Hasta La Gadget!

What do students want in exchange for all of the money that they pay for college? Is it a degree or an education?

Gather any group of college professors in any discipline in any part of the country, and most (if not all) have noticed a mindset affecting many college students in which they seem to value their degree more than their education.

As an example of how this mindset manifests itself, college professors can almost certainly count on the following question being asked most every semester (usually by multiple students):

“What grade do I need to earn on my next assessment in order to have a grade of X in the course?”

As a mathematics professor, this is disturbing for several reasons, not the least of which is that college-level students should possess the mathematical skills needed to determine the answer to the question for themselves. Students enrolled in College Algebra, Statistics, Calculus and above should already know how to use the weights provided in a syllabus together with their known grades in the course to answer their own question.

An even more disturbing consequence of such a question is the eagerness to know the minimum performance necessary to achieve the desired grade. This mentality focuses on how little the student must learn rather than how much the student can learn.

This certainly seems to be an indication that the end result (degree) is more valuable than the journey (education).

Does it matter if a student knows the grade he needs to earn on the next test in order to make an A in a course, for example? Does knowing the answer to this question really affect a student’s performance?

• First, if the answer to the question is beyond what the student feels he can achieve, then he will likely not even prepare for the assessment.
• Similarly, if the required performance is less than what the student feels that he can achieve with little to no effort, then he will also likely not prepare for the assessment.
• Finally, if the student feels that he can attain the desired grade with a reasonable amount of preparation, then the student may prepare, but knowing the needed grade should not influence the amount of preparation.

Since full-time students must manage their time and resources between multiple courses, it is logical to conclude that each course may not receive the same level of attention as other courses. Knowing the required performance on a particular assessment may influence the amount of time spent preparing for each course, but determining the minimum preparation time for each course is an extremely complicated problem.

It is difficult to determine the minimum effort needed to please parents with decent grades or to pass courses so as to simply not have to retake them. Therefore, the pertinent question that students should be asking themselves should be:

“Is a grade in a course, which leads to a degree, less or more important than the knowledge acquired from the course, which leads to an education?”

How students answer this question demonstrates whether they place more emphasis on the short-term goal of a college degree or the long-term value of an education.

A few weeks ago, a few journalists argued that President Obama waded into the often precarious “acting white” debate when he responded to a question from a young Native American man who inquired as to what the federal government was doing to help his ethnic group “revitalize their language and culture.” The president, in his usual measured and thoughtful comments, responded in somewhat pastoral terms as he quoted the bible, commenting that “without a vision, people will perish,” and how an absence of such an identity can lead to further erosion of one’s physical, psychological and emotional health. That being said he later transitioned into a DuBoisian (W.E.B. DuBois) moment when he told the young person in question that there was nothing irregular or counterfeit for a person to further embrace the larger culture while simultaneously celebrating and preserving their own.

After the summit, a number of media outlets from the conservative editorial page of the Wall Street Journal to op-ed columnists from the Washington Post and other national newspapers weighed in on what they saw as President Obama reigniting the “acting white” controversy. For the record, the usual anti-Obama Wall Street Journal praised the president and his administration for establishing the program. There were others like blogger, CNN commentator and frequent Obama critic Dr. Boyce Watkins, professor at Syracuse University, who argued that the program was “too little too late.” Watkins further argued that the president, his administration and inner circle have failed to address the issue of persistent discrimination and chronic unemployment that plagued large portions of the black community, particularly lower income and urban communities. That being said, the majority of political and cultural pundits who have commented on the subject have focused on what they saw as the “acting white” assumption being bought back to the forefront of political and social debate. It is a subject that sporadically returns to the forefront of debate in many segments of the black community. In 2011, the topic was ripe in the black blogosphere (and social media in general) after NBA basketball star Grant Hill masterfully and eloquently responded to Jalen Rose’s critical comments directed toward he (Grant) and other black athletes (and black people in general) who were/are the products of more upscale and privileged backgrounds.

Speaking of sports, I still have not forgotten the tirade of former ESPN commentator Robert Parker as he launched into a vicious, condescending tirade attacking NFL player Robert Griffith in 2012 demanding to know whether Griffith was a “real brother” or a “cornball brother.” Parker was more specifically attacking what was rumored to be Griffith’s Republican party political affiliation, his then white fiancé, now wife, and what he perceived to be his (Griffith’s) other supposed “misguided” decisions. After hearing such a screed, you would have thought that Parker was one of the gatekeepers of blackness and a card carrying member of the black thought police (sarcasm). Reaction to Parker (from people of all races ) was swift and he was dismissed from ESPN soon afterward.

