This is the 1917 Beta Test, administered by the United States Army to judge the intelligence of potential recruits. The cultural bias is almost unavoidable, in context - this test was the one administered to illiterate recruits, many of whom were recent immigrants. Any test-taker with a score under 13 was labeled a “moron” or worse. Test takers were told to draw the missing part of each picture, despite little to no common cultural ground - Isaac Newton would have gotten at least 9 of these wrong simply by virtue of having been born in the 17th century. An immigrant in the early 20th century would suffer the same fate.

It’s a fantastic teaching tool, especially now, nearly 100 years later. Some of the items on that sheet are as unrecognizable to children of the 21st century as they would be to men of the 17th, or immigrants of the 20th. How many kids would know that #18 lacks a horn? Or that what is missing in #8 is a stamp, rather than a ZIP code? It opens discussion up into issues of cultural relativity, the meaning of intelligence, and questions about race and ethnicity that are often difficult to get access to, all while being a potentially entertaining exercise.

On a personal note, I got a chance to share the game with my future brother-in-law, which was great. He and my sister will get married next summer. He took video of the entire 9th inning, which I’ll post once I have it.

Congrats, Jon. Enjoy it.

http://benfry.com/allstreets

Ben Fry, who works on data visualization, put together this tremendously cool map of all the roads - and only the roads - in the lower 48 states. Sadly, there’s no way to zoom in on anywhere you like, but at the very least it provides a fantastic look at urban settlement in the US:

Along with that, he has an interactive ZIP code map that’s just way too much fun to play with. Obviously, ZIP codes are geographically based, but I’d never seen it laid out like this, and with this level of detail.

http://benfry.com/zipdecode/

The base of the ZIP code system is the first number, which lays out the US into 10 different geographical areas. When the first number is typed, one of the following areas will light up:

0: New England and New Jersey
1: New York, Pennsylvania, and Delaware
2: Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia, and the Carolinas
3: Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi
4: Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan
5: Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, the Dakotas, and Montana
6: Illinois, Missouri, Kansas and Nebraska
7: Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana
8: Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Colorado, Wyoming, and Idaho
9: California, Oregon, and Washington

With each successive number typed, the field of lit ZIP codes will narrow until you’ve got one dot. The zoom feature takes this to a whole new level as well, as with each successive digit the map will zoom in to encompass only those areas covered. Once you reach 4 digits, the specific post offices are numbered; for example, my ZIP starts with 0213, and once that has been typed in you can see the locations of 02130, 02131, 02132, etc. graphically.

As I said, it’s always been obvious that there was a decent enough geographical system here, but I had no idea exactly how organized it actually is - especially amazing considering that the modern ZIP code system was introduced in 1963. You can read a surprisingly interesting history of the ZIP code system here.

Anyway, I’m not really sure how useful this would be, though I can see using the road map in class at some point. But it’s still real cool, so enjoy playing with it.

What had changed? The students, I guess - or, more appropriately, me. My job in class observations is to pay attention to a few different things, like instructional method, classroom management, discipline styles. What I found myself coming back to in these classes, though, were the students - how young they were, how many things they had going on all at once, and most importantly how similar they were to one another.

I used to think that my old high school was a study in social delineation. The smokers hung out over here, the preppies there. The jocks, the tech-voc kids, the geeks, and on down the line - I used to know them all instinctively. They all had their areas, their territory. On Wednesday, going in for the first time since graduation, I expected to get slingshot back in time - I expected to feel an affinity with the kids near the red lockers, a mild distaste for purple. I expected to get a little shot of fearful adrenaline as I passed green and blue. What I found instead was that everywhere I looked, all I saw were kids. Not identical, but certainly less identifiable. Those groups were probably still there, I’m just too old to see them anymore. All I saw were a collection of people struggling to figure out who they were, together.

In some ways, that’s heartening. As a teacher, you don’t want those old patterns, those old ways of grouping your students. You want to be able to address each of them the same as the others, with no preconceptions. You want to base your assessment on what they do, rather than who they hang out with. You don’t want to know who they are until you know who they are, and I had no idea who these kids were. And that was a good thing.

