Dune 2021

Mulan said I had to write one more blog post before the end of the year.  67 is a bad number to finish on.

She even wrote it for me:

On Wednesday Mulan and I went to the movies. We had been planning to go and see the new Dune movie when it came out but didn't notice when it did and almost missed seeing it! My review on the books is here.

Sounds good to me.

Mulan read the book a couple of years ago, and last year when we heard they were making a new movie we said we had to see it.

It's a great movie.  Highly recommended.  Far better than the other two screen versions of the book.

That's all.  Happy New Year.

Discus

The Colgate Games North Island children's athletics competition is in three weeks in Wellington.

We'll all be there.  (Don't worry burglars, we've arranged a house-sitter to stay and look after our cats.)  Mulan has signed up for 80m hurdles, long jump, discus, shot put and 4x100m relay.  Miya has signed up for high jump, shot put and discus.

From Wednesday, after Mulan and Miya's contemporary dance exams have happened, athletics will be our number one priority.

Today we were at the track de-rusting the discus.  Mulan has quickly got back into the swing of it, pushing the discus out to almost 25 metres, over a couple of metres more than her PB from last season.  This was her final throw today.

It's also starting to come right for Miya, with throws of almost 16 metres only a metre or so off her last season's best.  Once it clicks again she'll be getting PBs.

Mulan's ballet

Yesterday evening the family went to watch Mulan's open-viewing ballet class.  (It clashed with athletics club night, but seeing Mulan dance was more important.)

While we had seen Mulan dancing at home during her Covid lockdown Zoom lessons, it's been ages since we'd seen her properly in the studio.

Some of the dances are for Mulan's RAD Advanced Foundation exam on Saturday, while others were just for fun in classes.  Mama videoed some of them:

HASCA and Covid

HASCA is the local homeschooling organisation that organises and provides a centre for sport and cultural activities for homeschoolers on the North Shore (Auckland).

In some cases, it's the only place that local homeschoolers can access activities (as otherwise it's via the schools).

Today, as HASCA members, we received an email from HASCA leadership:

Re: Temporary Hibernation

14/12/21

Dear HASCA members and friends,

We have been silent throughout lockdown and the subsequent change from the Alert Level System to the Covid Protection Framework (CPF) as, 1) we have basically been unable to operate, and 2) we have wanted to watch and wait and make a considered decision on how HASCA will move forward under the new mandates.

As well as the government’s directives, our decisions have been influenced by the organisations we partner with - the sports organisations, programme providers, and the venues we hire and utilise to bring our classes and programmes to our home-schooling community. Unfortunately, many are either under government mandate themselves, or have their own in-house mandates which will impact on HASCA’s operations and our ability to provide any sort of non-discriminatory programme for the immediate future.

HASCA strives to be an inclusive organisation that brings people together, connects and supports, and “creates community” for all home educating families. Therefore, segregating or excluding participation based on vaccine status is not something we feel comfortable adopting, and is not where our hearts are placed. Our goal has always been to bring people together, not to divide. We do not want to operate any of what we previously offered if participation and inclusion is based on a vaccine status or the presence of a vaccine-pass. It is for this reason that the HASCA committee has decided that HASCA and all activities operating under our umbrella will hibernate for the foreseeable future. This has been a difficult decision for us, but we simply cannot run programmes knowing we must exclude select families.

[...]

We think they've got this badly wrong.  They make it sound like vaccinations are mostly meaningless, having no significant impact on the health and safety of others who we might interact with.  We have replied to them as follows:

Hi HASCA leadership,

 

As long-term HASCA members we respectfully disagree with this HASCA decision.  We hope that you will reconsider.

 

It's sad that it's the kids who will be the losers in this HASCA decision.  Something is better than nothing for homeschooled children; for HASCA to remove this option for local families is wrong as in many cases this is the only place where local homeschooling children can participate.

 

There is no unfair discrimination in the vaccine pass mandates; it's about following the science, protecting the vulnerable, giving people free choices, then people accepting the consequences of their free choices.  Requiring vaccine passes when people gather in larger groups protects everyone by slowing down the transmission of a contagious disease that would otherwise overwhelm the hospitals.  In saying this, we accept the overwhelming majority opinion of the experts.  As homeschoolers, we aim to model good reasoning to our children.

 

We feel that as a vaccinated family we have done the right thing for the community, and it is not right that vaccinated families are now being penalised by HASCA, just because of the free choices of non-vaccinated families.

 

We assume this means that HASCA won't be organising the Athletics Day and Swimming Day in 2022.  But please do let us know if anything changes.

 

Glenn, Xiaoying, Mulan and Miya

Likely, next year our family would have done the HASCA Athletics and Swimming Days in term 1 (which we help organise), and Miya would have signed up for the HASCA netball team (terms 2 and 3).

UPDATE (17/12/2021): HASCA also posted a similar announcement to their Facebook page, to which I commented that we (our family) respectfully disagreed with their decision and linked to this blog for details.

To date there have been four responses.  Three other members commented on the Facebook announcement, thanking the HASCA committee for their work.  And HASCA leadership emailed me privately, letting me know that the HASCA committee unanimously agreed with the decision.  At no time so far has anyone responded to the substantive points.

I want to emphasise that everyone has been extremely polite and nice about it.  Everyone thanks each other and wishes each other all the best.  Once again, I have no doubt that everyone sees themselves as the good guys -- they believe they are doing the decent and right thing.  And for the most part they are.  Homeschoolers really are nice people, and we enjoy spending time with them.

But I also want to acknowledge that old saying -- the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

In this situation, HASCA leadership has made the decision to block access to education for local homeschooled children.  They can coat it with nice words, but the fact remains that they have made things worse for local homeschooled children.

The only reason they have given for this so far is that they think that the vaccine pass requirement for large group gatherings is unfairly discriminatory, and they don't want to exclude anyone.  So they'd rather exclude everyone.

It is fair enough if, individually, their families (committee members and the three Facebook commentators) choose to not participate until all families can participate -- that is their free right to freely choose for themselves.  (I understand that some families see HASCA as more about social gatherings.)

But it is wrong for HASCA leadership to deny other families the opportunity to make this free choice for themselves.  And it is wrong for HASCA leadership to reduce educational opportunities for children without providing alternatives.  As I see it, HASCA leadership has overstepped their duties by dictating (mistaken) morals to their members, while at the same time failing to uphold their more fundamental duty of providing educational opportunities to children that are otherwise only available to schooled children.

In my opinion, the correct thing for HASCA committee to do is to keep HASCA operating (for now), but acknowledge and accept the right for any HASCA families to not participate until they feel comfortable doing so.  This may mean a reduced leadership group, and committee members would be more than free to step aside for now.  It may also mean that HASCA would need to ask members to join the committee to continue to keep things running (I would consider it, if necessary); if they were unable to get the committee numbers then hibernating would be the right choice.

