Page 103 – Mechanical Sympathy

Project Bikes

I got a couple of nibbles on Kijiji from my ‘got an old bike in your shed you want to get rid of?” ad…

1979 Suzuki GS850, not running, asking $500

A review on this specific bike from the UK shows a lot of love for it.

Here is a history of the GS850 series of bikes from Suzuki. It’s a touring bike and weighs in at around 600lbs. With a shaft drive and that weight it isn’t exactly ideal as a cafe racer rebuild. It is however air cooled and those pipes are lovely. Something other than a cafe racer could be

the goal. This military style build is interesting.

As a bobber style bike with a saddle, the GS850 has some potential!

1986 Honda Shadow 1100cc, no info given, asking $500

Another big cruiser (many people seem to have these old lumps lying around). Shaft drive, massive motor, covered in things. Everything I don’t like in a motorcycle.

If these get customized, it seems to be along chopper lines. I think I’m holding out for something a bit less, um, big.

Chain and Agony, or, the End of Local Parts Suppliers

I’ve got to admit I’m a bit pissed off. After trying to wrap my head around chains and sprockets online I decided to buy locally and have a chat with the parts desk at my regional dealer. Since it was my first time doing a chain/sprocket replacement I figured I’d pay the extra cost and get some face to face advice.

Trying to get details out of the parts-desk guy was like pulling teeth. He seemed frustrated with my questions and didn’t offer up much. I guess the logic there was, ‘just bring it in to service.’ I left paying over $300 taxes in for what would have cost me $240 online, but was none the wiser. I was at least assured that these were the specific parts I needed.

After a series of confusing and frustrating situations, here is the advice I wish the parts guy at the dealer had given me:

The Ninja 650r uses a 114 link chain, he gave me a 120 link chain but told me this was the stock chain especially for my bike. He’s not wrong, but he didn’t tell me I’d have to ‘break’ the chain. Here is how I wish it’d gone down:

You’re going to need one of these to break and master link up a motorcycle chain. It isn’t expensive (about sixty bucks)

Parts guy: “I’m ordering you the chain size for your bike, but it comes with six extra links. When it comes in I’ll get one of the guys to break the chain so it fits your bike specifically. If you want I’ll even ask him to do it when you come to pick it up so you can see how he does it.”

He could have sold me a $60 tool (probably for more) and I would have left knowing what I was getting into, instead all I got was the exasperated face.

When I hung the chain on the bike it was way too long (it was a 120 link chain going on a 114 link bike, but I didn’t know that at the time). I had to go digging to find out why the chain ‘specific to my bike’ obviously didn’t fit.

This experience asks a larger question about brick and mortar stores versus shopping online: why would I spend the gas and time driving there and then pay the extra 20% for the experience if I can pay less online? If there is nothing value added in me bothering to buy at full retail locally, then why would I do it?

Second up, I wish he’d have offered me some pragmatic advice for doing my own chain work:

Parts guy: “Is this your first motorcycle chain? It’s pretty easy to mess it up. I’d suggest going for a basic O-ring chain for your first go. If you botch the job you’re only out fifty bucks and you’ve learned something.”

I ended up buying the bells and whistles X-ring chain on his advice, and then breaking it a link too short (after looking up how to do that on that paragon of customer support, the internet). It’s an expensive learning experience breaking a chain so that it doesn’t fit my bike. At least it’s still over 110 links and a 520 sized chain, meaning it’ll work on a lot of other bikes. Now I’ve not got to decide whether to seal it up and wait for an ideal use or try and resell it (at a loss).

One way or another, I don’t think I’ll be driving down to the local dealer again for parts, I get my questions answered with more patience on the internet, which beggars belief.

Note: a couple of days later I went online and picked up a basic O-link chain from the same Japanese chain manufacturer from Canada’s Motorcycle (35% cheaper than the equivalent chain from the dealer). In a matter of moments the chain was on its way (free delivery). It got here in the same amount of time it took the dealer to order it in (but I didn’t have to drive down to the city twice). I’m all for buying locally and helping out the area economy, but if local business don’t realize how they can add value to a local buying experience, they’re going to kill it stone dead.

Note²: maybe it’s only a motorcycle dealership thing. I went to RONA to make an order for deck parts and they couldn’t have been more fantastic, same with Universal Rentals in Fergus, equally awesome customer service. Are motorbike shops just too cool to care?