On the other hand, I always imagined I’d be the kind of teacher/parent/adult who remembered what it was like to be there. This week was a slap in the face of that particular fantasy: as of right now, I am the enemy. I am a teacher. I am an authority figure. I am an adult. My job is not longer to survive, or to make friends. Consequently, the tools I used to have that would let me accomplish those things have faded. They’re being replaced now with the tools I’ll need to reach my students on an intellectual and, hopefully, personal level. And as happy as I am about that, I miss the high school survival handbook I used to know by heart.

I’ll end this with my favorite moment of the visits. At the start of my first class there, Mr. V introduced me. “This is Mr. Lipsett,” he said. “Mr. Lipsett used to be a student of mine.” The kids all looked at me - some mixture of boredom and curiosity, no doubt, with a drop of vague chronological puzzlement. “When?” one of them asked. “About 14 years ago,” I said, “I used to sit at that desk.” The kid I pointed to beamed, and pumped his fist. What did that mean? No idea. Maybe it was a joke. Maybe it conferred a history on him, or at least the space he temporarily inhabited. Maybe it was a subtle reminder that stuff happens after high school. Maybe he was just a suck-up. I couldn’t say. No matter what it was, though, it was my first small connection with a student - some tissue that tied me to him. I liked the feeling.

My personal favorite moment:

He also told WIMS radio in Michigan City that he didn’t believe the event he attended included people necessarily of the Nazi mindset, pointing out the name isn’t Nazi, but Nationalist Socialist Workers Party.

It should also be noted that nowhere in the article does the reporter mention that the term ‘Nazi’ was shorthand for - drumroll please - Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, which when translated into English means ‘National Socialist German Workers’ Party’.

Sigh.

So, here’s what’s going on with me. Several months ago, spurred on by a complete lack of interest in my current publishing career (and then further spurred on by the news that my company was sold, making my job future questionable) I began to think very seriously about My Future. This was going to be a recurring theme anyway, as I approached 30, so I sat down and gave some serious thought to what it was that I really wanted to do with my life.

The conclusion I reached was this: my life - or at least my life since about 1997 - has been primarily consumed with two things. First Thing: History. It’s my first love, and it’s what I always find myself gravitating back to. I initially got into publishing to work with history, though that got waylaid along the way. I have intensely strong opinions about the way the study of history should be approached, and I think a very clear knowledge - gathered over the years through tons of reading, debate, and internalized philosophizing - of how history works. What I’ve always been looking for is a way to translate that into action, and into some form of a career; it became pretty patently obvious to me a few years ago that I was too social, too flaky, and too impatient for a PhD, so the purity of academic history was out. I had previously tried the non-profit thing for a while, but it’s fairly hard to move forward in the non-profit world without directly relevant experience unless you’re in fundraising, to which I’m allergic. Publishing initially seemed like a good way to reconcile my love of academic history with a more structured environment, but I slowly came to realize that much of publishing is far less about the content than it is about the bottom line, and as anyone who has seen me attempt to comprehend money can attest, the bottom line is not anything I generally obsess over (to my own detriment, I might add). All of that, of course, leads me to…

The Second Thing: Education. In some fairly obvious ways, spending a boatload of time thinking about history leads naturally to spending a boatload of time thinking about education. Most of us form our opinions of history in school, for better or for worse (usually for worse). Education is also a major battlefield for my favored field in history, identity; how events or peoples or ideas are depicted in the education system is a constant tug of war. My first job out of college was for an education non-profit in Brookline that specialized in history education, focused around ideas of identity, and it’s still the best job I’ve ever had - teaching, and especially teaching high school, forces you to think about ways to make history both accessible and rigorous, the former being a primary complaint I have about most history. History should be fun - these are, at their core, stories, and their sweep is extraordinary. History is exploration too - there’s never a right answer, and investigating all the ways people have constructed and reconstructed history is the best detective job in the world. Students do not get enough of that, buried under the weight of dates, battles, dry portraits, and treaties with Dutch names. That job opened my eyes to the daily struggle of history teachers to make their material exciting, relevant, and enlightening.

So, when I finally sat down and thought about it (remember when I did that, two incredibly meandering paragraphs ago?) it became pretty obvious what I should do, and I was forced to laugh at myself for not thinking about it earlier. I should be a history teacher.

So, for the last few months, I’ve been working toward that goal. This past Friday, I got the results from my MTEL (Massachusetts Test for Educator Licensure) and passed with flying colors. I’ve been taking courses at Simmons College toward a second MA, this time in Education, and will enroll there full-time within the next month. In September, I’ll begin an in-school internship, location TBD. It has been a tremendous amount of work, but it’s also been fairly exhilarating, and I can’t wait for the next step.