Given the (limited) feedback to date, there is a distinct possibility that a significant number of HASCA members are either (a) unable to participate because they have chosen to not vaccinate, or (b) unwilling to participate as they (mistakenly) see vaccine pass mandates as unfairly discriminatory.  If this is the case, then there is a distinct possibility that activity sign-up numbers would be too low to proceed anyway.  And so there is a distinct possibility that most (or all) HASCA activities would have to practically stop anyway due to insufficient numbers.   If this is the case, then so be it.

But HASCA leadership should have kept things going long enough to find this out first, one way or the other.  They should have opened it up to the members first, for the members to freely decide.  They should not have denied freedoms to their members.  And they should have thought more about the children who are missing out because of their decision to stop offering activities.

Life in the Covid red traffic light

It's been ten days since we left Covid Level 3 lockdown and moved to the red traffic light system.

For us, the main changes have been:

• Mama is back teaching in-person from home.  While some students are still preferring to have Zoom lessons, many are having lessons in our at-home classroom.  They stay socially distanced on opposite sides of the room, and keep the air circulating with the windows open and a fan going.  Scanning in is there, and Covid passes are shown.
• Mulan is back doing in-person ballet lessons at the dance studio (our dining room is back being a dining room again!).  With the exam on Saturday, she's having classes about every second day.
• Miya and I are back rock climbing in the gym, going three times a week.  Our hands are super-soft, and our endurance is way down, but we're steadily de-rusting.  It's tough climbing with a mask on, but much better than nothing.
• The girls have both got gymnastics and contemporary dance classes in-person again (exams for contemporary next Wednesday).
• The girls are both re-starting their in-person private music lessons at our place with their music teachers.

Mulan's school is not much different from before.  Mulan's swimming school decided not to restart classes for her level this year.  Miya's music school decided to continue classes online for the year.  Miya's clarinet exam is cancelled this year, and she'll do it next year.  And athletics is mostly the same as in Level 3 -- club nights and senior interclub competitions but no children's interclub competitions.

In other words, life is mostly normal now for us, except for the mask-wearing, scanning check-ins, and relaxed-but-continued social distancing.

Ballet and jumping

Yesterday was quite busy for Mulan.

In the morning she did two and a half hours of ballet, and in the afternoon did another hour of contemporary dance.

In between she did six triple jumps, two of which bettered her Takapuna Athletics Club record from last season.  Her best legal jump is now 9.58m.

I also jumped.  My 10.80m was 5cm off my club record.  I didn't do any ballet.

The results are here.

Frank Turek

Mulan has a good memory.

YouTube suggested that I watch this video while I was eating.  (Okay, it hasn't yet started giving breakfast  suggestions, but that's when I usually browse YouTube.)

It's a video by Drew McCoy of Genetically Modified Skeptic, who I've started watching lately.  I'm impressed by Drew.  He has a great attitude to discussing religion, coming across as super-nice and really emphasising being kind.  In the world of religion YouTubers he stands out as the nice guy, making his videos a pleasure to watch.

Mulan happened to pass by when I was about five minutes into the video.  She said, "isn't that Turek?"

I said, "who?"

"The one who [cousin] was studying for school and you commented on?"

Finally it clicked for me.  Yes, Drew was discussing the co-author of a book that I wrote about last year in response to my niece's Year 13 school assignment.

I have a sad habit of forgetting names and only (sometimes) remembering ideas.  But I was surprised that Mulan remembered Turek's name; I thought she hadn't been that interested in the topic.  I'm very happy that she is quietly taking it in.

Mulan stayed to watch, and we laughed at Douglas Adams' well-told puddle story.

Stimming

Haha, I remember sitting in the classroom at school doing this stim for hours:

I'm enjoying Hunter Hansen's autism YouTube channel.  I haven't been diagnosed, but I have many of the characteristics at a functioning level.  I made the connection in my early 20s while doing my psychology degree (which I specifically did to try to understand others better).  While I don't care whether or not I really am autistic, looking into it has definitely helped me in a practical way to learn coping strategies so I don't get too overwhelmed.

This was a good video:

I especially like that Hunter comes across as pretty "normal".  While my immediate family accepts my occasional autism-ish-ness, my extended family directly say they don't believe it.  I like his video on masking; it really felt true to me:

Triple jump

Mulan and I did our first triple jumps of the season today, having not done anything in over six months.  And given our rustiness, we were both pretty happy with our efforts.

This was an Auckland-wide Covid-socially-distanced competition, held at three different stadiums.  Jumps and throws were at Millennium, and about 30 or so athletes were dotted around the field, with officials (mostly) masked up.

Mulan's best jump today was 9.29m (her PB from January is 9.73m).  I videoed her final jump of 9.20m:

My best jump today was 10.25m (sorry, no videos of the old man!).

Covid and freedom

I've been unsure about whether to write this post.

I write this blog for two main reasons.  (a) To record our family's homeschool/life journey; we enjoy looking back at what we've done over the years.  And (b) when I come across interesting ideas, writing them down helps me with trying to understand them better.

I'm not sure this topic fits either reason.  To be blunt, I find the topic not especially challenging or interesting.  On the other hand, it is kinda topical.  So here goes.

I'll start by saying I'm a liberal.  By this, I just mean that liberal has to do with liberty which has to do with freedom.  In other words, a liberal thinks that freedom is very important.  (Yeah, I know that USers use words in weird ways, and for them "liberal" is either a term of abuse or praise, depending on their political affiliation.  But I'm going to ignore that stuff.)

So, for me, I take the view that the default is that people should be allowed to do whatever they want, whenever they want.  They should have their freedoms.

However, in the real world people bump up against each other in all sorts of ways.  We're a society, a community, after all.  It's practically impossible for everyone to have complete freedoms, because sometimes what I want and what you want conflict.  Only hermits don't have that problem.

So, in the real world we have to qualify things.  We can't have complete freedoms.  Maybe our slightly more nuanced liberal statement is that people should be allowed to do whatever they want unless it harms others.  When it harms others, then we need to figure out who has the right of way, and which freedoms it's better to restrict.

Speaking of right of ways, road rules are a good example.  We could have complete freedom on the road, with no road rules.  Everyone driving their own way, with no speed limits and no red light stopping requirements.  But we recognise that, while it would be fun to be free to drive at 200km/h, the downsides outweigh the upsides.  Besides the likelihood of dying or being injured, it would also take us longer to get where we want to go.  There'd be plenty of traffic jams slowing us down.

So, we agree to restrict our roading freedoms, because overall it's better for each of us.  Road rules reduce harms to us.

The road rules example introduces us to a curious fact about freedoms -- they come in different types.  Sometimes reducing one sort of freedom simultaneously increases another sort of freedom.  When we reduce our freedom to drive however we want by introducing road rules, we also increase our freedom to get where we want to go faster and with less chance of being killed.