Note³: See the followup post on how to break/shorten/master link a new bike chain for how-tos.

Naked Versys Ninja: Riding Many Demo-Bikes

At Kawasaki’s Demo-Day last weekend I threw a leg over as many different bikes as I could. I’m looking for my second bike and I have an opportunity to make a much more educated decision this time, however my expectations didn’t always match my riding experience, although with my current crush they exceeded them:

Kawasaki Z1000

As pretty in person and a treat to ride.

I started on a bike I like so much I’ve got a poster of it up in the garage: the Kawasaki Z1000. Riding a 1000cc bike spoiled me for the rest of the day. You can be inattentive with gear changes and the big four just pulls away with turbine like insistence. The wide bars made handling light and responsive and I didn’t find the gearing as twitchy as I’ve read it is.

The saddle most wanted.

It’s not often that someone you’re smitten with is as impressive in person, but the Z1000 rides as special as it looks. It pulls hard, feels wonderfully poised and seems to enjoy moving as much as the rider, it has the same kind of cheerful internal combustion that my Ninja has.

Our 20-30 minute round trip down country roads and through villages put this naked beauty in its glory. It’s a bike for riding not a bike for covering miles at speed, but if you’re looking for an interactive riding experience this is it. As a solo riding machine that puts the focus on the experience, you can’t get much better. It’s an emotional as well as a mechanically satisfying ride. When I’ve been riding long enough that I can afford to insure one, it’ll be on my short list.

Kawasaki Versys

The big Versys with a wonderfully smooth four cylinder and a very neutral riding position.

I’ve been curious about the Versus for a while now, it’s Kawasaki’s all-rounder. Before taking any out I was talking to the Kawi-rep and he said they get photos of people riding Versys to the ends of the earth, it’s a very capable all-round machine.

I’d initially only signed up for a 650cc test ride, but the rep was able to get me onto a VIP ride with the 1000cc, and I’m glad he did. The big Versys is a tall bike with great wind protection, tall handlebars and comfortable seating position. Like the Z1000, that big four is turbine smooth and pulls hard at any RPM. It’s an easy bike to ride and doesn’t show its weight other than the somewhat awkward ride height.

My 32″ inseam just touched the ground but I couldn’t flatfoot. On a bike this tall I’d expect more relaxed geometry in my legs when I’m on the pegs, but they were bent about as much as they are on my Ninja. Short of getting on a cruiser I’m going to have to assume I’ll be folding myself onto most bikes. If the foot pegs are high enough to allow the bike to lean into corners meaningfully then leg geometry is going to be bent.

The little Versys, a close cousin to my Ninja with the same engine and many shared parts.

Overall I found the big Versys a nice surprise. It’s only 33 kilos heavier than the 650cc bike and has much more presence, comfort and wind protection. This would be a bike that could cover long miles with ease, yet is higher off the ground and able to traverse even rough terrain.

I was talking to a rep from Rally Connex Adventure Tours about the Versys and he suggested it wouldn’t take much to create a Versys Scrambler. His main concern was the soft underbelly full of exhaust pipes – with a modified exhaust that runs up the side high on the bike, the Versys might become a real RTW contender.

The little Versys was the one I was keen to try. It has the same engine as my Ninja, which I think sounds great, is super efficient and offers great power to weight. I expected a light, quick bike with a more neutral riding position suitable for longer rides.

I was surprised at how rough the little Versys was. Perhaps I was spoiled by riding the bigger bike first, but on the ride home back on my own Ninja it had none of the buzziness of the 650cc Versys. The seat was hard and high and the riding position is less leaned over than on the Ninja, but not by much. When revved it I found a lot of vibration coming back through the handlebars and seat, to the point where I didn’t want to rev it and actually stalled it at a traffic light (my only stall of the day). Perhaps it’s a new engine and it hasn’t been worked in yet, but the bike I was most curious about was the one I had the least interest in after the ride. It was uncomfortable, felt under-powered and didn’t offer the more relaxed rider geometry that I was hoping for, a real disappointment.

