"In the Blink of an Eye"

Andrew Parker, "In the Blink of an Eye ---The Cause of the Most Dramatic Event in the History of Life---", 2003, The Free Press, London
「The balance between camouflage and conspicuousness lies behind every case of purposeful colouration in nature. Whether the colour seen is conspicuous or inconspicuous indicates the way the balance has tilted. This is the direction of evolution --- the direction with the greatest difference between positive and negative selective pressures.」（p.96）
「They do all occupy the same forest, but they divide up the height or profile of the plant life into microenvironments based on light conditions, including ultraviolet content. And the colours of each species are adapted exactly to the light of their specific microenvironment. So in each microenvironment, one type of clouration will be most adaptive, and the owners of that colouration will be the most successful there.」（p.100）
「A problem faced in mid-water is how to appear camouflaged from both above and below. From below, a fish is viewed against a light background ---the sky. From above it is viewed against the darkness of the deep.」（p.104）
「Countershading is a possibility for fish because generally they remain horizontal. But some animals vary their orientation. Jellyfish often roll around in the water and effectively have no upper and lower sruface. They lack the sophistication in hardware and software to handle chromatophores and are often left with only one option to help them blend into their background --- tranparency.」（p.104/105）
→A problem faced in the middle class is how to appear camouflaged and/or conspicuous from both above and below. From below, the middle-class are viewed against power --- the ruling class. From above it is viewed against the darkness of the poverty. Countershading has been a possibility for the middle-class because generally they have remained horizontal. But some personel vary their orientation today. They often roll around in the society and effectively have no upper and lower surface. They lack the sophistication in hardware and software to handle communication and sovereignty, and are often left with only one option to help them blend into their background --- transparency.「Again, in this chapter I place emphasis on the predator-prey scenario because the first rule of survival is to avoide becoming a meal. So this interaction is as important as it gets.」（p.120）
「On land, the transition from light to almost dark happens quickly, during sunset or at dusk. So few animals on land are adapted to anything other than light or almost dark conditions. But in the sea there is another transition from light to dark --- a transition in space. Marine animals can be compared from different depth ranges, living under different light levels.」（p.120/121）
→「But in the sea there is another transition from light to dark --- a transition in space. Marine animals can be compared from different depth ranges, living under different light levels.」（p.121）
「The potential niches available diminishe drastically.」（p.133）
「The first eyed proto-trilobites must have been frustrated individuals. They had a taste of meat and were feeding on whatever scraps they came across on the sea floor, probably detecting the chemicals wafting from decaying 'food'. But now they could literally see a far greater potential. They saw their soft-bodied neighbours, from all animal phyla, as chunks of protein, or potential meals. But they had neither the mobility nor the jaws to capture and kill all of them. They needed to swim to capture those floating forms, and they needed stabbing mouth-parts or limbs to perform their acts of murder. In other words, they needed hard parts. But considering the potential for proto-trilobites to take over the world, the selective pressures for hard parts were massive. And hard parts and active predation would follow, very quickly. soon, proto-trilobites would become trilobites.」（p.276）
→The first well-trained proto-well-to-do-teachers must have been frustrated individuals. They had a taste of know-how and were feeding on whatever scraps they came across in and around school, probably detecting the information wafting from various kinds of sources. But now they could literally see a far greater potential. They saw their simpleminded neighbours, from all subjects, as chunks of know-how, or potential Inteligent Property. But they had neither the mobility nor the technologies to capture and absorb all of them. They needed to move to capture those floating know-how, and they needed communication technologies to perform their acts of absorption. In other words, they needed connections. But considering the potential for well-trained teachers to take over the educational community, the selective pressures for connections were massive. And connections and active absorption would follow, very quickly. Soon, proto-well-to-do teachers would become well-to-do teachers.
「One cannot 'urge on' evolution, even if one thinks one knows better. So as selective pressures for active predatory lifestyles mounted on the proto-trilobites, so did selective pressures for countermeasures build up on the other multicelled animals.」（p.277）
「Evolution is a balance, and the balance will not continue to tilt one way. With the exception of extinction, it continuously levels.」（p.277）
「when niches are filled there is stability in the system, a stability which resists change.」（p.281）
→Are we in change, or already in stability again?

