The Case Against Cheating (And AI)

As schools and teachers have tried to pressure their students to stay away from AI use, they have recapitulated many of the same old arguments against cheating in its traditional forms. 

We English teachers have railed against shortcuts since CliffsNotes first reared their "study guide" heads back in 1958. Then the internet begat SparkNotes and its ilk. And it was always a mistake to frame the argument as some sort of moral or ethical issue. "You're a bad person if you cheat on this assignment," is not a useful message for young humans for many reasons, not the least of which is that they hear variations on "You're a bad person if..." a lot.

As it turns out, the best arguments against old school cheating are equally valid against new school high tech cheating, or just plain AI "augmentation."

Anything worth doing is worth doing yourself

"I would really like to kiss this highly engaging and exciting human being in front of me, so I am going to get someone else to do it and tell me what it was like," said nobody, ever.

You get the most out of life's experiences by, you know, experiencing them. You could sit in a cave somewhere and let your tech feed you a regular summary of what is going on outside, but what would be the point? You find your best self, you learn how to be fully human in the world, by being in the world. 

Too many adults, and far too many adults who work in schools, feed the narrative that students are in some sort of holding pattern, that their real lives in the real world will start further down the road. That's just not true. Your life is going on right now, even if you are not yet an adult. So experience it first hand. And yes, that includes the work that you've been given to do in school. 

Of course, "anything worth doing" is doing some heavy lifting here. That part falls on the teachers. It's part of their job to make sure they are bringing students together with things that are, in fact, worth doing; then they have the task of making the "worth doing" case to students. 

Lying is corrosive

Everyone has seen the memo explaining that lying is wrong. But it's also important to understand that lying is corrosive and self-damaging. And it's nearly impossible to cheat without lying. And lying is corrosive.

Lying builds barriers in relationships; in particular, it ruins trust, and without trust as a foundation, it is difficult to build or sustain any sort of relationship with other human beings. Lying creates a brutal sort of isolation, in which you alone are the only person who knows the truth of your own story. That kind of isolation is the usual root of the whole existential angst thing anyway, but to add the barriers that come with lying just makes it so much worse. 

As I told my students a gazillion times, life is too short to put your name to a lie.

Protect your brain

You do not build muscles by hiring someone else to lift weights in your name. Students are developing their minds, strengthening their brains. There is a natural tendency to draw back from the friction and pain involved, but that's how you build things.

Your brain is the toolbox that will hold every tool you'll need to make your way through the world, both personally and professionally. The more, better tools you collect, the more choices you will have in life. We know that offloading cognitive work to AI is not good for people. It's not good for adults and degrades the tools in their mental toolboxes, but for young humans who are supposed to be accumulating those tools the effects could be even worse-- the absence of necessary tools as they enter the adult world.

It is becoming increasingly clear that AI is not for amateurs, that it is only useful for people who are already knowledgeable about the field in question. Students are not those people. 

You are going to need your brain your whole life, and your school years are the chance to pack it with as many bits of knowledge and skill you can get your mental mitts on. Do not use AI to shortchange that process.

This requires the kind of long term thinking that young humans does not always come easily to young humans. But we adults have to keep reminding them that the work is not to generate an assignment that you can hand in tomorrow, but to wrestle with the work in ways that will help them accumulate the knowledge and skills that will help them move through the world. Speedruns and shortcuts will not help with that. 

Don't avoid cheating or cutting corners or just getting a little extra help because it's Very Naughty. Avoid all of these with either AI or old school methods, because they get in the way of the work of building your self and your life. That should your measure in all things-- is this a tool for helping you grow and live, or a means of avoiding engaging with growth and life? Don't choose the latter. 

Can Schools Play Catch-Up?

From its launch as Campbell Brown's attempt to be a major education player in anti-public ed politics, The74 has become a very mixed bag. Sometimes they publish valuable journalism about education, and sometimes they roll out junk like this article about using AI to help schools get students caught up, an article mostly impressive in how it manages to get so much wrong in such a little space.

Everyone just run faster than that guy-- go catch up

The piece is by Daniel Weisberg. Weisberg has deep reformster credentials; the former lawyer was First Deputy Chancellor of schools in NYC under Joel Klein and David Banks and is a Broad Foundation fellow. He was CEO of TNTP, the sister organization for Teach for America, where he attacked teacher job protections and oversaw blog-posts-disguised-as-reports like The Widget Effect and The Opportunity Myth that lacked substance and accuracy, but which provided cover for reformsters to act like their ideas were grounded in something other their personal preferences. He's no stranger to controversy, having been implicated in a scandal under Banks/Adams. 

Weisberg has never shown a particularly strong grasp of teaching or education, and this article doesn't break his streak. 

"America's schools are terrible at catching kids up" Weisberg says, a sentence he puts in its very own paragraph to help make it pop.

This is just so dumb. The whole discourse around "catching kids up" is just dumb.

What's the hope here? Let's take a student who is behind by, say, three months of material. So to catch that student up, the teacher needs to get that student through three months' worth of material in one month. 

If the teacher could do that, wouldn't she be doing it already?

Do catch-up fans imagine teachers are sitting there thinking, "Well, I could teach this material a lot faster, but I think I'll just poke along instead." Do catch-up fans imagine that teachers aren't already moving as quickly as they can? 

Guys like Weisberg believe in "intervention programs designed to catch kids up," but if educators knew a swifter, more efficient way to teach that material, why would it be an "intervention program" and not a "regular program"?

But Weisberg never has shown much understanding of actual classroom teaching. He argues that schools are bad at catch-up because teachers are being asked to do the impossible-- but he has the wrong idea about what the impossible is.

In a classroom of 25 to 30 students, teachers must determine who is on grade level, who is behind (and why), how to modify instruction for each struggling child and how to extend learning for advanced students — all while delivering grade-level content.

Diagnostic exams, designed to give educators information on how students are progressing, are infrequent and often test different subject matter than what is used in the classroom. Intervention programs designed to catch kids up are purchased but poorly implemented. Students needing intensive help are sometimes segregated into programs with low expectations and weak outcomes.

Sigh. Not exactly untrue, but all beside the point. Weisberg assumes that a great intervention program and intensive help could somehow cause struggling learners to learn material faster than any other students in the system. He talks about a "roadmap to acceleration," but if we had such a roadmap, why wouldn't we have all students on it (and is it possible we already do). He also connects these problems, somehow, to grade inflation. 

Weisberg thinks he know how to do achieve the great catch up miracle. Let's see. First, this:

TNTP’s study identified 1,400 schools where students consistently learned more than a year’s worth of material annually, enabling those who started behind to reach grade level.

No, they did not. They identified some schools where students scored well on the standardized test of math and reading. When someone starts talking about "1.3 years of learning" they are talking about a certain amount of a standard deviation on a test score. Can intensive test prep bring test scores up? Probably. Do we have a shred of evidence that raising that test score will improve the student's life outcomes? We do not.

Weisberg continues with his bold vision:

In other words, the Catch-up Crisis is reversible. But first. we need a bold, shared goal: that students who fall behind grade level will catch up to — or exceed — grade-level standards within two school years, and without fail by high school graduation.

This is lake Woebegone talk-- we can get all students to be above average. You know what happens when all students are at or above grade level? We start talking about "grade level inflation" and how the standards are too low. 

But Weisberg sees three obstacles to implementing his bold vision: "limited real-time insight into student learning, little evidence-based guidance on how to address specific learning gaps and minimal job-embedded coaching."

