Book Review

The title caught my eye:  “The Only Woman in the Room”.  The main character was even more intriguing:  Hedy Kiesler, later known as the famous actress Hedy Lamarr.

In this historical novel set in the 1930s and 40s by Marie Benedict, Hedy was (often) the only woman.  She was an only child of Jewish parents living in Austria, the young wife of an abusive husband, a lone woman at dinner parties where men plotted war, an advocate for her acting career, and the sole inventor of technology that (could have) helped the Allies during WWII.  Benedict did a masterful job of providing details about these solo roles and setting Hedy’s life within the larger political atmosphere of Austria before and after the start of WWII.  Though Benedict discussed Hedy’s acting life in Austria and the US, the bulk of this novel focused on Hedy’s life as a young wife, survivor, and inventor.    

Benedict hinted at the importance of Hedy’s beauty by including a picture of her on the inside front and back cover of the book.  Hedy is stunning and also attracted men with her flawless figure.  As narrator, Hedy admitted using her beauty as a tool to exert power over men in her private life and theatrical audiences in her professional life.

Hedy felt attracted to her future husband, Fritz Mandl, because he seemed interested in her opinions, did not appear intimidated by her beauty, and was publicly recognized as a powerful man.  With Fritz as the owner of a weapons business and as a close associate of several powerful Austrian politicians, Hedy and her parents hoped Fritz would protect them from growing anti-Semitism and the threat of war with Hitler. 

Unfortunately, Fritz fooled them and only revealed the full extent of his physical and verbal abuses after their marriage.  Over time, Fritz reduced Hedy to a beautiful object and an example of his wealth and power.  At dinner parties hosted by her husband, Hedy learned that he sold weapons to Hitler and of Hitler’s plans to completely remove Jews from Austria and Germany.  However, she did not reveal this knowledge to anyone in Austria before she left because she feared peoples’ opinions of her. 

One major section of the book ended abruptly.  In August 1937, Hedy made a second attempt to escape from her husband.  Benedict provided such a rich and suspenseful description of Hedy’s escape that it read like a movie script, complete with a cast of characters, costumes, and an escape car.  However, her escape tale lost momentum when Benedict simply revealed that Hedy made it out of Austria to Paris then London.  How?  Then, the next chapter simply began with her standing on an ocean liner bound for London and being introduced to the film studio head Louis B. Mayer.  Again, how?      

After she arrived in the US and the Nazis torpedoed a ship full of children, Hedy became involved in the war effort by raising money.  She also attempted to have a larger impact on the war by using her knowledge of science and German military plans.  Hedy recalled hearing about a weapons problem of the German military at the dinner parties hosted by her husband when she still lived in Austria.  The Germans had developed a remote-control system to transmit information between the ships, planes, and torpedoes but this system used radio signals which could be jammed by the enemy.  Hedy understood the nature of this problem because her father had discussed science, along with other academic subjects, with her when she was a child.      

In September 1940, Hedy met the composer George Antheil at a party and they entertained themselves by playing the piano, each alternating after the other.  Subsequently, she had an idea:  radio signals could also alternate by skipping frequency to frequency as they were sent to torpedoes so that the enemy could not find and then jam them.  Hedy, with George’s knowledge of pianos and composing, built a machine to enable this skipping.  They submitted the invention to the National Inventors Council which in turn a sent letter to the US Navy (with a copy to Hedy and George) that the Navy should consider their invention for military use.  In an April 1942 meeting, the Navy informed Hedy and George that they rejected Hedy’s idea because they did not want to tell their troops a woman had invented it.  On this note, the book ends. 

For me, some descriptions of Hedy’s personal and professional life experiences in this book could serve as the basis for a movie because Benedict wrote with such visually appealing details.  With Hedy narrating this book, however, the reader also learns about her thoughts and emotional growth, which are more difficult to convey in a movie.  Before reading this book, I knew that Hedy had become a successful American actress during and after WWII and therefore had survived it.  However, the book was so well written that my knowledge of her later success was suspended until the end of the book. 

Benedict made the convincing point that Hedy’s world refused to see past her beautiful face and slim figure and therefore could not consider that her invention might have helped the war effort.  This book presented one woman’s experience of WWII and showed, in the end, that she survived, on her own.

Review of Education Documentary

Instead of reading another book about a teacher, school, or education system, I watched a documentary about a teacher and his students.  Rather than relying on written words, I chose to witness a teacher in action.  His teaching and the interactions between students would provide an auditory and visual picture of one classroom that could not be painted with just words in a book.  A viewer may assume that a teacher and students would change their words and actions due to the presence of a camera.  However, for a few of the scenes, the teacher already had certain activities and lessons in place.

I chose to watch a documentary about a classroom outside the US because I want to better familiarize myself with the educational practices, perspectives, and philosophies of other countries.  Schools worldwide socialize children into the particular society in which the schools are located.  Schools provide a window into the larger society of a country and a snapshot of the country.  Also, instead of watching a documentary about a Western country, I decided to view one from an Eastern country: Japan. 