Kawasaki Ninja 300

I would have signed up for a ride on the Ninja 1000 or the ZX-14r, the former because it has gotten good reviews as an athletic all-rounder, the later because it’s bonkers and I’ve got a crush on it, but instead I thought I’d try the Ninja 300 to see what such a wee bike is capable of. It turns out, quite a lot! Trying to keep up with everyone else on two to three (to five!) times the displacement was tricky until I figured the bike out.

The little Ninja is unbelievably light and feels weak until you get half way up the rev range, then that little motor comes to life. Five minutes in I wasn’t letting it drop below seven thousand RPM, and I hit the rev limiter at a stratospheric 13,000 RPM a couple of times before I figured out how to keep it close by the sound of the engine (which is surprisingly smooth and eager).

The wee Ninja is a limited machine, no doubt, but when you wring its neck its also a very entertaining one. It was nice to end my day of rides with such a pleasant surprise.

There was such a mix of bikes at this demo ride that I’m disappointed that I couldn’t try them all. From the ZX-14r super-bike to something as relaxed as the Vulcan cruiser, I’m more curious than ever as to how all these bikes do the same job differently. Even up the sports/adventure end of things where I did my riding, the differences in the bikes were astonishing.

As I mentioned before, if you have a chance to do a demo-day, I highly recommend it. The experiences gained there make finding a bike that suits you a matter of fact and hands-on preference rather than faith and opinion.

Naked Lies

When you’re using digital tools to assist your writing process, you’re not only getting grammar and spelling support, but you’re also performing your writing process in a fishbowl. It’s amazing how many digital natives seem to be unaware of this. When you create online you’re creating in a radically transparent environment. If you’re going to do something less than honest, it’ll show.

I had a series of plagiarism issues teaching elearning this semester. In one case a student handed in the same thing copied off the internet in two different assignments. Worst. Plagiarizer. Ever.

Turnitin lights up copied text and links you to where the material came from online, very handy.

The Ontario elearning system has Turnitin.com built into it, so catching the plagiarism was a matter of opening the report, screen capturing it and sending it on to the student. When it’s that easy, it’s not even particularly time consuming to call a student on copied text. I often have students try to beat turnitin in order to show them how it works. They leave with an appreciation of how easy it is for the teacher to wield and how hard it is for a student to beat. It’s easier to just write it yourself.

When I catch a plagiarizer I usually just show them the report without explanation and then see what they say. I’ve gotten some funny responses to this, like the time the rural Ontario farm kid stole an essay from an honours student from India. When I asked him what a ‘chap’ was, he said it, “was a kind of stick.” That’s some quality plagiarism. To most English teachers it’s patently obvious when plagiarism occurs. When a kid who appears to have a vocabulary mainly consisting of swear words suddenly starts dropping four syllable terms in picture perfect compound sentences, alarms go off.

Since we’ve gone to Google-docs it gets even more transparent. A colleague told me about a student who handed in a suddenly perfect French paper. She opened up the editing history and saw that the boyfriend had logged in (under his own account) and edited the entire thing. When called on it the student said she’d had to use his account because she couldn’t get into her’s… but she’d shared the file from hers. It’s hard to make lies stick when it’s all out there.

Until students realize just how transparent working online is, they are labouring under a huge misconception. That misunderstanding is based on the false sense of anonymity they feel when they are online. Because they feel that eyes are off them, they are more likely to push moral boundaries, but they don’t understand that digital processes are documenting their every move.

Here is yet another example of how ‘digital natives‘ fail to grasp the basic concepts that drive digital processes. We shouldn’t be smitten with familiarity, we should be advocating for understanding… at least if we’re still trying to educate people (which may not be the case). From that neo-lib point of view, the digital native is one of those magical assumptions that integrate digital technology into the very biology of our students, it becomes a fundamental truth we base learning on, but it’s just a convenient assumption that frees us from taking on the responsibility of understanding it ourselves.

Someone shared The Brave New World of 21st Century Teaching the other day in our teacher Facebook group. I responded:

The subtext of 21st Century skills is the de-branding of educators as teachers and the re-branding of educators as facilitators. Edtech could be used to enhance pedagogy and individualize learning, instead it will be used to Walmart education into a process overseen by centralized administration and bereft of teachers, and it has the convenience of being much more ‘efficient’ (read: cheaper) than our current system. It’s also more controlable than trying to manage a bunch of professionals bent on something as airy fairy as pedagogy.