Baku-matsu Pilgrimage to the East

We had a 2-day family trip to Fukui and Gifu. I drove more than 780km in total; about 320km for the first day, and about 460km for the second. We will never have this kind of family trip again, so that was my last chance as a long distance family driver.
On the first day of the trip, we visited Fukui city to see "baku-matsu" related buildings and monuments. We found the monument which showed the site of Yokoi Konami's home, but could not find that of Yuri Kosei's. In my younger daughter's idea, Yuri played a bigger role in Meiji Restoration. Later we visited Sanai-cho (Sanai Town), which is named Hashimoto Sanai, another "baku-matsu" character, who was executed just before the beginning of the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate. There is even a garden to memorialize him. Some are remembered better than others. Is that what we say there is no accounting for tastes? Or is there another kind rule for that?
On the second day, we drove around Gifu prefecture. We went into the region from the Northwestern corner, drove past to the Easternmost part of it, Magome. Nagano prefecture is just beyond the pass. The village is a historic site which conserves some medieval buildings and preserves its appearance somewhat as a medieval post station along Nakasen-do, one of the 5 biggest highways then. Of course, we visited there because Shinsen-gumi moved from Edo (today's Tokyo) to Kyoto through Nakasen-do, to "restore order" in the old capital, or, you might say, to be one of the terrorist groups there.
Driving westward to come home, I wondered what dreams Shinsen-gumi people had in their minds on their way to the West.

Chi-Tenjo (Bloody Ceilings)

We took a Route 206 bus from JR Kyoto Station, and changed to Route 6 at Shijo-Omiya. Route 206 was a so-called ecological bus, and stopped its engine automatically when it stopped for a moment. Route 6 was a traditional one to climb the hill to Takano-mine, one of the Northern hills, Kitayama, in Kyoto.Genko-an was at the top of the hill. The entrance to its gate was already quiet and still, which screened the hot air on the street. The gate opens to a front garden of the temple. An alley with scale-like step stones leads to the main building. As I rang a cast iron bell, a middle-aged woman popped up to accept our fees.We crept through "shoji" to find ourselves in a further separated world. It was a "zen" world. A round window shows enlightenment while a square window shows delusion. It is interesting that we see the same garden through the two. Does that suggest it is how we see the world that is important, and not what we see? What I have talked about is what we see when we see things horizontally. Once you look up, you find bloody ceilings. The ceiling boards were once used as floor boards in Fushimi Castle some 400 years ago. Then Tokugawa Ieyasu, who would establish Tokugawa Shogunate later, and Toyotomi Regime were at the edge of war before Sekigahara Battle, a decisive battle between the two.On their way to the East, Toyotomi smashed the castle to upsurge, which was guarded by a relatively small number of samurais. Tokugawa had found it vain to leave a significant number of samurais there. Torii Tadamoto and his me were all killed in the battle, or committed seppuku before the fall of the castle.The tranquil world of Genko-an has been looked down by the bloody ceilings which were reused then. What does that mean?

Five Years of the Plenary Training Session for English Teachers and the Evolution of English-Education-Related Know-how Market