We can call these two types of freedoms negative freedom and positive freedom.

Negative freedom is the absence of control by others (it's called negative because it's the absence of something -- barrier, constraint, interference).  Road rules reduce our negative freedom because they control our driving behaviours.  Positive freedom is the ability to do something (it's called positive because it requires something extra).  Road rules increase our positive freedom because they manage traffic flow to enable us to go where we want to go faster and safer.

Which type of freedom is more valuable?  Is it more important to not be told what to do, or is is more important to be able to do stuff?

It seems to me that in the road rules case, being able to go where we want faster and safer is far more important than being able to drive however I want on the road.  In this case the positive freedoms are more important than the negative freedoms, and if we can't have both then let's have road rules that allow us to get where we want to go.

So, we can argue that road rules actually increase our overall freedom, not reduce it, because some freedoms are more valuable than others.

So, there are two things to remember.  (1) There is no such thing as complete freedom, and in any society we have to have some restrictions on our freedom.  And (2) reducing some freedoms sometimes increases other freedoms, which can be more important.

Which brings us to Covid.

At the moment a small percentage of people are protesting their loss of freedoms.  Are they right?

Quite clearly, Covid lockdowns, mask requirements, vaccine passport mandates, etc reduce our negative freedoms.  They control our behaviours.

So, quite clearly we have lost some valuable freedoms.

If we're a liberal, as I am, then we need to have a good reason for justifying this.  The default is freedom, after all.

As with the road rules example, there are two aspects to think about, which are both linked together.  (a) Is the action from this freedom causing significant harm to others, and so would restricting this freedom reduce these harms?  And (b) are there more valuable positive freedoms associated with the negative freedoms, such that reducing the negative freedoms increases the positive freedoms?

In the same way that road rules manage traffic flow and so make things overall better for us, do Covid rules manage contagious disease flow and so make things overall better for us?  (Of course, we want faster traffic flow and slower disease flow.)

And this is where I say I don't know!

To answer this question we need to know certain empirical facts about the world, and we need to have certain skills and tools to analyse the facts properly.

While I hung out at university for 15 years, I never got around to studying epidemiology.  And while I got an A in my first year undergraduate stats course, and did a decent amount of social science, I'm not a statistical population modeler.  

I don't have the expertise to make an informed decision on this.  My years of study on other subjects don't give me the automatic right to opine on this issue.  If I did I would be arrogant.

(My rough opinion is that I could only respectably start to have a decently informed opinion on it after maybe about five-ish years of fulltime study on the specific subject matter, in a community of others, and under the tutorage of subject-experienced people.  Any less than that, and I wouldn't entirely trust myself.)

But if I don't know, then (assuming I should have an opinion on this; on some matters I really don't need to have an opinion) I've got to trust someone else on this.  To act in the world (protest or not?), I need to trust someone.

Unfortunately, no one is perfect.  So who should I trust?

This is where things get messy and complicated.

To tidy things a little, we could try to make a list of the sorts of qualities we might look for, such as:

• More than one person -- the more the better
• These people should be in communication with each other, explicitly interacting on specific points at issue -- they should be a community
• Each of these people should be working on the specific subject area fulltime, and should have been working on it fulltime for many years (ideally decades)
• These people should be publicly publishing their work, with oversight and constant checks, with replies, to minimise the chance that their publications have errors
• Their writings are being accepted in multiple reliable publications
• They should ideally be from as many places as possible, internationally located, with different ethnicities and genders 
• These people should have minimal conflicts of interest -- perhaps a personal history of working quietly in their field, without apparent political ambitions, before Covid happened and gave world-attention to their field of study

Then we could look at what they're saying, such as:

• Their communications are explicitly interacting with as many participants as possible, responding to points and challenges in fair ways
• They should be clearly changing their views if it is warranted, according to the latest, best evidence
• Given that we are not experts, we are not in a position to deeply judge the content subject-matter of what they say, however (and depending on our own critical thinking skills), we can, to some extent, evaluate the structures of reasoning in what they say

There is something of an iterative process to our evaluation.  The more we read (and read widely), the more experience we gain at evaluating what they are saying.  But it's important not to overstep our abilities.  It's important not to start thinking that we are equally competent to evaluate the subject matter.  To do so would be arrogant.  At best we should be evaluating the people who are evaluating the subject matter.

Someone who does something all day every day for decades is going to know significantly more than someone who has read several dozen articles on it during lockdown.  We can be pretty sure that if I (as a casual lockdown reader) have encountered a possible objection to what they're saying, more than likely they are very aware of it, and know the back and forth on it very well.  We can probably trust their conclusion; we shouldn't assume their conclusion is ignorant of our objection.

I hope it's clear that I don't think it should be an equal democracy.  Voting (on matters like this; not on everything) should be weighted according to how much individuals satisfy the sorts of criteria above.  On Covid matters, my vote should be close to zero.

Finally, once we have got a sense of who we think the expert community might be, we look to see if there is consensus among them.  There should be clear near-100% agreement on the solid, central issues, and some disagreements (with reasons and back-and-forth discussions) on the more cutting-edge issues.

When deciding on particular issues, we look for clear majority views.  While the minority may be right, all things being equal it is more likely that the majority is right.  While we should keep the minority opinions live and not ignored, we should go with the majority opinion if action needs to be taken.

How do we apply this to the Covid situation?

This is where I'm a bit conservative.  After spending 15 years at university (and being married to a university academic who spent 25 years there), I got to know quite a few academics in quite a few different disciplines.  On the whole, I think they satisfy the criteria of being trustworthy experts in their subject fields.  Yes, they have their quirks, and yes they aren't perfect, but on balance I think they're most suited to giving expert advice in their specific fields (though not outside their fields).

I've read some of the contrary views.  To me, they don't live up to the standards I think we should set for evaluating who we should trust.  They are not trustworthy.

I say trust the university academics and other fulltime professionals -- the epidemiologists, the statistical modelers, and so on.  Go with their community majority opinion.  Anything else would be arrogance on my part.

The details of the balance to be had between vaccinations, masks, social distancing, lockdowns, contact tracing, etc, is something that they are best placed to decide on.  Just let them do it, and I will go along with what they advise.  I trust that they are just as keen to get out of lockdown and return to normal life as the rest of us.  I don't buy that they are incompetent or in it for the power, etc.

Sometimes what they say may sound counterintuitive or not immediately obvious to us non-experts.  But that's the nature of complex issues.  Just because us casual readers don't "get it" immediately (or at all) doesn't mean to say that it's wrong.

As best I understand it (as a lockdown reader), the current best evidence from the experts is that unvaccinated and unmasked people really do harm others when they interact in public.  But because these harms are probabilistic and less direct, it may be not so immediately obvious to us non-experts.