Technology doesn’t appear to be moving the needle on student success, yet we’re pushing into 21st century skills as though they will resolve all ills. I’m a strong advocate of mastering technology, but integrating it in ignorance is a disaster in the making. It caters to exactly the kind of blind faith in technocratic neo liberalism that is infecting everything else. When we adopt machines in ignorance we let their limitations become our limitations. Those machines are all created and owned by very politically motivated interests.

For someone who has always been involved in the advancement of educational technology, it’s heart-breaking to see it implemented as a means of diminishing the teaching profession and placing human learning in the context of a software environment. I’d always thought pedagogy would drive educational adoption of technology, but as in the rest of society, there is something much more sinister at work in digitization.

The constant downward pressure on freedom of information and the push to striate and own data (including the data users willingly give) points toward a dystopian and authoritarian end to our digital frontier. The very processes that monitor plagiarism above can as easily be used to invade privacy, grossly simplify learning and itemize people for political reasons, and they are.

I’m glad it’s summer. Time to put this down for a while before we walk straight into another round of manufactured austerity and digital marketing. I wonder how much longer education can withstand these social forces.

Fighting The Urge for Sensible Compromise

I picked up my sprockets & chains today from Two Wheel Motorsport. I then had a chat with Craig, who works there and was the head instructor on my motorcycle course at Conestoga College last year. He mentioned the used bikes upstairs (TWM goes on and on, be sure to wander around if you go there). I was interested in a Kawasaki Concours they had on sale because it’s a sensible touring bike. Craig mentioned ‘upstairs’ when I was asking about used bikes. I didn’t know they had an upstairs. After getting my parts I went up and found a couple of dozen bikes and no one around. Since I was looking for a sensible touring bike I immediately found this and took this:

I’m really bad at trying to be sensible. I ended up buying my current Ninja because of the way it made me feel rather than the sensible KLR I was going to get. When it comes to buying an appliance like a car I’ll be sensible, but a motorbike isn’t about being sensible and I don’t want to waste my riding time on bland compromise.

I met John the salesman and we finally found the Concours out back. It’s not as big as some other touring bikes, but my knees are still pretty bent on it. Short of getting some sky-scraper adventure bike I’m going to be bent legged on a motorbike, especially if it’s as road-centric as I want it to be.

I suspect the answer still lies in not trying to find a bike for all things, they don’t exist. Instead, a couple of really focused bikes that do different things would do the trick. Instead of trying to find an athletic road bike that two-ups my son easily, get a machine that caters to time with him and another for solo forays.

The other day a guy road by on a Triumph with a Rocket Sidecar. I’ve still got a thing for sidecars. Uralling or Royal Enfielding up would cover the vintage bike itch as well as the weird sidecar itch in addition to creating a very friendly shared riding experience with my son. The other bike could be some kind of bat-shit crazy single seater that focuses entirely on me alone on the road (or track). Or a café racer…

I’m glad that Concours made a big wet noise in my imagination when I saw it with its C.H.i.P.s style windshield and acres of plastic. A sudden, irrational urge to own it didn’t follow. What it did do is clear up an important point: don’t compromise on what you want a bike to do for you, you’ll only end up disappointed.

John the salesman told me the story of a kid who missed the bike he fell in love with by twenty minutes and ended up with tears in his eyes over it. If I’m going to move on to another bike, it’s got to be a tear jerker. I didn’t get into motorcycling for sensible, I got into it for an emotional connection to my machine. Fortunately, that bonkers bike choice isn’t crazy expensive. An ’06 bike with only 2400kms on it costs less than $7000 from Two-Wheel.

For another $7k I could pick up an almost new Versys and go about getting it kitted out with a cool sidecar from Old Vintage Cranks. It’d be one of a kind on its way to being a multipurpose outfit that I could customize indefinitely. For $14k I’d be into one of the most powerful two wheelers ever made and a truly unique go-anywhere 3-wheeler.