"Welcome to XXX's world!" With this, my plenary training session week started. A ten-day plenary training session under "A Strategic Plan to Cultivate 'Japanese with English Abilities'" (SPC-JEA) formulated by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) started in the school year 2003, and all the English teachers working in high schools were supposed to take it once within 5 years by the school year 2007. It means this year is the last year for the project.
I happened to take the first 5-day part of the session in the first year, 2003, as a part of another voluntary session, and am taking that of the last year, 2007. As an organizer, who is the successor to the one who organized the first session, of this year's session proclaimed, its lecturers have improved both in quality and in quantity. What has made that happen within these 5 years? Is that because organizers have gained significant experience? Or does that have something to do with the longer-span social changes?
The separation of the education from the family or community transforms the education itself into an industry, into a commodity-producing or service-providing branch of economy. Some members of a community specialize themselves in teaching. The process of specialization also manifests itself in education. The specialization separates the diverse varieties of the manufacture of products or services from each other in the educational industry, and creates an ever-growing number of branches of the educational industry, for example, textbook publishers, teaching material makers, test makers, etc. It also creates specialized educational districts and systems of teaching, and gives rise to exchange not only between the products or services of the educational industry and those of the other industries, but also between the various products or services of the educational industry itself. This specialization of commercial or capitalist education manifests itself in all capitalist countries, and even in the international division of labour. This is true of post-World-War-II Japan, especially of today's Japan, as well, as we see in detail below.
A group of naive romantic teachers have argued that the post-World-War-II education, which they believe to be democratic, however bureaucratic it actually is, is characterized by the labour principle and the principle of even distribution of educational authority among the educational community members, namely teachers. This argument belongs entirely to the sphere of communalistic prejudices. The relation between bureaucratic education and individual evaluation expresses a conflict between two principles, the communal and the individual. The naive romantists accuse realists of the evil intention of introducing capitalism into education, and carefully avoid the reality which reveals the prevalence of capitalist relations even in public schools today.
The categorical assertion has been bluntly made in the Japanese educational community that there is no social division of labour in education. The naive romantic education theory of the "forcibility" of capitalism and commercialism in education could only have been evolved by rejecting, or proclaiming the very foundation of all commodity economy, namely, the social division of labour, as "forcible (artificial)." The theory is therefore based on the naive romantic prejudices dating back to the pre-modern, that is to say feudalism, society.
The people concerned in education in which commodity economy was poorly developed or not developed at all were almost exclusively teachers. This, however, must not be understood as meaning that the people, the teachers then, were engaged solely in teaching. It only means that the people engaged in teaching also processed the teaching materials, and that the exchange of products and services and the division of labour hardly existed.
The prestige of patriarchal teachers, who formerly conducted a mainly natural education, has declined significantly. The decline is, ironically enough, quite compatible with an increase in the amount of money under their control, for the more such teachers are ruined, the more they are compelled to resort to the purchase of teaching materials and services in the market. The conversion of teachers into wage-workers presumes that they have lost the means of education --- teaching materials, curriculums, evaluation, workshop, etc. --- that is, that they are "impoverished," "ruined." The small teachers who have lost their prestige in the education of developing commodity economy and capitalism have, in a sense, become ruined. That means the creation and not the shrinkage of the educational market.
The "freeing" of one section of the teachers from the means of education necessarily presumes the passage of the latter into other hands, their conversion into capital, and presumes, consequently, that the new owners of these means of education produce the products or services which are productively consumed as commodities by teachers now, but which were formerly produced by teachers themselves. That expands the educational market further.
The basic process of the formation of an education-related market, that is of the development of education-related commodity production and of education-related capitalism, is the social division of labour in education. This consists of various forms of processing teaching materials and teaching services, and of various operations in this processing. The operations have separated from teaching one after another, and have become independent branches of education-related industry. Education-related producers exchange their products and services, now commodities, for the education-related budget and for the family education-related expenses. Thus, education itself becomes industry, which produces commodities, and the same process of specialization takes place in it.
