities, perhaps more than ecology, teach us in unforgettable ways that we live in an interconnected world.

What we need to nurture in a technology-driven world is a sense of humility. If we put all of humankind’s achievements on one side and nature’s occasional yawn on the other, guess which side will tilt over? Yet we keep acting like masters of the universe, doing as we please, waging war, threatening, killing, pumping carbon into the air, plundering and raping the earth as if there will be no consequence.

Iceland’s Halldor Laxness, who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1955 for his epic “Independent People” and other works, wrote of the tragedy that befalls man when he indulges in hubris. Fly too close to the sun and your wings will melt. We forget this but then in the middle of our party, an earthquake strikes, or a cyclone or a tsunami, and we realize anew how small a corner we occupy in the vast canvas of our existence.

Apple, Mindshare and Passion

It has become almost a cliche to say that Apple has a lock on mindshare unparalleled among technology companies. It is still 48 hours away for customers to buy iPads but the excitement and anticipation is reminiscent of the Harry Potter books. Can any other company equal this?

The iPad may not solve global warming and world hunger but you will be hard-pressed to convince the aficionados. Besides games and entertainment, the iPad is expected to make the health care process smoother and easier and, consequently, less expensive. Looking up patient records and sending data seamlessly to physicians for remote diagnosis are just two of the potential applications that can make the iPad an indispensable tool in hospitals and homes. Coming in the wake of Obama's revolutionary health care reform, the iPad is already poised to make history.

But there is a story behind the iPad story. And that story belongs to Steve Jobs. Nowhere will you find this story more eloquently expressed than in Jobs' commencement address at Stanford University in 2005.

"... it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me," said Jobs. " The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life ... Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did."

That is the story in a nutshell. Jobs loved what he did and that's why no setback could set him back. The great physicist Hans Bethe expressed the same sentiment: "Never work on a problem for which you do not have an unfair advantage." Where does the unfair advantage come from? From love for what you do.

Millions of Americans are now without jobs. The long shadow of recessions is unlikely to disappear soon. Yet if you are passionate about something - and you have to have something to be passionate about - nurture it and sooner or later the sun will shine through. As Jobs said, "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life ... have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

So, no matter how useful the iPad may turn out to be, it will always be secondary to the story of the man who loves what he does and never loses faith in himself.

Firing Bad Teachers and Promoting Good Ones

I teach a statistics class as an adjunct faculty at a college in California. The other day, a student came up to me, almost in tears. He was having a terrible time in his economics class. He wants to major in business. Economics and statistics are two core requirements that he must fulfill before transferring to a university.

“I am getting nothing out of my economics class,” he lamented. “The teacher never explains anything. He just scribbles furiously on the board. The other day he drew many graphs and many equations on demand and supply theory. When a student asked him to explain the theory in simpler terms, he humiliated him in front of the whole class. None of us are learning any economics. Do you have any advice for me?”

“Is he full-time?”

“Yes, and tenured.”

Well, that probably explains it. All I could tell him was to team up with a few like-minded students and see if learning from each other helps. I am a big believer in peer-to-peer learning. I have encouraged this among my own students. When a student has difficulty, for instance, looking up the binomial probability distribution table, I ask another student who has mastered the task to help him. It works beautifully.

But the larger issue is what to do with the rogue teachers who are blind to the needs of their students and fear no consequences. They are untouchable. The underlying “principle” is that the Teachers’ Union will defend them against any threat to their job security. Everyone knows it. The dean of the department knows it. The rogue teacher’s peers know it. Yet nothing happens and students continue to suffer year after year, at a terrible cost to them and to society.

Another student who took an elementary algebra class from me had to sign up for intermediate algebra in the summer from another teacher. She told me about the hell she had to endure from this tenured professor.

Each chapter in the algebra text has about 7-8 sections. I had barely enough time to cover a single section in an hour. This teacher (summer classes are usually 3hours long in this college) bulldozed his way through almost two full chapters per class. That’s about 14-16 sections in one sitting!

“I lost weight,” the student told me. “I was so stressed and exhausted that I became a machine. That’s how I survived. I learned nothing. He never entertained any question. Our homework and tests were graded by the publisher’s online setup. He never checked our homework or tests or quizzes himself. He always seemed angry and gave the impression that we were wasting his time. I never had such a miserable experience in my life.”