Part of Weisberg's issue is a definite lack of faith in professional educators. "Students generate enormous amounts of work daily — assignments, quizzes, writing, projects," he says, as if human children are some sort of assembly line machine and the work they do descends from nowhere. "No human can analyze all of it for 25 students every day." He should meet secondary teachers who do it for 150-200 students. Is it hard? Sure. Do you find ways to manage it without doing it every single day? Maybe. 

But you know what he thinks the solution is-- magical AI that "can surface patterns quickly and provide teachers with usable, digestible insights." Which can also "generate evidence-informed strategies for specific challenges." Here's his example:

Imagine a fifth grader who is struggling with fractions. His teacher knows he earned a C- on the last test but doesn’t know why or what to do to help. AI can analyze the student’s work in real time and discovers he tends to invert numerators and denominators; it draws on data from thousands of similar children to see what worked best to help those with the same misconceptions and recommends content for a 15-minute tutoring block for the teacher to review and revise.

I'm stuck trying to imagine a fifth grade teacher who can't spot a student who tends to invert numerator and denominator (while doing what, exactly?) Where is this data from thousands of similar children? And how would AI know what worked best? And on what planet do you find a fifth grader who can be retaught successfully in a fifteen-minute block of time? 

Weisberg's working with a manufacturing model here. The assembly line is turning out a flawed product, so we examine all the data from the equipment and figure out how to correct the problem. But there are so many steps in this process that raise huge questions. How did the AI collect data from thousands of students-- did they agree to have every step of their classroom work monitored and recorded, and why is this data available all across the country? Also, given that AI does not actually think or understand in any human sense of the word, how was the instruction modified and shaped so that the AI could spot patterns in a useful way? 

Also, I love that AI-in-education folks always turn to math for examples (even though chatbots are notoriously bad at math). What if the student is having trouble analyzing figurative language in Shakespearean sonnets? What if the student is behind because they were supposed to read The Great Gatsby and they just, you know, didn't? 

Weisberg also wants to deploy AI to coach teachers. "AI-supported coaching tools, used responsibly, could provide timely, standards-aligned feedback on recorded lessons, supplementing human coaching rather than replacing it." Never mind "Teach like a pirate"-- now you can teach like a robot. This dovetails nicely with the suggestions for students, all of which add to the offloading of professional cognitive work for teachers. I wonder how long it would take the AI to deskill the actual human teacher.

Weisberg name-checks some companies doing some pilot work and claims some of these are seeing significant progress, but he only links to corporate sites-- not any "evidence-informed" support.

Weisberg nods to the ideas that teachers should still make final choices and also maybe the district better figure out how badly this adds to their too-much-screen-time problems. So he gets a half a point for that.

But mostly this is one more case of over-promising that AI can do something it can't actually do and maybe we shouldn't be trying to get it to do in the first place and, most of all, that can't really be done. He makes the mistake of imagining that teaching is engineering (read Russell Barkley on being a shepherd rather than an engineer), a view that is doubly problematic as it treats students like pieces of sheet metal waiting to be fashioned into a shape of management's choosing. Students get no agency or choice in his vision.

And all of that in service of the notion that if a runner is lagging in a race, they just need to be properly directed to run faster (faster even than those in the front of the pack) so that they can catch up. No, thank you. 

How You Made Them Feel

They may forget what you said — but they will never forget how you made them feel.

There have been variations on this quote, including one from Maya Angelou. But according to The Quote Investigator, its earliest appearance was in 1971 in Richard Evans's Quote Book in which the quote was attributed to Carl W. Buehner (a muckity muck of the Latter Day Saints). 

Sometimes it is used for speakers in general, but sometimes it is thrown at teachers-- and that's how I've seen it pop up in the past week. And it rubs me the wrong way.

I understand the intent, the idea of saying that teaching is more than just pouring content into young brains, that there is an emotional element to education. But I resist the notion, often attached to this quote, that trying to impart an emotional effect is a teacher's primary job, or that it is somehow separate from teaching actual content and skills. (I'm also not a fan of the idion of "making" someone feel something, but let's let that sit for today.)

One of the feelings that a teacher can give students to remember is the feeling of having mastered the content of the course. What I wanted my students to feel was that they were smart and capable of writing and reading well. In other words, most of my "feelings" teaching was conveyed directly through my content teaching. As my youngest kids work their way through school, I want them to feel good about themselves, and my expectation is that their teachers will not simply teach them to feel good about themselves, but teach them to read and write and math and other stuff so that the boys have something to feel good about. 

The feelings teaching and the content teaching are inextricably linked. If you hammer a student with the message that they are stupid and incapable of learning, it will be hard to teach them. If you give them simple work that teaches nothing and expects little of them, they will understand that you have low expectations and a corresponding low opinion of their abilities, it will be hard to teach them.  If you give them challenge-free puffballs in hopes of building their self-esteem, that will also fail; they are young, but they aren't stupid. They know when they've met a challenge and when they haven't.

But give them a real challenge and the support and encouragement to meet it, and they will both learn and feel like someone who is smart and tough. 

It is one the challenges of teaching--maybe one of the most important ones. To hit that sweet spot between Too Easy To Keep Students Awake and Too Difficult For Students To Bear. But between boredom and frustration levels is an energizing valley from which students emerge feeling pretty damned good.

Nobody ever mistook me for a particularly warm and fuzzy teacher, but when they came out of my course, most of them had accomplished something and also (important to me) knew they had accomplished something. My job was to chart a path up the mountain, walk with them up the mountain, and offer some combination of words of encouragement and the kind of kick in the ass that says "You can do this" rather than "You suck." 

Help your students feel smart and capable, and do it by helping them actually be well-educated. The best way to make a student feel like a reader is to teach them to read. I bet they'll remember that. 

Defending the Early Years To Close Up Shop

Defending the Early Years was founded in 2012 to respond to the new wave of bad reformy ideas and has ever since been a powerful and helpful voice in the world of early childhood education. They have stood up for the littles, the small children who are often overlooked in the midst of various education debates. And now they have announced that they are at the end of their road.

I've brought up their work many times over the years. Early on, they were leaders in responding to the Common Core insistence that we should be jamming more reading instruction into five-year-old brains. In January 2015 Defending the Early Years and the Alliance for Childhood released a report about the use of Kindergarten reading instruction. Authored by Nancy Carlsson-Paige, Geralyn Bywater McLaughlin, and Joan Wolfsheimer Almon, the report tipped its hand in its title: "Reading Instruction in Kindergarten: Little To Gain, and Much To Lose." The report put some weight behind the conclusion that forcing reading instruction on kindergartners was not a great idea, and in fact was not even a neutral idea, but an idea that could cause actual harm.

When academic pre-K heated up as a growth sector, DEY published a short piece by Lilian Katz that provides a useful framework for explaining and understanding why some approaches to early childhood education are not useful-- "Lively Minds: Distinctions between academic versus intellectual goals for young children." It was brief but great, distinguishing between academic and intellectual growth goals; I liked it a lot.

Looking back through my DEY pieces, I note that part of their evolution has involved responding to increasingly crazy pants ideas. By 2018, states were talking about cyber-preschool-- parking three-year-old's in front of a computer screen. This was a dumb idea, and DEY and their partners said so. This statement from the group captures their passionate protection of littles:

Recognizing the estimated $70 billion a year “preschool market,” an increasing number of Silicon Valley companies with names like “K12 Inc.” and “CHALK" are selling families and policymakers the idea that kindergarten readiness can be transmitted through a screen. What these companies offer is not preschool, but a marketing scheme designed to sell a virtual facsimile of real preschool. By adopting online pre-k, states are selling out kids and families for the benefit of private industry.