The specialization in education implies not only the horizontal one but also the vertical one. What might be a sound method to group teachers vertically? According to working hours? According to the goal and its accomplishment? According to the contribution for the team? According to the number of papers? In capitalist education the basis for the formation of a education-related market is the process of the disintegration of the teachers into educational entrepreneurs and labourers.
The "education-related know-how market" grows as a result of the specialization. Pieces of know-how are converted into commodities which are commercially produced and productively consumed. The production gives birth to entrepreneur educators, on the one hand, who produce pieces of know-how which sell. And, on the other, it gives birth to labouring educators who productively consume the pieces of know-how. In other words, teaching population is divided into well-to-do teachers with a commodity of the know-how and ill-to-do teachers with a commodity of the labour-power.
Here we finally reached the reason why the lecturers of the plenary training session have grown in quality and in quantity. They are, or at least have been, the well-to-do teachers. They have become prosperous because of the evolution of the education-related know-how market. Not a week passes these days without getting an invitation to a lecture or a workshop for English teachers. Some lecturers are showing their own "world" to inspire ill-to-do teachers. Some colleges are organizing workshops to preach their new methods, or to show off their rich equipments, to high school English teachers, maybe in part as a part of their publicity. The lectures and workshops are flourishing, and they are financed privately either with the fees paid by individual teachers or with the budget of colleges.
The growth of the market has been also supported by a kind of Keynesian power, the formulation of SPC-JEA, or, straightforwardly speaking, by a certain part of the budget of MEXT.
Two questions arise here: one is whether the market will survive even after the end of A Strategic Plan to Cultivate "Japanese with English Abilities", and the other is what consequence will come later. The answer to the first question depends whether the division between the well-to-do and the ill-to-do has followed the line between well-trained teachers and badly-trained teachers. The answer to the second depends both what the first answer is like and whether other powers are at work in the market. Let's see what will happen if the market power leads the educational community.
How have a certain group of teachers become well-trained? Labour hours used to concentrate to a couple of groups of teachers. They used to work longer than others. The concentration of labour hours means the concentration of experience. The groups of longer-workday teachers became well-trained with the longer labour hours, with more experience, and were naturally best provided with allocated pieces of teaching know-how. They have also concentrated in their hands the bulk of the purchased and the rented pieces of know-how. The more well-trained the teachers become, the more they rent pieces of know-how, despite the fact that they are better provided with allocated know-how, and some of them turn into small know-how owners, would-be well-to-do teachers.
It is quite natural that the well-to-do teachers also employ teaching techniques much above the average. That gives them a certain cultural hegemony which enables them to enjoy their influence over larger size of teaching staff, more plentiful supply of teaching materials, available financial resources, etc. That is to say, the well-to-do teachers do their planning faster, make better use of favorable condition, give the lessons to more well-prepared students, and report their achievement in proper time, place and occasion.
It is also natural that the expenditure of working hours on the production of any educational activity diminishes per unit of product as the size of the team increases. The cultural hegemony well-to-do teachers enjoy over other ill-to-do teachers will help sophisticate their methods over other methods planned by the latter teachers.
The well-to-do teachers used to work longer than others. Though they still work harder, what concentrate in the hands of the well-to-do teachers now is Intellectual Property. Intellectual Property here is education-related knowledge, pieces of teaching know-how, or know-who on the informative people. Knowledge itself is the result of the know-who on the past intellectuals. That is, the concentration of know-who is essential to be a well-to-do teacher.
As the result of their rich networking with other similarly minded teachers, or for the purpose of their rich networking with those teachers, the well-to-do teachers tend to do something in addition to teaching students. When the well-to-do teachers combine educational or teaching occupations and those of education-related industries on a large scale, a combination of the two systems of classification is necessary, that is, of classification according to the scale and type of teaching, and of classification according to the scale and type of education-related industries.
Commodity production will penetrate into education further, and consequently, the competition among the educators will be keener. The competition is the struggle for pieces of educational know-how and for educational independence. The significance of the way rentable know-how is grabbed by the rich teachers will change. The concentration of know-how renting in the hands of the well-to-do teachers, its industrial character, its connection with know-how leasing by the bottom group of the teachers will also change. The struggle for pieces of educational know-how leads to the ousting of the middle and poor teachers by the teacher bourgeoisie. This law will surely be manifested more vigorously.