So, what does that mean for this little corner of the web? For one, it means the time I can devote to massive spreadsheets has been severely curtailed. Honestly, baseball has been several rungs down the ladder for me this year; I’ve probably watched just two or three of this year’s games end to end, and have missed several entirely. I gave up my Opening Day ticket because I had class. Priorities have shifted.

That doesn’t mean I want to give up writing, and it probably doesn’t mean I want to give up writing about baseball. It just means that this site fulfilled its usefulness as a Sox blog, and now it’s time to transition it to other things. I don’t want to change sites or anything, just repurpose what I already have.

So, if by some miracle you’re still checking this space, keep doing so. I’m going to try to write semi-frequently. Maybe it will be about baseball; more likely it will be about teaching, or history. Or teaching history. Maybe it will even be interesting.

Today’s parade - attended by over a million, stretching from the cultural epicenter of the city to the political one - was the last moment of the 2007 World Champion Red Sox. It was less catharsis than pure and simple joy. The comparisons to 2004’s outpouring are predictable and understandable, but this was different: it felt more natural, more expected, far less cataclysmic. We’ve had time to get used to the Red Sox as champions of baseball, and now, in the midst of reams of articles declaring this organization the crown jewel of the sport, we find ourselves expecting to be here again in a year’s time. And maybe we will be: the core of players that has been acquired through trades, drafting and development, and targeted free agent signings is young, talented, and likable. They were the best team in baseball this season, despite untested rookies at second base, in the starting rotation, and in the bullpen; despite surprising off years by our free agent signings and our Hall of Fame left fielder; despite key injuries, disastrous trades, and fatigue. Yet though all that, this team trailed anyone in anything for only 16 of the 209 days of the regular season, from April 2nd to October 28th. 12 days in early April as the AL East took early shape, and 4 days in late October, as the Sox fell into and climbed out of a 3-1 hole in the ALCS. They outscored their opponents by 210 runs - more than any team since the 2001 Seattle Mariners. They went 11-3 in October, sweeping the AL West champs and the National League champs at opposite ends of the playoffs, and set World Series record after World Series record over five days between Fenway and Coors Field. They were the best team in baseball, and today they had a parade.

Now, with two and five red banners bookending decades of white and blue ones on Yawkey Way, we can finally look back on this season and realize how lucky we were. There was a lot of angst this year, much of it misplaced. We’re all still getting used to this; we’re not long removed from expecting failure despite victory, and the crushing weight of history instead of recent success. This new ownership has only been in place for five seasons, and they’ve already brought home two more trophies than we had in virtually anyone’s memory. They’ve vanquished whatever ghosts we thought we had, turned around decades of neglect to the team, the stadium, and the community, and brought us some of the most memorable events in Red Sox history. It’s sometimes too much of a whirlwind. But this season, our team didn’t give up a lead. They didn’t fold at the most crucial moment. They didn’t suffer tragedy or lose focus when it was needed most. They barely even needed heroics; they simply dominated, beginning to end. Somehow, the lack of stress was stressful; we spent much of the second half waiting for the other shoe to drop, and part of the playoffs envisioning nightmare scenarios. We focused on the rare instances when players didn’t get it done, and ignored many of the quiet, indiscreet times they did. But today they rolled down Boylston just the same.

This is a new era for Red Sox baseball. It’s an era where we - not the Yankees, not anyone else - are the team to beat. It’s not a position we’ve ever found ourselves in before. We’re caught in the transition between lovable losers and hated frontrunners. We have the payroll, the farm system, the front office that we need. We have a devoted, frequently psychotic fanbase. We are the envy of baseball, in all the good and bad ways that can entail. And we are the champions of baseball for the second time this decade, something no other team can say.

We won’t do this every year. We may not do it again for a long time. But we now have a team that could, and that’s what this year has proven. There’s no more urgency to win; our older players may fade, but there’s faith that younger ones can pick up the slack. The desire is still there, but the pressure is off. Our last parade was a celebration. This one was a coronation. I plan on enjoying every minute until it ends, and I don’t plan on being sad when it does; teams go decades without seeing something like what we’re in store for. We are, finally, lucky. The glow from that will last a long time.