With the ramifications of the pandemic so immensely unclear--and with Senate testimony from Dr. Fauci having just wrapped up as I sit to write this--I have some thoughts about schooling, the pandemic, and this bizarre piece that happened across my browser, an op-ed by Michael Petrilli called "Half-Time High School May Be Just What Students Need".
To begin with, Michael Petrilli is president of the conservative think tank Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an educator with Education Next (an outlet of corporate education reform policies), and a proud father. Since I'm not really interested in making any sort of ad-hominem argument about him, I bring this up only to say that he is coming from a different point of view and philosophy about education than I do. Additionally, he might have answers to some of my critiques--but they aren't in the op-ed piece, which is what I'm responding to. Petrilli points out an important and unavoidable point: COVID-19 has fundamentally upset what it means to get an education. He begins his piece lamenting the loss of the non-academic value that schools provide: sports events, dances, musicals, and other group-based events. These are crucial components to an educational experience in America and provides an opportunity for students to learn more about how much humankind has to offer. There's a reason why school is more than the "core classes", and exposure to variety (both in and out of the classroom) is necessary. He then paints a picture that is certainly common, though by no means widespread: The tuned-out teenager who's drifting through the day, waiting for the sweet relief of the bell to let them out to their freedom. While there absolutely are those students (and I think everyone, at one point or another, fell into that category), it's also true that there are teenagers sitting in classes that they love, learning eagerly, and anxious to improve their skills and understanding--even for seven hours a day. He claims (and I don't think he's wrong) that students would be happier if "they spent much more of their time reading, writing and completing projects than going through the motions in our industrial-style schools." It's true that our schools have been heavily influenced by industrial revolutionary ideas, as well as Cold War expectations for creating a workforce. In fact, that's the fundamental question about what education is for in the first place: Is it about making future workers? Improving the lives of the students? Providing opportunities to grow and fail with a safety net still in place? Memorizing facts? Socializing? Gaining experiences they don't know will matter to them later on? Forcing them to do things they don't want to do? Our education does a lot of things, but answering this question isn't one we do very well, most likely because there are so many different teachers who go into this profession for so many different reasons, seeing different ways that their career affects their students. Where I disagree with Petrilli's sentiment here is the idea that the students would be spending "much more of their time" in doing school-related activities. In the past two months, I've seen some of my students almost implode because of the workload--which, of course, is reduced from what it would have been during regular sessions--and struggle to meet even a single deadline. (Yes, I'm working with those students; I haven't left them in the dreary wilderness of Bad Grades…yet.) Online schooling--or, as my principal more accurately describes it, "crisis schooling"--is obviously an abnormal situation. It may be premature to draw any conclusions about what's happened the last quarter of the 2019-2020 school year. However, one of the things that we as teachers see every single year is that consistency makes an enormous difference in the overall growth of the student. I love my summers off, but I'll be the first to admit that there is a distinctive loss of retention over the long break. Math and language teachers especially see this, but I have full confidence that, even in a normal situation, if I gave a freshly-minted junior her final from her sophomore year on Day One of her new school year, she would fail that final. This has to do with one of the bigger problems with Petrilli's arguments (which the subtitle of the article is the only place where this problem is at even acknowledged), which is the difference between a senior in high school and a freshman in college is that of age. Teenagers' brains melt during puberty, and there is a lot of stuff that they learn only to forget. That's a natural part of development (and also the reason why they are exposed to the same history multiple times over the course of their education). Petrilli's use of the college paradigm is one I've wondered myself. Why don't we use the Ivory Tower as a model for our more prosaic public schools? As he points out, there's only three hours of in-person schooling during college, so why not do the same for high school? Well, the answer is pretty straightforward: High school isn't college. If you remember your college experiences at all, you'll remember how crucial it was that you manage your time, delicately balancing class schedules, work requirements, and study hours so that you could meet all of your obligations. Often, the on-campus stuff was the easiest part of the day. And though I look back fondly on my college experience, I know that for a lot of people, college was