Tangipahoa Parish School System / Homepage



Grade 8Flowers for AlgernonSupplemental Texts for Students Table of ContentsHow Fire Was Given to Men3How Diseases and Cares Came Among Men5What's in an Inkblot? Some Say, Not Much8Demeter’s Prayer to Hades13The Scarlet Ibis14IQ tests are 'meaningless and too simplistic' claim researchers24Does IQ Test Really Measure Intelligence?26Excerpt from Old Greek StoriesBY JAMES BALDWINI. How Fire Was Given to MenIn those old, old times, there lived two brothers who were not like other men, nor yet like those Mighty Ones who lived upon the mountain top. They were the sons of one of those Titans who had fought against Jupiter and been sent in chains to the strong prison-house of the Lower World.The name of the elder of these brothers was Prometheus, or Forethought; for he was always thinking of the future and making things ready for what might happen to-morrow, or next week, or next year, or it may be in a hundred years to come. The younger was called Epimetheus, or Afterthought; for he was always so busy thinking of yesterday, or last year, or a hundred years ago, that he had no care at all for what might come to pass after a while.For some cause Jupiter had not sent these brothers to prison with the rest of the Titans.Prometheus did not care to live amid the clouds on the mountain top. He was too busy for that. While the Mighty Folk were spending their time in idleness, drinking nectar and eating ambrosia, he was intent upon plans for making the world wiser and better than it had ever been before.He went out amongst men to live with them and help them; for his heart was filled with sadness when he found that they were no longer happy as they had been during the golden days when Saturn was king. Ah, how very poor and wretched they were! He found them living in caves and in holes of the earth, shivering with the cold because there was no fire, dying of starvation, hunted by wild beasts and by one another–the most miserable of all living creatures.“If they only had fire,” said Prometheus to himself, “they could at least warm themselves and cook their food; and after a while they could learn to make tools and build themselves houses. Without fire, they are worse off than the beasts.”Then he went boldly to Jupiter and begged him to give fire to men, that so they might have a little comfort through the long, dreary months of winter.“Not a spark will I give,” said Jupiter. “No, indeed! Why, if men had fire they might become strong and wise like ourselves, and after a while they would drive us out of our kingdom. Let them shiver with cold, and let them live like the beasts. It is best for them to be poor and ignorant, that so we Mighty Ones may thrive and be happy.”Prometheus made no answer; but he had set his heart on helping mankind, and he did not give up. He turned away, and left Jupiter and his mighty company forever.As he was walking by the shore of the sea he found a reed, or, as some say, a tall stalk of fennel, growing; and when he had broken it off he saw that its hollow center was filled with a dry, soft pith which would burn slowly and keep on fire a long time. He took the long stalk in his hands, and started with it towards the dwelling of the sun in the far east.“Mankind shall have fire in spite of the tyrant who sits on the mountain top,” he said.He reached the place of the sun in the early morning just as the glowing, golden orb was rising from the earth and beginning his daily journey through the sky. He touched the end of the long reed to the flames, and the dry pith caught on fire and burned slowly. Then he turned and hastened back to his own land, carrying with him the precious spark hidden in the hollow center of the plant.He called some of the shivering men from their caves and built a fire for them, and showed them how to warm themselves by it and how to build other fires from the coals. Soon there was a cheerful blaze in every rude home in the land, and men and women gathered round it and were warm and happy, and thankful to Prometheus for the wonderful gift which he had brought to them from the sun.It was not long until they learned to cook their food and so to eat like men instead of like beasts. They began at once to leave off their wild and savage habits; and instead of lurking in the dark places of the world, they came out into the open air and the bright sunlight, and were glad because life had been given to them.After that, Prometheus taught them, little by little, a thousand things. He showed them how to build houses of wood and stone, and how to tame sheep and cattle and make them useful, and how to plow and sow and reap, and how to protect themselves from the storms of winter and the beasts of the woods. Then he showed them how to dig in the earth for copper and iron, and how to melt the ore, and how to hammer it into shape and fashion from it the tools and weapons which they needed in peace and war; and when he saw how happy the world was becoming he cried out:“A new Golden Age shall come, brighter and better by far than the old!”Excerpt from Old Greek StoriesBY JAMES BALDWINII. How Diseases and Cares Came Among MenThings might have gone on very happily indeed, and the Golden Age might really have come again, had it not been for Jupiter. But one day, when he chanced to look down upon the earth, he saw the fires burning, and the people living in houses, and the flocks feeding on the hills, and the grain ripening in the fields, and this made him very angry.“Who has done all this?” he asked.And some one answered, “Prometheus!”“What! that young Titan!” he cried. “Well, I will punish him in a way that will make him wish I had shut him up in the prison-house with his kinsfolk. But as for those puny men, let them keep their fire. I will make them ten times more miserable than they were before they had it.”Of course it would be easy enough to deal with Prometheus at any time, and so Jupiter was in no great haste about it. He made up his mind to distress mankind first; and he thought of a plan for doing it in a very strange, roundabout way.In the first place, he ordered his blacksmith Vulcan, whose forge was in the crater of a burning mountain, to take a lump of clay which he gave him, and mold it into the form of a woman. Vulcan did as he was bidden; and when he had finished the image, he carried it up to Jupiter, who was sitting among the clouds with all the Mighty Folk around him. It was nothing but a mere lifeless body, but the great blacksmith had given it a form more perfect than that of any statue that has ever been made.“Come now!” said Jupiter, “let us all give some goodly gift to this woman;” and he began by giving her life.Then the others came in their turn, each with a gift for the marvelous creature. One gave her beauty; and another a pleasant voice; and another good manners; and another a kind heart; and another skill in many arts; and, lastly, some one gave her curiosity. Then they called her Pandora, which means the all-gifted, because she had received gifts from them all.Pandora was so beautiful and so wondrously gifted that no one could help loving her. When the Mighty Folk had admired her for a time, they gave her to Mercury, the light-footed; and he led her down the mountain side to the place where Prometheus and his brother were living and toiling for the good of mankind. He met Epimetheus first, and said to him:“Epimetheus, here is a beautiful woman, whom Jupiter has sent to you to be your wife.”Prometheus had often warned his brother to beware of any gift that Jupiter might send, for he knew that the mighty tyrant could not be trusted; but when Epimetheus saw Pandora, how lovely and wise she was, he forgot all warnings, and took her home to live with him and be his wife.Pandora was very happy in her new home; and even Prometheus, when he saw her, was pleased with her loveliness. She had brought with her a golden casket, which Jupiter had given her at parting, and which he had told her held many precious things; but wise Athena, the queen of the air, had warned her never, never to open it, nor look at the things inside.