Embedded Files
"Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious. And however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at."
- Stephen Hawking, theoretical physicist
"We're too concentrated on having our children learn the answers.
I would teach them how to ask questions—
because that's how you learn."
- David McCullough, historian
I. What is a LENS and why does it matter?
When the Chinese Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi (秦始皇) ascended the throne, he ordered an army of artisans to sculpt thousands of full-scale clay models of every significant person in the military to be buried with him in his tomb. And over two thousand years later in 1905, a German, Jewish patent clerk named Albert Einstein proposed a new formula explaining the relative relationship between matter and energy, E = mc2, a discovery that would lead to the advent of nuclear power, nuclear medicine, and nuclear weapons. Non-sequitor? Not at all.Though these men are separated by time and place, centuries and continents, there is something they had in common. Both were dissatisfied with what had happened in the past. The Qin Emperor had just reunified China in a bloody series of wars and was eager to retain the loyalty of his army. So instead of sacrificing and burying his whole court on his death as was tradition, he decided to spare the lives of his soldiers by having them make high-quality replicas of themselves instead. Similarly, Einstein realized that the accepted Newtonian model of physics was now inadequate, since it could not explain the behavior of subatomic particles. The old way of doing things required radical change.While these men are most often remembered today for their new ideas, I wish to draw your attention to how and why they made these changes. Their revolutionary innovations could only happen because they both understood the past well enough to think critically about it and to meaningfully question it.Their knowledge of the past colored the way they saw the present, the same way a lens can magnify, intensify, or transform what we see. By carefully studying the ideas of past, they had developed a unique LENS, a way of understanding one’s own relationship with the world. Only having done the work of understanding the past, could they have a lens capable of seeing better ways of doing things.This story is hardly unique. If you do the research you will discover that every achievement in human history began the same way, with someone asking a question, seeing a problem through A NEW LENS.
The ancient Greeks in particular were famous for this which is why we studied them so closely. Thales of Miletos, is sometimes called the world's first philosopher because he asked, "what is the cosmos made of?" Centuries later, Socrates of Athens wrestled with the questions of what truth, justice and beauty are. All this questioning led to not just philosophical theories, but also the sciences, astronomy, physics, political science, and aesthetics.
Most of what we know about the universe and every technology and great idea we rely on came as a consequence of people asking deep questions and coming up with meaningful answers.
Our society has refined the process of inquiry by dividing questions into disciplines such as humanities, science, math and a host of other studies. And this is where we invite you to begin your own path into the past to create your own powerful lens....
Okay, so what?
I hear you say, "but I'm never gonna be a Chinese Emperor, a physicist, or a philosopher. What's in it for me?" Actually, there are plenty of benefits of the Lens Project.
Unless you inherit a fortune, the odds are that you will spend a huge percentage of your life at work. Yet huge majorities of people in the U.S. and around the world report that they hate their jobs and many of them suffer real, measurable health impacts because of it. Lens can help prevent that by giving you a head start on something you find fulfilling.
Additionally, politicians, business leaders, and academics tend to agree that schools need to do better teaching students to innovate, and the Lens Project is in part Barlow's response to that. So if your education is going to have any value, if you want to achieve your dream of breaking into a competitive field doing important work that you enjoy as opposed to the work that's available, you too must learn to master this process.
And if getting into a good college is your primary goal right now, Lens Project is exactly the sort of work that can make the difference between your "dream" and your "safety." When you read the common app essay prompts, it should be easy to see how having special expertise in something you actually care about would be a huge advantage, especially when you are asked to write about an "interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it" or "a topic, idea, or concept you find so engaging that it makes you lose all track of time."
So what counts? I will assess the expertise you develop through your lens work by looking at a number of products and milestones including questions, notes, short reflective writings called check ins, an essay, a creative piece, and a presentation. And even if in the end you decide that the topic of your Lens Project won't lead directly to a career, the lens model should equip you with the skills you need to quickly progress from novice to expert, the very skills you need most in that moment when inspiration strikes and you finally find your calling.
One of the worst mistakes you can make is to project forward, skipping steps and cutting corners. Please give your full attention to whatever "step" you're on, and I promise you the pieces will fit together in the end.
Step 1: we discover a reason for taking on the lens project:
With the exception of royalty and the Kardashians, nobody is born famous. Most of our heroes achieve attain notoriety through their choices, and by making a short comparison between five stories, we might discover a reason for doing the lens project that's more powerful than the fact that you get graded on it. Please take notes on the first two minutes or so of the following five film clips. After the last one, please write a paragraph in which you identify and explain a non-superficial common thread that ties them together . Start with your claim and then link each person to it.
James Hetfield -
https://youtu.be/1Eq9RVKT9XQ?t=3s
Tom Brady -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOi0YPETruot?t=38s
Lin-Manuel Miranda -
https://youtu.be/Xpctf1kxNhc?t=5m13s
https://youtu.be/aJ_hAuv0aM8?t=12m10s
Malala Yousafzai -
https://youtu.be/MOqIotJrFVM?t=10m0s
Sir Ken Robinson - discussing Gillian Lynne, DBE
https://youtu.be/ltdChRnteGw?t=14m59s
II. Creating a LENS...
It begins with finding One question with many answers...