The best I can understand is that these experts are saying that if we don't (and didn't) restrict freedoms in certain ways, then there will be greater harms to us all.  Restricting negative freedoms increases positive freedoms -- it allows us to socially participate safely, with fewer deaths, and without our hospitals being overwhelmed.  The restrictions that are advised are specific and targeted, and are there because they are beneficial at this time.  I also don't buy the "slippery slope" objections, that these restrictions are the first steps to more oppressive political control. 

As I see it, the negative freedoms that protestors are fighting about are not as important as the positive freedoms that we gain from the Covid restrictions.  In my opinion, Covid restrictions actually increase (valuable) freedoms.  The protestors have got their reasoning wrong (though I sympathise with their itchiness to go out and do stuff, and can understand their dislike of being told what to do).

And so, as I see it, it shouldn't merely be a personal choice for each person.  Respecting other people's choices may sound like the decent thing to do.  And it is when it comes to many/most choices in life.  But when choices harm others, we should not be respecting those choices or tolerating them.  We should respect the people and be kind to them (of course), but at the same time work to stop the harms that they are unintentionally doing to others.

(And yes, this was fairly uninteresting for me to write.  A lot of words to get to an obvious conclusion.  But, as always, happy to discuss further specific details to do with freedom and trust, and happy to be corrected if I'm wrong.)

TV

When Mulan was born we put our TV away in storage.

TV is great for zombie-ing in the evening after working hard all day.  It's not so great for having quality time with family.

But we didn't stop watching visual entertainment.  We still watch stuff on the computer.  It has just meant that when we watch something it's about intentionally picking a show rather than passively letting show after show happen in front of us.

However this has meant that lately we haven't watched many TV series.  Generally we watch movies  (I wrote about it here and here).

But now, as Mulan (and Miya) get older, it is useful (and fun) for us to watch together some TV (but not too much!).  Last year, when we set up our Covid-safe classroom, we bought a multimedia projector.  We now often watch big-screen-style projected onto our wall.

Over the past several months we've watched a few TV series together.  We generally watch while we eat at lunch and/or dinner.

Early series we watched included Mystic (a teen horse story), AFK (suppose you suddenly appeared in the body of your avatar inside your computer game) and K-Pop Academy (reality TV!).

We also watched almost all of the 90s series Highlander.  It's fairly simple and formulaic, but it was fun and entertaining and a good introduction for Mulan into the structure of TV storytelling.  There are also a few thought-provoking moments with justice, morality, death and the meaning of life (Queen's Who Wants to Live Forever).  As the actors point out, the six seasons was a single story arc examining the tragedy of eternal life, and the process of arriving at never-ending loss and regret.

When we signed up for Netflix last month we started watching two TV series, The Good Place (our lunchtime watch) and Star Trek: The Next Generation (our dinnertime watch).

We've now finished the 53 episodes of The Good Place.  In my opinion, it's amongst the best TV series I have watched.  First up, it was funny and entertaining, with a great story.  Unlike many TV series that reset each week, the story progressed in new ways throughout the four seasons.  Each season was set with a new and different main issue, developed from the previous season.  But as well as good storytelling, the show did an awesome job of introducing moral philosophy (that's something we don't see much in US sitcoms!).  Over the course of the show it explicitly introduced many of the main issues that we would typically encounter in a first-year intro to ethics course.  And it managed to do it in a real-life way without being boring.  Good job writers!  It's interesting to see how both Highlander and Good Place address the question of eternal life in their own ways.

We've also now finished to the end of season two of Star Trek: The Next Generation.  There's seven seasons of this, and then another seven seasons of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, so we've still got some watching to go (we probably won't bother with any of the other incarnations of Star Trek).  While there is the occasional weak/silly episode, on the whole TNG is a good watch.  Most episodes have good storytelling, and many are thought-provoking and/or inspiring.  In my opinion, TNG and DS9 sit well together.  As I see it, TNG sets up the optimistic attitude, then DS9 challenges this with a more Greek tragedy-style storytelling.  Both aspects are equally needed in life.

What is science?

A few months ago seven University of Auckland professors wrote an open letter which was published in the Listener magazine.  (Reposted here.)

I know two of those professors.  Robert Nola was one of my teachers in the philosophy department.  Amongst other things, I learnt philosophy of science from him, and I'm pretty sure that when I tutored undergraduate courses on theories of human nature he was lecturing them.

I'm also pretty sure Michael Corballis was one of my lecturers when I did my undergraduate psychology major.

But it seems that some people are strongly disagreeing with the letter.  And sadly it seems to have exploded into academic freedom issues that are now being noted overseas.

Sigh.  As far as I can see, (mostly) everyone means well in the disagreement, but those who are disagreeing with the letter are not understanding the conceptual distinctions.  Maybe I have missed the more reasoned responses (happy to be corrected on this), but as far as I can see, responses to the letter have strawpersoned the letter's reasoning.

Having been involved in some of Robert's philosophy of science courses, to me it is ironic that some people are questioning the letter's understanding of what science is.  More than most people, Robert knows theories of the nature of science, and I have yet to see any responses to the letter that even begin to approach the level of discussion I experienced 20 years ago.

Kyle Gibson tries to clarify things here.

Ron Keat Virtual Ribbon Day

Our athletics season started on Sunday, with the Ron Keat Virtual Ribbon Day.

Usually Papakura Athletics Club holds the Ron Keat Ribbon Day at their grounds, but this year the Covid lockdown meant it couldn't happen.  Solution: each club held their own Day at their own grounds, socially distanced of course, and Papakura passed over the ribbons to hand out.

I'm on the Committee this year at Takapuna Athletics Club, and together we organised two hour-long sessions for 28 club athletes.  Athletes competed socially distanced in bubbles, doing 60m, 100m, 200m, long jump and shot put.

Mulan and Miya competed, too:

A majority of the committee voted for all five events in the one hour allocated, which made the competition feel very rushed (the family all thought it better to do fewer events).  Consequently, the focus was on just completing the events rather than good results in each event.  As Mulan pointed out, it was more like a group training rep session than a true competition.  By the end Mulan was feeling a bit sick from not enough recovery.

But no big problem, and being able to get out and have a run/jump/throw was the most important thing.

We're planning for Club Nights to start again tomorrow, also socially distanced and in bubbles.

Charles Mills

Charles Mills died, too young, on the 20th of September, of cancer.

I hadn't heard of him until Robert Paul Wolff mentioned him.  But if Professor Wolff praises someone, it's generally worth following up.

So, topping my YouTube search was Mills' 2020 Tanner Lecture on Human Values.  It was well worth watching.  The two hours sped by pretty quickly, and Mills is entertaining, clear and analytically astute.  His sense of humour is a delight.

But most importantly Mills gave me something to think about that I hadn't considered before.

Some background (as always, I may misunderstand things; happy to be corrected):

50 years ago John Rawls wrote A Theory of Justice.  In so doing, Rawls helped draw new attention to Social Contract Theory, and his veil of ignorance thought experiment was dramatically thought provoking.