All of our knowledge about human development demonstrates that children learn best through exploratory, creative play and relationships with caring adults. As the American Academy of Pediatrics notes, “Higher-order thinking skills and executive functions essential for school success, such as task persistence, impulse control, emotion regulation, and creative, flexible thinking, are best taught through unstructured and social (not digital) play.” By contrast, there is virtually no evidence showing that online preschool improves outcomes for kids.

Online pre-K may expose kids and families to new types of risks. Research shows that screen overuse puts young children at risk of behavior problems, sleep deprivation, delays in social emotional development, and obesity. Extended time on screens diminishes time spent on essential early learning experiences such as lap-reading, creative play, and other social forms of learning.

That was their trademark-- passionate yet professional responses to crazypants ideas most firmly rooted in extracting dollars from state and parents (including responses to bogus studies meant to produce science-flavored marketing).

And when the nation needed information about how the pandemic was affecting education, DEY had that covered, too. 

They created training sessions and informative videos. They provided a mountain of resources soi that parents, teachers, and advocates who knew in their gut that something was wrong with a new child-targeting policy had materials they could use to help make their point. They even put me on their facebook page a time or two.

I have met Executive Director Denisha Jones, and she is everything you would want from a person to run an organization like this-- smart, incisive, knowledgeable, and still warmly human. They were lucky to have her.

But a recent announcement on the website tells us that DEY is headed into the sunset.

Though the need for this work has not gone away, we have reached a point where it is time to say goodbye to Defending the Early Years. We recognize that this may feel sudden, but it is a decision we have been grappling with for the past two years. And one we have not made lightly, but one that we believe is in the best interest of the staff and the board. It is well known that securing funding for early childhood advocacy is not easy. Foundations and corporations rarely prioritize early childhood education and care, and when they do, there is never enough to fund everyone who applies. And though we have received many wonderful individual donations over the years, that is not enough to sustain an organization. The reality is that we need a dedicated funding stream to continue being the voice for just, equitable, and high-quality early childhood education and care. And without one in sight, we have decided to bring DEY’s admirable run to an end on June 30, 2026.

Damn. Once again, the tiniest humans, and the people who work with them and stand up for them and raise them-- those folks the short end of the stick. It's a little rage-making-- in the midst of a new wave of moaning about how not enough Americans are making babies, the powers that be still can't figure out how to help the "under-babied" of this country actually raise babies. Is there any country that makes more noise about valuing family and children and devotes fewer actual resources to making life easier for families and children. 

But I digress. There is some good-ish news, in that the vast library of resources created and collected by the group will still be available. And if you want further evidence of their reach and impact, a page is set up for messages from friends, supporters, and beneficiaries.

DEY has been an invaluable organization; the landscape surrounding early childhood education will be a bit more bare without them. Thanks to all the folks who worked in the organization; may you all land somewhere that allows you to continue your important work on behalf of education and tiny humans. 

ICYMI: Final Final Stretch Edition (5/31)

By the end of the coming week, school will have wound down for the year for the Board of Directors and the CMO here at the Institute, and summer will officially begin. Oh, the adventures! I spent Friday as a volunteer for the annual carnival day, which in my case involved standing outside helping small humans deal with various yard games, point being I have already achieved my first sunburn of the summer, so we are hitting the ground running here. May your summer unfold happily, too.

Here's some reading from the week. 

The Conservative ‘plan’ to Dismantle Public Schools is Entering the Home Stretch

The latest from independent journalist Jeff Bryant. It's not pretty.

The First School Year Under a Texas Law Targeting LGBTQ+ Students

Bekah McNeel at The 74 reports on one Texas student whose senior year was hit by the new anti-LGBTQ law, and what that student did about it. 

Property tax cuts sound great — until your city can’t fund schools or police

Speaking of which, Florida is now entering the "end property taxes" stage of dismantling public education. As the Miami Herald editorial board points out, there are many problems with that idea.

Honesty for Ohio Education Will Launch Statewide “Voucher Accountability Project”

Jan Resseger reports on an attempt in Ohio to inject a little accountability into the school voucher program.

Why learning a musical instrument could stave off ‘brain rot’ and help concentration

Cool article. It's a small study with a small effect, but still cool to read about, Rebecca Whittaker reports for the Independent.

Tennessee school district reverses ban on Alex Haley ‘Roots’ novel

A reminder that making a bunch of noise over stupid decisions really can help. Knox County Schools in Tennessee became famous for banning Roots. They've decided maybe that wasn't a great choice. The superintendent believes they were trying to make a good faith attempt to follow the state law, which is a reminder of how much trouble is stirred up by bad censorship laws.

The Math Was Within Us All Along

Jose Luis Vilson celebrates a moment in which it turns out the people do too have math within them.

Explainer: What is "Teacher Tired?"

Matt Brady tries to explain that special end-of-the-year teacher exhaustion.

Everyone in Edtech Should Show Their Cards

Dan Meyer has more love for ed tech than I, but it is a clear-eyed sort of realistic love. Here he talks about the need for transparency in the ed tech world.

Maybe There Really Is a Learning Recession. But It’s Not What You’re Thinking.

Nancy Flanagan looks into the "learning recession" -- the timing, the framing and the conclusions we might draw.

The New York Times Mistaken Ideas About NCLB!

All sorts of reformy types are sure that if we had just stayed the course with NCLB, we wouldn't be in this mess. They are full of it. Nancy Bailey explains just some of the ways this thinking is mistaken.

The Return Of The Reformers

Gary Rubinstein has also noticed the return of these yahoos, and reminds us of some of their many flaws

Texas School Police Pepper-Sprayed, Tackled and Tasered Students

The New York Times visits Texas, where every misgiving you ever had about putting police in schools has come true. This is a pretty depressing piece, but a cautionary tale for other states. (Well, it's cautionary for Texas, too, bless their authoritarian hearts, but they aren't going to pay attention).

La. Gov.’s May 2026 Presser on a Teacher/Staff Pay Raise via MFP Dollars

Louisiana teachers haven't had a raise from the state in 18 years. The governor has made noise about fixing that, and the indispensable Mercedes Schneider is transcribing it all for the record. Not that politicians take stuff back or anything. Worth a look at what kinds of noises are being made.

Automata & Paradox

Benjamin Riley considers economics, education, and AI. An interesting thought experiment.

‘Lobotomized’: Character.AI Is Showing What AI Enshittification Looks Like

Turns out when companies try to make their AI profitable, customers get cranky.

The Biggest Tell That Something Was Written by AI

Excellent piece by Eve Fairbanks for The Atlantic. Come for this paragraph:

The problem is that the efficiency and frictionlessness that make AI appealing to writers are the same qualities that make it feel untrustworthy to readers. And readers are right not to trust it. No matter how much we may tell ourselves that AI is just a tool like spell-check, it isn’t. When we use AI to flesh out ideas, we lose the most important part of the writing process: thinking.

Even Ansel Adams Isn't Sacred Anymore

A gallery used AI to color Ansel Adams prints, then tried to sell them, all without talking to the Dams estate. This is part of the trouble with AI-- it empowers the kind of idiot who would look at an Ansel Adams print and think, "What this needs is some color."

Franklin Silver Cornet Band opens their 170th season with anniversary concert

How I spend part of every summer. 

This Beatles song translates perfectly into bluegrass, starting all the way back with Arlo Guthrie. I don't have a good video clip, but this is so tasty, I'm including it anyway. 

 

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TN: School Takeover Amnesia

Now that reformsters have been at it for over a decade, there has been plenty of time for amnesia to set in about previous attempts to Fix Schools with Very Clever Ideas. We can talk another day about the curious delusion leading many reformsters to insist that we should go back to NCLB test-and-punish because that was awesomely successful (spoiler alert: it was not). Today, let's go to Tennessee, a state that really ought to Know Better when it comes to this One Weird Reformy Trick and yet, apparently, does not.