Step 2: Find your dream by generating a focus question
Before going any further, you need to create a space for your lens work. Please follow these directions:1. Google "google drive." Login using your er9 id and password.2. Click the blue "new" button and then click "google doc."3. In the new doc, click "untitled document" in the upper left corner and retitle it using this formula:W1 (or W7 or W8), your last name, Lens ProjectExample: W7, Bilinski, Lens Project
4. Click the blue "share" button on the upper right corner and give rsmith@er9.org access.5. All your notes and work for the Lens Project will go into this doc, keeping the most recent at the top. Okay, now let's move on to what you need to put in the doc...Inquiry begins with a question, so your task is to generate a question or problem you wish to guide a portion of your study in the second semester. You can discover your question by reflecting on the following two questions, making lists of each:1. What do you care about? 2. What do you enjoy? Why start with these? Your teachers and your families ultimately want you to be happy, so it helps to look at research to figure out what it will take to get you there. Researchers who study happiness at Harvard say that among other things, "happiness is the intersection between pleasure and meaning." It turns out that the happiest people are the ones doing work that they enjoy and that they feel is important.
If you wish to be among them, the next logical step is to take your lists and see if you can figure out where that intersection is. List professions, disciplines, or careers where the two might converge. That's your dream!
Ultimately, your question should be reflective of your own interests and values. This question must be broad enough to include different times and places. Write your question down and bring it to class.
Step 3: Shop for societies
Everything has a history. No matter what your dream or passion is, there have surely been lots of other people in other times and places that have traveled similar paths, and it would help you to know about what they learned in the process. By studying their history, you can effectively make yourself their apprentice and benefit from their mastery.This is why I'm asking you to research how the question you are interested in was handled or answered by three other societies. To make sure you are drawing from a diverse expanse of history, separated by both time and place, please make sure that your selections fit the following criteria. I'll be happy to offer you advice on some societies that specialized in your area of interest:1. TimeOne must be ancient (before ~500 C.E.),One must be medieval (~500-C.E.-1500 C.E.)
One must be modern (~1500 C.E.-now)
2. Place
Each of your societies needs to be (or have been) on a different continent (Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, South America, & Australia).
Important! NO ONE may choose Europe or the United States without my permission. You'll get plenty about both of them in other course work. See me if you believe your question warrants an exception.
Where do I look?
There are lots of places...
Hyperhistory is old-school web at its best, and it still works. It’s a simple, interactive timeline will show you what societies were in power during various periods of human history:
http://www.hyperhistory.com/online_n2/History_n2/a.html
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York boasts a similar resource, the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History:
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/
Here's John Sparks' Histogram, a 1931 timeline of human history that shows what generally what historians of the past century thought mattered at any given date.
Also, look at the sidebar timelines wikipedia "history of" pages on any nation or region, e.g. "History of India."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
Examples of societies/era/regimes/periods you can find...
ancient Middle East - Achaemenid (Persian) Empire, medieval Africa - Songhai Empire, modern Asia - Qing Dynasty (mentioned above)
ancient Asia - Mauyra Empire, medieval America - Mayan Empire, modern Europe - fascist Italy
ancient Europe - Celtic Gaul, medieval Asia - Mughal Empire, modern Australia, German Empire (where Einstein worked on relativity)
Once you finish step #3, you will cycle through steps 4-10 three times, the first time for you ancient, second for your medieval, and third for your modern society. You will get a grade for each during conferences with me.
Steps 4-7: Answers to Key Questions
Once you've picked your societies, you should have a broad concept of how they worked. It's tempting to dive right into the life of a hero or rebel from the society that tackled your area of interest, but we should resist. Whatever they did in relation to your focus question did not occur in a vacuum. The keys will help you reconstruct the context that your heroes lived in.Use abc-clio and wikipedia if permission is given to take notes on how each society answered the "keys to the social studies" e.g. politics, economics, history, etc. Make sure you get at least two specific facts for each key, that is to say a specific person, event or place and how that helps answer that key question. For example a student researching ancient China could find out how the literature key question was answered by the Qin Dynasty from abc-clio and articles entitled "Qin Dynasty," "Shi Huangdi," "Legalism" and "Burning of books by order of Shi Huangdi." Did you know, for instance, that the Qin Emperor banned all books not dealing with medicine, agriculture, or fortune telling and that he drank mercury to become immortal? Clearly there was more to that guy than his army of clay soldiers.
Do one per day, first ancient, then medieval, and lastly modern. Look for "history of" pages on Wikipedia or articles on abc-clio named for a dynasty, regime, or historical period or era. Whenever you don't finish in class, put in another 20m at home.
Collect full citation information of the quotes and images you place into the doc. You'll need it later when you write. Remember, wikipedia and almost all .com sites are not legit sources!
Be warned, a google doc stuffed with text is not necessarily evidence of actual learning. Detailed notes are required, but don't just mindlessly copy and paste quotes and citations. Read carefully and make it stick. Be prepared to describe what you've learned and why it matters, both in person and on paper. If you need to look at your notes, you probably won't get an A.
But why do all this work? What does economics have to do with rock 'n roll? A heavy-metal obsessed freshman Mr. Smith might reasonably ask his present self what he might learn about music by looking at the politics and economics of a society. In response Mr. Smith the teacher would ask the following question, "can you explain why all of the sudden music in the UK got so loud and angry in the 1970s and 80s, especially when compared to what came a just a decade earlier?" It turns out that high rates of youth unemployment and perceived indifference on the part of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the older generation towards the problems of young people lead to an explosion of of rage and protest in not just politics, but also music and all the arts. In short, you can't understand why Iron Maiden happened without first knowing about "the Iron Lady."