“They must be jewels,” she said to herself; and then she thought of how they would add to her beauty if only she could wear them. “Why did Jupiter give them to me if I should never use them, nor so much as look at them?” she asked.The more she thought about the golden casket, the more curious she was to see what was in it; and every day she took it down from its shelf and felt of the lid, and tried to peer inside of it without opening it.“Why should I care for what Athena told me?” she said at last. “She is not beautiful, and jewels would be of no use to her. I think that I will look at them, at any rate. Athena will never know. Nobody else will ever know.”She opened the lid a very little, just to peep inside. All at once there was a whirring, rustling sound, and before she could shut it down again, out flew ten thousand strange creatures with death-like faces and gaunt and dreadful forms, such as nobody in all the world had ever seen. They fluttered for a little while about the room, and then flew away to find dwelling-places wherever there were homes of men. They were diseases and cares; for up to that time mankind had not had any kind of sickness, nor felt any troubles of mind, nor worried about what the morrow might bring forth.These creatures flew into every house, and, without any one seeing them, nestled down in the bosoms of men and women and children, and put an end to all their joy; and ever since that day they have been flitting and creeping, unseen and unheard, over all the land, bringing pain and sorrow and death into every household.If Pandora had not shut down the lid so quickly, things would have gone much worse. But she closed it just in time to keep the last of the evil creatures from getting out. The name of this creature was Foreboding, and although he was almost half out of the casket, Pandora pushed him back and shut the lid so tight that he could never escape. If he had gone out into the world, men would have known from childhood just what troubles were going to come to them every day of their lives, and they would never have had any joy or hope so long as they lived.And this was the way in which Jupiter sought to make mankind more miserable than they had been before Prometheus had befriended them.What's in an Inkblot? Some Say, Not MuchBy ERICA GOODEPsychology has produced few more popular icons than the Rorschach inkblot test.Devised 80 years ago by a young Swiss psychiatrist, the Rorschach has entered the language as a synonym for anything ambiguous enough to invite multiple interpretations. And beyond its pop culture status, it has retained a central role in personality assessment, administered several hundred thousand times a year, by conservative estimates, to both children and adults.In custody disputes, for example, the test is used to help determine the emotional fitness of warring parents. Judges and parole boards rely on it for insight into a prisoner's criminal tendencies or potential for violence. Clinicians use it in investigating accusations of sexual abuse, and psychotherapists, as a guide in diagnosing and treating patients.Yet almost since its creation, the inkblot test has also been controversial, with early critics calling it "cultish" and later ones deeming it "scientifically useless."And in recent years, academic psychology departments have been divided over the merits of the test, and some have stopped teaching it.The debate is likely to become even more heated with the publication of an article provoking discussion and anger among clinicians who routinely use the Rorschach. In the article, three psychologists conclude that the inkblot test and two others commonly used — the Thematic Apperception Test or T.A.T. and the Draw-a-Person test — are seriously flawed and should not be used in court or the consulting room."There has been a substantial gap between the clinical use of these tests and what the research suggests about their validity," said Dr. Scott O. Lilienfeld, an associate professor of psychology at Emory University and the lead author of the article. "The research continues to suggest that they are not as useful for most purposes as many clinicians believe."The review, by Dr. Lilienfeld and two colleagues, Dr. James M. Wood of the University of Texas at El Paso and Dr. Howard Garb of the University of Pittsburgh, appears in the current issue of the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest, a publication of the American Psychological Society.The three tests are known as "projective" because they present people with an ambiguous image or situation and ask them to interpret or make sense of it. The test taker's responses are assumed to reflect underlying personality traits and unconscious conflicts, motives and fantasies.In the T.A.T., test takers are shown a series of evocative pictures depicting domestic scenes and are asked to tell a story about each one. The figure-drawing test requires drawing a person on a blank sheet of paper and then drawing a second person of the opposite sex.While the Rorschach and the other projective techniques may be valuable in certain specific situations, the reviewers argue, the tests' ability to diagnose mental illnesses, assess personality characteristics, predict behavior or uncover sexual abuse or other trauma is very limited.The tests, which often take hours to score and interpret, add little information beyond what can be gleaned from far less time-consuming assessments, the psychologists say. They recommend that practitioners refrain from administering the tests for purposes other than research "or at least limit their interpretations to the very small number of indexes derived from these techniques that are empirically supported."Dr. Lilienfeld said that the review was written to raise awareness of the problems with the tests in the legal field and with "the hope that maybe we can reach a small number of open-minded people, and in particular students, who have yet to make up their minds on this issue."But he added, "I'm confident that many will take issue with our conclusions."One of those is Dr. Irving B. Weiner, a clinical professor of psychiatry and behavioral medicine at the University of South Florida and the president of the International Rorschach Society, who said the authors of the journal report took research findings out of context to bolster their case.Dr. Lilienfeld and his colleagues do not really understand how clinicians use the tests, Dr. Weiner said. They "have been used for a long time very effectively, with very good results and a great deal of scientific support," he said.Dr. Gregory J. Meyer, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Alaska at Anchorage, who has studied the Rorschach, said admonishing psychologists against using the tests was "not in the spirit of advancing our science."He said the journal's decision to run the psychologists' article was like asking "someone who believes in creationism to review evolutionary theory and make recommendations about it."A History of ControversyProjective tests are no strangers to controversy. The Rorschach, in