July, 2007

I was busy visiting preparatory schools on Friday and Saturday. Those were for low level students and high level ones. This school year's target should be a hyper-target which covers various kinds of sub-targets. Or hasn't my target always been such a hyper-target? I have thought that I should do such and such, not only one "such." To change a school culture to another, if teachers are responsible to the project, teachers ought to belong to the latter targeted culture. They may be well guessed to belong to the former starting culture. Conversion of our school culture is an agenda. As the school culture has several sub-cultures in itself, it is to change the configuration of the sub-cultures to convert the culture. What is the representative photograph of a school? That leadsto another question: What is the representative photograph of a club, of a school festival, and of a sports day? If we take a picture of a painting student, is that a representative photograph of the art club? It could only be a picture of a painter. If we take a group picture of the club members, it could only be a picture of a club. What is the photograph of an art club? What is the efficient or productive way of handing the know-how of a job? There might be several of them. The question might be what the most suitable way is for a teacher? The virtual society "Second Life" seems to have gained its global popularity among many people. I wonder if we can employ the service to help students develop their English language skills through the usage of the skills, especially that of writing, in their "second life." By the way, what makes the Second Life so popular? Why do so many people find having their "second life" so attractive? Aren't they satisfied with their own life? Or just enjoying another one? I think I know the importance of having another.

"The Creative Brain"

Nanct Andreasen, "The Creating Brain: the Neuroscience of Genius", 2005, Dana Press, New York
「Personality traits that define the creative individual include openness to experience, adventuresomeness, rebelliousness, individualism, sensitivity, playfulness, persistence, curiosity, and simplicity.」（p.30）
「Creative people tend to approach the world in a fresh and original way that is not shaped by preconceptions.」（p.30/31）
「Creative people tend to approach the world in a fresh and original way that is not shaped by preconceptions. The obvious order and rules that are so evident to less creative people, and which give a comfortable structure to life, often are not perceived by the creative individual, who tends to see things in a different and novel way.」（p.30/31）
「The obvious order and rules that are so evident to less creative people, and which give a comfortable structure to life, often are not perceived by the creative individual, who tends to see things in a different and novel way.」（p.31）
「openness is accompanied by a tolerance for ambiguity. Creative people do not crave the absolutism of a black and white world; they are quite comfortable with shades of gray.」（p.31）
「A self-organizing system is one that literally a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. It is defined as a system that is created from components that are in existence and that spontaneously reorganize themselves to create something new, without the influence of any external force or executive plan. Control over a self-organizing system is not cetralized. It is distributed over the entire system.」（p.62）
→A school is, or should be, a micture of a self-organizing system and a centralized system.
「In chapter 2, I described many personality characteristics of creative people that make them more vulnerable, including openness to new experiences, a tolerance for ambiguity, and an approach to life and the world that is relatively free of preconceptions. This flexibility permits them to perceive things in a fresh and novel way, which is an important basis for creativity. But it also means that their inner world is complex, ambiguous, and filled with shades of gray rather than black and white. It is a world filled with many questions and few easy answers. While less creative people can quickly respond to situations based on what they have been told by people in authority --- parents, teachers, pastors, rabbis, or priests --- the creative person lives in a more fluid and nebulous world.」（p.101）
「And we have seen how creative ideas probably occur as part of a potentially dangerous mental process, when associations in the brain are flying freely during unconscious mental states -- how thoughts must become momentarily disorganized prior to organizing. Such a process is very similar to that which occurs during psychotic states of mania, depression, or schizophrenia.」（p.102）
「The anecdote illustraites two common traits of the creative mind and brain: the need to have free-floating periods of thought during which inspiration may come as the brain spontaneously self-organizes and new associative links are found, and the uncompromising and obsessional perfectionism that seeks to achieve the ideal product or result.」（p.120/121）
→「the need to have free-floating periods of thought during which inspiration may come as the brain spontaneously self-organizes and new associatiative links are found,」（p.120）
「The creative process arises from the ferment of ideas in the brain, turning and colliding until something new emerges. At the neural level associations begin to form where they did not previously exist, and some of these associations are perilously novel. An environment full of intellectual richness and freedom is the ideal one in which to create the creative brain.」（p.128）
「In art alone the city was filled with men of genius, bouncing ideas back and forth and borrowing what was best. Add to that the philosophers, poets, and politicians --- it was an astonishingly rich congregation of human beings, who created social networks that cross-fertilized one another and opened avenues from which new ideas could emerge. Another self-organizing system, so to speak.」（p.129）
→A self-organizing system in a brain and that among brains.
「As Darwin has pointed out, evolution thrives on variation. And creativity does as well.」（p.152）
「We have learned that highly creative people particular personality and cognitive traits, such as openness to experience, curiosity, and a tolerance of ambiguity. We have learned that they often get their ideas as flashes of insight, through moments of inspiration, or by going into a state at the edge of chaos, where ideas float, soar, collide, and connect. We have learned that this creative state arises from a mind and brain that are rich in associative links that encourage new combinations to occur freely.」（p.159）
「Robert Root-Bernstein and his wife, Michele Root-Bernstein, who discuss creativity in a refreshingly novel way. They argue that creativity may often arise from taking ideas from one field and transferring them to another. They also discuss the phenomenon of being a polymath.」（p.160）
「they have also written a recent book about creativity, Sparks of Genius (1999), which describes thirteen ways to enhance creativity.」（p.160）