A Silent, Fast & Sustainable Future

Originally published on Tim’s Motorcycle Diaries in June of 2014:

The other day I swung in for one of my infrequent fuel stops on the Ninja. As I was finishing up putting $18 of super into the tank, good for another 300kms, the guy across from me was bleating about how much it was costing ($180 of the cheap stuff) to fill up his massive pickup truck with chrome wheels and low profile tires (I won’t go into how wrong that is, suffice it to say that this truck wasn’t purchased to *do* things, it was purchased as a look-at-me-penis-extension – one that costs over two hundred bucks a week in gas).

His fill up would put about ten tanks in the Ninja, at 300kms a tank his single fill up would get me over 3000kms (!), and he has the nerve to stand there crying about how his inferiority complex has resulted in poor choices? If gas doubled in price tomorrow I’d still be able to afford to ride. I wonder what Bucky-look-at-my-truck would do.

***

I was reading Cycle Canada last night and came across a letter from a reader who (after extolling the virtues of cruisers for a long time) went on to sneer at the idea of quiet electric bikes, basically saying that they’d have to pry his Harley out of his cold, dead hands. Many of those dinosaurs will soon be extinct and maybe then we can move on to forms of motorcycling that are sustainable for generations. I’ve often wondered what it would have been like to ride my Grand-dad’s bike. Wouldn’t it be cool to get to a point where our descendants can? It would give me great pleasure knowing that we developed a form of motorbiking that is so efficient and undamaging that my great, great grandchild could enjoy it without worrying if it will irreparably damage the world.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the sound of a nicely tuned engine as much as anyone (you can keep your farty exhausts), but if the internal combustion engine is the pinnacle of human achievement, we’re in real trouble, especially if we’re going to stuff the world full of billions of people who all want a giant pickup.

***

Way back in the 1990s I watched one of those Star Trek: The Next Generations that was dangerously insightful. In the episode, Force of Nature, it is discovered that warping all over the place actually damages space. It snuck up on you, but the allegory was clear – even if you love something (burning fossil fuels and making CO²), you can’t be blind to the damage it does. What was previously a blind-love relationship with motor vehicles became more complicated for me after that.

Think gas is expensive now? You
ain’t seen nothing yet.
Welcome to the end of cheap oil.

Just recently I watched Cosmos and the episode they did on climate change was jarring. Neil deGrasse Tyson demands something more than blind devotion to fossil fuels no matter how easy they’ve made life. Ever the optimist, he states that in the next century we’ll build the last internal combustion engine as we move on to less environmentally damaging technologies (he’s an optimist, I don’t know if we’re that adaptive).

If you ask most people to imagine a world without internal combustion, they can’t. I asked kids in class a couple of years ago what they’d like to do when they retired in 2045. One said she wanted to buy a Camaro. I asked her what she intended to do with it, use it as a planter to grow flowers? She couldn’t conceive of a world without cheap, plentiful oil, most of us can’t, but that world is coming.

“Though they run on fossil fuel, these
are digital machines” – Ewan McGregor
describing the lastest MotoGP bikes

Nothing thrills me more than seeing real change. Formula One this year is using hybrid gas/electrical power plants and reduced the fuel from 176 to 100 kilograms per race. The cars are faster than ever but the engines are changing how to drive quickly. Instead of having to wait for a gas engine to rev up to peak output, the electric assist is providing instant, full torque. Drivers are having to change how they negotiate corners because the power is instantly available. The cars are also much quieter, you can actually hear the rubber squealing as they peel out of the pits (you couldn’t before over the howl of v8 engines).

I also caught some of the 24 Hours of LeMans. The prototypes in that race used only electric power to enter and leave the pits. They were eerily silent and people could carry out normal conversation as they went about their work, it was pretty awesome. They are also faster than anything previously while using less fuel. That’s the kind of future I can get excited about.

The McLaren P1 is an astonishing piece of engineering. Over 30mpg and capable of well over 200mph. It’s not just fast for a hybrid, it’s one of the fastest cars ever built. The future won’t be slow, though it may be much quieter.

There are still people who keep steam engines alive because they love the history and the mechanics of the things. They aren’t very efficient, and it wouldn’t be sensible to have everyone using steam, but it’s nice to see mechanical history honoured. There are people who will keep gasoline engines alive. They aren’t very efficient or sustainable, and it wouldn’t be sensible for everyone to have one, but it’ll be nice to see that history remembered too. For the rest of us (doofus with his pickup truck included), I’m looking forward to a quieter, faster, cleaner future. In the meantime I’ll enjoy my 0-60 in under 4 seconds Ninja that gets more than 60mpg. There is nothing like the minimalism of the motorbike to make the most out of every drop of fuel.