Fundamentally, what it's about is trying to figure out what sort of society we should have.  But a problem is that people with vested interests keep giving their biased, self-interested views.  How do we know which is the right approach, with all of that bias?

In the real world we can't all suddenly become virtuously selfless.  But it's possible to be pragmatic and work with that self-interested part of our nature.  We can still get to an answer.

The idea is to imagine that we don't know who we are going to be in life.  We don't know our social position, our place of birth, our gender, our race, and so on.  We're positioned behind a veil of ignorance.  (We still know good science, though, including psychology and sociology.)

Given this ignorance, self-interestedly, what sort of society would we most like to be thrown into?

Presumably, we would not want a society that is too uneven or unfair, just in case we happen to end up at the bottom of the heap.  Presumably, we (or most of us) would want a society that is mostly decently fair and just.  Rationally and self-interestedly, we thus jointly agree to a social contract to protect ourselves.

The details, from this point, are what this fairness and justice would amount to.

Seems plausible.

But Mills questions this.  As well-intended as it is, it misses an important point.

Mills argues that this approach only works if our current society we are living in is already not too bad.  It assumes our society is already quite close to the ideal.  In those cases, Rawls' veil of ignorance thought experiment enables us to tweak the details of what we are already doing.  It merely improves on a society that already functions pretty well.

But if our current society is too far away from the ideal, then mere tweaking is not going to be enough.

So, Mills proposes a modification to the veil of ignorance thought experiment.

In it, we're still ignorant of who we are and what place we will have in society.

But instead of asking what sort of society we would ideally like, Mills asks us what modifications we would like to make if we were thrown into our currently existing (far from perfect) society.

This is an important difference.

In Rawls' thought experiment our society doesn't have any past baggage to deal with.  But in Mills' thought experiment we are needing to incorporate the existing real world baggage of past injustices.  For Mills, it is not simply about creating a more ideal society but also potentially about correcting past wrongs, which may result in things needing to be done differently.  The Mills-style improved society is thus a unique response to the specific society in question.  It is not a universal, generalised ideal society.

This means that sometimes, for Mills, we will rationally agree to social rules/policies/practices that might otherwise (when thinking ideally) be seen as illiberal.  Using Mills' thought experiment we would agree to put into action policies to rectify past injustices.  We would agree that some groups should be allowed special treatment not permitted others, because they are starting out at a disadvantage thanks to what has gone on in the past.  In other words, with Mills' version, thinking up ways to correct past problems would be at the forefront when figuring out the details.

In case it's not already obvious, Mills has been mostly talking about racial injustices, and in particular those in the US.  (A lot of his work is on race issues, but I decided to ease into the topic!)

Mills makes an important distinction between societies that have racism versus racist societies.  Approximately, societies that have some racism might be close enough to the ideal so that Rawls' thought experiment works.  But racist societies are too far away, and require Mills' modification.

Mills is not the first to point out, very plausibly, that the US is a racist society.  It was founded on racism, and racist practices were an essential and central component of its development.  Too many people are in the social/economic positions they are today because of that racism, and in many places racism still persists.  (Some, though not all, of this racism is more a secondary effect of economic practices in a capitalist society.)

At 1hr 22min 10sec into the video, Mills puts it directly.  When the veil of ignorance lifts, you are going to find yourself in a white supremacist society.

As Mills puts it, imagine you were born a black woman in a ghetto in South Side Chicago, or a Latina somewhere in the southwestern US, or a Native American on a reservation.

What principles of justice, what structures of public policy, would you want to see put in place so as to make sure that you are not going to be radically handicapped in this social situation?

This modification to the thought experiment makes racial justice centre stage rather than off stage altogether.

To me, as a New Zealander, I can comfortably look at the US in this way and acknowledge the work that should be done there to improve their society.  It's a foreign country with some serious problems that need fixing.

But I shouldn't be too complacent.

When Taika Waititi says that New Zealand is "racist as fuck" (while still being "the best place on the planet"), New Zealanders need to pause and think.  And act.

When some Maori are saying that they won't get the Covid vaccination because of the racism they have experienced throughout their lives from police and government workers, and the consequent (understandable) distrust, there's some serious racial issues going on.

Maybe Mills' thought experiment should apply to New Zealand, just as much as to the US.

(Mama pointed out to me that of all the (non-medical) reasons she has heard for people refusing to get Covid vaccinated, this is the only one she could accept.  I agree.)

Taka Tricks

Takapuna Athletics Club has a Taka Tricks Challenge running.

Today the family spent a couple of hours at the track videoing our contribution.

Here's what we came up with:

Miya snapped a synchronised jump at the end:

Athletics nationals cancelled

We just heard that the athletics national competition that was to be held in mid-December has been cancelled because of Covid.

This was a combined competition put on by the New Zealand Secondary Schools Athletics Association and Athletics New Zealand.

Mulan had registered to compete, in both the long jump and triple jump, in the school junior girls and the club under 16.  We had planned that she and I would drive down to New Plymouth together, with Mama and Miya staying home.

It's disappointing, though expected and the right decision.

Mulan has still got another year in this grade, so here's hoping it goes ahead next year and Mulan can be competitive for a good placing.

Athletics photo shoot

Ten days ago we had a (socially distanced) photo shoot for advertising Takapuna Athletics Club.

The club committee organised about a dozen or so families to each have a five-minute session with Athletics New Zealand Team Photographer Alisha Lovrich.

It was also a great opportunity to get rid of some of the rust, since it's been six months since we did any of this.

If we look good enough, our photos may be spread around advertising Taka Athletics, Auckland Athletics, NZ Athletics or Alisha's business.

In our five minutes, Miya did high jump:

Mulan did hurdles and long jump:

And we all had a run together:

Wang Huning -- behind the scenes power in China

This is a fascinating article about Wang Huning, one of the behind-the-scenes political influencers in China.

Born in 1955, family connections and poor health meant that Wang didn't have to do labouring work in the countryside, as many of his peers had to during the cultural revolution.  Instead he studied at an elite school.

When universities reopened in 1978 the article tells us he scored so well on his entrance exam that he was admitted directly to a master's programme in international politics at Fudan University, skipping his bachelor's degree.

Interestingly, Wang was a younger (by four years) schoolmate of Mama's Uncle at Fudan University.  Mama tells me that Uncle sat the university entrance exam in 1977 (after having been sent to do labouring work in the countryside of Hainan Island).  Before receiving the results of their exam, students had to nominate their preferred university.  Uncle, living as he was at Zhongshan University in Guangzhou, applied for the English programme there as his first choice.  Contacts in the university department said that Uncle would have been approved, but his name wasn't on the list of candidates.  Instead, when the results came out he was surprised that he had been admitted to the politics department at Fudan.  It appears that Fudan had special access to the student exam results and had picked students based on their results regardless of their own choices and that of other university departments.  Uncle started his bachelor's degree at Fudan at the beginning of 1978 (Mama thinks Uncle was in the academic year ahead of Wang, who likely started mid-1978).