particular, has inspired intense passion in defenders and critics over the decades, leading two scientists to observe in a 1999 paper that the test had "the dubious distinction of being, simultaneously, the most cherished and the most reviled of psychological assessment instruments."Dr. Hermann Rorschach, a Swiss psychiatrist who worked with schizophrenic patients, is believed to have gotten the idea for the test from a popular European parlor game called Klexographie, which involves making inkblots and telling stories about them. As a child, Dr. Rorschach was so good at the game that he earned the nickname Klecks, or Blot. He died of peritonitis a year after the test's publication in 1921. He was 37.The Rorschach's champions have often been almost worshipful in their belief in its ability to pare back the layers of the psyche, and the test is generally regarded as offering a richness of information about a person's psychological world that cannot be gained from interviews or from "self-report" tests like the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory or M.M.P.I.The test has used the same 10 images since it was developed. Responses to the inkblots can be scored using more than 100 criteria, including how common or unusual the responses are, what areas of the blots are focused on, whether movement is seen in the images, and so on.In an earlier era, clinicians who demonstrated special skill in interpreting the test were dubbed Rorschach "wizards," and the technique sometimes was referred to as "an X- ray of the mind."Over the years, the test's detractors have also been zealous, making at times brutal attacks on its scientific validity, especially in the 1950's and 1960's, when practitioners varied greatly in the ways they administered and scored the tests.Some of the criticism abated in the mid-1970's, when Dr. John E. Exner, then a professor of psychology at Long Island University, developed systematic rules for giving and scoring the Rorschach and established norms against which the responses of test takers could be compared.Dr. Exner's "comprehensive system" is used by a majority of psychologists who administer the Rorschach. Dr. Exner says that Rorschach Workshops, a North Carolina research foundation which he directs, trains an average of 300 clinicians a year in the method in the United States and several hundred more in Europe and Japan. The foundation charges $650 for five days of intense training in the technique.With the comprehensive system, the test can yield a complex picture of people's psychological strengths and weaknesses, the Rorschach's proponents say, including their intelligence and overall mental functioning, their ability to relate appropriately to other people, their sexuality, and their fantasies, fears and preoccupations.Below the SurfaceThe test is considered particularly powerful in situations in which people may not be expected to volunteer negative information about themselves.For example, Dr. Carl F. Hoppe, a clinical psychologist who does psychological evaluations for the Los Angeles Superior Court's family law division, said he administered the Rorschach about 130 times a year in "high-conflict" custody disputes.In a custody evaluation, Dr. Hoppe said, parents are often motivated to present themselves positively and to deny any sort of difficulties, and the Rorschach is a way to look beyond the way people present themselves."We take some of the familiar away," he said, "and look at patterns of perceptions in a highly statistical manner."But even with Dr. Exner's scoring system, the embrace of the Rorschach, and other projective tests, has been far from universal."There is widespread criticism, there's no doubt about it," said Dr. Wayne H. Holtzman, Hogg professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, who in 1956 developed his own inkblot test to correct deficiencies he saw in the Rorschach.Dr. Lilienfeld and his colleagues argue, for example, that there is "virtually no evidence" that the Rorschach can accurately diagnose depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder or some other emotional problems, calling into question the test's usefulness in custody hearings or as a diagnostic tool in psychotherapy.(The Rorschach is such a common feature of custody disputes that Fathers' Right to Custody, a nonprofit organization, includes advice on its Web site on the best ways to respond to the inkblots. Describing one Rorschach card, for example, the site counsels, "This blot is supposed to reveal how you really feel about your mother." In another case it advises, "Schizophrenics sometimes see moving people in this blot.")Equally scant, Dr. Lilienfeld and his colleagues conclude, are the data supporting the test's use in parole and sentencing hearings to evaluate whether prisoners are prone to violence or likely to commit future crimes. Research suggesting a relationship between certain Rorschach indicators and psychopathic tendencies and violent behavior has been contradicted by later studies, the authors say."It just doesn't work for most things that it's supposed to," Dr. Wood said.And the psychologists argue that even when the Rorschach appears to have greater validity — for example, in assessing intelligence, diagnosing schizophrenia and predicting a patient's success in psychotherapy — it is not clear how much additional knowledge is gained from the test.In some studies, they point out, the ability of clinicians to predict behavior or diagnose mental disorders actually went down when data from the Rorschach were added to information derived from other tests."The critical question is what, if anything, does this measure buy you above information that could be more easily collected," Dr. Lilienfeld said.Detecting AbnormalityAnother problem with the Rorschach, the psychologists say in their review, is that the test tends to "overpathologize," making even normal people look maladjusted.In a study, which they reviewed, of 123 subjects with no psychiatric history who were given the test, most at a California blood bank, 16 percent scored in the abnormal range on the test's schizophrenia index — far higher than the 1 percent incidence of the illness in the general population indicated in other surveys. Eighteen percent showed signs of clinical depression on the test, and 29 percent had indicators of extreme narcissism.Empirical backing for the validity of the other two projective measures, the T.A.T. and the human figure drawing test, was sketchy at best, the review's authors found, with the drawing test "the weakest" of the three tests.Psychologists like Dr. Weiner, the author of "Principles of Rorschach Interpretation" and another book on the test, strongly disputed the conclusions drawn in the review.They said a diagnosis was never made on the basis of the test alone."There are plenty of studies that show the Rorschach can help you identify people who have schizophrenia or whether people are depressed," Dr. Weiner said, "but the test doesn't make the diagnosis. No single test that a clinician uses makes the diagnosis. If you're going to use this instrument effectively, you're going to take a lot of things into consideration."He added: "Tests don't `overpathologize.' That's done by the person who interprets them."Dr. Meyer, of the University of Alaska, said that while more research needed to be done on some of the issues raised by Dr. Lilienfeld and his colleagues, their views did not fairly reflect what is known about the validity of the Rorschach and other tests.In an article to be published in the journal American Psychologist, Dr. Meyer