A Herculean Task

Except for the Sherlock Holmes stories, I have never been a reader of detective fiction. But recently I watched some of the Poirot series and have become a great fan of the Belgian sleuth. David Suchet’s portrayal is masterful. I highly recommend the 65 episodes (and the five that are still in the making).

Watching the series led me to read some of Agatha Christie’s tales. I do not think I will read them all, but it is interesting to see how they were translated onto the screen.

Having been so saturated in Poirot, and needing a rest after revising The Free Lands—which will need yet another edit, which I plan to complete this summer—I thought I would set aside that now 740-page manuscript and try my hand at a detective story, something I have never written before—a satirical, light-hearted detective story, and a pastiche, a gentle satire.

I here present you with the opening of the story. If there is anyone out there who enjoys it, please let me know by leaving a comment or sending an e-mail (brnlbb@gmail.com).  Maybe that will encourage me to finish it.

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                 THE ADVENTURE OF THE MANY SUSPECTS    

 On a bright, sunny morning in central London—very odd weather that many found disconcerting—the greatest detective in the world sat behind his large desk sipping his customary cup of tisane while perusing the Times.

The clock on the wall said 10:13:27 AM, Friday, May 28, 1937 A.D. (The detective, impatient with slipshod clocks that provide only partial information, had had this one custom made in Zurich.) He closed the paper, thinking that today’s lead article offered hope for the future: now that Mr. Chamberlain had become Prime Minister, maybe England would at last begin to take a firm line against Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini. It was high time.

The door to the outer office opened as there entered a tall, lean, handsome gentleman of perhaps fifty years, attired in a neat grey suit and a regimental tie. This man by his very presence radiated all that was fine in the British upper-middle class: honesty, plain dealing, bravery, trustworthiness, dependability.

“Cheerioh, old bean! I say, what a simply spiffing morning, what?” he called out as he tripped on his own feet and went sprawling on his face. Fortunately the inch-thick pile of the fine mauve carpet prevented any injury.

The great detective contemplated this through his pince-nez and said, “Eh bien, mon pauvre Captain Waterloo, vous êtes bien maladroit comme usuel, n’est-ce pas? Please, arise and adjust your garments. Your cravat she has been much disorganized.”

The former officer was spared further contumely by the rapid entry of a lady in early middle age, her dark blonde hair tied in a severe bun, her not unattractive figure mostly concealed by her modest blue dress. She proffered a handful of mail. “The first delivery, Mr. Greycelles,” she said. “And there was a very urgent call from Viscount DeLuxe. He seemed to think he could speak to you at once, but I explained that you never accepted calls before 10:18½, after you finished your tisane. I told him you would return his call.”

“Quite right, my dear Miss Kumquat,” said her employer. “One must have order and method in one’s life or it becomes like the existence of the wild beasts of the field. Did his Grace hint at whatever petit problem troubles him?”

“He said that an explosion has destroyed the entire staff wing of Garrish Manor, his ancestral home, killing eleven retainers, including Mat Grubb, his Chief Gardener for forty years.”

“Ah, these trifles,” said Greycelles. “Call his Grace and ask if his senior under-gardener survived. If, as I suspect, he was not even there—probablement he said he had to make a sudden visit to a sick great-aunt or other superannuated relative—then voilà! Gardeners know all about fertilizer, a prominent component of which, the nitrate of aluminum, is most useful in the making of the objets explosif such as the bombs of time. As for motive, the man surely wished to supplant his senior, whose long tenure of office must have annoyed him.”

As the efficient secretary hurried to make the call, Capt. Waterloo, now seated on a sofa, exclaimed, “By Jove, Greycelles, aren’t you jumping to conclusions? I mean…”

The soigné detective raised a plump hand. “Doucement, mon vieux. Énée Greycelles, he leaps not to the conclusions rash. Did I not just read in the Times that a hundred pounds of fertilizer was stolen last week from a warehouse in Little Rotting, a village not far from Garrish Manor? Eh bien, the under-gardener took it for the construction of the bombe gigantesque used in the up-blowing of his so-hated rival the chief gardener. So now we have solved two cases. Remind Miss Kumquat to bill both Viscount DeLuxe and the Little Rotting constabulary. But now let us peruse the mail and discover if any real problems await us, mon ami.”

