by Ed Finn
“These issues are, of course, far more complex than any one person can fathom. Systems and philosophies from religions to economic treatises to legal and governmental frameworks and science have proposed cures for the ills that so visibly plague humanity. Some even claim that human nature is itself to blame and that we cannot change what is worst in us without losing what is best in us.
“I think that is an empty, morally bankrupt approach. When we look around and become aware of human suffering, all of us must think of how best we can improve matters. Perhaps new ways to manage resources will bring an end to war. I don’t know.
“But I do know that universal literacy, however radically it comes about, will be part of the solution.” Applause. A woman approaches from the right side of the stage, smiling.
IT IS SUDDENLY A new world.
MY BROTHERS GET THE shot and grow up, to my great surprise, to be great guys.
A STUTTERING RUSH OF sound, pictures, words, sharp and colorful feelings, then Melody’s voice and pictures cease.
I am Alia again, and the tang of salt water, the rush of wind, and the roar of surf bring me back to my surroundings.
I open my eyes. The blue sky and the sparsely populated landscape (I’d been spun across the globe, into classrooms, threaded through history with tremendous speed), and the random cries of the children on the beach below take me by surprise, as when you stop moving suddenly and the world surges forward.
“Do you still paint?”
Melody seems surprised. It takes her a moment to answer, and her voice is slow and thoughtful. “I stopped painting for some years. I was too busy, too happy. I think my painting came from anger. I’ve painted now and then over the years, in spurts. But it’s not the same, and I think that my father was always sad about that. He thought I’d lost my genius. I certainly lost my anger, and that was what propelled my painting, back then. I had no other way to express myself. Dead ends inspire creativity. I’ve found new challenges, though, that give me the same deep satisfaction as painting once did.”
She touches her fingers to her thumbs in a certain combination, and her body glows with complex bioluminescent patterns. “I still love to explore color, pattern, and form. To create these, I studied bioluminescence for two years.”
My eyes widen. “Can you give me some?”
She laughs. “See? Design your own! Figure out how to do it!”
I gaze back out at the sea and breathe in sharply at the wonder it now, quite suddenly, contains—a new wonder that wells from all that I see and hear—coordinated, strident, almost as if it is shouting at me, a complex combination of forces and properties, chemistries and habitats, no longer a toy but an astonishing field of information and relationships, some, probably, unknown. Some that I might discover.
LIFE BURSTS OPEN.
I SAY TO MELODY, “This is your art. Opening minds.”
Still sitting cross-legged, hands clasped in her lap, Melody lowers her head and nods fiercely, so that her whole body rocks. When she looks up again, her face glows with quiet satisfaction. “I think that’s true. I never realized that.” She leans over and gives me a long, strong hug, whispers in my ear, “Thank you, Alia.”
She stands, spreads her wings, leaps, and dances with the wind, furling, diving, spinning, and gliding, until she is another pixel of blue in the distance, indistinguishable from sky and sea. A dot of infinity.
Leaving nothing resolved, I think, with slight vexation, watching my friend take yet another pounding in the surf below.
Except: everything has changed.
I pick up my board and carefully make my way down to the swirling surf.
Antishock/Shutterstock, Inc.
STORY NOTES—Kathleen Ann Goonan
I was intrigued by the Hieroglyph project when I was asked to participate by editors Kathryn Cramer and Edward Finn and began thinking about what might lead to meaningful change in our future.
I have read widely in the field of neuroscience for many years and had just finished a story about a girl with a particular form of synesthesia (Arc Magazine, 2014), and another about the possible effects of a neuroplasticity drug on PTSD victims (TRSF, 2013). My novel This Shared Dream (Tor, 2011) draws heavily on the fast-changing field of memory research and on the much more slowly implemented field of education research.
Therefore, I asked Joey Eschrich, senior coordinator for the Center for Science and the Imagination at ASU, and my bridge to ASU researchers, to introduce me to someone working in neuroscience. Stephen L. Macknik, Ph.D., is director of the Laboratory of Behavioral Neurophysiology at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, Arizona, and Susana Martinez-Conde, Ph.D., is director of the Laboratory of Visual Neuroscience at BNI. We had several e-mail exchanges, and I read their book, Sleights of Mind: What the Neuroscience of Mind Reveals About Our Everyday Deceptions (Henry Holt & Co., 2010). It is a fascinating book but did not particularly yield a focus for my story.
Through Joey, I was eventually able to Skype with Ruth Wylie, Ph.D., at ASU’s Chi Learning and Cognition Lab in the Learning Sciences Institute. The lab engages in the kind of hands-on research and development that interests me. Fellows investigate how children learn and how they interact with various materials, and develop and test teaching/learning strategies. In our Skype chat, we talked about Dr. Wylie’s particular research, which engages in developing strategies to expand computer-enhanced and computer-tracked learning.
By the time I spoke with Dr. Wylie, I had decided to focus on the process of learning to read, and how future education based on what we are discovering about how we learn might facilitate universal literacy.
