BLOG 5 - TED TALK - THUS ENDETH THE LESSON

Now comes the tough part.  I need to take the millions of ideas floating around in my head and pull out 3 or 4 earth shattering points.  I think that I need to practice!  Are we talking practice? PRACTICE ?  Yeah practice!  Food is universal, relevant, and relatable.  I love food and I think that you all should love it too.  The problem with food today is that we are inundated with horrible food.  How do we wade through the sea of quantity to find the last bit of quality?

We’ve become a society of could we do it when we should be asking should we do it. Case 1 – DiGiorno pizza now comes with toll house cookies!  We don’t want you to eat a mere 3,000 calories in that pizza, please eat these cookies too for an additional 3,000 calories.  My stomach just twisted.  Case 2 – Hot Pockets are born of the devil.  The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was in making people believe that he didn’t exist hence, the creation of Lean Pockets.  That same old Hot Pockets flavor now with half the gas!  Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the microwave, Hot Pockets introduces Pretzel Pockets. 

The quality argument is most evident in advertising.  Franchises have gigantic advertising budgets and the commercials have become more and more misleading.  Case 1 – The Olive Garden – Uncle Luigi came all the way from Sicily and we’re going to take him to the Olive Garden.  Are you kidding me?  Uncle Luigi did not travel half way across the world to go to the Olive Garden.  Case 2 – Long John Silvers – I’m a shrimp boat captain and when I’m home from the sea, I go to Long John Silvers.  Really?  Really?  If you’ve ever eaten at Long John Silvers, the shrimp tastes like the fries, the fries taste like the fish, the fish tastes like the hush puppies, and none of them taste like anything resembling food!  Forrest Gump was a shrimp boat captain and he wouldn’t eat at Long John Silvers.  By the way, he was a moron!

The sea of quantity is obvious but, can quality win out over quantity?  Is quantity all bad?  Can we go back to the way food used to be?  Is it too late?  I need you to close your eyes and think about the best meal that you’ve ever eaten.  Did it come in a bag or box?  Did you cook it in the microwave?  Let me ask you something that digs a little deeper.  We’ve spend a lifetime thinking outside of the box when it comes to food but, what if the box was broken? 

BLOG 4 - YOU CAN ALWAYS LOOK IT UP - OR CAN YOU?

You can always look it up and yes, you can still look it up! The point of looking something up is to establish a baseline knowledge of the subject matter. We shouldn’t expect students to master subjects that they look up in books or on the internet. These are not realistic expectations for kindergarten students or college students. Research is used as a secondary source of knowledge and this is the student’s role to learn what they can through their own resources. The role of the teacher is to take the student’s research to the next level. The students build their block of clay to class and the teacher helps them shape it into a work of art. It helps if the students brings something to the table through baseline knowledge and that is definitely something the student can look up!
Rote learning has its place in teaching. I learn my basic math tables through memorization. I didn’t need to know why 4 + 4 = 8 when I was 6 years old . I just needed to know the answer. I wasn’t searching for a deeper meaning. I learned the basics by rote and then could add to that baseline knowledge as my through deeper levels of learning. We’re getting caught up in labels and the labels tell us that rote is bad and you need to go deeper. Don’t let labels dictate your schooling. Students dictate how they learn something. Rote learning worked for me so, it can’t be all bad.
According to the article, specialists in vocabulary estimate that in order to understand something that is read or heard or looked, the percentage of already-known words necessary for comprehension is around 95%. That percentage seems a little high for my tastes but, I do agree that it does take a fairly high percentage of already-known words for comprehension to take place. I have to admit that I know 100 percent of all the words in this article but, for the most part, I’ve had a hard time comprehending everything in this article. Honestly, this article reads like stereo instructions.
The author trots out a line-up of impressive academics that have been locked up in a classroom for the last thirty years researching theories, scholarly journals, and all matters of cognitive projects. The problem is that if you ever put these giant brains in front of a room full of students, they would look like a deer in headlights! Absolutely frozen for all the world to see. This is a case where looking it up has gone terribly wrong. I smell a another theory.

TED TALK 4

Capitalism has hit us like a hurricane. It has left mayhem and devastation in its wake. We have become a society of people that eat horrible food, drink terrible beverages, and compromise our taste at every turn. The very existence of Taco Bell proves my point. I rest my case and we’re on to Long John Silvers. The only hope out there exists in a few small spots in our country and these are the places that I would like to talk to you about today.
Lancaster, Pennsylvania is one of the last places on earth where a true farmer’s market exists in the world. Local farmers and bakers bring their goods to market every day. Fresh produce straight from the farm and baked goods to die for. FRESH! Imagine that every day you could eat something daily that isn’t in a box and frozen. Butcher shops selling fresh goods from their farms. Things that are never frozen with no preservatives. Is this still possible in today’s society? There are two places in Lancaster that you need to check out before you die. The first is the mercantile market in downtown near Franklin and Marshall college. Local merchants with baked goods that will melt your face! The second is Ginny’s Diner. Ginny’s is an old school stainless steel diner with homemade food and hardy portions. This place will straight up kill your diet but, what a way to go! A trip to Lancaster is like stepping back in time to a place where people actually cooked and food didn’t come in a box or a bag. You may not think that this is possible but, it happens here every day.
Bagliani’s market is Hammonton, New Jersey is the other place that I would like to talk to you about today. Bagliani’s is part deli, part market, and part butcher shop. They make everything on the property. The butcher shop cuts and prepare their own steaks, chicken, sausage, and various other delicacies. They offer a selection of over fifty cheeses. They make their own pepperoni! They have a full deli that offers everything under the sun. They roast their own turkey! FRESH! Every day they make these numerous selections. I’m beginning to slobber on my keyboard. I’ll be right back. I’m sorry but, I have to go to Bagliani’s market.
I’m back. The absolute avalanche of garbage that we eat everyday cloud the clear cut choice of quality over quantity. Malcolm Gladwell’s observation is incomplete. We have a plethora of choices in our society today but, somewhere along the way, we accepted quantity over quality.