And history is full of phenomena like this, where the things that a society is famous for has unexpected causes. Ever wonder why ancient Greece was the cradle for so many innovations in science, math, engineering, astronomy, navigation, philosophy, and the arts while older societies like Egypt and Mesopotamia were comparatively less creative? I argue that Athens would not have been a center of development were it not for their lack of arable land and the unexpected consequences of widespread deforestation. Greeks with ruined land feared starvation, so they went to sea to import food, traded with people from Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and northern Africa. In the process were able to collect the combined wisdom of the ancient world through realizations inspired by their many influences. The hope is that the lens project will do the same for you as you look at a variety of ways that different cultures dealt with issues that are important to you.
Over the next week, please compile complete sets of notes about how ALL THREE of your societies answered each of these key questions. Be sure to note specific people, places, events, and ideas. They of course can be the basis for further exploration. Put these notes in a shared and correctly labeled google.doc and share it with rsmith@er9.org.
Here's a model of lens notes I've gathered. You can return to it to get a sense of what I am looking for. Click here to copy out a template and paste it into your research doc.
Mr. Brix and I will help compile resources and key search terms for you, too, and you can find them here.
Steps 8-10: are tasks designed to help develop the kind of depth of knowledge that experts have.
Primary sources give you a window into how experts viewed their work. Books and their relative equivalents give you the kind detail that you can't get from encyclopedias. And mastering the stories of three different "heroes," or rebels from your societies who have worked in your field of interest can give you an enhanced sense of what is possible.
As we read the directions, think about finding the richest possible source. Maybe you've found the name of a person, a book, or an important work while researching the key questions. That could be a lead to follow up on. And if you're really clever, you might find a substantial sources actually created by a "hero" that can satisfy the requirements of all three tasks at once.
Step 8: Got primary sources?
Secondary sources are great, but new insights are more likely when you look at the surviving evidence yourself. For each society you're studying, find at least one primary source relevant to the question you've working on. It has to be something produced by the people themselves. Examples of primary sources include:
- The oldest available eyewitness accounts, histories, diaries, chronicles from or about the society itself
- Religious texts and scriptures
- Laws and codes
- Novels, plays, poems, and stories
- Lyrics or a libretto from songs & hymns
- Photographs and drawings of buildings, murals, relief carvings, paintings, sculptures, archaeological sites, coins, and other artifacts.
- Articles, books, videos of performances, and interviews by or about a "hero" as described in page 10.
The best ones should be by or about the most important people or group from the period whose life work was connected to your question. So for example, a person studying music in ancient Egypt must study hymns about the goddess Hathor. Similarly, a person looking at medieval middle eastern poetry would look at Rumi and his Dar al-Masnavi. And a person studying team sports in a modern context might well study the cricket rivalry between India and Pakistan.
Finding primary sources quickly involves expert use of search terms and careful parsing of wikipedia where it tells you what the sources were or identifies books by and about the person or thing you are studying.
Here are some time-tested search terms that you can use individually or combination: study, pdf, translation, the name of an author, the name of a book or work, transcript, interview, inscription, subtitles, and "full text."
On wiki pages about books or other works, don't forget to look at the bottom for "external links." Also use any commonly-used alternate spellings of names, e.g. Ashoka and Asoka, Mohammed & Muhammad.
Prior to the start of class on Wednesday 2/6, please make sure to...
1. Put a passage in your doc: Once you've found a good primary source that speaks to your focus question, please paste a juicy 1-3 page passage from it at the top of your lens document. If you haven't found one yet, please consult step 8 of the lens project for ideas on how to find one.
2. Cite the passage: Put a space above the passage and put a citation including the author, the name or title of the document, and the date.
If your primary source is substantial enough, it could do double-duty qualifying as a book, too!
Once you have the source, Mr. Smith will give you written directions about what to do with it.
Step 9: Read your primary source using CSI
Using the primary source document you collected in step 8, please use this system to break down the parts of a text to figure out what it's really about:
1. Claim: Underline a few key words and write "C" in the margin next to it the main idea of what the author wants the reader to think.
Hints:
- The title and context found in the blurb contained above the passage are often helpful, too, so read those first.
- The claim is usually in the first two or three paragraphs, but sometimes it is revealed near the end or in the conclusion.
2. Supports: Underline a few key words and write "S" in the margin next to evidence, examples, and impact analysis the author includes to support the claim.
Hints:
- supports are usually found in the middle of the texts. Body paragraphs and sections are typically organized around individual examples or sub claims.
- Analysis is how the author builds links between their supports and their claim.
3. Impacts: Underline a few key words and write "I" in the margin next to what the author hopes will change when the reader accepts their claim.
Hints:
- All essays ultimately seek to persuade, even science articles. Yes, there is always an agenda in operation.
- To find the impact, you first need to identify the audience and purpose. Audience is who is the document for. Purpose is what the author wants that audience to do.
- Sometimes the writer doesn't explicitly name their audience is or specifically say what they want so will you have to "read between the lines" and infer it.