Possibilities

A friend’s daughter came by last night because she was interested in The Ninja. I’m rabidly interested in riding as many different bikes as I can, so when they asked if I wanted to follow along on the Honda Firestorm she’d ridden over I quickly grabbed my gear. With aftermarket everything on it, the Honda backfired loudly and took off like a scalded rabbit. The steering geometry on it is very vertical and the grips small, making the bike turn in very quickly even though it feels heavier than the Ninja. It was definitely a young man’s bike, riding it for more than an hour would be agony, but I totally get it, it was a blast!

The test ride ended up not fitting the rider (she found the Ninja tall and the riding position too upright), but the possibility of Bike2.0 got me thinking…

They have a nicely-looked-after ’06 Concours at Two Wheel Motorsport. It’s an athletic mile eater that easily 2-ups and is in its element as a long distance tourer. This particular one is low kilometres (~50k) and well maintained, it would run for ever with no problems.

I’m pretty weight fixated after riding the Ninja and doing a lot of thinking about bike dynamics, and the Concours isn’t light even if it is light on its feet for a big guy. I was wandering Kijiji yesterday after suddenly facing the prospect of maybe being bike-less and came across another interesting choice. I’ve been doing a lot of reading on the new VFR800f Interceptor. This is another athletic mile eater that is at home in the twisties, and at over 150lbs lighter than the portly Concours it plays to my sense of what athletic means in a bike. I’ve always been a Honda fan, I had a picture of one on my wall when I was a kid, it’d be cool to own one.

The VFR on Kijiji is an ’02, almost half the miles of the Concours for sale and ‘meticulously maintained’. Not to be an English snob or anything, but the add is nicely written too:

Mint condition, meticulously cared for, very low mileage (28000 km) VFR 800 VTEC with ABS. The VFR 800 has the distinctive single sided swingarm, ABS and the legendary Honda Interceptor V4 engine that is famous for producing one of the most intoxicating exhaust notes of any motorcycle powerplant… it’s music. This bike is just as comfortable eating up corners in the twisties as it is taking you on multi day trips in comfort. It comes with 2 seats, the stock one and a Sargent seat, 2 windshields, stock and a tinted Zero Gravity windshield, solo seat cover, PDF Honda VFR800 Service Manual and a set of frame sliders still in the box. Also installed are the 2006 VFR clear tail light and smoke front turn signal light lenses. $5700 or best offer.

There is something about a rider who knows spelling and grammar that gives an air of competence. When this guy says it has been meticulously maintained I believe him because he knows the word meticulous (and how to spell it).

I’ve got such an itch for this bike that I’m tempted to give him a call and ride down to Hamilton to give it a go. I only wish I had the money aside to snap it up if I liked it as much as I think I might. The process of selling the Ninja means that the VFR might be long gone by the time I’m ready to pull the trigger.

That was quick. I’m glad he sold it, but sad too…

No Heroes & Distractions

Originally published on Dusty World in June of 2014

I suspect the general public thinks that teaching is easy. I’m not talking about classroom management, that everyone agrees is difficult, but teaching, the process of enabling learning, is generally seen as easy. Anyone can tell someone else what to think, right? Pretty much everyone has been through school, so they all know what it is and how it works.

I’ve talked about the terrifyingly vast concept of pedagogy before, but most lay-people have never heard the term and so don’t know or care about its complexities. Strangely, few teachers or administrators seem to want to talk about it either, but that’s for another post. The process of creating a rich learning environment is subtle, ever changing and very difficult; reflection is a good teacher’s best defence against this challenge. By constantly reflecting on our teaching, we hope to cull bad habits and maximize the learning environment around us. Honest reflection isn’t something that seems to come up much in PD either.

Normally pedagogy would be my focus, one of the joys of my job is how intellectually challenging it is. I use this blog mainly to try and tackle the challenges of pedagogy in a rapidly changing technological situation, but for the past month I and many teachers I know in Ontario have been distracted by politics. We have to be because the circus that is modern politics oversees our profession, and we are one of their favourite whipping boys.