A recent cover story in Newsweek (March 15, 2010) boldly claimed that the key to saving American education was startlingly simple: “We must fire bad teachers.” Almost all recent data and educational reports suggest that teacher quality is the most important factor in the success of our education system. A talented teacher can unlock the potential of a student while a bad teacher can stifle it and even doom the student’s future. Parents will happily go along with a class of 40 students taught by a great teacher than a class of 10 taught by a bad one. The influence of an inspiring and demanding teacher can last a lifetime. Unfortunately, so can the influence of a mediocre and unimaginative one.

Charter schools like KIPP and Teach for America use rigorous methods for selecting their teachers and subject them to frequent evaluations. The success of teachers in these schools is entwined with the success of their students. If students do not show improvement, the failing teachers are replaced. But charter schools represent only 3% of America’s public school students. It is not clear that charter schools can scale well.

At the community college level, firing bad teachers often lead to legal battles that can drag on for years. It can also lead to trouble for students who dare to report. Yet I have found in private conversations that many teachers themselves strongly support firing the incompetent ones among them. They also seem to know who they are. These rogue teachers tarnish the image of the teaching profession and bring bad name to entire departments. It is the case of one rotten apple spoiling the whole barrel.

What compounds the problem is that when a budget crisis forces layoffs, and California is now going through its severest budget crisis in decades, it is often the young teachers who are laid off first. Yet they are the ones who are often best able to connect with students because of their facility with technology and current issues and their passion for teaching. In reality, though, the longer a teacher has worked in the school system, the more secure he is, no matter how atrocious he may be as a teacher. This quality-blind law and last-in, first-out model has been a disaster for our schools. Seniority can never be the basis for who gets to shape the minds of our students.

Teachers themselves have suggested three criteria to judge their own effectiveness: classroom management skills, attendance and a rigorous, objective annual performance evaluation rating. The three add up to one final criterion: the performance of students.

The sooner this type of quality-based system is put into practice, the better off we will be as a nation. While such practices are the norm in schools such as KIPP and Teach for America, public schools and colleges are still mired in politics and endless debates about repealing quality-blind laws. But the status quo cannot continue because the future of our nation is at stake.

About my statistics student, I have decided that I will personally take him to my dean and together, we will make a formal protest against the economics professor. If necessary, I will add other students who will be willing to stick their necks out. It is likely that I will be relieved of my teaching duties for being a “troublemaker.” That’s okay. The satisfaction that my students have already given me over the years with their evaluations will last me a lifetime. But perhaps this protest will have a ripple effect and at least a few of the teachers who are no longer passionate about their craft will retire voluntarily, to make room for those with a gift for teaching. If that happens, there is nothing I can think of that will bring me more happiness.

D-Day for Health Care Reform in America

The D-Day (as in “Defining-Day”) for health care reform in America arrives tomorrow, Sunday, March 21, 2010. Barack Obama has staked his young presidency on this bill. He will not become a lame-duck president if the bill fails to pass but there is no doubt that his image and effectiveness, at least in the short-term, will take a major hit.

Even among his die-hard supporters are those who feel that the president’s “obsession” with health care has diverted attention from the foremost problem facing America today: loss and lack of jobs. When Americans worry about having a roof over their heads or putting food on the table, seeing a physician becomes a luxury that can temporarily be dispensed with.

Yet there is also no denying that universal health care coverage is a right, not a privilege. Sure, the cost to the economy will be in hundreds of billions of dollars but can we, as a civilized and humane society, allow money and politics to trump what is fundamentally an ethical and moral issue? What kind of society will ours be if insurance companies continue to deny or revoke with impunity (the case of Jerome Mitchell, a 17-year old college freshman from rural South Carolina, is one of thousands of such cases) the coverage of Americans when they are afflicted with life-threatening conditions?

The idea underlying insurance companies is: Grab as much premium as possible from the healthy but exclude those who are sick. This macabre 'survival of the fittest' business model is unacceptable in any civilized society.

Obama’s administration has to bear responsibility for the cliffhanger that the health care bill has become. We Americans abhor serpentine language. We believe that if anything is worth fighting or dying for, we should be able to understand it without having to master the language of lawyers. Yet there has been no coherent explanation by the president or the democrats about why and how the heath care bill makes sense economically, socially and politically. Simply evoking the moral principle has played into the hands of Republicans. Their shrill warning that American capitalism, as we have known it for two hundred years, will die if the health care bill were to pass, has resonated with many fence-sitters simply because Democrats have not matched them in the “easy-to-understand” department. This is particularly ironic given the president’s reputation as a wordsmith and his facility in distilling an issue to its essence in words that can capture the imagination of Americans, as we saw repeatedly during his presidential campaign.