- Often you can find the impact in the conclusion and sometimes in the intro.
EXAMPLE: A first pass reading the American Declaration of Independence should reveal something like this:
- Claim: Jefferson's claim is that the American colonies are right to seek independence, or “dissolve the political bands” described in the first paragraph.
- Supports: Jefferson's supports are “these truths” he described about rights and the long list of grievances like "imposing taxes on us without our consent" that compose the body of the text.
- Impact: Jefferson's purpose was to persuade his audience, American colonists to join their cause, to stick together, and be prepared to make sacrifices for independence, or to “mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor” at the very end. At very least, there is an implied hope that the reader will at least not get in their way or help the loyalists.
But in everything we read, the author tells us a ton of different things. How can I tell which one is the claim and which ones are supports?
Let's look at an example. The most famous phrase from the American Declaration of Independence is that “all men are created equal.” Surprisingly, that is NOT actually the claim, it was actually a support to support the idea “That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States.” How can you tell the difference? The core claim is an opinion broad enough that it connects to every part of the writing. By contrast, supports are only linked to the claim but not to all the other supports. For example, "all men are created equal" does not not link directly to Jefferson's complaints about taxation without representation. Yet both of his points about taxes and equality do link to his argument for independence. In this way we know that independence is his core claim and the rest are supports.
The second pass - a closer read looking for answers and evidence for these questions…
On the top of your doc under the heading "Step 9 CSI", please write your answers to the questions below your work from the previous step. You can fashion your responses in imitation of the models I provide for each. Support each answer with short quotes from the document. In addition, you can use cited, short quotes from any resource from your research to prove your points. Limit yourself to no more than three sentences for each question:
1. Audience: Who was the author of the passage writing to? Sometimes the document names their audience, but when they don't, you might have to infer from your understanding of the society who the most likely reader would be.
Example: The Declaration of Independence was speaking to "the good People of these Colonies," people who were either opposed to these or undecided about whether or not to support the fight to create a new government.
Here's another:
The Urukagina Liberty Cone does not name a specific audience, but one can infer that people living in Lagash who believed in "Ningirsu, warrior of Enlil" would find the description of his career persuasive. Since it also lists lots of different occupations including farmers, boatmen, brewers, shepherds, singers, herdsmen, bakers, land-holding slaves called "shublugals" and many others, one can infer this was intended for the laborers of Lagash.
2. Purpose: What did the author or authors hope their audience would think, say, or do after reading or hearing the document? There can be more than one purpose, too.
Examples: At best, the signatories of the Declaration of Independence hoped the colonists would join the revolution and "mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor." At very least, they hoped the reader would be in "support of this Declaration," and not side with the British against the revolutionaries.
Here's another:
It seems to me that the goal of the writer was to convince the reader that Urukagina's reforms were religiously-motivated return to order. By declaring that "the fates of former times he restored, and the commands which his master Ningirsu had spoken to him he seized upon," the writer likely hopes they will accept Urukagina's laws and not rebel against them.
3. Polemics: All documents seek to change minds. What people and ideas was the passage created to attack? In addition to a quote or two from the document, you can use cited quotations from other research you've done to answer this question. Keep in mind that even science articles have some level of polemic directed against people who don't accept the findings of the research. Can you drill down to who the author's opponents are in terms of status, age, gender, wealth, education, ethnicity, belief, location, etc?
Examples: The Declaration of Independence polemicized King George III by listing dozen of crimes. Among them, the authors alleged that he "plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people."
Here's another:
The Liberty Cone attacks Urukagina's predecessor, Lugalanda for his abuses of power. One notable one is this, enslaving blind people to dig ditches and wells: " When a royal subordinate on the narrow side of his field built his well, blind workers were appropriated for it, and for the irrigation channels(?) located within the field blind workers were (also) appropriated."
4. Apologetics: Who or what is the passage defending? What was the narrative that the document is seeking to respond to? In addition to a quote or two from the document, you can use cited quotations from other research you've done to answer this question. Keep in mind when looking at your article that authors often use apologetics to defend themselves, but they can also do it to defend groups to which they belong or sympathize with. Can you drill down to who the author supports in terms of status, age, gender, wealth, education, location, ethnicity, belief, etc?
Examples: The authors of the Declaration of Independence also engaged in apologetics for revolutionaries by simply not mentioning anything about the Boston Tea Party, the Sons of Liberty, the Worcester Revolution and other violent incidents and groups involving revolutionaries, many of which are described in Adam Soward's abc-clio article "American Revolution." This conspicuous silence in the Declaration was probably designed to counter the narrative that said that the revolutionaries were just a bunch of mindless criminals or ungrateful, disloyal traitors.
Here's another:
In a strange way, the text arguably tries to rescue the reputation of not just Urukagina, but also the gods Enlil and Ningirsu who arguably could be blamed for allowing Lugalanda to abuse his power in the first place. The author wishes us to believe that Urukagina was the instrument of divine justice, and through him they ordained "that the orphan or widow to the powerful will not be subjugated, with Ningirsu Urukagina made a binding agreement as to that command."
5. A key question: Using a short quote from the passage, show how it helps reveal how the society you're studying answered one of the key questions.
Examples: The Declaration of Independence obviously is primarily a political document, but it also reveals the author's views on gender, specifically their sexism. The fact that all 56 of the signers were men, including the famous "John Hancock," demonstrates that women were excluded from government.