The mail apparently contained nothing unusual. The bill from the cleaners for £150—the detective always had a suit cleaned after wearing it once—and the confirmation that four pallets of the finest tisane were en route from Brussels, were routine, as were the advertisements from three manufacturers of moustache wax and eight clothing stores. But upon reaching the last item Greycelles exclaimed, “Tiens! Voyez, Waterloo, a coronet on this so-expensive envelope.” Hastily he ran his Damascus-steel letter opener under the edge and withdrew a magnificent sheet of paper. “Mon cher ami, we are bidden to see the Duke of Worcestershire at Daggerthrust House, his summer residence in Kent. His Grace recalls fondly how I found his missing cuff link two years ago and now has another matter about which he wishes to consult us.”

“A bit of all right, that,” said the captain. “I can run us down in my new Bugatti 57T. I’ve installed patent feeder gaskets on the supercharger and chromed the reverse valve injectors so the gidgit pump maximizes the superflow. Goes like smoke, old chap.”

The detective peered over his pince-nez. “I have no idea what you just said, but from your animation I infer that you can provide adequate transport to St. Anspeth-on-Sea-by-Marsh, the village where Daggerthrust House has its location. Excellent. We leave in three days. I shall have just time enough to groom my moustache.”

Before Greycelles and Waterloo left for lunch, Miss Kumquat reported that Viscount DeLuxe’s senior sub-gardener had been arrested and had confessed to both the bombing and the theft of the fertilizer. “His Lordship sends his undying thanks for your miraculous insight,” she said. “And the Little Rotting police are eternally grateful, especially since they had grown very tired of interrogating every tramp they could find.”

“Mais naturellment,” replied her chief. “But fail not to send the bills promptly.”

(to be continued, possibly)

Writing Away

I have been diligently editing The Free Lands, a process that will take longer than I thought because, unlike what has always happened with previous novel edits--i.e., the book gets shorter--I find that this book is getting longer. It was 675 pages when I started; now it's about 710, with roughly a hundred pages of editing yet to go. I guess I should say "rewriting" rather than editing. But I like these new developments and I hope others will, too.
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I have noticed that, of all the articles on this blog, An Innovative Boarding School Model gets the most hits. On the other hand, no one has yet left a comment about it. My suspicion is that people wind up at the article because it has somehow infiltrated their Google search and they come here expecting a Serious Treatment of Cutting-Edge Pedagogy. I hope new guests will realize that the article is satirical, humorous. Actually, it--and all my other essays on Modern Education--are also deadly serious (in their way). But I am sorry to disappoint any colleagues who might have wound up reading the article in the hope of enhancing their Professional Development, understanding current Best Practices, and enhancing their understanding of the latest Epistemologies. (For these earnest persons, if any there be, I have a suggestion: spend the hours you were planning to use up on Professional Development reading  S.J. Perelman or Evelyn Waugh. It's a much better use of your limited time. You might even try reading one of my books.)

Richard III

I imagine that the newly-discovered remains of this controversial king are to be taken away for burial. I wonder if, as the attendants await the removal of the royal skeleton, anyone will exclaim, "A hearse! A hearse! My kingdom for a hearse!" 

Merry Christmas!

Andiriel, Sandi, Lana, Dagget, Loreg nar Jevlis, and I, wish all of you a very happy Christmas and New Year. I am still working on my resolutions (not to be confused with Resolution, a novel already available), but I think one of them will be to publish The Free Lands, the fourth volume of the Mercenaries series, in 2013. That's it sitting on the desk; but it needs a deal of editing. (Any indication that folks might actually buy it would probably speed up the process.)

For visitors who are wondering who Andiriel and the others are, kindly take a few minutes to wander through this blog, which features excerpts from my books and various essays on divers topics.
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Here is a chronological Blog Index. Visitors may easily find items with a click or two.