and other researchers conclude that the validity of psychological tests, including the Rorschach and the T.A.T., is comparable to that of medical tests, like ultrasounds and M.R.I.'s. The article is based on a review of 125 meta-analyses of the validity of psychological and medical tests.But even Dr. Exner, the developer of the comprehensive system, agreed that the test "can be abused unwittingly by the ill-trained person," and he said he was uncomfortable with the use of the test in "adversarial" settings, like custody disputes, unless the psychologist was working for the court, rather than for one parent or the other."It takes a long time to learn the Rorschach and you've got to work at it, it's not simple," said Dr. Exner, who is also the curator of the Rorschach archives.The real question for clinicians in using the test, he said, is, "What do you want to know about the individual?""If you're interested only in some diagnostic labeling," Dr. Exner said, "I don't know that the Rorschach is worth doing, not simply because of time but because you're flooded with information that you're not going to use. On the other hand, if you're going to treat someone, I think the Rorschach is a pretty sturdy instrument."The strength of the test," he continued, "is that it helps the really capable interpreter to develop a picture of an individual."Demeter’s Prayer to HadesBy RITA DOVEThis alone is what I wish for you: knowledge.To understand each desire and its edge,to know we are responsible for the liveswe change. No faith comes without cost,no one believes without dying.Now for the first timeI see clearly the trail you planted,what ground opened to waste,though you dreamed a wealthof flowers. There are no curses, only mirrorsheld up to the soul of gods and mortals.And so I give up this fate, too.Believe in yourself,go ahead – see where it gets you.The Scarlet IbisBY JAMES HURSTAdapted from: Elements of Literature: Third Course. Austin: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 2003.It was in the clove of seasons, summer was dead but autumn had not yet been born, that the ibis lit in the bleeding tree.1 The flower garden was stained with rotting brown magnolia petals and ironweeds grew rank2 amid the purple phlox. The five o'clocks by the chimney still marked time, but the oriole nest in the elm was untenanted and rocked back and forth like an empty cradle. The last graveyard flowers were blooming, and their smell drifted across the cotton field and through every room of our house, speaking softly the names of our dead. It's strange that all this is still so clear to me, now that that summer has since fled and time has had its way. A grindstone stands where the bleeding tree stood, just outside the kitchen door, and now if an oriole sings in the elm, its song seems to die up in the leaves, a silvery dust. The flower garden is prim, the house a gleaming white, and the pale fence across the yard stands straight and spruce. But sometimes (like right now), as I sit in the cool, green-draped parlor, the grindstone begins to turn, and time with all its changes is ground away--and I remember Doodle. Doodle was just about the craziest brother a boy ever had. Of course, he wasn't a crazy crazy like old Miss Leedie, who was in love with President Wilson and wrote him a letter every day, but was a nice crazy, like someone you meet in your dreams. He was born when I as six and was, from the outset, a disappointment. He seemed all head, with a tiny body which was red and shriveled like an old man's. Everybody thought he was going to die—everybody except Aunt Nicey, who had delivered him. She said he would live because he was born in a caul,3 and cauls were made from Jesus’ nightgown. Daddy had Mr. Heath, the carpenter, build a little mahogany coffin for him. But he didn't die, and when he was three months old, Mama and Daddy decided they might as well name him. They named him William Armstrong, which was like tying a big tail on a small kite. Such a name sounds good only on a tombstone.I thought myself pretty smart at many things, like holding my breath, running, jumping, or climbing the vines in Old Woman Swamp, and I wanted more than anything else someone to race to Horsehead Landing, someone to box with, and someone to perch with in the top fork of the great pine behind the barn, where across the fields and swamps you could see the sea. I wanted a brother. But Mama, crying, told me that even if William Armstrong lived, he would never do these things with me. He might not, she sobbed, even be "all there." He might, as long as he lived, lie on the rubber sheet in the center of the bed in the front bedroom where the white marquisette4 curtains billowed out in the afternoon sea breeze, rustling like palmetto fronds.55379649571 bleeding tree: reference to a certain tree prevalent in the South; the name derives from the fact that the tree emits a milky substance whenever a branch is broken from it.2 rank: thick and wild. Rank also means “smelly” or “overripe.”3 caul: a membrane sometimes surrounding the head of a child at birth. 4 marquisette: think, netlike fabric5 palmetto fronds: fanlike leaves of a palm treeIt was bad enough having an invalid6 brother, but having one who possibly was not all there was unbearable, so I began to make plans to kill him by smothering him with a pillow. However, one afternoon as I watched him, my head poked between the iron posts of the foot of the bed, he looked straight at me and grinned. I skipped through the rooms, down the echoing halls, shouting, "Mama, he smiled. He's all there! He's all there!" and he was. When he was two, if you laid him on his stomach, he began to try to move himself, straining terribly. The doctor said that with his weak heart this strain would probably kills him, but it didn’t. Trembling, he’d push himself up, turning first red, then a soft purple, and finally collapse back onto the bed like an old worn-out doll. I can still see Mama watching him, her hand pressed tight across her mouth, her eyes wide and unblinking. But he learned to crawl (it was his third winter), and we brought him out of the font bedroom, putting him on the rug before the fireplace. For the first time he became one of us.As long as he lay all the time in bed, we called him William Armstrong, even though it was formal and sounded as if we were referring to one of our ancestors, but with his creeping around on the deerskin rug and beginning to talk, something had to be done about his name. It was I who renamed him. When he crawled, he crawled backward, as if he were in reverse and couldn't change gears. If you called him, he'd turn around as if he were going in the other direction, then he'd back right up to you to be picked up. Crawling backward made him look like a doodlebug,7 so I began to call him Doodle, and in time even Mama and Daddy thought it was a better name than William Armstrong. Only Aunt Nicey disagreed. She said caul babies should be treated with special respect since they might turn out to be saints. Renaming my brother was perhaps the kindest thing I ever did for him, because nobody expects much for someone called Doodle. Although Doodle learned to crawl, he showed no signs of walking, but he wasn't idle. He talked so much that we all quit listening to what he said. It was about this time that Daddy built him a go-cart, and I had to pull him around. At first I just paraded him up and down the piazza,8 but then he started crying to be taken out into the yard and it ended up by my having to lug him wherever I went. If I so much as picked up my cap, he'd