Wang was a full Professor by the time he was 30, and in 1988 spent six months in the US as a visiting scholar.  Before this visit he had been hopeful that liberalism could be good for China, but his observations of the US changed that.  He returned to China an opponent of liberalism, and his 1991 book America Against America was a tough critique of US society.

Similarly, Mama's Uncle spent time in the US and came away hating it.  After completing his bachelor's degree and while teaching at Zhongshan University, Uncle was offered a scholarship to do a PhD at Harvard University, which he started in 1982.  Struggling in the US, Uncle didn't complete his studies and instead returned to China.  Later, he completed an MA in Hong Kong before getting his PhD from Oxford University.

Mama's recollection is that the family became aware of Wang when he was promoted to full Professor, as it was an impressive achievement in someone so young.

In 1993, Wang was spotted by Jiang Zemin, and headhunted away from academia.  Within a couple of years he was given a leadership position in the Chinese Communist Party Central Policy Research Office.

Unfortunately, Mama's Uncle was not so politically astute/lucky, and ended up in prison for 11 years, ostensibly because he revealed too much in his research publications on Korea.  When Mulan was young she and Mama used to visit Uncle every month in prison, before he was finally released in 2011.

Since the mid-90s, Wang has been a key influencer behind the scenes for the past three Chinese leaders -- Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping.  He has led a secretive life, cutting ties with his previous university career and no longer publishing or speaking publicly.

I don't know much more about Wang than what is in this article, so take what you will of what I write.  I may have misunderstood Wang's outlook.  Nonetheless, a couple of quick very general thoughts occur to me:

1.  The story suggests that it was the visit to the US that changed Wang's attitude on liberalism.  If this is the case, then Wang represents a very common Chinese attitude of over-focusing on the larger political powers when evaluating political theories/models.  That is, for many Chinese it is either China or the US.

Clearly, Wang had a bad experience in the US.  But I wonder what Wang, China, and the world would be like today if instead of visiting China he had have visited New Zealand or a Scandinavian country.  While New Zealand is far from perfect, its version of liberalism is very different from that of the US, and hence does not have some of the problems that the US has (and that Wang correctly identified).  If Wang had have studied and experienced a social democracy like New Zealand, instead of the US, would he have been so strongly critical of liberalism?

2.  Without directly mentioning it, the article suggests that Wang is a Hobbesian.  That is, he sees human nature as inherently bad, and consequently the only way to minimise the excesses that result is to have a powerful leader to resolve people's conflicts and maintain society.

Like Wang, Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) lived though politically/socially turbulent times, and in particular experienced the English Civil War.  Hobbes' Leviathan (1651) is his argument for a supreme ruler, justified by a social contract and assuming a pessimistic view of human nature.

The Hobbesian approach is most plausible if one is participating in a tragically broken society (such as a civil war or cultural revolution).  In those (unusual) social extremities, any strong leader, regardless of their decisions, is the lesser of two evils.  It is also an understandable psychological reaction to desire order amongst all that chaos.

If this is the case for Wang, who experienced the horrors of the Chinese cultural revolution, it is understandable that he has been working behind the scenes in China to strengthen the Chinese leadership.  For example, it fits if it is Wang who has worked to end the time limit for Chinese leadership, allowing Xi Jinping to continue as leader for more than two terms.  (He has also developed a more subtle and sophisticated form of power than what Mao had, including education, economics, information, technology and public approval.)

But once again there is the possible mistake of either/or thinking.  In moderate, normal societies, it is not either all-against-all Hobbesian chaos or authoritarian control.  Other political options are available and present.  Similarly, human nature is complicated, having both altruistic and selfish parts.

A more serious problem is that the Hobbesian approach fails to adequately acknowledge the danger of leaders with absolute power.  It assumes that any leader, regardless of what they do, is going to be better than the alternative.

But, even if, right now, Xi (with Wang) is overall not too bad for China, there is no guarantee that the next Chinese leader will serve China (and the world) well.  Giving Xi more power also means giving future Chinese leaders more power, and who knows what they may be like.  Do we really want to give any future Mao, Stalin, Hitler or Trump in China more power?

The Hobbesian pessimistic view of human nature may also be challenged.  For example, last year I reviewed Rutger Bregman's book Humankind.  As I have repeatedly said since I lived in China, if we have a pessimistic outlook on life, and if we distrust those around us, then we create a society that reflects that.  But if we have an optimistic outlook on life, and assume the best of people, then we create a society that is better for us all.  I see today's China as having been created by people who have a pessimistic outlook on life, and it may be that Wang is one of those people. 

When I reviewed Cixin Liu's The Three-Body Problem in 2018 I also addressed this aspect of Chinese culture.

Another lockdown project completed

We've just finished another Covid lockdown project.

This one was pretty small -- just freshening up the hall.  The first step was to rip off the loose wallpaper, which had bubbled out when, about ten years ago, we had a leak in the hot water cylinder.

Next, the biggest part was fixing the hole in the gib board (which Mulan fell through) and then plastering the gaps.

The final step of painting was easily done.

Lockdown project - garden

Another Covid lockdown meant another Covid lockdown project.

One of our projects this lockdown was to finally finish our main garden.

When we bought our house back in August 2007, the previous owners had made things look good for the short term but had planted far too many trees for the long term.

While we rented it out for the next seven years (while we were living in China) the trees grew out of control.  By March 2012 it was getting pretty wild.

When we moved in, in December 2014, it was a slow process to tame the jungle.  (Unfortunately we don't seem to have any photos.)

We started by clearing a small patch for the veggie garden.  By November 2015 we'd cleared the remaining bushes/weeds and removed two large olive trees.  

It was time for the largest tree removal, with over 20 palms getting the chop.

A busy life meant things got abandoned, and by June 2019 it was a dumping ground for dirt and greenery.

Not much had changed by October 2020.

So it was time for another tree removal session, with several more getting cut.

In April this year we got in a skip bin and removed four cubic metres of stones/shells/dirt.  By August the weeds were growing again.

In September, as soon as we moved from Covid Level 4 to Level 3 lockdown, we got two cubic metres of soil delivered.

We ordered click-and-collect plants, and yesterday we finished popping them in.  The near half is the flowery stuff, while the far half is the veggie stuff.

All we need is a blue sky sunny day to have the final photo shoot.  (And finish painting the house.)

UPDATE: A month later our garden is looking like this:

Netflix

We've joined the modern age.  On Tuesday we subscribed to Netflix.

As I said before, for the past couple of years Mulan and I have watched movies and TV series together (often at mealtimes).