Speaking closer to home, I wonder if someone like myself who likes to listen to Peter Frampton, Band of Horses, One Republic and Irish music is in the “danger zone” of losing one’s authentic blackness. Perhaps, it might be best for me to shout from the mountaintops that I love love gospel music. Cry passionate alligator tears that I love a fair amount of jazz and blues music. Swear on a stack of bibles that I actually do love the late Michael Jackson (as do many non-whites), adore James Brown, Aretha Franklin as well as classic R&B and soul music in general. The fact is that Irish music is indeed, very soulful. It is the European version of black gospel music. Not to add insult to injury (sarcasm) but I am a voracious reader! And get this, sometimes I read books that are absent of black subject matter! Uh Oh! Am I suspect? For the diehard members of the black thought militia, I have probably come close to committing racial treason. I am a “SUSPECT” negro so to speak or at the very least, unreliable and largely artificial. After all, in their eyes, deviating from such supposedly “authentic black” behavior may have almost certainly qualified me as a prime candidate for a Dave Chapelle skit.

Goodness knows if it were any group of people who should know how demeaning it is to be pre-judged, be passed judgment on, assumed on how you will behave, how you think, how intelligent you are (or supposedly not) etc., based on the pigmentation of your skin, it is black people. Yet, some (not all, by any means, but probably too many of us) from barbershops to beauty shops, to houses of worship to soul food diners and other similar venues, have no hesitation in engaging in racial histrionics, sitting around passing judgment either ratifying or disqualifying one another based on what are far too often superficial values. THE DEGREE OF HYPOCRISY IS REAL!

The hard, true fact is that all of us who are black regardless of socio-economic status or educational level at some point in our lives will be confronted with the reality that your skin color (minus those few who can choose to pass if they want to) will render you vulnerable to the fact that you are the “other” in the eyes of some whites and some other non-Blacks. There is no need to engage in unscientific racial litmus tests to do so. There are enough issues plaguing the black community, internal as well as external, as it is. We are all pretty much in the same boat. There is no need to add unnecessary baggage.

When you first read or hear the words “parental gatekeeping”, what do you think about? You may have an image of a parent standing in front of a locked gate, arms crossed with a child on the other side and the other parent trying to get through.

Hold that image.

Parental gatekeeping is not an everyday word intact or separated families use but it has a very real impact and import on child custody cases.

Gatekeeping is simply the act of facilitating or restricting the relationship with a parent and a child. I have found the “facilitative” aspect of it (and the concept of facilitative gatekeeping) a bit of an oxymoron. After all, to facilitate generally means reasonable communication, open access gates and no real need to be a “keeper.”

Restrictive parental gatekeeping is just as it sounds. Placing limitations, often through actions, to restrict communication or access to a child. Restrictive gatekeeping can be for the child’s protection (often in physical abuse, serious neglect or substance abuse cases) or unreasonable, in an attempt to harm the parent-child relationship. The latter often festers into parental alienation.

Now we come to the question and it’s not an easy one. Should a restrictive gatekeeper who is not gatekeeping due to abuse, serious neglect, or real concerns about alcohol or drug abuse but rather to intentionally harm the parent-child relationship be treated just like a parent who has been found to have committed serious, physical child abuse and have custody taken away from him or her? Along with that, is a state like California and others that don’t have specific family codes punishing this type of gatekeeping behind on this necessary legislation?

Let’s get more specific.

Assume a father and mother are going through a divorce. They are a middle-income family and have little savings or disposable income. The mother is angry with the father. Assume the reason is infidelity. They have two children, ages four and six. Mother has been the primary care taker of the kids but father has been involved, just nowhere near equal involvement.

Father tells the mother he no longer loves her. He tells her he wants a divorce. Mother is hurt, the children are confused and eventually mother’s hurt becomes something more — hostility. Father has a new girlfriend, a new life and helps out financially here and there. Mother decides father doesn’t deserve time with the children or to be involved in their life because he abandoned the family. Mother then starts a pattern of disparaging the father to the children, to the point the children develop negative feelings toward the father.

Mother tells the father she won’t let the father take the children overnight and shuts down nearly all communication. Father’s parenting time is infrequent and irregular. Many months go by and despite father’s attempt to persuade the mother to act otherwise, she is not having any of it.

Flexibility? Forget it.

Sharing information and making decisions together? No way.

Mother tells the father little to nothing and makes unilateral decisions. After six or more months, father’s relationship with the kids has been seriously harmed and is heading toward deterioration. The children cry when father comes to pick them up, even for short visits. Mother creates drama at every exchange and Father sometimes engages and yells back.

Father cannot afford an expensive child custody battle and mother knows that. She also knows if she keeps this up, she will have created enough division in the relationship that the children will not want much, if anything, to do with their father.

Has the mother physically harmed the children? No.

Emotional or psychological abuse? Yes?

Notice I didn’t paint the father as a saint. He did cheat, leave the family and certainly there is enough blame to pass around for why the separation occurred.

California gives a codified version of lip service to parental gatekeeping. Frustrating parenting time, lack of co-parenting and false allegations are all important in child custody cases but how most judges apply them is, at best, inconsistent.

