This is a talk by Sir Ken Robinson on why & how schools kill creativity. It’s poignant, it’s funny, and it actually ties into some of our discussions this weekend…

…if you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original. If you’re not prepared to be wrong. And, by the time they get to be adults, most kids have lost that capacity. They have become frightened of being wrong. We run our companies [sic] this, by the way. We stigmatize mistakes. And we’re now running national education systems where mistakes are the worst thing you can make. And, the result is that we are educating people out of their creative capacities.

…academic ability, which really came to dominate our view of intelligence, because the universities designed the system in their image. If you think of it, the whole system of public education, around the world, is a protracted process of university entrance. And the consequence is that many highly tallanted, brilliant, creative people think they are not. Because the thing they were good at, at school, wasn’t valued. And I don’t think we can afford to go on this way.

Sorry for the length, but I haven’t posted much about my personal life lately…

• The refrigerator started making a noise while the motor runs. I’m thinking it’s the compressor motor…maybe a bad bearing or something. I made an appointment with Sears for service, and they called verify the appointment Friday. But Saturday, while I was waiting for them to show up, I apparently missed their call to make sure someone was home and now we have to wait for them to come out next Saturday. I told them the whole thing is ridiculous after their appointment web site made it so easy to print out a confirmation with the date & time, and after they already called to verify the night before. “Sorry sir, that’s our procedure.”
• I hung pegboard in the utility closet and the garage. I tidied up the garage and even fixed the side door. I feel so…organized.
• Inigo went to a new vet Thursday. He’s been throwing up almost every day since we got him, and the only thing our vet could suggest was changing his diet. The new doctor thinks it’s probably a nervous system condition that keeps the digestive system from following the normal flow just right. I’ll spare everyone the messy details. Anyway, he has to get medicine three times a day now, but he’s only thrown up once since Thursday night, and that was after getting catnip (why does he insist on eating it???).
• Someone posted an hour-long documentary about Blade Runner to Google Video: On the Edge of Blade Runner. I watched it tongiht, and now it has me really wanting to see the movie again.
• While I’m posting Google Video links, the site suggested a presentation made by 80s video game programmer Jeff Minter at Google headquarters, discussing his history in the games industry and previewing what he’s working on these days: Llamasoft and the Space Giraffe
• I started reading The Responsibility Virus, but I haven’t gotten too far into it. I’ll be sure to post some insights about it once I do. But, from what I’ve read so far, I highly recommend it.

I’m sure I’ve ranted about this before*, but I feel it bears repeating. Better still, I’ll let Chris Hincker, who just got a partial tennis scholarship to the University of Delaware, start the show…

Frequently, the mention of Tourette evokes an image of extreme verbal tics called coprolalia which result in the “involuntary use of obscene or socially inappropriate words and phrases,” according to the Tourette Syndrome Association, Inc.

“A lot of people know about the kind of Tourette’s where you curse uncontrollably,” Hincker said. “That’s what they think of. If we’re fooling around and some kid says, ‘Why do you do that?’ I’ll say, ‘I have Tourette’s.’ They’ll say, ‘No you don’t. That’s where you curse.’ “

I’ve actually had that happen to me, where grown adults have told me that I can’t have Tourette’s because the worst I do is twitch every once in a while. According to the Tourette’s Syndrome Association, fewer than 15% of people with Tourette’s have copralalia (literally translated, “shit talking”). Yet that’s what most people associate with the disorder. Not only does it hurt the chances of acceptance for the other 85% of us, it means there are people out there who might never get diagnosed or treated because either they or their doctor wouldn’t think that thing they do where they twitch their nose might be Tourette’s.

Where do people get this idea? Personally, I blame it mostly on the media, who have a Tourette’s like compulsion (heh…get it? I’ve mastered irony!) to use the name of the syndrome as a synonym for “swears a lot” or “speaks without thinking”. And that, dear readers, is simply retarded (wow, I’ve got more irony going today than a Gen-X teenager).

April 25th, The Herald (UK), describing a football match:

A fan in front of me resembled a rabid coyote (albeit, somewhat improbably, one with Tourette’s) any time the midfielder was in the vicinity of the ball. This may or may not have been the result of Lennon’s aggressive style of play.

April 21st, The Daily Telegraph (UK), describing a trip to the Himalayas:

We were met by a driver who had recently “had Danny DeVito, yes please”. His habit of dropping “yes please” into every sentence was rather like a charming form of Tourette’s.

Maybe I’m just a little eager to find examples, but I can’t read this sentence as meaning anything other than the idea that cab driver’s behavior was incredibly charming in contrast to the utterly abrasive swearing of a Tourette’s sufferer. Couldn’t the same point have been made, and more succinctly, by just saying his habit was charming?

Probably the most damnable thing I read recently came from the desk of Michelle Malkin, and was published far & wide after the situation with Don Imus broke. Quoted here from the Jewish World Review, describing The Culture of ‘Bitches, Hos, and Niggas’:

Imus gets a two-week suspension. What kind of relief do we get from this deadening, coarsening, dehumanizing barrage from young, black rappers and their music industry enablers who have helped turn America into Tourette’s Nation?

Oh yes, heaven forbid everyone in the country had Tourette’s. As so can see, it has so badly limited my ability to build a career, have friends, or even find love. Most people I’ve discussed it with never noticed me doing anything unusual. Tourette’s symptoms tend to fade toward the end of the teen years. I’ll occasionally pop my elbow, crack my neck, or on a bad day I’ll flinch my stomach making a quiet grunting noise, but it’s nothing disruptive. But, yeah, I realize that’s not what she was referring to by a “Tourette’s Nation”.

Hey, Michelle…if you’re reading this, how was it writing for the World Review, anyway? Leave me a comment and let me know. Did they pay you well, or did they jew you down? (ok, ok…I’ll stop it)

On a slightly less-serious note, the St. Louis Riverfront Times on April 4th, describing the hit movie Grindhouse:

Her incurable case of Tarantino-style Tourette’s — “bitch” this, “mothafucka” that, nonstop “nigga pleez” — strikes what may be the only truly gratuitous note in this ostensible exploitation epic.

And a stand-up comedian at the University of Rhode Island, describes the source of his skill to the student paper:

As for the continuous swearing throughout his performance, Blue simply said, “It’s true, I do like to swear. But I just have really well-timed Tourette’s [Syndrome].”

And, I’ll close with an article about a wacky Memphis politician, from Commercial Appeal on April 19th:

In August 2005, he gave us this, in a council discussion over the salaries of MLGW employees: “I just want to make this perfectly clear. I don’t want no woman to have a woman problem. I don’t want no man to have a man problem. Sometimes hormones and all these other things get you kinda mixed up and you don’t want people to get paid what they ought to get paid, OK? And I think that’s an issue. … Sometimes these hormones need to be hormoning on out of here, now. And ladies, and I believe that women need to get the same as any man.”

Egads. Edmund’s undiagnosed Tourette’s syndrome is almost comical, but other ramblings are not.

These were all examples from this month. There are more out there, and the month isn’t over just yet.

* I looked it up, and my last such rant was over a year ago. I guess I was due.