Unlike heroic police officers, firefighters and doctors, teachers don’t get a halo. If the internet doesn’t convince you of the banality of teaching turn on the TV. How many heroic teacher shows do you see on there? Emergency services are protected by their halo, and since we’re all public servants it’s pretty obvious who is going to get thrown under the austerity bus. Whenever the political class decides to vilify public servants to collect some vapid public support we know it’ll be us, hence the distraction.

The public perception is that teachers are overpaid, under-worked and largely clerical in what we do. Unlike those men (and women, but let’s face it, the hero professions have a male face to them) of action, teachers are presented publicly as female, supportive and administrative rather than as action heroes. Any time a government wants to take a swipe at public servants teachers make an easy target, like last year when teachers across the province had their wages and benefits illegally stripped even as the OPP enjoyed big year on year raises; it’s a financial emergency, but not for everybody.

In a climate like this our unions urged us to carefully consider our votes in strategic terms because the Ontario Progressive (sic) Conservative party had adopted tea-party American ideologies and was prepared to cut Ontario to pieces while following Michigan and the rust belt down the rabbit hole. That urge to strategically vote worked very well encouraging many public servants to participate in this election, it also unified and focused non-conservative votes. The result deposited the morally bankrupt Liberal party into a four year majority. This was the same party that stripped contracts and forced work conditions through illegal legislation. It’s also the same party that will do what Hudak and the PCs promised, they just won’t do it on an election year.

It begs the question, is it better to be stabbed in the front or in the back?

Teachers seem to be relieved by the Liberal win, but our profession with its poor public perception will be the first (again) to be thrown under the bus by Wynne and the Liberals. It’s ironic that the meritocratic Liberals are going to throw a world-class education system under the bus because of optics. If we do our difficult job well it won’t matter because ignorant people think we’re lazy and poll chasing politicians can use that. The social and political environment we’ve been draped in for the past two years makes basic positivity difficult, let alone cultivating an attitude of improvement, and improvement is where we have to be if we want to maintain our excellence and keep up with the technological revolution happening all around us.

There are a lot of ways we could make education more efficient in Ontario rather than just cutting people’s wages and benefits and worsening their work environment. When I first started teaching there was a guy who ran the Simpsons in his class and then sat in the English office eating his lunch at 10am. He later got suspended for over a year while they reviewed claims that he’d slept with a grade 11 student. They are a small minority in the system, but there are teachers who are incompetent or simply unsuited for the profession, and the system as it stands makes it almost impossible to remove them. As a Liberal (that’s a large L Liberal who believes in the values of liberalism rather than blindly voting for a political party) I’d be all for making the removal of incompetent teachers easier, though not if it’s done by administrators who haven’t been teaching for years or pencil pushers who have never taught a class in their lives. Peer review by a group of experienced, working teachers would be a fair way of doing this, but if it ever does happen it’ll be forced on us, probably by illegal legislation that punishes us for political advantage. It would be nice to work in a system focused on excellence instead of political gain.

Then there is the whole weird duality of the Ontario public school system, but no one will touch that… the optics are bad, and you’ll never pry a publicly funded private religious system out of the hands of a majority, even if the UN does object. It’s hard to consider hack and slash politics like Bill 115 fair when the system protects incompetent teachers and encourages very one sided religious favouritism.

There is a storm ahead for educators in Ontario and it’s going to be hard to focus on the complexities of pedagogy, the challenges of technological change and all that social work that we do as people with little or no understanding of education make decisions based on optics rather than reason or fact.

Doctors and nurses won’t be expected to justify their profession, police officers and firefighters will continue to produce heroic television, and I’ll be painted as a lazy clerical worker doing a job that anyone could do. While all that’s going on I’ll do everything I can to prepare my students to hack a technocratic neo-liberal future that makes it harder and harder for young people to find good work and become independent. The same thing stepping on our profession is stepping on our students.

“You Never Teach Us Anything”

Originally published on Dusty World in May of 2014:

I had an interesting chat with a student yesterday. He’s yellow, I’m green:

“You never teach us anything.”
“By teaching do you mean do it for you?”
“Um, yes?”
“I don’t do everything for you because unless you figure it out for yourself, you haven’t figured out anything at all.”
“… but you never help.”
“I don’t think that’s true, I offer suggestions, and give you a framework to develop ideas in, I’ve provided you with thousands of dollars of free equipment and access to professional level learning resources. Have I never helped?”
“Ok, so you’ve helped, but you don’t teach.”
“What do you think teaching is?”
“When someone tells you what you should know…”
“Do you think that’s what a lesson is? When someone gives you information?”
“Yeah, isn’t it?”