The American most passionate about health care reform was the “Liberal Lion of the Senate,” the late Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts. That his seat is now occupied by a Republican who is against health care reform shows how far the fortune of the Democrats has fallen in a single year.

Yet I believe that tomorrow House Democratic leaders will find 216 votes to make the health care bill the law of the land. Like most Americans, I am a prisoner of hope (especially today, the first day of spring!) and I cannot accept the fact that 216 of our representatives will miss out on this historic milestone that will affirm the right of every American access to health care. It is almost as historic a milestone as the election of an African-American to the highest office in the land, and there will be enough, just enough, votes to see the bill through.

Nicholas Kristof: Citizen of the World

No one has done more to motivate Americans to engage with people from other countries and cultures in the last two decades than Nicholas Kristof. The New York Times columnist is unique among his peers in inspiring us to look beyond America’s border and our own interests to seek justice, promote peace, help entrepreneurs, empower women, save children and build schools to transform not only ourselves but our foreign policy as well.

Kristof won a Pulitzer Prize in 2006 for his reporting on the genocide in Darfur. His graphic description of how the armed Janjaweed militia, backed by the government of Sudan’s president Omar al-Bashir, were ‘killing, burning villages and farms, terrorizing people, confiscating property from members of African tribes and forcing them from Darfur,' compelled us to act. Thanks in part to his reporting, American schoolchildren raised money for building schools in Darfur and wrote impassioned letters to their congressmen and senators to stop the genocide. It’s from a Kristof column (Dec. 17, 2009) that many of us learned about Valentino Deng, one of Sudan’s “lost boys,” who built a school in his hometown of Marial Bai (www.valentinoachakdeng.org), after suffering unimaginable horrors in his young life.

Kristof has often written about women because of his conviction that unless they have free and easy access to education and entrepreneurship, particularly in developing countries, there will be neither peace nor progress in the world. (In his latest book, “Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide,” co-written with his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, Kristof expands on his argument that developing countries can best fight poverty and promote democracy by helping women achieve personal and financial independence.)

“Religions derive their power and popularity in part from the ethical compass they offer,” he wrote in a column. “So why do so many faiths help perpetuate something that most of us regard as profoundly unethical: the oppression of women? It is not that warlords in Congo cite Scripture to justify their mass rapes. It’s not that brides are burned in India as part of a Hindu ritual. And there’s no verse in the Quran that instructs Afghan thugs to throw acid in the faces of girls who dare to go to school.” Kristof concludes that “any person’s human rights should be sacred, and not depend on something as earthly as their genitals.” His story on Mukhtaran Bibi, a Pakistani woman who was gang-raped in her village but who set an example by testifying against her attackers, moved many readers to raise more than $133,000 for her. With the money, Mukhtaran built a school for girls in her tribal village. Her memoir, "In the Name of Honor," became an international best-seller. Although her troubles are far from over, she now has a global audience that the Pakistani government will have to contend with if anything bad happens to her.

His column on “Bead for Life” (http://www.beadforlife.org/) was another inspiring story about the vision and generosity of ordinary Americans. Torkin Wakefield and Devin Hibbard, a mother-daughter team from Colorado, set up the “Bead for Life” organization after stumbling upon a Ugandan woman in the slums of Kampala making beautiful jewelry from garbage. One thing led to another and now the nonprofit recruits hard-working entrepreneurial women from Uganda earning $1 a day or less who get training in “how to cut strips of scrap paper, roll them tightly, glue them and seal them and, presto, a beautiful bead!” The beads are marketed mostly in America through Tupperware-like parties. In 2009 alone, there were 3,000 parties attended by about 100,000 Americans. Annual jewelry sale runs at $4 million. How can you not become curious about Ugandan beaders whose products you are wearing?

I wonder how many Americans were inspired to act by Kristof’s column on the Salwen family of Atlanta but I suspect that there were many. The family discovered “the power of half” by cutting down on everything they owned or consumed (house, car, everything) and channeling the savings (about $800,000) through the Hunger Project (http://www.thp.org/) to sponsor health, micro-financing, food and other programs for about 40 villages in, get this, Ghana.