start crying to go with me and Mama would call from wherever she was, "Take Doodle with you." He was a burden in many ways. The doctor had said that he mustn't get too excited, too hot, too cold, or too tired and that he must always be treated gently. A long list of don'ts went with him, all of which I ignored once we got out of the house. To discourage his coming with me, I’d run with him across the ends of the cotton rows and careen him around corners on two wheels. Sometimes I accidentally turned him over, but he never told Mama. His skin was very sensitive, and he had to wear a big straw hat whenever he went out. When the going got rough and he had to climb to the sides of the go-cart, the hat slipped all the way down over his ears. He was a sight. Finally, I could see I was licked. Doodle was my brother and he was going to cling to me forever, no matter what I did, so I dragged him across the burning cotton field to share with him the only beauty I knew, Old Woman Swamp. I pulled the go-cart 0-6356 invalid: ill, disabled, or weak and sickly7 doodlebug: larva of a type of insect; also, a shuttle train that goes back and forth between stations.8 piazza: large covered porchthrough the sawtooth fern, down into the green dimness where the palmetto fronds whispered by the stream. I lifted him out and set him down in the soft rubber grass beside a tall pine. His eyes were round with wonder as he gazed about him, and his little hands began to stroke the rubber grass. Then he began to cry."For heaven's sake, what's the matter?" I asked, annoyed."It's so pretty," he said. "So pretty, pretty, pretty."After that day Doodle and I often went down into Old Woman Swamp. I would gather wildflowers, wild violets, honeysuckle, yellow jasmine, snakeflowers, and waterlilies, and with wire grass we’d weave them into necklaces and crowns. We’d bedeck ourselves with our handiwork and loll about thus beautified, beyond the touch of the everyday world. Then when the slanted rays of the sun burned orange in the tops of the pines, we’d drop our jewels into the stream and watch them float away toward the sea.There is within me (and with sadness I have watched it in others) a knot of cruelty borne by the stream of love, much as our blood sometimes bears the seed of our destruction, and at times I was mean to Doodle. One day I took him up to the barn loft and showed him his casket, telling him now we all had believed he would die. It was covered with a film of Paris green9 sprinkled to kill the rats, and screech owls had built a nest inside it.Doodle studied the mahogany box for a long time, then said, "It's not mine.""It is," I said. "And before I'll help you down from the loft, you're going to have to touch it.""I won't touch it," he said sullenly."Then I'll leave you here by yourself," I threatened, and made as if I were going down. Doodle was frightened of being left. "Don't go leave me, Brother," he cried, and he leaned toward the coffin. His hand, trembling, reached out, and when he touched the casket he screamed. A screech owl flapped out of the box into our faces, scaring us and covering us with Paris green. Doodle was paralyzed, so I put him on my shoulder and carried him down the ladder, and even when we were outside in the bright sunshine, he clung to me, crying. "Don't leave me. Don't leave me."When Doodle was five years old, I was embarrassed at having a brother of that age who couldn't walk, so I set out to teach him. We were down in Old Woman Swamp and it was spring and the sick-sweet smell of bay flowers hung everywhere like a mournful song. "I'm going to teach you to walk, Doodle," I said.He was sitting comfortably on the soft grass, leaning back against the pine. “Why?” he asked.009 Paris green: poisonous green powder used to kill insectsI hadn’t expected such an answer. “So I won’t have to haul you around all the time.”"I can't walk, Brother," he said."Who says so?" I demanded."Mama, the doctor--everybody.""Oh, you can walk," I said, and I took him by the arms and stood him up. He collapsed onto the grass like a half empty flour sack. It was as if he had no bones in his little legs. “Don’t hurt me, Brother,” he warned.“Shut up. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m going to teach you to walk.” I heaved him up again, and again he collapsed.This time he did not lift his face up out of the rubber grass. “I just can’t do it. Let’s make honeysuckle wreaths.”“Oh yes you can, Doodle,” I said. “All you got to do is try. Now come on,” and I hauled him up once more.It seemed so hopeless from the beginning that it's a miracle I didn't give up. But all of us must have something or someone to be proud of, and Doodle had become mine. I did not know then that pride is a wonderful, terrible thing, a seed that bears two vines, life and death. Every day that summer we went to the pine beside the stream of Old Woman Swamp, and I put him on his feet at least a hundred times each afternoon. Occasionally I too became discouraged because it didn't seem as if he was trying, and I would say, "Doodle, don't you want to learn to walk?" He'd nod his head, and I'd say, "Well, if you don't keep trying, you'll never learn." Then I'd paint for him a picture of us as old men, white-haired, him with a long white beard and me still pulling him around in the go-cart. This never failed to make him try again.Finally one day, after many weeks of practicing, he stood alone for a few seconds. When he fell, I grabbed him in my arms and hugged him, our laughter pealing through the swamp like a ringing bell. Now we know it could be done. Hope no longer hid in the dark palmetto thicket but perched like a cardinal in the lacy toothbrush tree, brilliantly visible. "Yes, yes," I cried, and he cried it too, and the grass beneath us was soft and the smell of the swamp was sweet.With success so imminent,10 we decided not to tell anyone until he could actually walk. Each day, barring rain, we sneaked into Old Woman Swamp, and by cotton-picking time Doodle was ready to show 0010 imminent: about to take placewhat he could do. He still wasn’t able to walk far, but we could wait no longer. Keeping a nice secret is very hard to do, like holding your breath. We chose to reveal all on October eighth, Doodle’s sixth birthday, and for weeks ahead we mooned around the house, promising everybody a most spectacular surprise. Aunt Nicey said that, after so much talk, if we produced anything less tremendous than the Resurrection,11 she was going to be disappointed.At breakfast on our chosen day, when Mama, Daddy, and Aunt Nicey were in the dining room, I brought Doodle to the door in the go-cart just as usual and had them turn their backs, making them cross their hearts and hope to die if they peeked. I helped Doodle up, and when he was standing alone I let them look. There wasn't a sound as Doodle walked slowly across the room and sat down at his place at the table. Then Mama began to cry and ran over to him, hugging him and kissing him. Daddy hugged him too, so I went to Aunt Nicey, who was thanks praying in the doorway, and began to waltz her around. We danced together quite well until she came down on my big toe with her brogans,12 hurting me so badly I thought I was crippled for life. Doodle told them it was I who had taught him to walk, so everyone wanted to hug me, and I began to cry.