vastly more stressful and difficult to manage than high school. One of the contributing factors was that very thing that Petrilli is exulting over: The freedom to design one's day. I consider myself a pretty committed student during my time as a Wolverine, and I definitely had to fight the urge to skip a class because only the midterm and final count on the grade is pretty strong. I mean, I was paying for the class and still struggled to find the motivation sometimes. What do you think the result would be by putting a child in charge of what she's supposed to do at any given time? When dealing with younger people (yes, even seniors), the routine of the school day is what allows them to move into the more self-directed areas. Almost all educators know of that "one kid" who can't seem to finish his homework, despite having it outlined on the classroom calendar and seeing him write the assignment down in his planner. Ability to plan and manage time is on a spectrum, for sure, so the majority of students tend to do well enough. But if you were to take even a highly organized, highly motivated student and give her college-level schedules, she would likely struggle to decide what to do. I mean, high school kids (yes, even seniors) are still kids. I would imagine that, by now, most parents who are trying to help their own children with the school work coming through the computers now recognize how important it is to provide a lot for growing minds. The educational parlance of "scaffolding" is really important here: Teachers of younger children do a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to things like scheduling. The training wheels of disclosure documents and parent/teacher conferences are there to help the students move forward so that they can be ready to stand on their own when it's their turn. There's also a very important issue that Petrilli fails to even acknowledge in passing, and that's the fact that schools provide 30 hours (or more, depending on the school) of childcare. "Why don't schools start later? Teenagers need more sleep, according to research?" some people (including Petrilli, it seems) ask with a scratch of their heads. Because the work day won't shift correspondingly: If mom has to get to work by 8, she can't drop her kid off at the school at 9. Additionally, shifting the school day back means that academics begin to encroach on extracurriculars and the vital lifeblood of every Prom group, the part-time job. Later start would mean later end, and I can testify that ending one's day at 3:30pm after starting at 8:00am is really rough. Now, obviously, the reason that schools can't collapse the entire schedule (start at 9 and end at 2) is because of state-mandated number of seat-hours. With enough political will, this part of the equation could change--though it doesn't change the parental situation. Pretending for a moment that we could go back to normal school in the fall, except for the idea that kids aren't in school from 8 to 3, what does that do to a working mother's schedule? Is free daycare available? (No.) Is her work kid-friendly and capable of letting the child come and be entertained/cared for while her mom works? (Unlikely.) Divorcees, single parents, and kids from otherwise "less-than-ideal" homes would not be able to provide what full-time school does. Perhaps a rebuttal would be, "Do we really need to pander to the rare exceptions? Couldn't we make a better system and then figure out what to do with the spares?" Aside from being incredibly heartless, this question asserts a couple of things that are going to be increasingly untrue as time goes on: One, that "normal" kids are the ones coming from a nuclear family with a stay-at-home parent (if we're being generous; "stay-at-home mom" is likely more accurate); and two, that those who will be most disadvantaged by a shift that focuses on the "normal" kids are the most vulnerable in our society. Schools provide more than education: They provide a safe place for students whose home-lives are uncomfortable or dangerous; they give food to kids who may not otherwise eat; they give students tools that the kids' parents don't have when they teach them reading, writing, and online skills, often in a second language. No, schools are pretty far from perfect. However, dismissing those students as collateral damage in the wake of a full-system overhaul is a flawed decision. Another issue that I take with Petrilli's piece is the missing half of the equation: The teachers. I really appreciate his focus on students--even if I question whom he thinks is supposed to be in school--because that's the most important aspect of the story. But skipping over the implications that a half-time day would mean for teachers is a massive misstep. There are lots of reasons that we can't simply flip the switch on what we have now. Here are a couple: The average age of teachers in America in 2016 (I'm sure the numbers have shifted slightly) is 42. And while that may be the answer to life, the universe, and everything, it's also an indication of a demographic that is not likely to be making a TikTok video any time soon. I'm not saying that old dogs can't learn new tricks (I hope to be less clichéd than that); I'm saying that a resistance to change is a real issue. One of my coworkers is old enough to be my grandmother, yet she is keenly interested in using digital tools to help her students learn. Yes, she still makes copies and hands out worksheets (and considering the fact she's working with 7th graders, that's probably a good policy to have), but she's always trying to use Google Classroom to provide feedback and devise new strategies with the tech. She may not even be an exception (though some of my other, older compatriots are a bit less flexible in this area), but she isn't in the majority. Teachers resist all sorts of external changes, from new core curricula to what's allowed in their dress code. It comes, I think, from having a great deal of autonomy and authority in the classroom; when that is challenged in anyway, defenses tend to go up. Another reason why radically shifting the educational system requires quite a bit more effort than what Petrilli argues for is a matter of money. This is a sore spot for basically everyone--teachers are tired of being used in self-sacrifice porn and held up as martyrs for a greater cause simply because they have to have three jobs just to make ends meet; taxpayers are tired of seeing bureaucratic waste and six-digit salaries going to district puppets; conspiracy theorists are tired of claiming that public education is a usurpation of God-given commandments that a child only be taught by their nuclear parents (just kidding; they never get tired of claiming any- and everything). But it basically boils down to this: A radical restructuring and re-administrating of a century's worth of educational practices cannot be done for free. I last saw all of my students on 12 March 2020. On 13 March, I said goodbye to some of them (we have half-day Fridays), wishing them a good weekend, and that I would see them next week. By the time Monday, 16 March had arrived, I was at school, frantically John Henrying the track as the steam engine of "online school" barreled my way. I had two days to redesign a carefully constructed curriculum, having to restructure my schedule, my teaching style, and excising some of the most important moments of my year because the next step was incompatible with what I wanted to do. Now, I think I did all right, in part because of an ease I have with technology already (a fortunate advantage that not all teachers share), but did I get a bonus for this? Was I paid extra for having to do something so drastically different from my "job description"? No. In fact, there's a very real possibility I won't even get an annual raise. When teachers say that they want more pay, they're not trying to nickle-and-dime taxpayers. First of all, teachers are taxpayers. Secondly, there is a lot of flexibility and improvisation that teachers have to go through, and since every teacher is a college graduate and over half of them have master's degree, it's only fair to feel that such training and expertise have pecuniary rewards. Thirdly, now more than ever, teaching is a dangerous job. Quite aside from the nightmare of school shootings, schools are petri dishes for the transmission of diseases. Any teacher who is high risk or must care for one (as in my case) is putting her entire family in danger by virtue of her job. I recognize that part of the reason we're even talking about half-time school is because of the need to maintain social distancing as much as possible. Money doesn't solve every problem, but it can help ameliorate certain situations. Now, obviously, my resistance to Petrilli's argument doesn't mean that it's not bereft of merit. I see this pandemic as an opportunity to shift education in a way that I've long felt it needed. However, I do think it's folly to assume we can change things into a "new normal" in the course of six months, especially when we have to look at the broader implications for the less-fortunate students in our country. Maybe some day I'll write up my ideas. Back in college, I had to take a handful of American literature as part of my English major. I didn't have any defined taste when it came to the large swaths of literature--British or American--and so, when I first took one of the classes, it was fine. Whatever. A class that wasn't math or science but just about reading and talking about books? No problem.
Part way through my survey course of American lit, though, I started resisting the texts that we had to read. There was some gnarly anthology that weighed down my backpack--it was one of the few books I sold back, mostly because I wanted the cash for my mission--and I distinctly remember not being too thrilled by what was inside of it. For the most part, the literature was from the 1800s, which is one of my least favorite times in the past seven hundred years*, particularly in American letters. At the time of college, if it wasn't fantasy related, I was scarcely interested, though science fiction was still a large fascination to me. And the 1800s--with the notable exception of Moby-Dick, which I didn't study until I was an upperclassman--saw, in my view, a lot of less-than-impressive writers whom we admire because there's no one else. Yes, yes, there are exceptions throughout, but I'm not kidding when I say that very little of American literature really scintillated me. As the years marched on and I took more classes about literature from both sides of the pond, I realized that I very much preferred the British approach to writing than the American. As I had yet to fall in love with Shakespeare, I can only read this as the result of enjoying the variety** of British writing that America has consistently failed to match. During an advanced section on American literature, I