Example:
The Liberty Cone provides us a window into the busy economy of a Sumerian city, showing us "boatmen," oxen, brewers, sheep, irrigation, tax collectors, ferries, bakers, singers, priests & priestesses along with many skilled craftspeople implied by the mention of cauldrons, boats, and palaces.
Step 10: Got books?
There is no substitute for depth. Encyclopedias almost always lack the power to immerse you in distant times and places, and that's why experts never settle for the summary. They dig deep. And if you want to be an innovator in any field, you need to look at what other people are not looking at.Please borrow, buy, or find three relevant books and bring them to class. Each one should connect to at least one of the three societies you are studying and help you examine how each society dealt with your focus question. In the end, you'll need one substantial text for each.For people with specialized topics, you can use other high-quality, in-depth sources to substitute for books. Sometimes a substantial chapter from a book can count. A chapter from a history of India dealing with the dynasty or period you're working on might do the trick. Look at biographies of famous people from the society that dealt with your area of interest. Those studying medicine during the Islamic Golden Age might seek a book on ibn Sina (Avicenna).
Perhaps you can find a substantial text written in the society you are studying, satisfying both the book and primary source requirements simultaneously. Why read a book about ibn Sina if you can read a book by ibn Sina himself? If you're studying Indian drama or music, why not read a Chinese play or watch a concert? A high-quality documentary film or video of a substantial performance can count as one of your sources. Check with me to verify whether or not it's acceptable.
If you acquire eBooks, bring the list of texts to class and upload them into google.docs to make sure you are able to access them in school when we’re using computers. If a book is too cumbersome, you can scan portions of it using a free app on your phone, making pdf files that you can access from any internet-enabled device.
WHERE DO I LOOK FOR BOOKS, PRIMARY SOURCES, AND HEROES?
Our Media Center has lots of books. The Mark Twain Library and Easton Public Libraries also have substantial collections. Save time and hassle by searching their databases and making reservations before making the trip. But don't be afraid to poke around the stacks, you never know what you might find! If you want to buy, used texts are your most cost-effective solution. Powell's and Amazon used are among the vendors that are famous for this.
Don't want to bother with print? ResearchIT CT is a search service provided by the State of Connecticut giving you access to substantial peer-reviewed academic articles, chapters, most of which would qualify as book-like sources, primary sources, or sources by or about heroes. Click "high school," and then "advanced search," filtering for full-text results.
Click the pdf or html buttons to get a copy of whatever looks interesting. One more thing, ResearchIT CT only works in school, so take the stuff you like, download them and save them to your google drive folder to access them anywhere.
Google scholar is another good tool that searches peer-reviewed journal articles.
Once you have the book, create a full citation for it in your google doc. Populate the space under it with quotations you believe you might use later.
Step 11: Got heroes?
I mean the question literally. Still, when most of us hear the word "hero," we think of comic books and CGI blockbusters. Although most are less well known than any character in the Marvel or DC universes, the real giants in every field accomplished all their notable achievements without the aid of superpowers. Respect.You can't stand on the shoulders of any giant if you don't know who they are or know anything about their careers.
Last semester, I asked each of you to study ancient and medieval rebels, often with little choice. Now you get to study people who worked in areas that you care about. For me at least, studying the lives and works of great musicians never fails to renew my passion to play and write.
Devour the books or book-like works that you collected for the good stuff and record quotes and citations that you can use later in your doc. Make sure to include full citation information for the book you're reading as the heading for your notes.
At assigned intervals or any night I don’t assign something else, make certain to take CSI style notes for 20 minutes on the books and to submit them in a shared google.doc. Include a correctly formatted citation for each book you use. Directions for citations can be found here.
By "take names," I want you to find at least one hero from each society to study. As you did with the rebels in the first semester, please find the motives, actions, and consequences (MAC) for at least one specific rebel in each of your three societies whose life is related to your question. Your society wouldn't be famous for your area of interest if it wasn't for people within it who's life work changed how they did things. Would anyone remember Greece as the nexus of science in antiquity were it not for Thales, Plato, Hippocrates, Archimedes, Alexander, and of course later Muslim leaders like Caliph al-Mamun who preserved their memory? So use all your resources to find some in-depth information about the key people who defined the achievements of your period.
What does "taking names" look like concretely? So for my project on music, Johann Sebastian Bach is an obvious choice as a rebel to study for modern Germany. For resources, I'd use a chapter from a book like this one on the lives composers to take my MAC notes. For my primary source and book, a detailed listening and viewing of a major work of his recommended by a teacher along with a translation of the libretto which together would give me plenty to think about.
Finding heroes is actually easier than you might think. It's true that notables in many fields like, for instance, cryptography are not household names like, say, Tom Brady is, but that doesn't mean that they're not making news below the fold.
If you want to find out who the movers and shakers are in any given field, go to google news or any similar site and type in a word or term associated with your interest like "guitarist," "oud," "oceanography," "oceanographer," "aquaculture," "aviator," "psychologist," "geneticist," "oncologist," "study," etc.