“What are you crying for,” asked Daddy. But I couldn’t answer. They did not know that I did it for myself; that pride, whose slave I was, spoke to me louder than all their voices, and that Doodle walked only because I was ashamed of having a crippled brother. Within a few months, Doodle had learned to walk well and his go-cart was put up in the barn loft (it is still there) beside his little mahogany coffin. Now, when we roamed off together, resting often, we never turned back until our destination had been reached, and to help pass the time, we took up lying. From the beginning, Doodle was a terrible liar, and he got me in the habit. Had anyone stopped to listen to us, we would have been sent off to Dix Hill. My lies were scary, involved, and usually pointless, but Doodle’s were twice as crazy. People in his stories all had wings and flew wherever they wanted to go. His favorite lie was about a boy named Peter who had a pet peacock with a ten-foot tail. Peter wore a golden robe that glittered so brightly that when he walked through the sunflowers they turned away from the sun to face him. When Peter was ready to go to sleep, the peacock spread his magnificent tail, and folding the boy gently, like a closing go-to-sleep flower, burying him in the gloriously iridescent,13 rustling vortex.14 Yes, I must admit it, Doodle could beat me lying.Doodle and I spent lots of time thinking about our future. We decided that when we were grown, we’d live in Old Woman’s Swamp and pick dog’s-tongue15 for a living. Beside the stream, he planned, we’d build a house of whispering leaves and the swamp birds would be our chickens. All day long (when we 0011 Resurrection: allusion to the account of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ recorded in the Bible12 brogans: heavy ankle-high shoes13 iridescent: rainbow-like; displaying a shifting range of colors14 vortex: something resembling a whirlpool15 dog’s-tongue: wild vanillaweren’t gathering dog’s-tongue), we’d swing through the cypresses on the rope vines, and if it rained, we’d huddle beneath an umbrella treat and play stickfrog. Mama and Daddy could come and live with us if they wanted to. He even came up with the idea that he could marry Mama and I could marry Daddy. Of course, I was old enough to know this wouldn’t work out. But the picture he painted was so beautiful and serene that all I could do was whisper yes, yes.Once I had succeeded in teaching Doodle to walk, I began to believe in my own infallibility,16 and I prepared a terrific development program for him, unknown to Mama and Daddy, of course. I would teach him to run, to swim, to climb trees, and to fight. He, too, now believed in my infallibility, so we set the deadline for these accomplishments less than a year away, when, it had been decided, Doodle could start to school. That winter we didn’t make much progress, for I was in school and Doodle suffered from one bad cold after another. But when spring came, rich and warm, we raised our sights again. Success lay at the end of summer like a pot of gold, and our campaign got off to a good start. On hot days, Doodle and I went down to Horsehead Landing, and I gave him swimming lessons or showed him how to row a boat. Sometimes we descended into the cool greenness of Old Woman Swamp and climbed the rope vines or boxed scientifically beneath the pine where he had learned to walk. Promise hung about us like leaves, and wherever we looked, ferns unfurled and birds broke into song.That summer, the summer of 1918, was blighted.17 In May and June, there was no rain, and the crops withered, curled up, then died under the thirsty sun. One morning in July a hurricane came out of the east, tipping over the oaks in the yard and splitting the limbs of the elm trees. That afternoon, it roared back out of the west, blew the fallen oaks around, snapping their roots and tearing them out of the earth like a hawk at the entrails18 of a chicken. Cotton bolls were wrenched from the stalks and lay like green walnuts in the valleys between the rows, while the corn field leaned over uniformly so that the tassels touched the ground. Doodle and I followed Daddy out into the cotton field, where he stood, shoulders sagging, surveying the ruin. When his chin sank down onto his chest, we were frightened, and Doodle slipped his hand into mine. Suddenly Daddy straightened his shoulders, raised a giant knuckly fist, and with a voice that seemed to rumble out of the earth itself, began cursing heaven, hell, the weather, and the Republican party.19 Doodle and I, prodding each other and giggling, went back to the house, knowing that everything would be all right.And during that summer, strange names were heard through the house: Chateau-Thierry, Amiens, Soissons, and in her blessing at the supper table, Mama once said, “And bless the Pearsons, whose boy Joe was lost in Belleau Wood.”20 So we came to that clove of seasons. School was only a few weeks away, and Doodle was far behind schedule. He could barely clear the ground when climbing up the rope vines, and his swimming was 01075816 infallibility: the state or condition of being incapable of error17 blighted: suffering from conditions that destroy or prevent growth 18 entrails: inner organs; guts19 Republican party: at this time most Southern farmers were loyal Democrats20 Chateau-Thierry, Amiens, Soissons, . . .Belleau Wood: World War I battle sites in Francecertainly not passable. We decided to double our efforts, to make that last drive and reach our pot of gold. I made him swim until he turned blue and row until he couldn’t lift an oar. Whenever we went, I purposely walked fast, and although he kept up, his face turned red and his eyes became glazed. Once, he could go no further, so he collapsed on the ground and began to cry."Aw, come on, Doodle," I urged. "You can do it. Do you want to be different from everybody else when you start school?""Does it make any difference?""It certainly does," I said. "Now, come on," and I helped him up. As we slipped through the dog days, Doodle began to look feverish, and Mama felt his forehead, asking him if he felt ill. At night he didn't sleep well, and sometimes he had nightmares, crying out until I touched him and said, "Wake up, Doodle. Wake up." It was Saturday noon, just a few days before school was to start. I should have already admitted defeat, but my pride wouldn't let me. The excitement of our program had now been gone for weeks, but still we kept on with a tired doggedness.21 It was too late to turn back, for we had both wandered too far into a net of expectations and had left no crumbs behind. Daddy, Mama, Doodle, and I were seated at the dining-room table having lunch. It was a hot day, with all the windows and doors open in case a breeze should come. In the kitchen Aunt Nicey was humming softly. After a long silence, Daddy spoke. “It’s so calm, I wouldn’t be surprise if we had a storm this afternoon.”“I haven’t heard a rain frog,” said Mama, who believed in signs, as she served the bread around the table.“I did,” declared Doddle. “Down in the swamp.”“He didn’t,” I said contrarily.“You did eh?” said Daddy, ignoring my denial.