Up until now it has been free movies, on YouTube, TVNZ, TV3, etc.  For a while we were subscribed to a free (with ads) Chinese movie website, until it (mysteriously) disappeared.

But we've been scraping the bottom of the barrel lately.  Last week we watched Indiana Jones and Ghostbusters on TV3.  Neither has aged well, and the main characters in both are sleazy creeps.  The biggest positive was that Mulan learnt a couple of pop culture references.

We decided it was time to pay.  We looked at the various options, and thought Netflix looked the best (for now).  Our subscription is the most basic, for one viewing at a time only; it's like the olden days when we had only one TV.  Already we've had times when two people have tried to log in on different devices and watch at the same time.

Mama binge-watched Bridgerton.  She concluded that it was a silly soap, but still had to keep watching to see what happened!

So far I've watched the start of a few series.

Mulan and I together watched the beginning of Star Trek: The Next Generation.  My memory is that TNG and Deep Space Nine are the best in the Star Trek universe, so I wanted to see if they still held up with time.

I think TNG did.  Ignore the basic special effects and initially wooden acting.  TNG at its best is good storytelling with thought-provoking ideas.  Mulan suggested we continue with it.

The first episode of TNG (as I'm sure you know!) is where humanity is put on trial for its savage and barbaric nature.  The main characters had to try to argue that humanity has evolved and is no longer violently uncivilised.

(The next two episodes are first about a mysterious disease being passed around the spaceship and then about collecting a vaccine.  So topical in the Covid-world.  Why did the characters not practice the basics of social distancing and contact tracing that we Covid-veterans all know so well now?!)

Then I watched the first episode of The Witcher.  The opening scene has a man (who turns out to be the witcher) fighting a large spider-thing in a swampy forest.  I didn't know who I should be supporting.  The man, because he looked human?  Or the spider-thing, because clearly the swampy forest is the natural habitat of spider-things, and the man appeared the violent invader?

Sadly, the man survived and the spider-thing did not.

It turns out the man has a strict code of honour.  He only kills monsters for money.  He doesn't kill humans for money.  But he kills humans when he antagonises them into attacking him.  Or something like that.  He's good at killing.  But the first episode suggests that the man will soon have events thrust upon him in which his self-certainty will be challenged.

I'm not going to watch any more.  It seems like empty violence-porn to me (with a bit of gratuitous nudity-porn thrown in, too).  If the Star Trek judge had have watched The Witcher he would've immediately found humanity guilty; Star Trek would've ended after one episode.

Mulan and I also watched The Good Place.  It's another excellent keeper, and we'll continue watching it.

Finally, I tried out Star Trek: Discovery.  Special effects and action dominate, while the storytelling is simplistic.  I won't bother continuing with it.

We're also looking forward to watching more Miyazaki's movies.  Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind is my favourite.

At this rate we'll stay subscribed to Netflix for a long time to come.

School English assignments

Mulan has just finished her third unit study topic in her English class at Westlake Girls High School.

She started with a study of a Roald Dahl short story (they were partway through it when she arrived).  In Covid lockdown this was followed by a three-minute speech (videoed).  Most recently they've done a film/video unit, where the first half was a photography study learning different types of shots (using our camera at home).

The second part of the film/video unit was on the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding.  Mulan and I watched it together a couple of weeks ago, and Mama watched it later on her own.

As I wrote last year, for the past couple of years Mulan and I have been watching movies together.  We pick anything from classics, to pop culture, to thought provoking, to merely entertaining.  We talk about them together, laugh at the silly ones, and discuss the thoughtful ones.  In that time Mulan has developed her own sense of what is good and what is bad.

For the most part we complete movies to the end, but occasionally (rarely) Mulan decides that some are really too bad to bother continuing.  (Breakfast at Tiffany's, Clueless and Top Gun were examples of movies Mulan considered too silly to bother watching beyond ten minutes or so.)

As Mulan watched My Big Fat Greek Wedding she was really not impressed.  I suspect that if it was her choice she would not have bothered continuing with it to the end.

Then she had to write two pieces for class.

The first was an initial impressions piece -- basically just a few sentences saying what she thought of the characters and so on, probably mostly to show the teacher that she had watched the movie.

The second piece just completed was more in depth.  She had to write two mini-essays joined together, each on an opinion she had about the movie and backed up by evidence then linked to her own experiences.

Schools appear to like to use the "PEEL" essay structure style, where the basic thought is Point, Example/Evidence, Explanation, and Link.  But it also appears that different teachers interpret it in slightly different ways.  This blog, for example, which topped my Google search, basically treats it as intro, two paragraphs in the body, and conclusion.  Mulan's English course apparently interpreted the Link at the end not as a conclusion linking back to the intro point but as a link to the writer's personal experiences (meaning that, strictly speaking, it wasn't an essay as it didn't have a conclusion).

Included in the assignment info pack was a example piece (on a different unit topic), which was in the style wanted and was supposedly of "Excellence" level.  Mulan said this was about 470 words long.

This was where things got problematic, because both Mama and I thought the example piece was very badly done.  I thought it only deserved a Pass.

In a nutshell, the huge problem was that the example writing slid off the topic.  It's Point (introduction) stated one thing, while it's Example/Evidence and Explanation sections (body) didn't elaborate on the ideas stated in the Point but instead discussed other ideas.

In other words, the example directly failed to follow the writing structure as required by the assignment question, and (more importantly) failed to be logically persuasive as the body did not give any evidence to support the stated opinion Point.

The writing style was adequately fluent but not brilliant.  The main thing the example had going for it was that it was earnestly nice and positive, giving the conventional (but simple) statements of good teenager-ness.

So, I wondered why the teacher/department/school thought the example was of Excellence level.

Is it that the assignment marking in general is easy?  For Year 10 maybe they are not expecting students to be able to write any better than that?  (But surely they'd want their example to at least answer the question?)

Or is it because this example, while not structurally or logically good, is ideologically appropriate, mouthing the right platitudes?

Or is it that the teacher/assessor simply didn't notice the failed structure/logic?  They were seduced by the decent words and failed to look further.

To be blunt, it may simply be that school teachers generally only have a bachelor's degree, and may themselves not be very sophisticated essayists.  They may have got average passes in their undergraduate university courses, and never really gained the skills of better essay writing.

(In my experience of marking undergraduate university essays at Auckland University, B or C grade passes may have these sorts of weaknesses to some extent; it is often only A students or once one gets to graduate level that this sort of essay writing sharpness is the norm.)

All this got me comparing the school English work versus Science/Maths work that I have seen Mulan completing to date.  My quick initial impression is that, relatively speaking, school Science/Maths requires a higher level of conceptual sophistication, while school English is not conceptually very sophisticated.  This leads me to wonder why the same degree of analytic precision cannot be taught/used in school English as it is in school Science/Maths.