Long ago, Tennessee installed Kevin Huffman, as the Tennessee Grand High Commissioner of Education, representing a reformster milestone of his own. Huffman's career path took him to Swarthmore, which led to a TFA posting, which led to law school, which led to practicing education law in DC, which led back to TFA, first as general counsel and later as various VP executive titly things. Then, a few years later, Governor Bill Haslam tapped him for Tennessee Educational Poobahdom. Which made him the first TFA temp to get to run an entire state's education system.

One of the ideas that bubbled up during Huffman's time was the Achievement School District. The idea was that the state would take over a bunch of failing Memphis schools. State educrats were confident they could totally turn the schools around, promising that these schools in the bottom 5% would be moved directly to the top 25% of schools in the state. 

Chris Barbic, a charter guy, was brought in to run the ASD, wielding all the hubris and arrogance confidence and optimism that Teach for America products tended to muster, secure in the knowledge that they could do the education so much better than traditional teachers and career educators. This is the basic premise of every state takeover of schools-- We Smart People know so much better than educators how to make schools work. And takeover artists give themselves an edge with the premise that "success" is narrowly defined as "get those test scores up." 

And yet, in 2015, after three years of ASDing his heart out, Barbic was heading for the door. They had redefined the goals for ASD, given themselves new deadlines, and yet even with the goalposts on wheels, Barbic was moving on, and while some of his analysis of his failure was not very insightful, he mostly got the important parts: 

Let’s just be real: achieving results in neighborhood schools is harder than in a choice environment. I have seen this firsthand at YES Prep and now as the superintendent of the ASD. As a charter school founder, I did my fair share of chest pounding over great results. I’ve learned that getting these same results in a zoned neighborhood school environment is much harder.

Barbic was replaced by a Broadie, who also failed to do anything other than move some goal posts (no more of that "top 25%" stuff). Huffman couldn't close the deal on selling the model to other states. And the ASD just kept failing. Subsequent education chiefs tried a variety of ASD heads and an array of ever-vaguening goal statements, and yet by 2024, they were still nowhere. 

Under four different state education commissioners, helmed by five different leaders, and aimed at shifting sets of goals and strategies, the Achievement School District never accomplished the kind of dramatic school turnarounds that its supporters aspired to.

State takeovers mostly fail. They use the wrong metric for failure, the wrong diagnosis, the wrong pool of "expertise," the wrong motivation, and the wrong timetable, and Tennessee's ASD, with its dogged over-a-decade unsuccessful flailing, provides one of the most thorough debunking of takeovers.

And yet.

The Tennessee legislature has decided to take over the Memphis school district. 

Test scores have been low-- but the district has the highest possible growth score. There will be a new board that will be in charge of everything from teacher evaluation to superintendent contract to curriculum to finances. The board includes local folks from business and politics and, of course, nobody with an actual background in education. Plus David Mansouri, head of the reformy Tennessee SCORE, with plenty of reformster credentials. 

To some folks, this sure looks like a bunch of white Republicans usurping a mostly Black board in order to take over a largely Black district. Coming on top of the gerrymandering that will dilute the Black population of Memphis and likely end any Black representation in the legislature--well, it's not a great look. But Tennessee GOP has a super-majority, and I'm not sure they give a rat's ass how any of this looks.

Melissa Brown has been covering this for Chalkbeat, though I haven't seen her yet address what ought to be the big question: the state tried taking over Memphis schools for over a decade, and it failed. It failed a lot, and it failed hard. So what do these folks imagine they know this time that will make a difference? 

Maybe they don't care. Maybe they just want to dismantle the district and privatize the parts. We'll see what happens, but I feel confident predicting that Memphis schools will not be catapulted into the top 25% of the state.

PA: Looks Like This Cyber School Is Doing Okay

When Pennsylvania passed some rudimentary cyber charter school funding reforms, the cybers squealed like impaled porkers. "This is terrible," they hollered. "We will have to lay people off! Some schools will close!"

CCA HQ. Really

So now it's six months later, and the Education Voters of PA have continued the hard work of filing and pursuing Right To Know requests (because although cyber charters pretend to be public schools and run on taxpayer dollars, they fight hard to avoid actual transparency and accountability). They've been checking to see how much cyber charters have had to scale back, now that they're in the grip of these new reforms. 

Apparently they're doing okay.

Ed Voters reports that PA Cyber has approved the following field trips since the reforms (and, presumably, the associated belt tightening) went into effect. (You can read the actual receipts here.)

$28,800 for a field trip to the Kalahari Resort, including 400 waterpark passes and meal vouchers that cost $62 per attendee,

$13,375.70 for 192 tickets ranging from $25 to $92 for a field trip to the Sight and Sound Theatre in Lancaster County. As a bonus, this is a theater that aims to present "powerful stories from the pages of Scripture and history."

$6,18.80 for parties at five different Urban Air locations, another sort of indoor adventure park

$5,088.00 for 125 students to enjoy two hours of snow tubing at the Seven Springs Mountain resort.

Is it terrible for a school to wrap up the year with a field trip to some place fun? Not at all. At my old high school, we took seniors on a trip every year-- and they paid for it with four years of fundraising leading up to that. I'm pretty sure that if our district had started asking taxpayers to fork over money to send seniors to an amusement park, there would have been complaints (and even more if we asked taxpayers to foot the bill for some Biblical "entertainment").

Perhaps it would fly better in other districts. But what seems clear is that PA Cyber is not struggling to deal with the financial fallout of Pennsylvania's cyber charter reforms.

Growth or Proficiency

Some of us are apparently still having this debate.

Jill Barshay wrote a piece for Hechinger Report about the DC school district, which is apparently awesome at growth but not so great at actual achievement levels. The piece does a good job of revisiting the debates about these two sorts of measures; I'd just like to add a point or three.

First, let me point out for the gazillionth time that we are not talking about student achievement and we are certainly not (as Barshay unfortunately does) talking about years of learning.  A "year of learning" or "month of learning" or "fortnight of learning" or an "afternoon of learning" is just a journalist-friendly way of packaging test results. 

We are talking about scores on a Big Standardized Test. That's it.

Barshay notes that "A school system can improve rapidly and still leave most children behind." Well, yes. Which students have more room for improvement-- those who are already at the top of their game, or those who are scoring in the basement?

Students who are bringing up the rear academically can be given more test prep, instruction that goes straight to what the test covers as well as instruction on how to take the test itself (Here's how to avoid being tricked by distractors in multiple choice questions). Students at the top of the game may well be growing and developing, but the BS Test measures such a sliver of skills (and no knowledge at all) that their growth doesn't register (You've been developing insights into quantum theory? That's will not raise your test score). 

This was always part of the debate over tying teacher evaluation to student scores. Focus on growth, and teachers of honors classes are in trouble, because a student who's already at the 98th percentile isn't going to grow at all. Focus on proficiency scores, and the teachers who are assigned the low-achieving students are in trouble, because no matter how well they teach those students, they will still lag (no, Virginia, there is no magical technique for "catching up" students quickly-- if there was, teachers would use it all the time). 

Worse, when policy bases teacher or school evaluation on proficiency, it turns the lowest achievers into hot potatoes. We've seen this in action where charter and voucher schools work hard to avoid those low-scoring students who would mess up their numbers. When Steven Wilson is cited in the article pointing to charter schools with low-income students and high levels of proficiency, he's simply pointing to the effects of creaming, where schools do their best to avoid having their numbers damaged by low-scoring students. There is no magic trick there that can be applied "at scale" for the public system. 