“I certainly did,” Doodle reiterated,22 scowling at me over the top of his iced tea glass, and we were quiet again.Suddenly, from out in the yard, came a strange croaking noise. Doodle stopped eating, with a piece of bread poised ready for his mouth, his eyes popped round like two blue buttons.0021 doggedness: stubbornness; persistence22 reiterated: repeatedBy the time I had done this, Doodle had excused himself and had slipped out into the yard.He was looking up into the bleeding tree. "It's a great big red bird!" he called. The bird croaked loudly again, and Mama and Daddy came out into the yard. We shaded our eyes with our hands against the hazy glare of the sun and peered up through the still leaves. On the topmost branch a bird the size of a chicken, with scarlet feathers and long legs, was perched precariously.23 Its wings hung down loosely, and as we watched, a feather dropped away and floated slowly down through the green leaves. “It’s not even frightened of us,” Mama said. “It looks tired,” Daddy added. “Or maybe sick.”Doodle's hands were clasped at his throat, and I had never seen him stand still so long. "What is it?" he asked. Daddy shook his head, “I don’t know, maybe it’s—“At that moment the bird began to flutter, but the wings were uncoordinated, and amid much flapping and a spray of flying feathers, it tumbled down, bumping through the limbs of the bleeding tree and landing at our feet with a thud. Its long, graceful neck jerked twice into an S, then straightened out, and the bird was still. A white veil came over the eyes and the long white beak unhinged. Its legs were crossed and its claw-like feet were delicately curved at rest. Even death did not mar its grace, for it lay on the earth like a broken vase of red flowers, and we stood around it, awed by its exotic24 beauty.“It’s dead,” Mama said.“What is it?” Doodle repeated."Go bring me the bird book," said Daddy. I ran into the house and brought back the bird book. As we watched, Daddy thumbed through its pages. "It's a scarlet ibis," he said, pointing to a picture. "It lives in the tropics--South America to Florida. A storm must have brought it here." Sadly, we all looked back at the bird. A scarlet ibis! How many miles it had traveled to die like this, in our yard, beneath the bleeding tree.“Let’s finish lunch,” Mama said, nudging us back toward the dining room.“I’m not hungry,” Doodle said, and he knelt down beside the ibis.0023 precariously: unsteadily; insecurely24 exotic: foreign; strangely beautiful, enticing“We’ve got peach cobbler for dessert,” Mama tempted from the doorway.Doodle remained kneeling, “I’m going to bury him.”“Don’t you dare touch him,” Mama warned. “There’s no telling what disease he might have had.”“All right,” said Doodle. “I won’t.”Daddy, Mama, and I went back to the dining room table, but we watched Doodle through the open door. He took out a piece of string from his pocket and, without touching the ibis, looped one end around its neck. Slowly, while singing softly, “Shall We Gather at the River,” he carried the bird around to the front yard and dug a hole in the flower garden, next to the petunia bed. Now we were watching him through the front window, but he didn’t know it. His awkwardness at digging the hole with a shovel whose handle was twice as long as he was made us laugh, and we covered our mouths we our hands so he wouldn’t hear.When Doodle came into the dining room, he found us seriously eating our cobbler. He was pale and lingered just inside the screen door. “Did you get the scarlet ibis buried?” asked Daddy.Doodle didn’t speak but nodded his head.“Go wash your hands, and then you can have some peach cobbler,” said Mama.“I’m not hungry,” he said."Dead birds is bad luck," said Aunt Nicey, poking her head from the kitchen door. "Specially red dead birds!"As soon as I had finished eating, Doodle and I hurried off to Horsehead Landing. Time was short, and Doodle still had a long way to go if he was going to keep up with the other boys when he started school. The sun, gilded with the yellow cast of autumn, still burned fiercely, but the dark green woods through which we passed were shady and cool. When we reached the landing, Doodle said he was too tired to swim, so we got into a skiff and floated down the creek with the tide. Far off in the marsh a rale was scolding, and over on the beech locusts were singing in the myrtle trees. Doodle did not speak and kept his head turned away, letting one hand trail limply in the water.After we had drifted a long way, I put the oars in place and made Doodle row back against the tide. Black clouds began to gather in the southwest, and he kept watching them, trying to pull the oars a little faster. When we reached Horsehead Landing, lightning was playing across half the sky and thunder roared out, hiding even the sound of the sea. The sun disappeared and darkness descended, almost like night. Flocks of marsh crows flew by, heading inland to their roosting trees, and two egrets, squawking, arose from the oyster-rock shallows and careened away.Doodle was both tired and frightened, and when he stepped from the skiff he collapsed onto the mud, sending an armada25 of fiddler crabs rustling off into the marsh grass. I helped him up, and as he wiped the mud off his trousers, he smiled at me ashamedly. He had failed and we both knew it, so we started back home, racing the storm.We never spoke (what are the words that can solder26 cracked pride?), but I knew he was watching me, watching for a sign of mercy. The lightening was near now, and from fear he walked so close behind me he kept stepping on my heels. The faster I walked, the faster he walked, so I began to run. The rain was coming, roaring through the pines, and then, like a bursting Roman candle, a gum tree ahead of us was shattered by a bolt of lightning. When the deafening peal of thunder had died, and in the moment before the rain arrived, I heard Doodle, who had fallen behind, cry out, "Brother, Brother, don't leave me! Don't leave me!"The knowledge that Doodle's and my plans had come to naught was bitter, and that streak of cruelty within me awakened. I ran as fast as I could, leaving him far behind with a wall of rain dividing us. The drops stung my face like nettles, and the wind flared the wet glistening leaves of the bordering trees. Soon I could hear his voice no more. I hadn't run too far before I became tired, and the flood of childish spite evanesced27 as well. I stopped and waited for Doodle. The sound of rain was everywhere, but the wind had died and it fell straight down in parallel paths like ropes hanging from the sky.As I waited, I peered through the downpour, but no one came. Finally I went back and found him huddled beneath a red nightshade bush beside the road. He was sitting on the ground, his face buried in his arms, which were resting on his drawn-up knees. "Let's go, Doodle," I said.He didn't answer, so I placed my hand on his forehead and lifted his head. Limply, he fell backwards onto the earth. He had been bleeding from the mouth, and his neck and the front of his shirt were stained a brilliant red. “Doodle! Doodle!” I cried, shaking him, but there was no answer but the ropy rain. He lay very awkwardly, with his head thrown far back, making his vermilion28 neck appear unusually long and slim. His little legs, bent sharply at the knees, had never before seemed so fragile, so thin. I began to weep, and the tear-blurred vision in red before me looked very familiar."Doodle!" I screamed above the pounding storm and threw my body to the earth above his. For a long time, it seemed forever, I lay there crying, sheltering my fallen scarlet ibis from the heresy29 of rain.0025 armada: group. Armada is generally used to mean “fleet, or group, of warships.”26 solder: patch or repair. Solder is a mixture of metals melted and used to repair metal parts.27 evanesced: faded away; disappeared28 vermilion: bright red29 heresy: here, mocker. Heresy generally means “denial of what is commonly believed to be true” or “rejection of a church’s teaching.”IQ tests are 'meaningless and too simplistic' claim researchersBy NICHOLAS MCDERMOTTResearchers say findings are a 'wake up call' for anyone using current testsComes after biggest ever study of intelligenceIt will come as a relief to those who failed