Our present U.S. educational system is not science based; instead, it has become business based as the dehumanizing loop of frequent, expensive standardized testing, and targeted materials developed and sold to enable school systems to focus on testing success, have become government mandated. Though this method of teaching and evaluation might not be detrimental to students who are able to learn in this manner, many normal students might fall outside the effective parameters of this method of teaching. Additionally, all bodies are slightly different. Some of us have brains that process information in ways that do not meet the norm, such as children who fall under the broad definitions of dyslexia and dyscalculia, and who are therefore unnecessarily challenged and frustrated by our public schools.
Despite fits of reform enthusiasm, the teaching methods used in our public schools, even in this age of science, are not based on scientific information about how children learn. They are, instead, still based on models developed to homogenize large groups of multiethnic immigrants—to teach immigrant children to be good factory workers by learning English, obeying bell-regulated time signals, and receiving information in boring formats without questioning it rather than participating in shaping their own learning process.
My interest in neuroplasticity springs from my long experience as a Montessori teacher. When young children learn, they go through finely delineated periods of neuroplasticity, several of which, as an example, make learning to speak one’s native language effortless and accent-free.
I began Association Montessori Internationale training, in 1975, as a skeptic. I planned to be a writer, but I realized, after finishing my degree in English, that I would not be able to support myself as a writer for some time. Having my own preschool seemed a good way to spend time with young children (not everyone’s idea of fun, but it is for me), have my own business, and write in my “spare time.” Spare time did not materialize, of course, because within a year of opening my school I had a hundred students, an elementary school, two locations, and many employees. But for fourteen years, I closely observed how well a science-based approach to learning works, and this fostered a great curiosity about neuroscience and the ways in which learning occurs. I learned a lot about early childhood development, observing firsthand how effortlessly most of the four-year-olds I taught could read, write, add, subtract, and multiply. In fact
, I had to discourage parents from having their children labeled as gifted. They were, for the most part, normal children in a very good science-based learning environment, doing what normal children are able to do.
The underlying tenets of this approach to early childhood learning, developed in the early twentieth century, have been borne out by science. This is not surprising, for Maria Montessori was a scientist. The first woman to graduate from the University of Rome with a medical degree, in 1896, she became an instant worldwide celebrity when she spoke at the first International Congress for Women’s Rights in Berlin that same year. During the next few years, she established herself as an advocate of children with learning difficulties. Being a scientist, she took nothing for granted and developed her educational philosophy and materials using the tool of dispassionate observation. The challenged children in the first learning environment she established, for the City of Rome, passed the city’s tests in normal range, which made Dr. Montessori wonder why normal children were not learning at a higher level.
One reason I wanted to teach preschoolers instead of high schoolers, as I could easily have done with my English degree, was that, despite being in one of the best school systems in the country from the time I was in seventh grade, I found it stultifying. I knew there had to be a better way. And there is. In fact, there are many different ways. All of them depend on becoming literate, and the best and most effortless age to become literate is in early childhood, when children are naturally learning language, numeracy, and spatial skills; when children’s growing motor skills can be engaged in learning through their exploration of an environment that holds finely targeted learning materials. However, early childhood education, or for that matter, public education in general, is not held in very high esteem in the United States. Perhaps that is the reason it consistently ranks average in international measurements of student mastery of science, math, and reading.
Finland, and various Asian countries and locales, including South Korea and Taiwan, consistently rank very high in tests administered annually by the Program for International Student Assessment. In 1963, Finland made a decision to make education its number one economic priority, and the highly effective educational system that emerged is the result. To find out more about it, I read Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland by Pasi Sahlberg (Teachers College Press, 2013). I also investigated educational methods used in the Asian schools that top the list and learned that Finnish and Asian methods differ greatly. However, they both work. It seems that wherever good education is a cultural priority, as it is in all the top-rated countries, teaching is a highly respected profession. I also read a number of books that offer alternatives to the way education is usually handled in the United States, such as Who Owns the Learning? Preparing Students for Success in the Digital Age by Alan November (Solution Tree Press, 2012) and World Class Learners: Educating Creative and Entrepreneurial Students by Yong Zhao (Corwin Press, 2012).
When I finally decided to focus on writing science fictionally about helping dyslexics learn to read, I found one of the best books I have ever come across about the neuroscience of reading, Reading in the Brain: The New Science of How We Read by Stanislas Dehaene (Penguin Group, 2009). I also read books about dyslexia, such as Living “Lexi”: A Walk in the Life of a Dyslexic by Shelly Trammell, and other first-person accounts of dyslexia. I also read quite a lot of research about some of the causes of dyslexia.
The process I went through in researching the facets of this story, and of writing it, is similar to my process when writing any fiction. I thank ASU for putting me in touch with some of the top researchers in the field. I hope that the result is interesting enough to spur individual interest in the importance and possibility of literacy for everyone in the world.
RESPONSE TO “GIRL IN WAVE : WAVE IN GIRL”—Erin Walker
Erin Walker, a researcher in the field of personalized learning technology at Arizona State University, responds to “Girl in Wave : Wave in Girl” at hieroglyph.asu.edu/grokking.