ESSAYS (Amusing)
2012: August 23: An Innovative Boarding School Model
2012: August 13: Testing Kinesthetic Students
2012: May 20: A Cautionary Tale
2011: October 10: An ‘Aria of Revenge’ a la Verdi
2011: July 26: Lights! Cameras! Teach!
2011: July 26: Project 1812: History for Kinesthetic Students
2011: May 10: An Innovative Grading System
2011: January 12: Evelyn Waugh on Educational Reform
2010: October 11: A Theory of Art
2010: February 15: The Test of the Future
2010: January 28: The Newest Members of the U.N.
2010: January 7: Just What the Doctor Ordered

FILM CRITICISM (Trenchant)
2011: July 25 & July 20: Historical Films
2010: March 1: The LOTR Film Trilogy (Take That, Peter Jackson!)
2010: February 21: Star Wars III: A Critique of “Revenge of the Plot”
2010: February 7: Star Wars II: A Critique of “Tacky Clowns”
2010: January 18: Star Wars I: A Critique of “The Phantom Mess”

EXCERPTS FROM MY BOOKS
2011: March 17: “Consulting”: from And Gladly Teach
2010: October 6: Resolution
2010: April 4: Gold and Glory
2010: March 7: Storm Approaching
2010: February 1: And Gladly Teach

(The books are all in print. You can obtain them from Amazon.com, other online retailers, or from the author. Why not consider obtaining one today? Or two tomorrow?  Or...)

And Now A Few Words From the Author

To Read or Not To Read, which gave Gold and Glory a nice review in July, today published a ten-question interview with me. I hope you'll read it. And dare I hope it will lead to some sales?

http://www.2readornot2read.com

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An Innovative Boarding School Model

Another essay in my ground-breaking series on innovation in education.
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N.B.: If you are a teacher who has come here thinking you are about to enhance your knowledge of the very latest praxis, please first read the second half of the blog entry for March 6, 2013.  :-) 
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In the very competitive world of college-preparatory boarding schools it is essential that a school have a character, a distinctive personality, traits that distinguish it from similar institutions. At least two decades ago a highly-respected consultant told us that a “plain-vanilla” school—one that offered merely a traditional program of strong academics—would have a hard time selling itself to prospective customers. (Footnote 1)

It is also clear that, given the tremendous amount of thought and work that many fine schools have put into designing distinctive programs, it is becoming harder and harder to “think outside the box” because the box has become so large. Cutting-edge computer programs are common; unusual language programs—Chinese, Tagalog, Finnish, whatever—are jejune. (Even some public schools teach Mandarin, so plebeian has it become!) Transforming a school into a sports academy is hardly noteworthy (though still very tragic).

No, what is needed is something really progressive, truly innovative, authentically revolutionary.

And here it is: the non-residential boarding school (NORBS).

The advantages of such a school to the board of trustees or proprietor are obvious. There is no need for dormitories, athletic facilities, laboratories, a chapel, a large cafeteria, or more than a few classrooms. Outlay is limited to the upkeep of a couple of buildings and some teachers (the latter being, of course, an almost trivial expense). All the rest of the money can go to paying vast sums to administrators, as it should.

But how would such a school exist? Surely this is some silly fantasy? No, no, not at all. Now that the computer and its associated applications exist, now that we have the means of instant communication, the non-residential boarding school is quite possible. Let us describe its main features:

ACADEMICS

We do not propose the usual form of “distance learning” in which students listen to lectures or watch demonstrations randomly and at their own convenience. No. Each student will have a class schedule. At, let’s say, 9 AM, everyone in a given section of English III [or Language Arts III, for those schools that have gone over to the Dark Side] will stand before their computers with webcams trained on themselves. The teacher—or perhaps a dean—will inspect the class to insure that each student is in dress code, instructing those who are wrongly attired to go change and awarding demerits to repeat offenders.

The teacher will then teach the class. Students with questions will push a button to notify the teacher, who can respond as convenient.

The teacher will be in a normal classroom facing some sort of camera.(2)  It should be possible for the students to be displayed on a wall-sized array of screens. If this is not possible, a “virtual class” can be projected on the wall so the teacher has the illusion of speaking to real people. (Holographic projection of 3-D students at desks will be used when technology permits.)

If the class involves discussion, students can ‘text’ messages that will be displayed to everyone. If technology permits the use of microphones, so much the better. Skype should be useful.