A Week of Teachers' Training Session

"Welcome to XXX World!" With this, the training session week started. The first day passed listening to 2 lectures. Both of them have, or at least have had, a career as a junior high school teacher. Their lectures were not bad at all, but made me wonder what their purpose(s) might be. What use will being immersed in a world or two have use for? How useful take-it-if-you-like-it approach is? The life course(s) of the lecturers, the teachers with craftsmanship, should be researched and made explicit, so that we can see certain laws of teachers' development. They should be interviewed as such.
Today's workshop was about how to employ authentic materials in classrooms. We don't have Oral English classes anymore, and it is difficult for us to use those materials in our English I or II classes because of short of time. Although it is nice to get useful ideas created by native English speakers, I would rather like to see how they find the textbooks of English I and II, and how they "cook" them to have our students learn authentic English. That kind of workshop will be really beneficial to us.

Passing know-hows among teachers, especially from those with craftsmanship to others, is important, but not enough. The life course of each skilful teacher should be researched and made explicit how they have developed themselves. That will enable us to extract certain laws of teachers' development. Those explicit laws will then enable other teachers to apply some of the laws on themselves, which will enhance their development as a teacher.

Today's lectures or workshops, whatever you call them, didn't reveal the lecturers' secrets which have enabled their development. Is it because that secrets make a lecture a lecture? Some people condemn that teachers are only taking advantage of the knowledge gap between their students and themselves. So are lecturers?

There should be 2 kinds of training sessions or courses for teachers. One is, of course, to provide them new teaching skills. The other is to en-power their self-innovation ability itself.

Mr. Gordon was trying to bridge Japanese vowel pronunciation to that of English vowels. As he says, each vowel sounds as a result of a certain configuration of muscles in and around the mouth. In bridging Japanese and English configurations, he picked up a wise way; to focus on specific muscles. I his case, they are those of and around lips. It is a wise idea because we can easily figure out what shapes our mouth is taking.

His method also reminded me of the famous "interlanguage" argument. As a matter of fact, we can easily argue appropriateness of students' pronunciation when they follow his method. Let me, however, introduce what Deng Xiao-ping once famously put it in: Whether it is a white cat or a black cat, a cat which catches a rat is a good cat.
Mr. Takahashi theoretically introduced us how to develop students. His words reminded me of "The Zone of Proximal Development: ZPD" theory by Vigotsky. We have to assume what readiness students have, and allocate readiness dots properly so that they can connect the dots with lines easily.
Mr. Takahashi also suggested how we can develop ourselves as well. We have acquired some useful dots, but don't have lines to connect them. We can hardly reach the top or goal without them. If this session is planned to train English teachers, it should have provided training opportunities. What we are supposed to train is not only our teaching skills, but also our self-innovation ability.