What you'll get are stories about notable people in the field who have made new discoveries, announced new projects and collaborations, are making new performances, and earned awards for their work. Search for "interview," too, and the answers the expert gave could be quoted as primary sources, too! You may also find stories about scandals, too, but even those can be instructive, too, showing the challenges that exist in the world you're seeking to enter, making it more likely that you have clear eyes and few illusions.
Steps 12-14: Creating a big picture and a rule
The next three assignments are designed to help you come up with a claim or rule that would be good advice for a professional in your area of study. Everybody knows that when you know what's going on, you make better decisions.Research shows that having ideas in working memory correlate with better executive functioning. Building on this finding, the first two tasks will help you to create a big picture of what you studied, assembling the granular detail you encountered in your book-like sources, primary sources, and the stories of heroes. With these ideas firmly grasped in your mind, you should be able to then create a rule that is applicable, relevant, and useful.To help you along with this process, you can click here and see models for how I would approach these tasks for my lens topic, music.
Step 15: Focusing your Lens
Now that you have data, you need to start making sense of what it all means. By now you should have notes from encyclopedias and books on all three of your topics. But what do you do with it?
Let's start by thinking about this phrase: "slow and steady wins the race." We all know where that one came from, but have you thought about why that one sticks but a lot of the stuff you're reading about these days is harder to retain?
One of the reasons why it's so easy to get point of each of Aesop's fables was the fact that he limited the number of characters, plot points, and details down to smallest possible number. In The Tortoise and the Hare, you get two animals, a race, a nap, a winner, and a lesson learned. That's it, he directs your focus to the essentials, leaving nothing to distract you from his core message.
By contrast, what I've asked you to do over the past few weeks was to look at a ton of rich and complex detail. To move on from this point, it is necessary to filter out the noise. This exercise will help you do just that, pick out the essential greatest hits and leave the rest behind. And once you have that list of the most important bits of history and reflect on it carefully, following Aesop's advice, you will have something of value to say. See how meta that was?
1. Make a list of three things that make each of your three societies unique, especially with respect to your focus question. Specific features (people, places, events, ideas, creations, etc.) that make them different from the others.
2. Make a list of three specific features that all of your societies had in common with respect to the issue(s) raised by your question.
3. Make a list of the greatest accomplishments of your "heroes" along with any key details about how or why they were able to make it.
Step 16: Focusing your Lens, pt. 2, best & worst moments
Look over your similarities & differences. Think about everything that you've read. Make lists of five successes and five failures that you've discovered from your societies. Refer to specific features (people, places, events, ideas, laws, policies, creations such as books, artworks, theories, songs, dramatic productions, buildings, monuments, technical achievements, and also disasters, wars, scandals, etc.)
Step 17: Discover Your Rule
This is it! The moment you condense your learning into one critical piece of actionable wisdom, where knowledge and creativity converge into hopefully a eureka moment that makes the whole process worthwhile, where your expertise allows you to see something of value in the past that the rest of us missed. This step comes in two parts, a. writing a few rules and then b. work-shopping them with your peers.
A. Draft 3-5 rules:
Look at the lists you make for step 12 and turn each success or failure into a rule that can be applied to any time or place. What would have to happen to make sure the success was replicated everywhere? What should we to do make sure that mistake is permanently avoided? Imagination and creativity are usually required for this step.
Here's a basic formula for a rule: "An expert in A should do X."
Here are a couple examples:
In Aesop's famous fable, The Tortoise and the Hare, an obvious success was the turtle's victory. The author even went to the trouble to give his readers a rule to follow when competing against opponents who cut corners or are too self assured:
"Slow and steady wins the race."
But as simple as this story is, there was at least one failure to look at, too. Despite being naturally faster, the hare lost the race. What rule could he have followed to avoid it? If you think carefully about the graph on the left, a solution reveals itself:
"To defeat a tortoise in a race, a sleepy hare should set an alarm to wake him no later than four hours after the race begins."
Sure, he could leave it a bit later, but this way he has time to have a bath, watch the news, and get a bit of breakfast before rejoining the race.
Extracting rules from children's fables is easy enough, so what would rule making look like for something more complicated like the stuff we've been reading? Well, sometimes you luck out when you read about some hero like Aesop who gave you a rule that works. Provided you agree with it and can cite where it came from, you could use that. Or if you disagree with their advice, turn it on it's head to find a rule. Both Jesus and Gandhi for example famously argued for rules that were the opposite of what Hammurabi advocated for. In his 1958 book,
“Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story,” Dr. Martin Luther King wrote, "The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind."
For most of us, however, looking at complex history, it is necessary to draw our own moral conclusions. For step 12, I noted that failure of ancient Egypt was to use music to encourage intoxication, thereby making people addicted to alcohol. What rule could avoid this failure? How about this:
"Musicians should be careful to communicate messages that don't end up harming their audiences."
Still confused? I have lots of other models, too. Click here to see a model for how I created rules from my lists.But remember, just as in the fall, your rule needs three critical features, applicability, utility, and relevance:
A. Applicability: Your rule must be broad enough that it could apply to any time or place. We seek timeless human wisdom that has relevance across continents and the ages. By that I mean, your rule would be good advice for not only ancient Spartans, but also medieval China, and contemporary Brazil. For example, if we were writing about Hitler, you could say that the lesson would be that, "a responsible society should not classify people by race." Someone else studying contemporary Germany might write, "to be prosperous, a responsible society should be generous to their neighbors."
