Page 274 of 524

TLC Book Tour – The Vigorous Mind by Ingrid Cummings


Over the course of my twenty year teaching career, I was subject to many a learning trend. Never did a trend arrive unaccompanied by innumerable in-service opportunities. Each sparkly new theory had a guru who had at the very least mounds of handouts to share and at the very worst – a book to sell. One of the middle schools I worked at even based its reason for existing on a teaching model called Multiple Intelligences. And yes, we all had quite the chuckle over the misuse of the plural, even those of us who weren’t English teachers. Well, maybe not the P.E. teachers, but everyone else anyway.

The idea behind M.I was a simple one. In fact I’d seen it a couple of times before by this point in my career albeit under other aliases. M.I. asserted that everyone had a learning style or preference, but that it was possible to train children to effectively use learning styles they were weak in by building lessons that incorporated multiple ways of learning.

The logical leap from this was, of course, team teaching and cross curriculum lessons. For example, as a Language Arts teacher I built the weekly spelling list around vocabulary the students needed for science, math, and geography. When I could get them to cooperate, I even used word lists from the P.E. department and the art specials. But even before this I had built units in conjunction with the science teachers because they were the most open to the idea that we could double team the kids and coerce them into making connections and finding the relationships between our subject areas.

So what does this have to do with Ingrid Cummings book, The Vigorous Mind?

Ms. Cummings believes in cross-training our minds. Through cultivating an attitude that learning is a life long process and actively seeking out new experiences and areas of interest to develop through reading, active study or simply puttering about, we can go happily into the good night years rather than trudging towards our graves like the good little automatons that our consumer driven society would prefer us to be.

And I won’t argue against her idea or her theories. She is spot on when she talks about the benefits that cultivating numerous and diverse interests throughout the course of one’s life. It’s beneficial to be a generalist or Renaissance person which is another way of saying, “Jack of many trades.”

The book was a slow read and a repetitious one. She followed the teaching model that all really good teachers use which is to continually make the main points of the lesson over and over again using different examples. My brighter students were always pointing out to me that I repeated myself, but my average and slower learners never noticed because of the human tendency to not listen. In book form, however, that isn’t the case. At least I don’t think it is.

I skipped over the prologue. Fiction writers are instructed to never, ever, ever start with a prologue. Of course, all writing rules are subject to interpretation, but there is a good reason why a writer shouldn’t have a lengthy prologue – at some point the writer will start writing the actual book and not just be leading into it.

The first chapter was like a continuation of the prologue and the second chapter threatened to repeat the first, so I skipped it and read the third, which is where the book should have started.

After that I headed into part two of the book, which is divided into three parts. In part two there are seven imperatives for a generalist or life long learner. And again, part two was way too long. I ended up reading each imperative and a paragraph or two following it before heading into part three.

Part three is probably the best part of the book and by this time I was pretty sure that The Vigorous Mind was a text book or reference that in conjunction with a seminar would be a very good buy. Easier by far than taking notes.

Cummings has a plan for helping those who would like to mentally cross train.It’s based on a Japanese philosophy known as Kaizen. Basically it is not much different from the idea that one must devote a specific amount of time to a new activity every day – like a new exercise program for example – and commit to doing this until it becomes an ingrained habit or new skill set.

She provides exercises at the end of chapters or sections to help a person select new areas of interest to pursue that will enhance existing interests, skills or careers even.

I wanted to like this book. There is nothing about the idea or the methods that I don’t agree with. I whole-heartedly believe in life-long learning. I think that intellectual curiosity and the pursuit of new skills and pushing oneself into areas of expertise that are challenging and fun will do nothing but good for anyone who decides to go there.

But there were so many examples of so many people continually thrown at me throughout the reading that after a while I couldn’t sort one from another, and the celebrity examples made the whole thing seem Oprah trendy. I much preferred when the author used real people whose faces you wouldn’t see when you were checking out your groceries. And honestly, the public school teacher in me was offended by the continual put-downs against the education system. It seems to me that people, who are not actual classroom teachers of real children, too quickly dismiss what is really going on in classrooms today. There is far more good than bad and the critics seem to be basing their dim views on what they remember about their own education rather than on today’s schools. Education is in a state of evolution to be sure, but it’s not as dire as it’s being painted and failure has far more to do with socio-economic issues than on the quality or even the quantity of what exists right now.

New writers are told to “show” more than they “tell” their readers. There is a lot more telling than showing here and for me, it smothered the author’s main intent, but a reader who is able to use the index in conjunction with the exercises (which are valid) and not need to read from start to finish might be able to come up with a cross-training regime for his/her self.