Ultimately, schools can not win playing the growth measurement game because schools cannot raise student scores every year forever, as if somehow each cohort of students was smarter than their older siblings. Test scores are not a stock market ticker.

But schools also cannot win the proficiency game. BS Test scores and "grade levels" are scaled and normed (curved). If the BS Test were truly standards based, students taking the test could be scored instantly after they clicked the last answer. But the scores have to be computed and compared and scaled and then some state bureau sets the cut scores. But curves have to have a bottom. If, after years of intensive effort, every child tested above grade level for reading, we would not conclude that a reading education moonshot had occurred-- we would conclude that "grade level" had been set too low. If every child was rated "proficient," we would conclude that the requirements for "proficient" had been made too easy (just check every piece complaining about grade inflation). 

Does test score growth tell us something? Absolutely. Does it tell us everything, or even most of the things? Absolutely not.

Do test score levels tell us something? Absolutely. Do they tell us everything, or even most of the things? Absolutely not.

The growth vs. proficiency debate is in many ways a debate about how to make the best use of a tiny, noisy slice of data. Instead, I wish we were talking about what we really should be measuring, how we can measure it, and how we are going to deal with the fact that there is much about educational quality that cannot be measured in any way that will satisfy our data overlords. Some days we are wasting way too much energy arguing about whether we should cut baloney into slices or cubes when we'd be better off figuring out how make a healthier meal.

ICYMI: Big Bishop Sunday Edition (5/24)

Everybody in a lofty position had to start somewhere, and the current head of the Episcopal Church in the US happened to start out as the rector at our local church. He has done a fine job of standing against the current christianist tide. He was also a valued school board member during a difficult time with a great commitment to public education (his sister is currently education chief for the state). And when he was just a lowly local bishop, he married my daughter and son-in-law in that same church. That church is celebrating its 200th birthday today, and the very reverend presiding bishop will be visiting to share a few words. So, a cool day.

Ordinarily I put the tech-related reading at the bottom of the list, but today I have two really valuable tech pieces to share, so we'll start this week's list with those.

Real signals or artificial stereotypes?

Though I referenced this item in a post this week, it bears repeating. Adam Kucharski tells us about an experiment in which Copilot was given two data sets of survey responses, one labeled US and on UK. Could Copilot discern the cultural differences between the two? It could, and did so at great length. Except that the two data sets were just two copies of the same dataset. Whoopsies.

Googlebooks are the first anti-personal computers

The next awesome tech tool is a computer that is "AI-first." It will tell you what it is you want to do next. "It is Google’s computer acting on your behalf — not your computer under your control." Ashley Biancuzzo, PCWorld associate editor, is not feeling it.

Parents explode in fury at school’s plan to constantly film their children to train AI

The crazypants folks at University of Washington just wanted preschool teachers wear body cams so that everything they said and did could be recorded to train AI. That included filming the children. And parents had to opt out to avoid it. And they were pissed, so the university gave up this time-- but you know that idea is still out there.

Koch and Walton Tied Front Buys Its Way into Maine Governor's Race

Maurice Cunningham is an expert in tracking dark money. Here he notes that DFER, the supposedly Democratic advocacy group for school privatization, is throwing plenty of money around for the Maine gubernatorial race. 

Children Are Not Property: The Case for Children’s Fundamental Rights

Bruce Lesley argues the point once again for the people in the back-- children are not chattel. And no, that doesn't mean that parents are unimportant.

Teachers: Please Take Action on the Public Policy that Affects Our Work and Our Students

A rare guest post at Jan Resseger's blog. Brand new teacher Mackenzie Morgan asks teachers to please get in the debates about education policy.

We Taught Students to Read. We Still Can’t Tell if They Understand.

Oh, look. Could it be the reading pendulum swinging back away from decoding toward comprehension. Quel surprise!

Tennessee governor signs Memphis schools takeover into law

Nobody has proven more thoroughly than Tennessee that state takeovers do not work. So, of course, Governor Lee would like to launch another state takeover of a school district.

Education Department Reallocates Minority-Serving Institution Funds Again

Just a quick take from Inside Higher Ed (so you may want to save your free clicks). It requires some more study, but it sure seems like the feds saying "Let's just put money supporting those non-white students into just getting them ready for a job."

The Last Bell Rings, But the Lessons Don’t Stop

As always, TC Weber writes about many things, but come for the explanation of the importance of a half-decent principal.

Neanderthals vs Humans vs Ants vs AI

Do we get smarter when you collect more of us? Benjamin Riley takes a look at some science.

Commencement, Continuation, Convocation

Adrian Neibauer shares some thoughts about transition and commencement and the students going through them.

Academica Enters Florida’s Voucher Gold Rush

Sue Kingery Woltanski takes a break from taking a break to look at how one charter giant is getting ready to cash in on vouchers, too.

Why Is ALA Giving a Platform to a Company Promoting “AI Librarians”?

What the heck, ALA? The AI School Librarian has some questions.

Memorial Day, 2026

Nancy Flanagan once again the personal with the bigger picture. A worthy Memorial Day meditation.

At Forbes.com this week, a look at the attempt to slash next year's education budget (which looks a lot like last year's, except for the branding).

Of all the musical appearances on Colbert as he went down to the wire, I think this was my favorite.

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US Department of Ed: I Can Has Skillz

Earlier this week, the actual United States Department of Education posted this on their dead bird app account-

Once you get past the 1962 Soviet Russia esthetic, there's just a lot of AI sloppage to take in here.

Why so much copper tube, and why is it running everywhere except to the actual faucet? Is that supposed to be the innards of a radiator above the sink? Is some of running into his butt? What the heck is that coupling that the tubing is running into on the left rear corner of the sink?

Once you start looking closely, you'll notice that these tools are some sort of Lovecraftian nightmare. His sort-of-pipe wrench is close, but what the heck is she using to do... something... with the piece of pipe in her hand? What is the odd assortment of unusable wrenches, from the ones only half there to the closed-end wrench with a smooth, round interior-- what bolt do you tighten with that? And what are the assorted odd shapes in their toolbox? 

Her shirt is held shut with snaps or buttons? It doesn't look quite right for either. But his shirt is apparently held shut with patriotic thoughts. Why does he get two flags to her none? Hard to say, but eagle-eyed uniform-knowledgeable viewers will have noticed that the flag on his sleeve is backwards-- stars-forward, as if the flag is advancing into battle, is the correct positioning.

That may or may not be a US Postal Service van behind them, but I'm pretty sure its front end is levitating. What are the two reels of wire for? And why is she looking-- well, neither at him, nor at where he is pointing, nor at whatever operation she's performing with her hand? Also, if she's going to go to work plumbing, she might want to take that ring off. 

This is our tax dollars at work on a project that I think actually would have benefited by being sent to the states. It's progress, I suppose, that at least some people in the department apparently now understand that AI is not a steak sauce. I suppose we can also be grateful that these AI plumbers have the correct number and configuration of limbs (though I have some doubts about his right thumb). But if there was ever an example of work that would be better handled by a stock photo than by AI, this is it.

But no-- we get this amateur hour AI that apparently nobody at the department looked at long or hard enough to notice that maybe the folks who would consider a blue collar job (and lord knows we need more blue collar workers) would look at this and think that the encouragement was coming from someone who doesn't know jack about trades. 

It does make me nostalgic for the days of "All your base are belong to us."