B. Utility: While your rule must be broad enough to accommodate all human societies, your rule must also be specific enough to draw a clear line between what is acceptable and what is not. This is a delicate balance. What do we need to do (or avoid doing) in order to stay within the moral boundaries you are attempting to set? If your rule has this problem, the solution is to reflect and ask yourself what concrete actions or policies can we take (or avoid) to make sure that the "good thing" happens again or that the "bad thing" is avoided?
C. Relevance: We are looking for rules that will be useful for us to confront today's challenges. Therefore, please look for rules that would not be obvious to someone who has not studied this era. Use the "well-duh" test to see if your rule passes. If you can prove using properly-cited quotes from reliable journalistic sources that there are substantial numbers of people living today who don't yet follow your rule, it is non-obvious.
B. Workshop your rules:
With all this in mind, please go to the top of your lens project doc and draft a list of 3-5 possible rules. When you've finished, please discuss them with one or two trusted neighbors in your class and get advice as to which one is the best. Feel free to revise and make edits as you see fit. I will also offer advice when I look at your doc and confer with you.
When it's your turn to give advice, be as helpful as you can. What would you change to make the rule more applicable, useful, and relevant?
What if you have a bunch of good rules and can't decide which one to use?
You may not have to choose, just combine the best three of them into something like this:
Compound rule formula: We learn from ancient society A that we should do X, from medieval society B that we should do Y, and from the modern hero C that we should do Z It's up to you to substitute specifics for each variable.
e.g. We learn from Egypt that musicians should seek to build community, from medieval Sicily that musicians should be open to new musical ideas and instruments, and from Bach that professional musicians need many skills including composition, production, and performance.
III. Using your LENS...
Yay, you now have something meaningful to say about the history of a field that you care about! Having done the work of developing your informed and enhanced LENS, it’s time to apply it meaningfully in two ways, an essay and then something else.
Step 18: Please write an essay...
Time to give your ideas to the power of persuasive, analytical writing. The purpose is to help your reader see your topic through the same lens that you now do. Get it? Now the metaphor makes a little more sense.In short, this essay is basically another Wisdom From History essay, but the material comes exclusively from your own individual research about how three different societies dealt with a topic you care about and you will hopefully use more than three examples to support it. Help will be available every step of the way, both from me and the good folks in the Writing Center where you can set up appointments online using this link. You can also drop in during free periods to consult with teachers in the library.Please write your essay at the top of the same google doc where you have put all your lens work. To save yourself the trouble of endlessly scrolling up and down on the page, take two minutes to watch this video to learn how to set up an outline in your doc so you can more quickly harvest the quotes and citations you need to prove your points.
If you aim to write one or two paragraphs a night between now and our negotiated deadline, you should be fine. Remember to integrate anything you wrote for the check ins that can help prove your point. If you wait to the last minute, you will do poorly.
Lens Project Essay formula:
Please click here to copy out my lens essay formula a paste at the top of your lens doc.
Title: 20 - Make it catchy, name your topics, and articulate your rule. Write it last. Intro: Start here...
- - Topic sentence(s) Hook your reader with a surprising anecdote, a compelling question, or a paradox.
- 2 - An applicable, relevant and useful rule as a claim. The best advice for creating them are under steps 11-13 above. Write this first.
- 3 - A list of 3 (or more) societies, examples, people, events, institutions, that you will use to support your rule.
- A minimum of 3 body paragraphs or sections showing examples where people following your rule created success and other where people violating your rule caused problems. Arrange them in chronological order, ancient, medieval, & modern. Keep writing them until you run out of examples or time. Start with the quote and build everything around it.
- 1c - A transition/topic sentence referencing the rebel and the reason you're including them
- 7 - A non-parenthetical citation introducing a quote.
- 4 - A relevant, reliable quote from any of your many sources. Maybe more.
- 9 - Impact analysis linking the quote to your claim
- 16 - You have a minimum three body paragraphs that follow the formula from above, right? To be in the running for an 'A,' you will need about three examples from each society you studied:
- Conclusion: Write it as soon as you've finished at least one graph for ancient, medieval, and modern.
- 17 - A conclusion that proves your rule would be good medicine for people today. Prove it with cited quotes from recent news stories showing where your rule would make the most difference. Walk us through the steps whereby your rule would make things better.
- 18 . A complete and accurately formatted works cited.
C. And here's a doc containing lens project notes that I used to get quotes for the models and demos.
Also, don't delete this essay. In recent years, several students have used a revised version of their Lens writing for the required analytical piece in their junior writing portfolio.
Step 19: Make sure your lens essay is better than your last essay...
Please click here and follow the directions starting with STEP 5, setting goals and coloring text to prove that you've learned from the mistakes made on your most recent Wisdom From the History essay.Yes, please turn your finished essay, works cited, and nothing else in to turnitin.com. Please make sure the same items appear at the TOP of the lens project document you have already shared with me. I do not want or need a printed copy.W1 2020:
Class: 21402354
Key: W1coexist20
W2 2020:
Class: 21402367
Key: W2coexist20
W7 2020:
Class: 21402377
Key: W7coexist20
But what grade will I get? When I read your essay, here are the questions that I will be asking:
1. Does it work? Have you given a reader who either doesn't care about your topic or does not agree with your rule any reasons to change their mind? Have you proven that we should adopt a rule that is applicable, relevant, and useful with a diverse set of examples supported with quotes and proper citations? Have you linked all examples to your rule rather than just reporting facts? If the answer is "yes," you're probably getting nothing lower than a B.