Is it time to stop dancing around the issue and get to the heart of it? How about something like this?

“If the Court finds substantial evidence that a parent within the last 24 months has engaged in restrictive gatekeeping by unreasonably restricting contact with a minor child contrary to the child’s best interest with the intent to interfere with the other parent’s lawful contact with the child and that conduct has resulted in harm to the other parent’s relationship with the minor child, there is a rebuttable presumption that an award of sole or joint physical or legal custody of a child to the gatekeeping parent is detrimental to the child’s best interest.”

Of course, gatekeeping should have some reasonable definition and examples.

What do you think? Too much? Not enough? Are laws against reckless or malicious, restrictive gatekeeping overdue or is this a solution looking for a problem?

William Winramis a record-holding free diver (no cage, no breathing apparatus) and conservationist known for swimming with Great White Sharks.

A chance encounter with a shark 25 years ago was life changing for him. He was spearfishing for his dinner 800m offshore when he felt something to his right. That “something” was a tiger shark, and he was petrified with fear. According to everything he had ever read and seen, he knew tiger sharks to be man-eating machines. However, the shark he met that day didn’t behave at all like a shark in horror movies:

My experience was to the contrary. I got a shy and curious predator who was scared off when I lunged to pick up my spear. When I was swimming back to shore I could see the shark swimming beside me but at a set distance. If I swam towards her she would swim away, if I swam away she would come closer again but she would always maintain the safe distance between us.

The experience made him re-think everything he thought he knew about sharks. Since then he has been working as a conservationist and educator, committed to rehabilitating the shark’s image. He regularly free dives with Great White sharks and has learned a number of lessons along the way. Winram’s work provides a number of lessons for life:

1. Replace Fear With Knowledge: By closely observing and watching sharks, Winram has learned to literally swim with sharks. Rather than panicking, swimming away or being paralyzed by fear, he faces the shark head on.

If you don’t act like prey, they won’t treat you like prey.

He recommends a counter-intuitive approach if a shark is coming toward you — swimming right at the shark. The shark, like all things we are afraid of, is de-fanged when approached with greater knowledge and less fear.

2. Look the Shark in the Eye: Winram recommends keeping eye contact with the shark at all times:

Once we make eye contact, the shark knows we have seen them and therefore taken their advantage away. This generally gives us the advantage and keeps them from slipping into an instinctual mode.

3. (Mental) Preparation: Contrary to what people think, the most important breath is not the very last breath free divers takes before free diving. According to Winram, the most important breathing is the breathing he does:

… in the six to eight minutes leading up to the dive that’s oxygenating your blood and your tissues … You need to be able to go into that kind of Zen place where you’re completely relaxed, but with a wide open focus.

Controlled breathing promotes calmness and enhances focus (thereby keeping fear at bay). Being aware of one’s mind and body and taking good care of them are priorities when free diving and in life.

4. Pay attention:

When we’re around sharks we need to be 100 percent focused. As soon as you’re less than 100 percent focused, that’s’ when they begin sneaking in and seizing the advantage.

Free divers like Winram are never on autopilot because a moment of inattention could have disastrous consequences. A vigilant focus when swimming with sharks is essential for survival. Paying attention to what matters in life is essential too — part of this is recognizing that first impressions aren’t always correct.

5. Never Swim Alone: Winram always free dives with at least two others, and they all watch each other’s back. In addition to constantly being on the lookout for sharks that may be approaching from behind, diving with others is essential because a risk of free diving is blacking out. Survival depends on his connection to his team. This is a metaphor for life.

6. Enjoy the beauty: Winram thinks of swimming with sharks as a privilege. He is in awe of their majestic beauty and grace and has tremendous respect for the creature he has learned so much about and that has taught him so much about himself. Through knowledge and experience, it is possible to reframe perceptions, and like Winram to reframe what may initially seem scary into something we can appreciate and learn from.

As Heidi Klum says:

I’m not saying that everyone should swim with sharks, but sometimes you have to jump over your own shadow in order to learn something that you will never forget for the rest of your life. Then you know you can conquer your fears.

GOLETA, Calif. (AP) — Four people and a dog were found stabbed to death inside a Southern California home, and authorities said the sole suspect was in custody Tuesday.

The suspect, a 46-year-old man, was arrested without incident in the coastal city of Goleta, according to Santa Barbara County sheriff’s spokeswoman Kelly Hoover.

The department was investigating the incident as a multiple homicide, she said.

All the victims were dead from multiple stab wounds when deputies arrived at the single-family house in the Walnut Park area shortly after 11 p.m. Monday. Deputies were still investigating the crime scene early Tuesday.

The names of the victims and suspect were being withheld pending notification of family.

Goleta is a city of 30,000 people about 10 miles northwest of Santa Barbara.