Ingrid Cummings TLC Book Tours TOUR STOPS:

Tuesday, January 20th: A Garden Carried In My Pocket

Wednesday, January 21st: 8Asians

Monday, January 26th: A Novel Menagerie

Tuesday, January 27th: Anniegirl1138

Wednesday, January 28th: She is Too Fond of Books

Thursday, January 29th: Reading, ‘Riting, and Retirement

Friday, January 30th: So Not Zen

Monday, February 2nd: Simply Forties

Tuesday, February 3rd: life@work

Wednesday, Februarty 4th: MidLifeBloggers.com

Why Does My ISP Provider Suck is the Monday Meme/Updated


Blogging may be sporadic for the next little while. Because we don’t live in town, we are at the mercy of limited choices where internet access is concerned. Our service has been – in a word – shitty for the last week and finally crapped out almost entirely Friday night. There are brief, and I mean minutes only, windows of service*, but it is too hit and miss to bother sitting and waiting on.

So today, feel free to rant about the shite service you pay for because you haven’t a choice. Our provider never returns calls or acknowledges email. They assume that if there are problems it is because the customer is an idiot. That is the way of all IT people I have ever known. It couldn’t possibly be the equipment or them. It is always the user. 

So rant people. I will check in from the library – which has equally abysmal service by the way but a bit more consistent than I have right now.

*Mysteriously, service was miraculously on all evening but I don’t expect to wake up to service in the AM. Al Gore giveth and ISP’s capriciously deny access.

UPDATE: Rob went to the ISP’s office today and talked to one of the owners. Apparently he thought we were freeloaders using the signal for free which is why he hadn’t responded to us. Rob assured him that we are indeed paying customers and the owner quickly went on to assure him that we were slated for a new radio within the next week or two because the company had just received permission to put up another radio transmitter in a location that is actually closer to where we live. Hopefully this will improve our signal and ensure less interruption of service. 

The service is actually quite good when we get it but the lack of response from the company when there is a problem is irksome. It is, sadly, typical of the kind of service a person can expect here in Alberta however. Despite the slowing of the boom economy, there is still more demand than there are workers and everyday services are very taxed by the lack of warm bodies. And, like the U.S., infrastructure really doesn’t extend much beyond the major urban ares.

Friday Updating


It’s been hard to focus this week because I’ve been fighting a sinus infection,both Rob and BabyD have had spiritual encounters*, the Steelers won the AFC, and controversy in the form of assumptions and projections found me again.

In spite of all this I can pretty safely say the memoir is done. I am adding and revising things in the last two chapters still but – until the true revising starts in a couple of weeks – it’s complete at just under 87,000 words. A bit  short of my estimations. Likely to be shorter still because I think I am going to dump at least one of the opening three chapters and use the other two in abbreviated forms in later chapters. The chapter breaks too are still open to reinterpretation but again, that is for  later. 

So how many pages is 87,000ish words? 

357 pages. Double spaced with a 12pt font in New Times Roman. 

I am neither thrilled nor displeased with what I am calling a first draft despite the fact that some of it was revised a bit – more than once – as I wrote. I tried to just write without stopping but not having an outline other than the years and months, I had to reread on occasion and that always leads to revision.

I didn’t include as much of the correspondence between Rob and I via email and IM in the first draft as I thought I would, but this was mostly due to the volume of it. I will need to shore up chapters and this means going back through more of the “documentation” which is time consuming. I didn’t take into account when I began this that reading email, IM sessions and old blog posts would eat up a lot of writing time. I will have to factor “research” into the revision process.

On the quest for physical improvement front, I did not feel like puking or need a nap after spin this week. The women who have been talking the class since October assured me that Tuesday’s session was the hardest one yet and I held my own. Good on me. 

My new yoga instructor is awesome and I am finally getting into a more serious pose oriented yoga. I keep trying to talk Rob into yoga, but he still raises his eyebrow and looks at me as if I have never met him when I bring it up.

Rob has agreed to help me with my spin homework however. Yes, the spin instructor assigns homework. Abs and lunges daily. I can do the abs but lunges don’t work for my right knee, so I am to do plies instead. Rob gave me the look when I suggested plies for him. He will do lunges. And start lifting weights again, for which I am so pysched. He has the most awesome biceps and shoulders and pecs as it is  and more of that would be … well … more better.**

Finally, I am struggling with the book I am reviewing next Tuesday, Ingrid Cummings’ The Vigorous Mind. It’s not that I don’t agree with her theory or that the book isn’t useful. It is a bit repetitious however and very grounded in non-fic/self-help formula presentation. It doesn’t make for sustained scintillating reading. It’s something you tackle in stages and is not bedtime reading. So between not feeling well and being dog-tired from my new work-out routine, I am behind. I will be done on time, I think.

 

*BabyD was under the table playing on Tuesday night when she said, “Who called me?” Rob and I were reading the newspaper and hadn’t spoken and told her so. “Well, someone whispered my name,” she informed us. “I wonder who it was?” Who indeed. If it was that damn dead husband of mine, he knows better than to be playing games like that when I am having a tense week already.

**My motivation for motivating Rob to exercise is grounded in more than my concern for his health.