At the end of class a virtual bell will ring out. Students then have five minutes to log in to their next class. Students with study halls will sit in front of their webcams with Kindles, iPads, Blackberries, Mulberries, or even with books, monitored by the study hall teacher.

EVALUATION

Possibly some readers are wondering how tests will be given in a NORBS. Let me happily inform the ignorant layman that the world of education is rapidly moving away from the “test.” The notion that evaluation basically means that a student studies something, learns it as best he can, and then demonstrates that knowledge on a timed written or oral exercise that is graded as to its quality, is becoming obsolete. Such “high-stakes tests”—and apparently all tests are such; I have yet to hear the term “low-stakes test”—are potentially damaging to self-esteem, unfair (being biased in favor of smart, industrious people), and generally icky. Indeed the whole notion that students should ‘know’ anything is almost passé among the pedagogical pioneers who are improving education every week. After all, one can surely look up any mere facts on Wikipedia.

Consequently we assume that—until the happy day when newborns receive bachelor’s degrees along with their birth certificates in a perfectly egalitarian society—the necessary ‘grading’ will be done on the basis of class participation, group participation, mastery of learning skills, class effort, sense-making, portfolios, concept checks, and self-evaluations using detailed rubrics for each category. (3) These can be submitted by e-mail.

However, if the instructor is such a dinosaur as to wish to administer graded tests, the mechanics to construct online tests already exist on programs such as Moodle. (No one has yet discovered how to prevent cheating on such tests. The solution—using a method pioneered by Humpty-Dumpty in Through the Looking-Glass—is to redefine the word. “Cheating” can become “collaborative learning,” “research-based testing,” or some other comforting euphemism.)

ATHLETICS

Obviously it will not be possible for a NORBS to field sports teams in any traditional sense. This means that such schools will never enroll talented athletes. However, as it is absolutely unthinkable for any American high school not to have a competitive athletics component —indeed, such a lack could result in loss of accreditation if not charges of treason to the founding ideals of the Republic—we will enable our students to compete with other schools via video games. It will surely be possible to organize teams to play various sports using currently-available online games, and we can perhaps expand into nontraditional sports including MMORPGs and other over-the-airwaves competitions. Properly managed, they should offer as many chances for self-aggrandizement, bragging, misplacing priorities, and enabling parents to live vicariously through their children, as do traditional sports.

Basic physical fitness—which certainly is important—will be maintained by students running in place and doing pushups and jumping jacks in front of their webcams, supervised by “coaches” wearing T-shirts, with whistles around their necks.

OTHER MATTERS

Students will have ninety minutes of Evening Study Hall, Sunday through Thursday, monitored over a webcam by that day’s duty master.

At lights-out the school will ring a virtual bell on all cell phones to tell students to go to bed. Parents will have to be responsible for seeing that their children stay in bed and rise on time.

Parents will also have to feed their kids; but the school will send out menu suggestions weekly so that, in theory anyway, the student body can be offered identical food.

At Graduation, the seniors will sit in cap and gown before their computers so they can, like their contemporaries, listen to music by Edward Elgar, receive edifying advice from a commencement speaker, benefit from the Headmaster’s closing remarks, and hear their names called. Seniors will be e-mailed diplomas, which they can print out.

CONCLUSION

This pioneering essay has, of course, many lacunae, but readers cannot expect every loose end to be tied up in a few pages. Using this as a basis, others will fill in the blanks and proceed with the bold experiment. Surely the chance to offer to the public all the benefits of a college preparatory boarding school experience at a fraction of the cost of traditional on-campus education (4) and minimal infrastructure means this seminal essay will not lack enthusiasts!
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1  A fictional account of this consultant’s message—but unfortunately not nearly as fictional as I wish it were—may be found in Chapters 5, 25, and 36 of my novel And Gladly Teach.

2  Throughout this monograph I am using generic terms when referring to technological devices. Since it is hardly worth a grown man’s time to try keeping up with the proliferation of neoteric words for computers, cell phones, hand-held devices, etc.—for all I know, the cell phone is by now called a celone and the hand-held computer a haheco—the more knowledgeable reader should simply substitute for my generic term the correct name of whatever meretricious gewgaw occupies this week’s headlines. Please do not shoot the pedagogue; he is doing his best.