As you might guess, the interwebs have had a field day with this. Here are two alternative takes--

ChatGPT vs. BABEL

One of the great heroes in stemming the tide of using robots to evaluate student writing has been Les Perelman, who taught writing and composition at MIT (among other places), where he served as Director of Writing Across the Curriculum. He went had to head with many robograders, repeatedly revealing their many deficiencies. 

But he got tired of hearing bot companies claim that sure, maybe an expert writer could fool the bot, but a regular student could not. So, "I decided to test that hypothesis," he wrote, "by attempting to fool the computer with something less intelligent than any student, another computer." So he and his team created Basic Automatic B.S. Essay Language Generator (BABEL Generator), a program that could generate fluid gibberish. Perelman then passed the BABEL gibberish through various robograders, most of which gave the gibberish high marks, even though it was senseless (but grammatically smooth) junk.

BABEL was on line for a while, free for anyone to play with, so I played, and while it sadly appears to no longer be there, I still have some of the gibberish BABEL whipped up, so I thought I would pretend to be a student and get some "help" with my stuff from ChatGPT. 

What's the point, you may ask, of giving ChatGPT stuff that was not generated by a human being in good faith. 

First, an awful lot of what is crossing teacher desktops these days is, in fact, work not generated by humans in good faith. And as more teachers adopt LLMs as "aids" to "help" grade student work, the more students must question why on earth they should even try to generate human good-faith writing when there will be no human good faith attempt to read it. AI judging the work of AI is already happening. So I don't think this exercise is all that removed from classroom reality.

Second, watching what ChatGPT does when asked to respond to gibberish with no actual human intent or intelligence is instructive. Just for clarity's sake, I'll note that I was using the basic free-when-you-log-in version. 

This is going to take up some space, but I think it's worth it. Here we go.

Sentence Rewrites

Will start with an easy one. Given "privacy" as a prompt, BABLE extruded this pair of sentences:

Privateness has not been and undoubtedly never will be lauded, precarious, and decent. Humankind will always subjugate privateness.

I asked ChatGPT to "rewrite this sentence." It did not correct my lack of a plural, but it did come up with this:

Privacy has never been fully respected and likely never will be. Humanity will always find ways to undermine it.

It also suggested that if I wanted "to keep it more philosophical."

Privacy has never been truly honored, nor is it likely ever to be. Humanity will always seek to subordinate it.

Faced with three adjectives that make no sense, ChatGPT picked the one that came closest to a word that would complete the sentence and picked a more probable word. It took the same approach with "subjugate." In the case of "humankind" and "privateness," it went to a more usual word. It also killed BABEL's legitimate parallel construction. If BABEL had a voice, ChatGPT edited it out.

A Full Paragraph

On to a harder challenge. I had BABEL spew a full essay based on three words-- isolationism, Europe and war. The introductory paragraph was this one:

Warfare has not, and no doubt never will be expedited. Human society will always oust isolationism; some of appetites and others for an exposition. a lack of war lies in the field of literature but also the field of philosophy. War is the most inappropriately eventual trope of mankind.

The previous BABEL work might have meant something if you squinted real hard, but this is some top notch junk. When I asked ChatGPT to rewrite it, an acceptable response might have been "What the hell are you even talking about?" I also asked ChatGPT to "evaluate" the paragraph. 

Warfare has never been, and likely never will be, eradicated. Human society continually rejects isolationism—driven by ambition, desire, and the pursuit of dominance. The aspiration for peace belongs not only to literature, but also to philosophy. Yet war remains one of humanity’s most tragically recurring realities.

It also offered a "more literary" version.

War has never been fully overcome, nor likely ever will be. Humanity resists isolation, compelled by appetite, ambition, and the longing for expansion. The dream of a world without war exists in both literature and philosophy, yet conflict endures as one of mankind’s most persistent and tragic conditions.

Here, ChatGPT just throws out the words that don't make sense and looks for a more probable match based on the parts of the sentence that it leaves intact. "Warfare" and "expedited" are not probable sentence companions. It keeps warfare and ignores expedited. In its notes, ChatGPT wrote "Expedited means “sped up,” which does not fit the context. You likely mean eradicated, prevented, or avoided." 

Of course, BABEL didn't "mean" anything. But for ChatGPT words exist as coordinates in a multidimensional matrix (like a bunch of islands in Steve Ditko's renderings of Dr. Strange) assigned based on all those pieces of writing that the company stole for training, and what ChatGPT can check is whether or not the coordinates it has been fed in the form of your sentence are associated with each other or not. "Warfare" and "expedited" don't appear in the same neighborhood (especially if you throw in "never" and "not"). 

But ChatGPT is programmed to pretend that it can infer the writer's intention. In its "evaluation" of the paragraph, it uses phrases like "you may mean" and "the intended meaning," but again-- BABEL had no intent when it wrote this (just as ChatGPT had no intent when it replied). And it once again cannot address that this passage is nonsense:

Your passage has strong philosophical ambition and a serious tone, but several word choices and constructions make the meaning unclear. It reads as if you are aiming for a dense, literary style, though some vocabulary is being used imprecisely.

No, the passage had no ambition at all. And to say the construction makes the meaning "unclear" is not a human reaction to this gibberish. But ChatGPT deals mostly in fluency and structure, and BABEL's paragraph mostly delivers that. 

Finally, this stumper.

That opening paragraph was the closest to intelligible that BABEL came in the whole essay. Here's something from the middle of the essay:

As I have learned in my semiotics class, isolationism is the most fundamental casuistry of humankind. Though interference for obloquy inverts, information processes brains. The same pendulum may process two different orbitals to process an orbital. The plasma is not the only thing the brain reacts; it also receives neutrinoes for irascibility with war. Due to interceding, petulantly but extraneously petulant expositions protrude also on Europe. a contemptuous isolationism changes the injunction at warfare.

ChatGPT was pretty much stumped by this. The detailed responses focused almost entirely on versions of "the meanings of word X and word Y don't have any connection I can find." The summation:

This passage has an intentionally intellectual and abstract tone, but it currently reads as semantically unstable — many words are either used incorrectly or combined in ways that obscure meaning rather than deepen it. It resembles philosophical or post-structural writing stylistically, but the logical connections between ideas are difficult to follow.

So "intentionally"?? ChatGPT extrudes even more inferences about the writer's intent, including "The passage demonstrates a strong desire for philosophical density and elevated diction." I do like the phrase "semantically unstable" and would probably use it myself if I were still grading student papers; it doesn't mean anything, really, but sounds smarter than "this is a freaking mess." And "resembles philosophical or post-structural writing stylistically" is a hoot. This passage did push ChatGPT to issue an actual correction: "The brain does not meaningfully 'receive neutrinos for irascibility.'” The response also includes the notion that there are "traces of themes." Also, "The result feels more surreal or experimental than analytical." They do indeed. Also, "feels"?

Also, it was at this point that ChatGPT suggested I upgrade for more memory.

Prompted to rewrite the passage, ChatGPT extruded this:

As I learned in my semiotics class, isolationism may be one of humanity’s most enduring rationalizations. Although public interference and condemnation often reverse political intentions, information continues to shape the human mind. Just as a single pendulum can influence multiple motions, one idea may alter many intellectual trajectories. The brain responds not only to physical stimuli, but also to invisible pressures—fear, ideology, and the persistent anxieties surrounding war. Through political intervention, emotional and often unnecessary disputes continue to spread across Europe. In this way, a contemptuous form of isolationism reshapes humanity’s understanding of warfare.

ChatGPT just throws up its imaginary cyberhands and falls back on making shit up.

What can we learn?

AI apologists may argue that, gee, ChatGPT was just trying to give BABEL the benefit of the doubt, or fall back on the old argument that ChatGPT would be fine with human good faith efforts. I disagree.