realized something: Almost all of America's masterpieces deal with adultery, murder, or both. And while Shakespeare does the same thing for a lot of his plays, he has other things that attract his attention. But few American novels do. Of Mice and Men? Both. The Awakening? Adultery. The Great Gatsby? Both. As I Lay Dying? Both. Pretty much anything by Hemingway? Both in spades. And I'm not saying that those topics aren't fit for literature. In fact, literature is a really important part of our understanding of those topics. It's just that there is more to the human experience than these two ideas. Because so much of American letters orbit around these topics, I quickly became fatigued with the "classics of American literature", if only because they told the same story but with a different skin. I didn't really feel a strong pull to explore the Great American Novels after a while, as I felt like the other important questions about being an American were left untouched. This is probably one of the greatest reasons why I don't teach American history, which my school has broken up as the curriculum for juniors and seniors. I stick with the sophomores because then I don't have to pretend that I like Hemingway (though, for my money, I'd say Steinbeck is the best of the top-tier American writers, followed by Fitzgerald; I've no interest in Faulkner, and the transcendentalists simply irritate me, so Whitman and his ilk have no allure). In my current course, I get to talk about Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Hugo, Austen, Achebe, and some minor writers in between. All of that is much more interesting to my heart and soul than the tradition of my own country. I don't know how deeply to read into this. I've been frustrated and disillusioned with America for a long time--pretty much once I became politically aware, I realized that there was a massive disconnect between what I'd been led to believe about the country and how it really behaved. The relearning of this American mind was not a pleasant experience. When it comes to other countries, I'm more comfortable giving a balanced look--what they did right, what they did wrong; when they perpetuated violence and inhumanity and when they resisted it--without the attachment of having felt one way about the place and then learned how I was wrong. That detachment (if that's even the right word--it isn't, but it's all I've got right now) allows me to love the art that's been made without it necessarily saying something about the country whence it came. And maybe that's the biggest thing about American literature: Regardless of its topic (adultery, murder, both…or the rare "Other" option), it's always about America, too. I could say that it's the narcissistic vein that runs deeply which provides this impulse, but that's too superficial***. Everyone looks for themselves first in the yearbook, right? With two oceanic moats and only two neighbors to worry about, America has never had a strong reason to see others in the yearbook of history. We've always been quite content with our version, thank you very much, and that's reflected in our literature. While the great export of the American mythos in the form of superheroes is currently the pop culture mainstay, even that is so distinctly American that it's almost embarrassing. Just look at the first Iron Man movie to see how we view ourselves--embodied in Tony Stark--and you'll start to see that we're still telling ourselves the same stories over and over again. I guess it's just a story I got sick of a little bit faster than others. --- * The 1300s has Dante; the 1400s the Wars of the Roses and other Shakespeare-discussed eras; the 1500s has the Tudors and, of course, Shakespeare himself; the 1600s have Milton, plus the English Civil War; then there's the dearth of interesting to me 1700s and 1800s, with a couple of highlights thrown in--some revolutions and Jane Austen; then the 1900s have some fairly intriguing wars and, hey, that's the century in which I was born. Not coincidentally, it is this segment of time that I teach, so it's also the times I understand the best; pre-1300 anything is fuzzy to me. ** I guess it's worth pointing out that my taste heads toward British literature for a lot of reasons. They, too, fixate on certain themes--power structures and obedience are, unsurprisingly, more important to many of the kingdom's preoccupation over the centuries--and that, too, can be tiring. If I had to pick a favorite, it would be British, but that, I think, is a matter of taste. While that should go without saying, I figured I'd say it just to ensure there's no misreading of what I mean. *** Easily as superficial as saying that American literature is only concerned with adultery, murder, or both, perhaps--is it possible?--even more superficial. It's painful for me to sit down and actually admit this, but I have a problem. It's one that I've had for some time now--over a year--and though it comes and goes in intensity, it never fully goes away. I've tried a lot of different things to get rid of it--pep-talks, distractions, buying something expensive to guilt-trip me into changing, and pretending it isn't there--but nothing really works. I used to deal with this back in my early college days. It was really hard; I found myself being more depressed than usual (which, since I didn't know I had dysthymia back then, I didn't realize that my problem was amplifying my depression, not the other way around) and immensely frustrated.