FORUM DISCUSSION—Mad Scientist Island
Kathleen Ann Goonan, Bruce Sterling, and other Hieroglyph community members consider the prospect of a radically deregulated “Mad Scientist Island” at hieroglyph.asu.edu/grokking.
BY THE TIME WE GET TO ARIZONA
Madeline Ashby
THE BUZZ IN ULICEZ’S molars intensified as he drew nearer to the border. They’d said it would help him find his way; so long as he kept north it would keep humming along, a tiny siren song buried deep in his mouth to lead him ever onward. Really there was no need for the chip to vibrate, but the folks from Mariposa said it had to do something more than just tell the drones where you were all the time. It had to add value, they said. It had to be user friendly, so Ulicez and all the others wouldn’t have sat in the dentist’s chair for nothing.
They could have put the chip under the skin, but then Ulicez might have been tempted to pick it out and sell it. So now it sat there in one of his teeth. He didn’t know which one. They’d put him under for the surgery, and there were a couple way in the back, on the right side, that really fucking hurt. But they both felt just like bone when he ran his tongue over them. And neither one ached any more than the other when he sipped from his canteen.
“Why are you walking?” his mother had asked. “They said they would send a truck for you. You know, a truck? With air-conditioning? Like they did for Elena?”
Elena was waiting for him in Mariposa. Apparently they processed women differently. Something about establishing baseline reactions. Hormones. That was the official explanation: they needed more than the three-month probationary period with women, because the pheromone detectors positioned all through town could be totally thrown by menstrual cycles. But maybe they just wanted to see what the reunion would be like. If it would be romantic enough. Real enough. That was what Elena suspected. So she’d stepped up into the truck. She was smiling at him when the locks clicked down behind her. The black trucks that rumbled down from Mariposa had no drivers. Their doors locked automatically. They could take you anywhere, and you couldn’t do a thing about it. To him, getting inside one of those things sounded like a pretty stupid idea. And technically, they hadn’t said he couldn’t walk in.
He started just before dawn, when the sky was a bad bruise. He stopped in the living room, where his mother slept in the good chair. She was still half asleep when she stood up and kissed him good-bye.
“There’s extra ammo in the blue tin,” he said, before he left. “I left the latch open, so you can get it open quick.”
She rubbed the swollen joints in her hands and smiled at him. “Things aren’t like that, anymore,” she said. “It’s better, now.”
He didn’t know if she was talking about the war, or her arthritis. Either way, he waited until she’d turned all the locks in the door before starting down the hallway and out of the building.
© 2013, Daniel Leivick
It was not far to Mariposa; the desert was all solar farmland, now, and much smaller than it used to be. That was what the border looked like, now: a river of black photovoltaic cells open like flowers to the sun. Corporate surveillance flutterbys zoomed over and around them, automatically alerting the Border Patrol when they spotted a human darting northward whose gait, temperature, expression, and other secret factors did not fit the proprietary algorithmic definition of “employee.” Where the river stopped, Mariposa and the other border towns began. Mariposa was the latest.
Mariposa sat in the space once occupied solely by tarantulas and the rocks they hid under. It sat half on one side, half on the other. They’d dropped it just west of the Nogales-Hermosillo highway like a flat-pack explosive device. It was still in the process of unfolding itself, Tab A into Slot B, still growing into a “planned prototyping community” or “cultural moat” or “probationary testing ground” or whatever it was meant to be. Ulicez had looked up pictures of it and it still looked raw and new, more like a movie set
than an actual town. Given that everyone going there was auditioning for something, he supposed that made sense.
On the way out of Nogales, El Tejón joined him. Ulicez had no idea what the old man’s real name was. He’d been called Tejón forever, likely because the whiskers on his chin were streaked with white like a badger’s. But now he melted out of the alley like a tomcat and kept pace with Ulicez without any appearance of effort or exertion. It was as though he’d been waiting for Ulicez to pass by, even though Ulicez had told only his mother that he planned to walk. Then again, it was somehow fitting that the old man be the one to take Ulicez across. They had crossed the same distance together so many times before, although by another route.
“Mariposa?” the old man asked.
Ulicez nodded.
“Teeth hurt?”
He nodded again.
Tejón sucked his teeth and spat. Such was the extent of his commentary on that particular subject. As they headed for the highway, the ads began to diminish, the surfaces rendered inert by their shared demographics and direction. The last bus stop woke up as they shuffled by. It noticed the logo on Ulicez’s backpack and gave him the old bit about working at Walmart, where it surely must have come from. It told him how you could train at the nearest location and go anywhere with that training, because the system was the same everywhere, world without end, amen. Siempre más trabajo. Siempre.
“Jesus,” Tejón said. “That ad hasn’t changed in, what, ten years?”
“It was around when I was little.” Ulicez whistled the jingle and the old man laughed. They each waved good-bye to the ad (it was bad luck to be rude to the ads) and kept walking. At the highway interchange, Ulicez went ahead to help Tejón over the guardrail, but the old man threw his leg over without any trouble. They stood together on the rise by the crossroads, the old city at their backs and the new one burning white like a star in a field of glittering black. Above them, the real stars were winking out. Beyond the mountains, the night sky crinkled away from the horizon like burning paper.