TV

For some reason, watching movies seems a daunting task to me. They're too long. I can never finish one. Everyone is always needing to be run somewhere, even late at night, or helped with something.

Also, TV shows are now widely available without commercials on Amazon and Netflix, and we subscribe to both. So, I've done something I figured I would never do and started watching TV shows again.

Ellen is a HUGE fan of Downtown Abbey and got me watching them. I've seen 5 episodes. I liked the first one quite a bit, but they're sort of going downhill for me. I like some of the relationships, like the one between the older women. Maggie Smith is absolutely spectacular. She had a line about foreigners dying in the fourth episode that still has me chuckling whenever I think of it. And I like most of the male characters. But the sisters and mother seem faintly ridiculous. While relationships between many of the characters develop naturally, the sisters' relationships--both with each other and with others outside the family--veer off in wildly unpredictable directions that seem forced and artificial. And I never really like characters who are pure spite and evilness, like those two servants. A little character complexity would be welcome. I'll probably stick with it for a while longer, but may not last.

My favorite show at the moment is Sherlock, also produced by Masterpiece Theatre. It's interesting the BBC has had two huge hits here in the past two years. Sherlock only had 3 episodes its first season but has a bunch scheduled for this season, beginning in May. I'm pumped. It's witty, interesting, complex, and well-paced. I generally like well-plotted murder-mysteries and also like excellent dialogue, and this show does them both very well.

In a BBC mood, I tried the first episode of Dr. Who last night, the 2005 version. It was lots of fun as well. Dr. Who has had a couple of different incarnations on the BBC as I understand it, and is a bit like Star Trek in the sense that many are die-hard fans of the classic version. This 2005-present version apparently has lots of fans as well, and I can see why. It's entertaining, lively, quirky, and has some intriguing characters.

Finally, because book reading has ground to a halt with the busy-ness of the semester, I've decided to try some documentaries. Jazz, by Ken Burns, is great. The story of jazz is the story of America. And Planet Earth, the top-rated TV show of all time, is also pretty mesmerizing, I agree.

Evaluating Teachers

Whenever the question of merit pay for teachers arises, I hear teachers claiming that it is difficult to evaluate their work. I don't agree. To clarify, I think it is generally difficult to evaluate intellectual or creative work, but it is probably no more difficult to judge teaching than any other intangible work. I understand that standardized tests should not be the only measure, but it should be part of the equation.

I think I've read where New York does about 50 percent standardized tests and 50 percent evaluation from the principal. That seems a reasonable formula. Some might argue that principal evaluations are subjective. The way to solve that problem is to have more people involved in the evaluation.

At universities, we rely on committees to evaluate each other's teaching. Why can't secondary and elementary schools do that? The principal would select a committee of five or so of the best teachers and they spend time evaluating the teaching of others as well as the teaching of those on the committee (where the person being evaluated of course does not participate).

In many cases, it's not that difficult to identify better and worse teaching. Let's take my son's English teacher last year and this year. Both taught Shakespeare. The one last year had them listen to a recording. The one this year draws names out of a hat at the first of class and allows those students to choose a part. Each student then reads his/her part with others following along. They stop regularly to discuss what is happening. Then they watch the portion of a film that corresponds to the section they just read. Which technique is superior? That's easy. Moreover, adopting the second technique is EASY. Without merit pay, teachers can be extraordinarily lazy, painfully so. I wonder which teacher enjoys her job more? Wouldn't an evaluation and pay for better teaching make everyone's life easier and not be that difficult to implement?

Generally, I'm an underdog kind of guy, and that should potentially extend to unions. But the more I learn about teaching unions--and that's the only one I know anything about, to be sure--the more dismayed I become. Unions do seem to be the enemy of learning and improvement, to the extent that they oppose evaluations and merit pay.