Random Notes from a Crank

The other week, my nine-year old daughter asked me this simple question, "What's a Trojan?" You see, the town we live in has one high school, and its mascot is the Trojan. It's a knockoff of the USC Trojan because there the same icon on the football helmet with the red-yellow color scheme. That got us into an interesting conversation because she already knew about the Trojan Horse, which flushed me with pride because I love classical rhetoric and literature -- Isocarates, Artistotle, Cicero, Quintilian, Sapho's poetry, The Illiad, The Odyssey, The Aenead, The Georgics, all that good stuff. So I told about the story of the Trojan Horse in The Illiad, the brave character of Hector, Aeneas' escape and eventual founding of Rome. But I've also wondered why Trojans are the chosen mascot of schools. Think about it: They lost. Why would you want your mascot to exemplify a loser? At least if you go by the depiction of them via the USC mascot, they do have awesome helmets and pointy short swords though. And the noble Hector is someone to look up to; he's much better than that sulky, dishonorable Achilles. Of the Greek force, I always preferred Ajax anyway. 

For a long time now, I've been interested in how physical environments help or hurt learning. If you have a similar interest, check out Tanner's "Explaining Relationships Among Student Outcomes and the School's Physical Environment." 

Often you suspect what a decision is going to be, but sometimes it's worth the chance that patterns of thought and behavior might change. Often they do not change though.