On the other hand, for Mulan the English written work was more time consuming than the Science written assignment (similar word length) just completed.  (Mulan tells me that she finds Science/Maths easier than English.)  This was because, while the Science was conceptually deeper, the English was agonising because of the uncertainty of trying to articulate in words, with explanations, one's initial gut opinions.  It took some longish family discussions for Mulan to get beyond "the movie is boring!", "why?" "because it is!"

So, maybe that is the point?  School English is conceptually simple, because it is challenging enough to get the kids to put into words their thoughts, let alone learn the conceptual skills.  But maybe, just maybe, if they were explicitly introduced to analytical/conceptual tools they would find articulating their thoughts easier.

Anyway, Mulan submitted her piece a couple of days ago, writing about 900-ish words on two of her opinions of the movie.  Mama and I thought it was very good, and definitely solidly in line with university style essay writing.  It'll be interesting to see Mulan's teacher's comments on it.

UPDATE 28/9/2021:  Oops, we were wrong.  Mulan has been given another assignment on My Big Fat Greek Wedding.  This one is a close analysis of particular scenes, to understand how the emotional feel is built up by the camera angle, sound, lighting, etc.  Mulan is not impressed that she is still having to think about this boring movie (!), but otherwise all good.

Schooling in lockdown

Here in Auckland, our Covid Level 4 lockdown ends tonight, after five weeks holiday working from home.  We've still got at least another two weeks in Level 3 lockdown, which for us means almost no change.  (It's getting doubtful that any of our pre-booked school holiday activities will happen in two weeks' time.)

In that time our family has used the car twice -- once to get a Covid test and once to get a Covid vaccine.

That's a big change for us.  In normal life we use the car most days, driving to the various activities that the girls do -- ballet, rock climbing, swimming, music, gymnastics, athletics, etc.  "Homeschooling" is not a very accurate name for what we do; I'm not the first to suggest it should be called car schooling.

So, how's our schooling in lockdown going?

One difference for us is that our exercise is now all home-based.  Mulan has Zoom ballet lessons five days a week.  Miya has rock climbing and dance Zoom lessons.  Our dining room is a dance studio, while our dining table is in the lounge acting as a jigsaw puzzle table.

We go for runs around our local area and do various conditioning exercises at home.  On the downside my hands are getting soft from no rock climbing; on the upside my golfer's elbow is coming right with no rock climbing.

The girls both have music lessons over Zoom.  Mulan has recorder lessons, while Miya has clarinet, saxophone and trumpet lessons.  Miya is continuing to prepare for her Trinity Grade 4 clarinet exam, which is still planned for late October.  As part of this, we've signed her up for aural test training at e-music maestro.

Miya's deskwork remains the same.  She continues doing Khan Academy and touch typing.  She's still only primary school aged, so it's more about natural in-context learning and inculcating good attitudes.  We do stuff quizzes, and the children use kahoot to set their own quizzes.

This lockdown Mulan and Miya have started online gaming with the cousins, playing monopoly, gartic telephone, scribblio, psych, forge of empires, etc.

But the biggest change is that Mulan is back at home learning with us, instead of going to school.

Before lockdown hit, Mulan had a total of 17 days at Westlake Girls High School -- just enough time to start getting used to school life.  Now she's doing lockdown schooling.

I've heard it said that lockdown schooling is homeschooling.  It really isn't, for one important reason.

Essentially, homeschooling is about the parents/caregivers being the final decisionmakers on what gets taught.  This includes:

(a) Deciding what sorts of knowledge, skills and values are truly valuable to pass on to the children, 

(b) deciding what methods will work best to teach each child,

(c) deciding what order and amount to teach the knowledge/skills/values,

(d) deciding what lesson content to use to develop the knowledge/skills/values, and

(e) assessing what the children do, which then feeds back into the above.

With lockdown schooling, parents/caregivers do none of this.

All that lockdown parents/caregivers do is oversee or help with the completion of the work that the schools have supplied to the students to do.

And this is what we are doing with Mulan right now.

Mulan is connected to her teachers online on her new computer, where they tell her what she needs to do.  As part of our normal family life Mulan tells us what this is.  We then work with Mulan on this as much or as little as she needs.

At one extreme, Mulan's school maths is so easy that we haven't been involved at all in any of her maths learning during lockdown.  She simply does the required work quickly on her own and submits it, getting full marks every time.  (I've suggested that since lockdown is continuing for longer we should get back into doing Khan Academy maths with her; it would be a shame for Mulan to go backward with her maths just because school is not challenging her enough.)

For Mulan's other subjects we have been involved to some extent.  For her longer writings (English, music, science, etc) we typically read and give advice after she has written them, though sometimes we also talk through the ideas before she starts writing.  With the music composition, Miya helped out (Mama and I were useless!).  Miya also helped with the photography unit for English.

According to Mulan, what she has been learning over the past five weeks in lockdown is of a similar amount to what she was learning during those 17 days at school.  The main difference for her is that she says that she spends maybe three hours each day working on it rather than the full school day.  In other words, lockdown learning is, for Mulan, much more time efficient that school learning.

Nonetheless, Mulan says she would still rather be at school than do lockdown learning.  For her, learning at school in the social environment is more enjoyable that learning at home.  Even though school uses up more hours it seems that it is worth it.  And also, lockdown means missing all the other out-of-home activities we do; returning to school means also returning to ballet, swimming, gymnastics, athletics, etc.

From my point of view, lockdown learning is working better than homeschool learning, in the sense that Mulan is very responsibly taking charge of what she needs to do and calmly getting it done.  I've been very impressed with how she's gone about things during lockdown.  When she was homeschooling, if I had have told her to do the same thing she would have mucked around and tried to avoid getting it done.  I think partly she enjoys teasing me (she wouldn't dare tease her teachers in that way!) and partly it is hard to get started on something that is initially slightly out of one's comfort zone.  At least for Mulan, having an outside person setting the tasks is the key.

Having said all that, lockdown, for our family, has been a much-enjoyed quality time together.  We all get on well, and it has been wonderful to have Mulan around home again during the day.  As much as we'd like lockdown to end, and get back to all the fun outside activities, it really isn't that bad at all.

Miya's 11th birthday

For the second year running Miya had her birthday in Covid-19 lockdown.  After all the months of Covid-freedom it's an unfortunate coincidence to be in lockdown at the same time of the year again.

Fortunately we'd already had the big birthday activity, when we did the ninja warrior course at Jump.  But we did miss the extended family in-person get-together.

On the bright side, at the Zoom party on Sunday we got to eat all the birthday cake while the others watched on.  Miya is starting to do a lot of cooking, and this year she baked her own birthday cake -- chocolate with mint-chocolate icing.  Very delicious!

The grandparents gave Miya a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle (socially-distanced delivery with the grocery exchange).  By this morning the puzzle was complete.  Miya and I mostly worked on it together, with Mulan helping occasionally during schoolwork breaks.