Steve Ditko

Imagine this scenario. You are on the phone with a mentor, and as you pour out your thoughts, they reply with a steady stream of "Uh-huh" and "I hear you" and "That's a good point." You decide to continue the conversation in person, so you put your phone in your back pocket, still connected, and run to their office, where you find them on their phone, still saying "Uh-huh" and "I hear you" and "That's a good point" even though they are just listening to your butt. What would you conclude about how closely they had been listening to you when you were actually talking?

ChatGPT makes comments about writer intent and ambition and purpose not because of anything that the writer has written, but because that's just how ChatGPT is programmed to "talk." It is "hallucinating" writer intent and the meaning of the writing itself, latching onto a couple of word-coordinates and pulling up some nearby word-coordinates.  

While I was working on this post, a post from Adam Kucharski popped up on my feed that is just astonishing. Copilot looked at two datasets of writing, one labeled UK and one labeled US; Copilot was asked to mine the two 2000 responses for cultural differences, which it did, with relish. But the twist-- the two datasets were just two copies of exactly the same 2000 responses. 

It's not just that AI "analysis" of your writing is bad (though it is). It's that what you have written is largely irrelevant to the process that the chatbot goes through. It answers the same question that chatbots always answer-- what would the thing you just asked for look like? It does not perform an analysis; it creates a simulacrum of what an analysis would look like, and if any of that happens to be an accurate analysis, that's purely an accident. It cannot detect the difference between an actual human expression and a simulacrum that imitates human expression. 

Analysis of a piece of writing must include some inferences about the writer's intent. Chatbots are not remotely capable of making such inferences. But as we see above, even when such intent literally does not exist. it doesn't matter to the chatbot because it's just making shit up about all that anyway. It cannot tell the difference between a human in the loop or another bot, and that suggests that it can't "see" the human in the loop even when it's there. 

18 Rules For Life (2026 Edition)

 After first posting this list years ago, I have made it a tradition to get it out every year and re-examine it, edit it, and remind myself why I thought such things in the first place (it is also a way to give myself the day off for my birthday). This list does not represent any particular signs of wisdom on my part, because I discovered these rules much in the same way that a dim cow discovers an electric fence. 

In a break with tradition, I have fewer numbers this year (this is not the book I'm working on, but if you're a publisher who sees a book here, feel free contact me). And as the years roll by, it is interesting to note that some rules loom larger than others depending on the state of the world that year. 

In the meantime, today I exercise a blogger's privilege to be self-indulgent. My rules for life, in no particular order.

1. Don't be a dick.

There is no excuse for being mean on purpose. You will hurt people in life, either through ignorance or just because sometimes life puts us on collision courses with others and people get hurt. Sometimes conflict and struggle appear, and there is no way out but through. There is enough hurt and trouble and disappointment and rejection naturally occurring in the world; there is no reason to deliberately go out of your way to add more.

This is doubly true these days, even though some folks have decided that being a dick is a worthy goal, that inflicting hurt on Those People Who Deserve It Because They Are Wrong is some sort of virtue, that treating people poorly, on purpose, is not only okay, but necessary. It isn't. Be kind.


Step 1 of the writing process

2. Do better.

You are not necessarily going to be great. But you can always be better. You can always do a better job today than you did yesterday. Make better choices. Do better. You can always do better. Important note: having screwed up yesterday does not excuse from doing better today. No matter how lost or in the weeds you may be, no matter where you are, there's always a direction that takes you towards better.

And it's not just the "better" but also the "do." It's not enough to sit on the couch and think better thoughts. Our recent past reminds us that making the world better means actually doing something, putting something out into the world, standing up for what matters, making an effort to support what you value. 

3. Tell the truth (as best you can).

Words matter. Do not use them as tools with which to attack the world or attempt to pry prizes out of your fellow humans (see Rule #1). "Untrue but advantageous for my team" is not an okay substitute for "true to the best of my understanding." Say what you understand to be true. Life is too short to put your name to a lie.

This does not mean that every word out of your mouth is some sort of Pronouncement from God. Nor does it mean you must be unkind.

But you simply shouldn't speak, post, write or publish words that you know to be untrue. Untruths are not an acceptable means to an end; we rarely achieve our ends, and so it is our means that end up defining us. 

As a culture, we are drowning in bullshit. So much so that we simply accept that being told things that aren't true is just an ordinary part of life. And it is now accelerated because we have amazing little bullshit-generation machines, machines that cannot conceive of "true" or "false" and do not need to in order to fulfill their function of saying things that no human actually means. AI makes it easier than ever to generate a string of words that is disconnected from any intention, meaning, or truth. This not good for us.

4. Seek to understand.

Do not seek comfort or confirmation. Do not simply look for ways to prove what you already believe. Seek to understand, and always be open to the possibility that what you knew to be true yesterday must be rewritten today in the light of new, better understanding. Ignoring evidence you don't like because you want to protect your cherished beliefs is not helpful. Understand that this is a journey you will never complete, and it's not okay to quit. 

All of this goes double for interacting with other human beings. Do not simply decide who they are, or who you want to pretend they are (see #3), and force their every action and word to fit, rather than trying to understand what they are trying to communicate. Misunderstanding people on purpose makes the world a worse place.

5. Listen and pay attention.

Shut up, listen, watch, and pay attention. How else will you seek understanding? Watch carefully. Really see. Really hear. People in particular, even the ones who lie, will tell you who they are if you just pay attention.

Don't skip moments because you think they're minor. Your life is happening right now, and the idea of Special Moments just tricks us into ignoring a million other moments that are just as important. Also, love is not a thing you do at people-- to say that you care about someone even as you don't actually hear or see them is a lie.

Also, pay attention to things and people who contradict your cherished beliefs about yourself, because there may be something there that you really need to hear.

6. Be grateful.

You are the recipient of all sorts of bounty that you didn't earn. Call it the grace of God or good fortune, but be grateful for the gifts you have been given. You did not make yourself. Nobody owes you anything, but you owe God/the Universe/fate everything. I have been hugely fortunate/blessed/privileged; I would have to be some sort of huge dope to grab all that life has given me and say, "This is mine. I made this. It's all because I'm so richly deserving." I've been given gifts, and the only rational response I can think of is to be grateful. That's important because gratitude is the parent of generosity and grace. These days, the world needs more grace.

Maybe you believe that all human beings are not created equal, that some deserve more power and privilege than others. You are still fooling yourself to believe that the good parts of your life are there because you deserve to have them given to you. Understand that your privileges are privileges, and not some payment of what God owes you. 

7. Mind the 5%

95% of life is silly foolishness that humans just made up and then pretended had some Great Significance. Only about 5% really matters, has real value. Don't spend energy, worry, fret, concern, time, stress on the other 95%. The trick is that every person has a different idea of what constitutes the 5%, and sometimes the path to honoring and loving that other person is to indulge their 5%. 

Narrowing down and refining your 5% is a lifetime project. Some people just give up. Some people believe that 90% is the "really matters" part (which is exhausting). 

To know your 5% requires you to know yourself. Strip the definition of yourself of references to situation and circumstance; don't make your 5% about your car, your hair, your job, your house. The more compact your definition of self, the less it will be buffeted and beaten by changes in circumstance. When you define yourself by your car and haircut, the loss of your car or your hair is an existential crisis. Refining your core means you don't waste existential panic on minor bumps in the 95%. Note: this is good work to do long before you, say, retire from a lifelong career that largely defined you.

Also note: do not climb into your own navel and build a home there. At some point you have to stop reflecting and processing and analyzing and just get on with life. 