I get writer's block. Up until October 2018 (and I'll get to that date in a second), I really only had one major episode of writer's block. Back in my freshman year of college, I took a science fiction class. It was…okay. Thinking back to my educational experience, I don't know what I really expected or strove to get out of any particular class. I didn't really know how to learn--not the way that I've since seen the purpose of education--and I found myself taking classes that simply sounded like fun. I really enjoyed my science fiction class in high school--enough that I'd taken it twice, actually--so I hopped in to get the college-level version. For the most part, it was fine. I read a bunch of stuff that I never would have picked up otherwise--always a plus--and I got a broader sense of what the genre could do. One of the things that didn't work out for me, however, was the critiques I got from my professor on some of my writing. Up to that point, I had always been told that I wrote well, with few criticisms from my teachers.* Therefore, when I got my paper back, all marked up in green ("green for growth!" crowed my teacher when she explained that red made an edited paper bleed, and that was disheartening), I wasn't prepared for her comments. In retrospect, it probably wasn't my best story--I can hardly remember what it was about. As a mostly-discovery writer (I force myself to write outlines now, but that's a more recent development) who thought that he was a good writer, I explored my way through to the end of a weird story and then left it at that; I'd never edited my work in high school, why should I in college? Anyway, I have no idea if she was being generous or grievous in her grading, but I certainly felt attacked at getting a B+. All these years later, it still stings when I think of one phrase in particular that she disliked because she didn't understand what I was saying. The character was cowering in the corner, and I described her as "hiding behind her knees". Too weird, apparently, for my prof. When I got that paper back, its gruesome green grade leering off of it, I hit a major bout of writer's block. In those days, I wrote on a computer in my bedroom that was running WordPerfect software, and I remember creating new document after new document trying to write an opening that made me want to keep writing. It was the digital equivalent of a legal pad, pages torn off, wadded up, and thrown into the overflowing rubbish bin in the corner. I spent a long time in a tailspin over the grade. It was less the B+ that rankled (though that hurt) and more her "not getting" what was, frankly, one of my favorite lines from the story. (Clearly it meant a lot to me; I'm remembering it pretty well for it being 18 years down the road.) Eventually, I managed to tug something out--a lot of it through world building and character design; ancillary work on writing that helped lay a groundwork that my writing could develop later on--just in time to leave for my mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. While I wasn't explicitly forbidden from working on my writing during my mission, I never felt comfortable doing much with the ideas that I had developed before arriving in Florida. As a result, I let my writing languish, putting daily writing in my journal to document the events of my mission instead of a fictional world I had invented in my mind.** After I got married, I took the beginning ideas and, after about a year or so (maybe longer; I'm not really sure), I had finished my first real*** novel, The Terra Campaign: Impetus. From that time, I've been working on one novel or another. Once I wrote a 310,000 word behemoth that I still feel is one of my best concepts--even if it didn't actually work the way I had thought that it would--and I even have some small NaNoWriMo projects that I've knocked out over the years. I have over a dozen completed novels… …and I haven't really felt like writing anything lately. Since I started taking Wellbutrin (coincidence? Correlation? Who knows?), I have had a significantly harder time writing. These essays drain some of my writing juices, admittedly, but I have been more and more disillusioned with my place within a writing community since I started taking pills to help reduce my depression. November 2017 saw a novel, but I hadn't really been on the medication for long at that point. By the time my novel writing class showed up in January 2018, I had no idea what to write about. I tried my hand at some horror, I picked at other ideas. Nothing interested me. June 2018 was on the horizon and I still didn't have anything to do with my writing retreats. Fearing I would ruin this rare opportunity, I cottoned onto an idea for a sequel to War Golem and slapped together something that is honestly embarrassing to me in retrospect. I may have printed out the book--I don't know, I haven't looked for it; I think it's somewhere around here--but I don't have plans to look at it again. Possibly ever. When my January 2019 writer's retreat cropped up, I still had a NaNoWriMo novel languishing, so I spent most of the time there slapping an ending on that particular story, rather than trying anything new. I'm orbiting around a novella that I really like, but I don't know where it's going. Now I'm in my novel writing class again and I have an idea that I'm working on. But when I thought about coming up to my office today and writing anything