to shine when taking an IQ test.After conducting the largest ever study of intelligence, researchers have found that far from indicating how clever you are, IQ testing is actually rather ‘meaningless’.In a bid to investigate the value of IQ, scientists asked more than 100,000 participants to complete 12 tests that required planning, reasoning, memory and attention.They also filled in a survey on their background.They discovered that far from being down to one single factor, what is commonly regarded as intelligence is influenced by three different elements - short-term memory, reasoning, and verbal ability.But being good at one of these factors does not mean you are going to be equally gifted at the other two.Scientists from Canada’s Western University in Ontario, also scanned some of the participants’ brains while they undertook the tests.They found that different parts of the brain were activated when they were tested on each of the three factors.Traditional IQ tests are ‘too simplistic’, according to the research, which found that what makes someone intelligent is too complex to boil down to a single exam.IQ, which stands for Intelligence Quotient, is an attempt to measure how smart an individual is.The average IQ is 100. Mensa, the high IQ society, only accepts individuals who score more than 148, putting them in the top two per cent of the population.They use the Cattell III B test, which consists of six batches of multiple choice questions aimed at testing mental agility, with each section lasting between eight and 18 minutes.The new study, published in the journal Neuron, suggests that intelligence is too complex to be represented by a single number.Study leader Dr Adrian Owen, a British neuroscientists based at Western University in Canada, said an ‘astonishing’ number of people had contributed to the research.‘We expected a few hundred responses, but thousands and thousands of people took part, including people of all ages, cultures and creeds and from every corner of the world,’ he said.‘When you take 100,000 people and tested their brain function, we couldn’t find any evidence for a single uniform concept of intelligence.‘The best we could manage is get it down to three elements that contribute to intelligence. But they are completely different factors, unrelated to one another, and you could be brilliant at one and awful at another.?For example, the absent-minded professor.‘IQ tests are pretty meaningless - if you are not good at them, all it proves is that you are not good at IQ tests.?'It does not say anything about your general intelligence.’ The majority of IQ tests were developed in the 50s and 60s when the way we thought and interacted with the world was different, said Dr Owen.'Study co-author Roger Highfield, from the Science Museum, said: ‘The most surprising thing is that we still haven’t got over the hang up about IQ tests.?'This really is a wake-up call. We have now shown that on the evidence, these tests are meaningless.'We need to stop trying to simplify the brain, which is very complicated organ, down to a number.‘We need to think of intelligence like the Olympics. Is the gold medal winner in the marathon fitter than the gold medallist in the 100m sprint?’?The researchers are set to continue the groundbreaking study, with the team launching a new version of the?tests online, which you can see at the link below.Does IQ Test Really Measure Intelligence?By?Denise MannWebMD Health NewsDec. 20, 2012 -- Single tests that measure intelligence quotient, or IQ, may become a thing of the past.A new study of more than 100,000 participants suggests that there may be at least three distinct components of intelligence. So you could not give a single, unified score for all of them.Researchers' understanding of the complexities of the human?brain?has evolved, and so too has the notion of IQ, what it really means, and how it is most accurately captured.“There are multiple types of intelligence,” says researcher Adam Hampshire, PhD. He is a?psychologist?at the Brain and Mind Institute Natural Sciences Centre in London, Ontario, Canada. “It is time to move on to using a more comprehensive set of tests that can measure separate scores for each type of intelligence.”Using Many IQ TestsIn the study, all participants were invited to take a series of 12 online tests that measure memory, reasoning, attention, and planning as well as information on the test takers' background and lifestyle. The entire test takes about 30 minutes to complete.According to the findings, there are at least three components that affect overall performance on tests. These include short-term memory, reasoning, and verbal recall.Lifestyle factors count, too. For example, gamers -- or people who play a lot of computer games -- score higher on tests of reasoning and short-term memory. Smokers do poorly on tests assessing short-term memory and vocabulary, while test takers who have?anxiety?don't do as well on short-term memory tests, the study shows.What’s more, the study suggests that each type of intelligence may have its basis in a different set of brain areas. Researchers used sophisticated brain scans called functional MRIs to map out these areas. ?“Potentially, we can measure a more comprehensive set of intelligences," each of which reflects the capacity of a different part of the brain, Hampshire says.?RIP IQ Test?So should the IQ test that has provided bragging rights for so many be discontinued or discredited?Not so fast, he says. “Some very valuable research has been carried out using classical IQ testing. However, IQ is a massive oversimplification of the spectrum of human cognitive ability.”IQ scores may also be somewhat misleading, Hampshire says. “Based on the results of our study, it seems likely that IQ differences will vary in scale or even direction depending on the exact type of intelligence that the test or set of tests rely most heavily upon. I would suggest that it is both more accurate and informative to measure multiple types of intelligence.”He plans to see if there are other types of intelligence that were not captured in this study.Hampshire said the findings themselves weren’t all that surprising, but the number of people who took part in the study exceeded expectations. “I had thought a couple of thousand people might log in and participate in the study over the course of six months. Instead, tens of thousands logged in within the space of a few weeks,” he says. It was a remarkably strong response from members of the general public, who gave half an hour or more of their time to support this research.”John Gabrieli, PhD, professor of brain and cognitive science at MIT in Boston, reviewed the study for WebMD. “This is a really compelling study of an extraordinarily large number of people taking tests with a careful data analysis. It makes the case against the idea that IQ is localized in one part of the brain. We imagine that there is THE test of intelligence, but you can measure it in many ways. One measure may make a person seem super-intelligent, but if they picked another, they may seem average. There are multiple kinds of intelligence that can link to various tasks and different parts of the brain.”Gayatri Devi, MD, agrees with the new study findings. She is an attending neurologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. “To come up with one unifying score and use that to determine a person’s overall ability is fraught with problems,” she says.? “We need to get away from that.”The study appears in the journal?Neuron. ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download