8. Mind your own business (and hush).

Somehow we have arrived at a culture in which everyone needs to have and express an opinion about everything. If it's not your monkey, not your circus, and not a topic about which you know a single damn thing, what do you suppose you will add by chiming in? There are people whose whole day is organized around roaming the internet so they can unleash their opinion on people (see Rule #1). This does not make the world a better place, doesn't make them better people, and doesn't help solve the issue. Sometimes it is perfectly okay to say, "There's no reason for me to express an opinion about this topic."

Worse, we now have folks who believe that not only should they have and express an opinion about how others live, but they should be able to put their opinion into law. Nobody has ever made the world (or anyone's life) better by imposing their own moral code on others. 

9. Take care of the people around you.

"What difference can one person make" is the wrong question. It is impossible for any individual human to avoid making a difference. Every day you make a difference either for good or bad. People cross your path. You either makes their lives a little better or you don't. Choose to make them better. The opportunity to make the world a better place is right in front of your face every day; it just happens to look like other people (including the annoying ones). Nobody is in a better position than you are to take care of the people right in front of your face.

These opportunities may come at inconvenient times in inconvenient forms. That's tough--we don't get to pick our times or circumstances, but we can either rise to meet them or bail. Bailing does not make the world better. Take care of people, even when the leadership of the country is leaning hard on the message that you don't need to care about Those People.


You are never too young for your first tin hat.


10. Commit.

If you're going to do it, do it. Commitment gets up and gets the job done on the days when love and passion are too tired to get off the couch. Also, commitment is like food. You don't eat on Monday and then say, "Well, that takes care of that. I don't need to think about eating for another week or so. " Commitment must be renewed regularly. Make choices. Live intentionally.

11. Shut up and do the work

While I recognize there are successful people who ignore this rule, this is my list, so these are my rules. And my rule is: Stop talking about how hard you're working or what a great job you're doing or what tremendous obstacles you're overcoming. In short, stop delivering variations on, "Hey, look at me do this work! Look at me!" Sometimes we spend too much time talking about the work instead of just doing the work. Self-reflection is valuable, but at some point you just have to get on with the work.

Note, however, there is a difference between "Hey, lookit me do this work" and "Hey, look at this important work that needs to be done." Ask the ego check question-- if you could do the work under the condition that nobody would ever know that you did it, would you still sign up? If the answer isn't "yes," ask yourself why not.

One of the side effects of social media is that not only do we curate and craft our lives, but we want lots of other people to participate in and confirm the narrative that we're creating. "You're canceling me," often means "You are refusing to corroborate my preferred narrative." We don't just want an audience; we want pliable co-stars. Worry less about both. Don't curate your narrative; do the work. Who lives, who dies, who tells your story--that will have to take care of itself.

12. Assume good intent, complexity, and the possibility of growth.

Do not assume that everyone who disagrees with you is either evil or stupid. They may well be either, or both-- but make them prove it. People mostly see themselves as following a set of rules that makes sense to them. If you can understand their set of rules, you can understand why they do what they do. Doesn't mean you'll like it any better, but you may have a basis for trying to talk to them about it. And as a bare minimum, you will see yourself operating in a world where people are trying to do the right thing, rather than a hostile universe filled with senseless evil idiots. It's a happier, more hopeful way to see the world.

Also, this: when you paint all your opponents as monsters, you provide excellent cover for the actual monsters out there, and you excuse monstrous behavior in yourself.

People grow up. People learn things. People have a day on which their peculiar batch of quirks is just what the day needs; our strengths and weaknesses are often the exact same thing just in different contexts. Awful people can have good moments, and good people can have awful moments-- it's a mistake to assume that someone is all one thing or another. Nobody can be safely written off and ignored completely. Corollary: nobody can be unquestioningly trusted and uncritically accepted all the time. People are a mixed mess of stuff. Trying to sort folks into good guys and bad guys is a fool's game. This is one reason that relationships based on commitment are more stable and positive than transactional ones. 

13. Don't waste time on people who are not being serious.

Some people aren't serious. They don't use words seriously. They don't have a serious understanding of other people or their actions or the consequences of those actions. They can be silly or careless or mean, but whatever batch of words they are tossing together, they are not serious about them. They are not guided by principle or empathy or anything substantial. There's no time-waters quite like trying to change the mind of a person about X when that person has no serious opinion about X to begin with.

Note: do not mistake grimness for seriousness and do not mistake joy and fun for the absence of seriousness. Beware: One of the great tricks of not-being-serious people is to get you to waste time on them, to spend time and energy thinking, fretting, arguing acting about shiny foolishness, leaving them free for larger abuses that go unchecked.

This rule is being heavily challenged these days are a whole lot of very un-serious people have been installed in places of power, and that makes it very hard to distinguish between wasting time dealing with them and investing time in protecting stuff from them.

14. Don't forget the point.

Whatever it is you're doing, don't lose sight of the point. It's basic Drivers Ed 101. If you look a foot in front of the car, you'll wander all over the road. If you stare right at the tree you want to miss, you will drive right into it. Where you look is where you go. Keep your eye on the goal. Remember your purpose. 

And don't try to shorthand it; don't imagine that you know the path that guarantees the outcome you want. Every "If I do X, then I will achieve Y" needs to be examined, because generally it's better to just aim straight at Y. We are living through a dynamic demonstration when someone believes that being rich, famous and powerful will somehow fix gnawing spiritual emptiness and fear of death.

And this doesn't apply to just the big stuff. Many an organization has foundered because its leaders lost sight of the actual point of the organization. Focus on the point (even if it's a goal that you may never reach) because otherwise you will miss Really Good Stuff because you had too many fixed ideas about what the path to your destination is supposed to look like.

Therefor...

15. Don't be misled by your expectations.

Most of our daily misery (not the real big suffering stuff) is the result of measuring our actual situation against expectations we've created for ourselves. So many times we could be saying "Wow! A steak!" but instead we go with, "Dammit, where's my watermelon?"

Doors will appear on your path. Open them even if they are not exactly what you were expecting or looking for. Don't simply fight or flee everything that surprises or challenges you (but don't be a dope about it, either). Most of what I've screwed up in life came from reacting in fear-- not sensible evaluation of potential problems, but just visceral fear. Most of what is good about my life has come from saying "yes." And most of that is not at all what I would have expected or planned for. With each passing year, I look at my life and think, "Well, this is not what I envisioned at all, but it is mighty fine."

16. Make something.

Music, art, refurbished furniture, machinery. Something.

17. Show up.

The first rule of all relationships is that you have to show up. And you have to fully show up. People cannot have a relationship with someone who isn't there, and that includes someone who looks kind of like they're there but who isn't really. In the combination of retirement and parenting again, I'm reminded that this also means nor just being fully present, but remembering to show up at all. You put your head down, go to work, and then a week or two later you're suddenly remembering that it's been a while since you checked in with someone. Rule #2 applies.

Part B of this rule is that when you show up, you may suddenly find out that the place and time requires something of you. Showing up means answering that call.

18. How you treat people is about you, not about them.

It's useful to understand this because it frees you from the need to be a great Agent of Justice in the world, meting out rewards and punishments based on what you think about what people have done or said. It keeps you from wasting time trying to decide what someone deserves, which is not your call anyway. It also gives you power back that you give up when your stance is that you have to wait to see what someone says or does before you react to it.

Treat people well because that's how you should treat people, not because you have decided they deserve it. But don't be a dope; if someone shows you that they will always bite you in the hand, it's prudent to stop offering them your hand. (Also, their repeated hand biting is all about them, not about you and your hand).