unpredictable

So now I'm attempting to write a hopelessly abstract and complicated philosophical post about prediction, reading strategies, and...uh, life. I'll ease you into it:


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It began with an hour's worth of talking about the why/how of teaching reading strategies such as prediction and inference to reluctant readers, and how these skills play a role in reading, and, neccessarily, interpreting, which has a lot to say in terms of how we see life and other people (and since visualization is also an important skill in creating meaning, I want you to picture an aerial shot of our classroom in Sanchez and a quick pan out and up, pulling back from our city, our lives, our countries, all the way out).
The point of real-life application is (or should) always an issue for educators. Currently most of my papers and readings are directing me to think about authentic questions in curriculum and real learning. Unfortunately real-life assessment is more about evaluate-able items, such as: cause and effect, main idea, inference, etc, although these things too are open to bias and interpretation. I became interested in the usage of "predict" and "inference," and a quick Google search showed prediction's ties to the emotive, the mystic, the unexplained (but accessible if you just click on the right pop-up) while inference brings up several easy-to-use websites to practice making inferences from info in the text (and only in the text, dammit). A void seems to exist, at least in connotation, between the terms' relation to the unexplainable.

Listen to Miss Cleo:

I don't have to tell you what a big business prediction and prophecy is for us uncertain folk. Besides the consumer appeal of quick card-readings, we constantly think of (or assume, and you know happens when you do that) what's coming next anyway, it's what makes us human. In fact, I imagine animals do it too. When I woke up today I predicted the water in my shower would be hot after a few seconds, that when I turned the key my car would start. But that's experience, routine. I take what I see happening and apply it. Kids can do that. Kids know when they cry they'll get fed or changed or whatever. Kids know what it means when someone in a horror movie says "I'll be right back." They know if they act the fool they might be able to hide their embarrassment of having a reading problem. That's common sense with a side of symbolic understanding. But we have to teach them, for the benefit of being allowed into academic discourse, to do that from text alone.

One last thing. As a person who tries to see the irreverent/flip side of much of life, I realize how much of our humor is produced simply from predictions being wrong. A joke, a comedy, something that proceeds differently than we expect causes us to laugh. Misdirection. This technique is also popular among our politicians and presidents, with much less funny consequences.

As the TV drones, I am aware of how predictable things are in pseudo-life, in sitcoms and cop shows. Not so in real life. I wonder how many people predicted they would be where they are now.