in that piece, I realized that I needed a haircut. And then I needed to take care of my water softener. Oh, and I needed to do the dishes. What about that comic book about Silk that I checked out from the library? I had to read that! My guitar wasn't about to play itself, so I had to give it some attention. Then I was hungry--can't write on an empty stomach. I even went so far as to open up my document of It and try to copy down some of King's words to try to prime the pump for my own writing: I closed it almost immediately. Now I'm using this essay as a way to avoid the work. My blockages, before a brief aspect of my life, are eating up more and more of my life and my bandwidth. I worry that there's a hypocrisy in this, as I have breezily given "sage" advice to students who are struggling with the same thing. Now that I've succumbed so deeply to the problem, none of my flippant answers help me. And, lest you think this is a post without irony, I've sent off four queries for my recently-completed-the-editing War Golem--a record for me, as I've always been more of a sniper-shot kind of submitter, rather than a net-caster--and I should have my rejections in hand by the end of the school year. Why would I be looking for representation and trying to sell my book if I don't feel I have any books left to write? That nothing I come up with is enough to overpower the slightest distraction? I still have a goal of writing at least 50,000 words per month, even without my daily work here on the website. Thus far, I'm on track. But I constantly feel like I'm on track to nowhere in particular. And that's hard. --- * There can be a lot of explanations on this front: They never read any of my work is high up there. Or, since I didn't struggle (for the most part) to remember the differences between "to", "two", and "too" or when to make a new paragraph, they assumed that the stories, likewise, were good. Or, perhaps, they were good…in comparison to other teenagers. Whatever the case was, I never got anything but A's on my creative writing whilst in high school. ** Some people might argue that serving a mission is actually trying to push a fictional world I had invented in my mind onto others. Those people are being mean to say that. *** I wrote a lot of Spider-Man fanfic when I was a kid. There was one that I wrote that was actually pretty good, which I finished sometime before my mission, I think. I can't really remember right now. That book kind of counts as "my" book, but since it's based on someone else's characters, I don't add it to the list. I have about 19 total writing projects, at varying degrees of doneness. I guess it'd be 20 if I included my old friend, Spider-Man. Living Well 30 April 2018
On Twitter the other day, a lady solicited a "living well is the best revenge" thread. In it, she asked people to tell her about times when they were disparaged, discouraged, or somehow dissuaded from doing something, only to "stick it to the man" later in life. Stories poured in, 280 characters (maximum) each. Stories about rude teachers. Stories about dismissive professors. Stories about condescending bosses. Stories about thoughtless parents. Each one ended with the equivalent of a "Ha, ha! They were wrong! Now I make money doing [the thing]!" I even participated, having had a rough time with one of my professors back in college. She was one of the reasons that I had a year between graduating and getting the job that I currently enjoy. I am not ignorant of the fact that, without her interfering with my potential job, I wouldn't be where I am. However, it's also fallacious to say that I wouldn't have found a lot to enjoy, to fulfill my life, and to teach had I been a more traditional English teacher. That is, just because I love where I am now, it doesn't mean that I wouldn't love being somewhere else, too. (That being said, I wouldn't want to shift over now. I still gain far too much satisfaction from the classes that I teach where I am to want to go roaming for other classrooms.) As for the Twitter thread, I don't necessarily disagree with the lady who brought it up. I mean, there's a lesson to be learned. There is, I would say, a degree of pettiness that I'm not too keen on, though it makes a certain amount of sense. Someone else's damaging myopia, being proven wrong, is something to consider. What stood out to me more than anything, however, was the quantity of professors and teachers who expressed their honest feelings. I wrote about this kind of thing before, but to see it so pervasive as these stories made it seem was shocking. When I first saw it, I wondered if I could add anything to the thread. Had I ever been put down like what others were saying? It didn't take long for me to think about the example I gave above, but that's about as far as I could take it. Again, I'm very happy where I ended up, so it's hard to really foster any animosity toward her--though she does provide a useful example of this sort of thing to my students--and there are better, more important things for me to spend my energy on. The larger takeaway, I think, is instead counting myself as fortunate as I am. When it comes to support, I have been immensely blessed. It helps that I'm a cishet White male, meaning that most of life is custom-made to pander to me and my tastes. I don't have to deal with gender identity issues, life-altering disabilities, or any monumental difficulty that would fracture my relationships with those around