In 2002, the documentary "Children Full of Life" was filmed in a school located northwest of Tokyo.  Mr. Toshiro Kanamori teaches students for two years and his 3rd grade students had returned for 4^th grade.  The beginning of the film focuses on students’ sharing their thoughts and feelings, not on the teaching of academic subjects. 

On the first day of school, Mr. Kanamori’s students greeted him with hugs and hi 5’s. He asked them “What is the most important thing this year?”  One student answered, “To be happy”. Question:  how many teachers in the US believe happiness is the most important thing in school?  What does this suggest to the viewer about the teacher’s underlying curriculum?  The teacher’s question and answer suggest that he does not place academic knowledge or skills first in his curriculum.  Every day, students wrote in their notebooks about how they were feeling and what they were thinking.  They wrote in the form of letters to their classmates and, every day, three of them read them aloud.  From a curriculum standpoint, this requirement gives the students practice at writing and makes it part of their normal daily routine.  Also, their audience is not just the teacher but their classmates. Very often in the US only the teacher reads students’ writing.

The remainder of the film focuses on students’ trauma (family deaths and bullying) and misbehavior (talking in class).  Three students who experienced the death of close family members appeared comforted by both their teacher and classmates.  The day after male student’s grandmother died, he returned to school and read from his notebook about her death and his feelings.  Another student shared that her father died when she was only 3 years old.  Mr. Kanamori responded that it is hard to hold things inside and he believes she will feel better by letting it out of her system.  Her crying led other students to gather around her and / or cry themselves.  Mr. Kanamori consoled her by patting her on the back.  A third student missed several days of school due to his father’s sudden death.  Mr. Kanamori asked the students to each write a letter of comfort to him.  One boy suggested writing a letter to this student’s father about how cheerful he appeared.  The students wrote the following in the sand outside the school to two deceased fathers, presumably so the fathers could read the note from heaven:  “Your children are both well.  We are always with them so please don’t worry”. 

  

Later in the film, Mr. Kanamori told the interviewer "Empathy is the greatest thing”.  He is also fond of the expression “Let people live in your heart.”  He claimed that when people really listen, they live in your hearts forever and that shows the significance of the notebooks.  So, it appears that Mr. Kanamori is using the writing in notebooks as a tool within the process of teaching students’ empathy and keeping them in each other’s hearts.

Mr. Kanamori learned that a few children were being bullied.  He admonished them, “If you pick on someone you’re not being a friend”.  He instructed them to reflect on this situation in their notebooks.  Over several days of lecturing by Mr. Kanamori, slowly bits of truth come out. One student revealed that she experienced bullying in day care and feared it would happen again.  Mr. Kanamori patted her shoulders and comforted her with “We understand.  Take a deep breath. Breath”.  He did not tell her to stop crying and nor did he earlier in the film when a male student cried while remembering the death of a family member.  Question:  how many teachers (or parents) in the US allow their 10-year-old children cry, especially boys?  Younger children, yes, but not 10-year old’s.   

One student’s constant chattering almost caused him to miss a raft race.  For the race, the students collaboratively worked in teams to design the rafts, gather materials, and build them.   The morning of the race Mr. Kanamori angrily told a male student “Yotu” that he could not participate in the race because he had been talking too much for an entire month.  Once again, though this student started crying, no one tried to stop him or make fun of him.  Another boy (Yo) did not accept this punishment and argued that they are teammates, Yotu works hard, and he deserves a chance to show he can be responsible.  Another student, Yo, stated that Yuto should not have been talking but it was partly their fault too.  This student claimed that he would stay behind in the classroom with Yuto, the raft was the students’ project and not teacher’s, and if all students agreed then Yuto should be able to go rafting.  All students agreed.  Yo asked Mr. Kanamori to “please” allow Yuto to participate in the race, folded his hands together in front of him, and put his head on the desk. Mr. Kanamori said, “well-spoken Yo” and allowed Yuto to race the raft. 

The next day Yuto read a letter of apology to the class.  Mr. Kanamori later explained to the interviewer that the students performed all the work on the rafts and he could not take that away from them because of “something unrelated”.  He recognized that the children believed the solution should match the problem.  He was impressed and claimed that even adults do not suggest that the solution should match the problem.  So, Mr. Kanamori really listened to the students, considered their arguments, and changed his mind about punishing Yuto.  Since this situation appeared in a film and not in a book, I could see and hear the process that the teacher and students experienced in resolving this issue.  The nuances of their movements and their voice inflections provided details about their relationships that would be difficult to put into words. 

This documentary focused on students relationships, to each other as classmates, to their teacher, and to their families.  Even their school notebooks served as a tool for them to relate to their classmates. At one point, Mr. Kanamori claimed that happiness is the most important thing for that year and then later asserted that empathy is the greatest thing.  On the last day of school, he wrote his favorite word on the chalkboard: “bonding”.  So, “happiness”, “empathy”, and “bonding” appear as critical components to him in teaching these young students.  One of these words, “empathy”, is often included in descriptions of social emotional learning (SEL).  Based on the film’s focus on SEL, is Mr. Kanamori using SEL as the foundation for teaching academic subjects to these young students?  In other words, the SEL comes first and then the academics.  This approach contrasts with the focus on academics in the US in which SEL is added on top of the academics to help students improve their academic performance.