2. Have you fulfilled all the requirements following the models I prescribed under step 14? If the answer is "yes," you're probably getting a mark in the "A" range.
3. If any part of the essay is missing or is not done correctly, how much does it detract from the overall persuasiveness of your argument? The more the mistakes hurt, the more credit you lose.
4. For the wide variety of reasons I have explained in class, I don't want a rough draft. We don't need one. I've already given you feedback on your claim and several paragraphs, if you've studied my feedback, you have a clear idea of what I think you need to do.
5. No, for a variety of reasons that I would be happy to explain, I won't use a rubric for this essay, but if I did, it would look like this.
Key takeaways:
1. If up to this point you have faithfully engaged with every step and you take the time to study and implement the advice and models linked in the formula above, you will do well.
2. Don't waste any time worrying about anything that I'm not asking for. I DO NOT want title pages, a minimum or maximum number of pages, line spacing, fonts, footnotes, a printed hard copy, etc. If you stay focused on having a rule that matters and proving that your rule is useful with every bit of evidence that you can find, the rest will take care of itself.
And please, just don't use comic sans!
Lens Part II:
"What's the thing that's not in the world that should be in the world?"
- Lin-Manuel Miranda
SECOND, MAKE SOMETHING ELSE THAT MATTERS:
Congratulations! You have finished researching for and writing a beautiful masterpiece, your LENS paper. That is a great achievement. While we read and assess your work, you will be working on an engaging project that conveys your ideas.
Good ideas need to be shared. Essays are great vehicles for ideas, but there are a variety of other ways to convey messages. But how? American architect Louis Henry Sullivan who in an 1896 essay famously argued "that form ever follows function." What this means for you is that the point you are trying to make should determine the choice of media you select.
For example, after decades of studying mythology, J.R.R. Tolkien committed his insights to an essay and later wrote a short story that made exactly the same point, publishing the two together. He reasoned that if one didn't persuade readers, the other might. This is more common than you might suppose. Everyone can name a popular film or amusement park attraction that started at a book or comic, right?
Timing: You will spend several class days and several homework days on this. This is self directed work that will be shared out at the end of the marking period.
Choose a form for your function:
Podcast- 3-5 minutes in length. Should be informative so that the listener learns about your most interesting findings. Should reference research and include interviews if possible. Be creative, witty, intelligent, interesting and have fun (I don’t think that is too much to ask). If you need a format to follow, use the “Stuff You Should Know” podcast below for tips. Make sure to test all sound equipment before recording. Use GarageBand to edit.
Sample Podcasts:
The 50 Best Podcasts of 2017
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/12/the-50-best-podcasts-of-2017/548165/
Radio Lab (Shorts)
https://www.radiolab.org/tags/shorts/3/
Stuff You Should Know
https://www.stuffyoushouldknow.com/podcasts/sysk-selects-how-willpower-works.htm
Website - Create a dynamic educational website that highlights and simplifies your LENS research. Should be informative so that the viewer learns about your most interesting findings. Websites should be interactive and engaging. Choose this format if you want the viewer to be more involved in the learning process by clicking around and exploring the tabs on their own. Do not let them down!
iMovie - This should be approximately 3-5 minutes in length. Should be informative so that the viewer learns about your most interesting findings. Should reference research and be very visually and auditorily interesting, Be creative, witty, intelligent, interesting and have fun (I don’t think that is too much to ask).
Other art forms - Allegories are stories where a conflict between ideas are represented by characters and events. The story of how they relate to one another teaches the moral, say of the contest between authority and purity against democracy and diversity. That's right, Harry Potter is actually an allegory. So is Star Wars. Also Shakespeare's plays. Joel Barlow made them, too. Use this realization to inform how you design a drawing, script, play, short story, poem, or what have you.
Your something can take the form of a speech, a board game, a video game, a play, a film, a song, a poem, a painting, a short story, a graphic novella, a choose-your-own adventure story, a dance performance, a sculpture, a study, an experiment, an interactive advocacy website like a virtual museum, an installation, a dish, recipe, meal, or menu, or some other form of creative expression.
Grading: This will count as a quest/project grade that will go into fourth quarter. You will be assessed with the following criteria in mind.
1. Communicates and defends your rule clearly... Some form of allegorical representation is the most common method. Allegories are stories where ideas are represented by characters and events:
2. Synthesizes elements from all three cultures and continents that you've studied, ancient, medieval, and modern.
3. Demonstrates complexity & effective communication as defined by our school-wide rubrics.
4. Some form of your project shall be presented at the Barlow Palooza. Details are forthcoming.
5. Enjoy what you’re doing and believe that your work matters. If you’re just putting in the time to get it done, you’re probably doing it wrong and won't get a good mark.
6. Conforms to school standards of decency and conduct. You are encouraged to color outside the lines, but not in such a way that you offend anyone or create a danger to yourself or others.
7. You have a week to create whatever it is, so budget your time accordingly. It's due Monday, April 8th. You will have some class time to work on it, but Q4 resumes.
P.S. Please click here to compare the title and rule of my demo lens essay with the song I recorded.
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