Good question that, isn’t a lesson when you tell people what they should know? Isn’t teaching when you do everything for the student so they can be passive receptacles?

That a strong student who has ‘figured out’ the education system has such a poor view of our profession is worrying. I wonder how many lessons it took before he came to see pedagogy as little more than a fill in the blank exercise.

I wonder what it will take now to have him take possession of his own learning. I don’t imagine that will happen before post secondary, and when it does it will be a shock.

Child, Parent or Zen Master?

This one went into my edu-blog too, but it’s as much about motorbiking as it is about learning…

An editorial piece I read in Bike Magazine a while back has stayed with me. In it the author (a veteran motorcycle trainer) was describing how a rider’s emotional response to high stress situations limits their ability to learn from them. It struck me because I still catch myself falling into both of the archetypal mind traps he describes. I now struggle to get beyond them and adopt the clinical approach of a master learner that he suggests.

In a high-stakes, emotional environment like riding you can’t be throwing tantrums or assigning blame (though many do), you need to be calm and aware in order to both assess a situation as it’s happening and accurately recall and learn from it later. Emotion is a natural response to high stress situations, but it often gets in the way of attaining mastery.

The author of the piece suggests that people fall into archetypal behaviors when they are stressed and emotional. These behaviours prevent you from making coherent decisions in the moment as well as preventing progress by hiding memory details behind ego and emotion. The two archetypes we fall back into are child and parent. Since we’re all familiar with these roles it only makes sense that we’d revert to them when we are under pressure.

The child throws tantrums and reacts selfishly, aggressively and emotionally. People falling into this mind-set shout and cry at the circumstances and focus on blaming others. The child is emotional and blind to just about everything around them except the perceived slight. This approach tends to be dangerously over-reactive. Have you ever seen a student blow up in an asymmetrical way over a minor issue? They have fallen into the child archetype emotional trap.

The parent mind-set seems like an improvement but it is just as effective at blocking learning. The parent shakes their head disapprovingly and focuses on passing judgement. You’ll see someone in this mind-set tutting and rolling their eyes at people. The parent is focused on passing judgement loudly and publicly. You can probably see how easy it is for teachers to fall into this one.

The child is selfish, emotional and immediate. The parent wraps themselves in a false sense of superiority that makes the user feel empowered when they might otherwise feel helpless. Both archetypes attempt to mitigate frustration and ineffectiveness behind emotion and ego.

I’ve seen students stressed out by exams or other high-stakes learning situations fall into these traps but it took that motorbike instructor to clarify how students can lose their ability to internalize learning by falling into these archetypes. He describes riders who shout and yell at someone cutting them off. They are responding to their own poor judgement and lack of attention with the emotional outburst. Suddenly finding themselves in danger, they lash out emotionally in order to cover up their own inadequacies.

The parent adopts that judgmental stance. Last summer I had a senior student who rides a motorcycle get involved in an accident. He had bad road rash and was bruised all over. He went with the parent approach. The woman who hit him was panicked and frightened because she hadn’t seen him. Her own mother had been hurt in a similar motorcycle accident and she felt a lot of guilt over being the cause of this one. The student said ‘she came out of no-where’. I said, ‘that’s odd, cars weight thousands of pounds. I’ve never seen one appear out of nowhere before.’ Rather than review his own actions and perhaps learn to develop better 360° awareness, the student was happy to piggy-back on the driver’s emotional response and pass judgement. He never felt any responsibility for that accident and still believes that cars can come out of nowhere.

I enjoy riding because it is a difficult, dangerous craft that it is very important to do well. In pressurized learning situations you need an alert, open mind. I’ve never once seen this the focus of consideration in school (except perhaps in extracurricular sports). What we do instead is try and remove any pressure and cater to emotionality rather than teaching students to master it.

Other Links:
Comparing Teacher PD to Motorcycle Training
Training Fear and Ignorance out of Bikecraft
Archetypal Pedagogy