Since 2007, Kristof has been sponsoring a “win-a-trip” contest for American university students. The winner goes on a reporting trip with him to Africa to cover issues of global poverty and come up with solutions. The number of participating students has been increasing dramatically each year. It goes to show how passionate many young Americans are to do something with their lives that will make a difference in the lives of those for whom everyday is an existential battle.

The columns cited here offer only a glimpse into the global humanitarian work that Nicholas Kristof promotes through his powerful and persuasive pen. Americans ask him for suggestions as to which charities around the world they should contribute to, without worrying about tax breaks. He has written about Greg Mortenson, the Montana native who started from scratch but built hundreds of schools in the remotest areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan. He has written unflinchingly about male domination in Muslim societies and its terrible social, economic and political costs. At the same time, he has also written about how easily and unjustly many Americans stereotype Muslims and attack the religion of Islam. He has written heartbreaking stories about children forced into prostitution and the flesh trade. His writings on the Palestinian-Israeli issue, in its historical context and complexities, have probably been fairer than the writings of any other American journalist.

Not all of Kristof’s columns are noteworthy. He has missed his mark on occasions. Some of his pieces are predictable. But what distinguishes him from his peers is his desire to make the world a better place. He does this not by wearing rose-colored glasses but by describing what he sees with clear and direct prose and offering solutions that manage to be both practical and altruistic. It is a tribute to his humanity – and his status as a global citizen - that more Americans ask him, rather than any other journalists, that most telling of questions: “What can I do?”

Oscar Math for Best Picture

A course I am teaching – Mathematics for General Education – at a college in Northern California deals with various voting methods. The students are as excited as any movie buff about the 82nd Annual Academy Awards this year (3/7/2010) but they have an additional reason: they are curious to see how the new voting system for Best Picture plays out. They have been learning about the Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) method in my class.

The number of pictures that could nominated for the Best Picture award, from 1946 until last year, was 5. This year the number has been increased to 10 (Avatar, The Blind Side, District 9, An Education, The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, Precious, A Serious Man, Up and Up in the Air.)

Suppose there are 100 voters to pick a winner. If Up in the Air were to win 51 votes, the contest would be over because it had won a majority of the votes. This is as straightforward as it can get. However, it is rare that in a field of 10, one picture will get a majority of votes in the first round.

Let’s consider a more complicated (some would say, pathological) case. Suppose Up in the Air won 11 votes, eight other pictures won 10 votes each and the remaining picture won 9 votes. According to the old system, Up in the Air would still win because it had the most first-place votes (plurality, as opposed to majority), even though it did not reflect the choice of a whopping 89 voters!

How can a picture rejected by 89% of the voters still win the Oscar? It is precisely to remedy such situations that the IRV method is being used. It is fairer than the Plurality method it is replacing and isn’t that complicated either.

In IRV, voters identify not only their first choice, but second, third and fourth choices, all the way down to tenth in this year’s Best Picture category. In other words, a voter whose first choice is Avatar may identify The Hurt Locker as her second choice, Up in the Air the third, An Education the fourth, and so on. (There are around fifty-eight hundred Academy members who will cast their votes for Best Picture among the nominated 10.)

For simplicity, consider 4 pictures and only two choices to illustrate how IRV method works. Suppose this is how the 100 votes are cast:

Number of voters	33	26	23	18
1st choice	Avatar	Hurt Locker	The Blind Side	Up
2nd choice	Up in the Air	District 9	Avatar	Hurt Locker

None of the pictures won a majority of votes. Since Up has the fewest first-place votes in this example, it gets bumped from the list. The second-place Hurt Locker moves up and takes over its 18 votes. The table now looks like this:

Number of voters	33	26+18 = 44	23
1st choice	Avatar	Hurt Locker	The Blind Side
2nd choice	Up in the Air	District 9	Avatar

But Hurt Locker isn’t the winner yet because still there is no majority (at least 51 in this case). In the second round, eliminate The Blind Side because now it has the fewest first-place votes. Avatar moves up and grabs its 23 votes. The table now looks like this:

Number of voters	33 +23 = 56	26+18 = 44
1st choice	Avatar	Hurt Locker
2nd choice	Up in the Air	District 9

Now there’s a majority winner (56 out of 100) and it’s Avatar!

So how did the students cast their “votes” for The Best Picture? Of the 40 students, one chose District 9 as his first choice, another chose The Hurt Locker and the rest, all 38 of them, chose Avatar!

If Community College math students had their say, it would appear that Avatar would win by an overwhelming majority in the very first round. If only life were that simple!