me. I struggle with my dysthymia, and my oldest has a severe heart problem that requires vigilance. But massive, foundational problems? Nah. That is, I'm coming to understand, fairly rare. My parents have always ever been supportive of me, encouraging me to pursue my different talents, paltry though they are. Art supplies, books to read, even guitar strings (I broke so many when I was learning how to play, I'm embarrassed to remember it now), and far beyond that, my parents always gave me space to grow and balance with which to steady myself. As at home, so at school. I took a far-beyond-my-real-ability math class in my senior year. I've never been particularly interested in math--which, unsurprisingly, translated into believing I wasn't any good at it--and I went ahead and tackled it anyway. My teacher, Mr. Jackson, didn't ever pull me aside and say, "What are you doing here? You're never going to use calculus. You're on a different path. You shouldn't be in this class." And why would he? He wasn't trying to convert us all to being mathletes. He was teaching what he was passionate about to a bunch of kids whose hormones were exploding and all of them wanted out of these desks and classrooms where they had to listen to an adult talk about some subject that didn't interest them. They wanted to get into college or university, a place where they would…um, sit at desks in classrooms where they would have to listen to an adult talk about some subject they wouldn't care about… Yeah, chomping at the bit to get out of high school is kind of dumb, especially for the college-bound. I digress. My point is, even up through college, whenever I wanted to move beyond just what I was doing in the classroom, I would get nothing but excitement and eagerness. I remember one professor, Christa Albrecht-Crane, spending a lot of extra time with me after class to talk about the course I was in with her, to read some of my short stories, and to help me prepare for the NCUR experiences that culminated my college years. She didn't pull me aside and say, "Your writing is terrible and pretentious and you probably ought to stop pursuing your English degree." (I don't know that she thought that; if she did, she never gave a sign to me.) With that one noted exception above, I've always had support. So what gives? Why don't more teachers do more for their students? I had one student who confessed to me her broken heart because the drama teacher had told her that she wasn't lead material and that she should probably do something else with her life rather than acting. But acting was her life. And though she wasn't as easily a natural talent as those that surrounded her, she had found what she cared about. That, for me, was what mattered more*. As she cried about being so firmly shut down, I took the opposite tack. I asked what her goal was, and she answered without hesitation: "To perform on the Globe Theater in London". I told her, she gets to the Globe, I'll get into that audience. So far as I know, she's no closer to her dream than I am to mine. But I fail to see how giving her a "reality check" about her passions would in any way help her out. Additionally, I don't feel I gave her false hope. Believing in the potential of other people is one of the addicting aspects of my job, a benefit I don't get to enjoy nearly as often as I would like. Why would I throw that away and make others' lives less as a result? So, maybe George Herbert is right. Maybe living well is really where it's at. But if it's just about revenge? Well, I don't think it's worth the bother, then. --- * I would bet that the reason I feel this way is because I have so many hangups about the validity of my passions. I constantly war with myself about attaching value to monetary validation, which is pernicious and poisonous but also very natural in our late-capitalistic world. If I rely on net worth to determine self-worth, I would have empirical evidence of my own relative worthlessness, especially compared to the affluence that America generates. So, yeah--caring about something is more important than the dollars you can get by it. So sayeth Steve. Whilst talking with a coworker friend, we stumbled upon a similar reaction to American fiction: A recognition of its power and beauty, but an emptiness inside of it. We didn't tease out every nuance, but it was interesting to hear his point of view on something that I've felt for a long time.
Back in college--now almost a dozen years ago--I went through the English program, taking the different genres of literature and mostly enjoying everything I did. Even the class on critical theory was better for me than I thought at the time. (In fact, I wish I could go back and experience that class, actually asserting myself. What that class could have taught me--but I refused to learn--haunts me, and deserves an essay of its own.) One of the great things about the program was that it gave me excuses to grow in terms of my reading diet. I normally feasted on comic book novels, science fiction short stories, and massive fantasy tomes. So reading a book dedicated to the internal struggles of a butler in the English midlands (Remains of the Day) was a large departure for me. As I navigated toward my associate's degree, I found myself not appreciating the American courses as much as the British literature. If I remember rightly, I had to take survey courses of both sides of the Atlantic, two of each, then dive into a couple of specialized