3  I hope nobody expects me to define this verbiage. I do not know what most of these terms mean. I merely copied them from a memo sent out by a particularly progressive teacher earlier this year, confident that they embody cutting-edge pedagogy and the wave of the future.

4  A fraction of cost to the school is meant. Tuition will be kept in the $40,000 range.

Testing Kinesthetic Students: A Dynamic Approach

With the start of the academic year swiftly approaching, it is time for another of my seminal articles on progressive education. Others, perhaps, will follow. When these cutting-edge "best practices" come to a school near you, remember: you read about them here first. As always, I welcome reader response.
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In my previous monograph, Project 1812 [which you can find on this blog, July 2011], I suggested a method for insuring that kinesthetic high school students learn unforgettable lessons in history without the necessity of doing things for which they are not best suited, such as reading and writing. Here I propose a method for administering tests to kinesthetics.

The whole idea of testing is, of course, undergoing scrutiny and debate. It does not seem too far-fetched to suggest that in many schools—certainly in those progressive institutions that so rightly put a premium on innovation and creativity—the notion that students should periodically have to undergo exhausting, psychologically painful, and possibly humiliating ordeals in which they are expected to know things, and to demonstrate this knowledge by writing some of it down, will soon be as passé as slide projectors, mimeograph machines, and lectures, replaced by a portfolio system or a group project system or anything that will remove the necessity for schools to differentiate industriousness, ability, or intelligence, or award low grades to anyone.

However, until that happy day arrives, “traditional” testing will be a major component of high school classes. But how can such tests be made fairer for kinesthetic students, whose learning style makes laboriously studying famous people, notable events, crucial dates, and cause-and-effect relationships very difficult? An innovative pedagogy surely will not try to make these students overcome their weaknesses, but will take advantage of their strengths.

I propose the adoption of  Scavenger Tests  for the use of kinesthetics.

Students certified by the school psychologist, psychiatrist, “counselor,” astrologer—whatever functionary identifies some young persons as more comfortable using their hands than their heads—will be tested in a separate place. The teacher will distribute the test, which will be the same as that being administered somewhere else to the visual and verbal learners. However, the kinesthetics need not write anything on the test. Instead, the answers to the various questions will have been printed on little pieces of paper and hidden throughout the room: in books, behind classroom furniture, under the rug, inside light fixtures, etc. etc. The students will leap from their archaic, confining desks and scurry about to find these answers. When a student finds an answer, he will go to his desk and staple it next to the corresponding question. Think how much fun this will be for the kinesthetics: they can use the motion of their bodies and their tactile curiosity to complete the test without having more than a rudimentary knowledge of the subject being tested!

Tests of course vary in difficulty, from basic quizzes to final exams (in those reactionary schools that have not yet abolished such ghastly ordeals as final exams). The mechanics of a Scavenger Test do not vary, but the challenge can be enhanced by increasing the area in which the answers are hidden. Instead of only the classroom, answers can be secreted in corridors, on other floors, in bushes, flower beds and other campus shrubbery, in administrative offices, perhaps in a drawer in the Headmaster’s desk. The haptic learners should then have a really kinetic evaluational experience as they ransack the entire school to find them. (This can be a learning experience for the whole school community, too, which can live through a simulation of the sack of Jerusalem in 1099 or the Spanish Fury at Antwerp in 1576.)

Thus a Scavenger Test can be varied in its difficulty, from the basic “Easter Egg Hunt” model to a cataclysmic exercise that leaves the school looking like northern France in 1918.

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The “basic” Scavenger Test presupposes that the number of answers is sufficient for all the students to get an A+ : i.e. if there are nine students being tested, nine copies of each of the answers will be hidden. But those schools interested in introducing an element of real-world competitiveness into testing—for seniors, perhaps, about to leave the loving, caring coddling of an innovative and creative private school for the reality outside—can easily simulate this by simply making fewer answers available than there are students. Imagine the enhanced excitement generated by telling several seniors, their competitiveness and aggression already honed to a razor’s edge by years of playing sports, that there is only one hidden answer to each ID question. The result should be exceedingly kinetic. And the mayhem may reduce the number of kinesthetics at the school—which, readers may recall, was also one purpose of Project 1812.