classes. When I was going through the American classes--almost every time--I felt a disconnect with the literature. As my full-blown love affair with Shakespeare had yet to erupt, I can't say that it was the Bard influencing my interest, as he does now. I can't really trace an external reason to dislike the American literature canon in favor of the British--and even the word "dislike" is too strong for my feelings, save transcendentalism--so I have to turn to what the texts were giving me. In the case of American mainstream literary fiction, the stories seemed preoccupied with affairs, murder, or both. Here's why I came to that conclusion: As I Lay Dying, East of Eden, The Great Gatsby, The Awakening, Sister Carrie, and even The Scarlet Letter (which is about premarital sex, instead of cuckoldry). Sex and violence pretty much fill the canon. While those two things needn't be an automatic failure in my mind, there's also a pessimism to the literature that doesn't fit in with the great promises of America. Now, I have plenty of issues with the way America fulfills (or doesn't) her promises, but I would have much preferred to read about something with more hope than I got. Indeed, I think part of the reason that I liked Moby-Dick so much is because it wasn't about the Two Great Themes of American Literature™. Now, I know, I know: There's a lot more to American literature than that. Just look at the transcendentalists! Thoreau, Whitman, and whoever else ends up on a list of American transcendentalists! Yeah, yeah. I know a lot of people like them. That's fine and cool. They talk about other stuff than affairs and murder, I know, I know. I don't like them. Every time I try some transcendentalism, I get bored, irritated, and uninterested. They recognize the brilliance of life, but their way of expressing it fails to resonate with me. I'm not a fan of the romantics, the European parent to the transcendental writers of America, though I prefer a romantic to a transcendentalist. And I think that goes back to an inherent bias toward European--particularly British--writings. As I mentioned before, it isn't something that comes because of an outward bias, at least not as far as I can tell. It's a mystery as to why I feel this way, but it ultimately boils down to the vanilla/chocolate question of ice cream: I like one more than the other and that's about all I can say on the matter. But the bigger point that my friend and I rallied around was a similar feeling of emptiness--a clumsy term for what we're thinking about. It's less the sex and violence or pessimism and more a sense of…existential angst, I think. I mean, when you walk away from The Great Gatsby, you're not whistling "Zipadee Do Da" to yourself. Greed, lust, violence, and the hollow trappings of capitalism has eroded people who could have been decent but end up being…pathetic*. No one finishes that book and thinks, "I know how I want to pattern my life, now!" It doesn't even function well as a cautionary tale, as any comparisons fail, mired by the context of the story. "Ah," I hear you cry, "but Shakespeare doesn't give you paradigms by which to live!" "Ah," I cry back to you, "there's much more to mine in Shakespeare than almost anything else, so let's not be silly." I mean, sure, Macbeth doesn't leave the audience feeling particularly inspired for personal experiences, but I feel as though experiencing Macbeth helps people to see the corroding influence of power, the price that has to be paid to stand against it, and the reasons why greed and ambition can derive some rewards, but runs a steep and uncomfortable risk. But it's not even that The Great Gatsby is lacking a specific moral that I can easily apply to myself. I don't need happy endings in order to enjoy the book (which, for the record, I like The Great Gatsby just fine, thank you very much). I don't have to have it stand on a pedantic soap box and pontificate about whatever value or moral the person is trying to expostulate (*cough* Ayn Rand *cough*). So it isn't this idea of a happy ending that's irksome. No, the great pieces of American literature all seem to leave me with a sense that we're pretending. It's similar to Camus' The Stranger, which I read in high school, a book that forces the concept of existentialism into a harsh, uncompromising spotlight. The absurdity of life and existence is put under intense analysis through Camus, and though his conclusion is negative (and pathetic), his arrival there is an inevitable conclusion of the process of the story. But American lit seems to have that as its foundation, but we're all pretending that it isn't there. I don't know how to better express it than that--an intersubjective agreement of silence in the face of futility. And, in terms of what I feel America needs to be--if only in her best sense, the ideal she ought to be striving for--that kind of reading is harsh and cold. Now, I know that there are plenty of wonderful, positive, and excellent pieces of American literature throughout our country's history. Obviously. And there's plenty of stuff that countermands what I said about the sliver of canon I read whilst in college. But the canon is part of what I read. These are the books that we've declared as being the best that our culture has crafted. And, as far as craft goes, they are remarkable: Few stories have the tight, immense sense of closure as East of Eden or Of Mice and Men do, as Steinbeck is an incredibly talented writer--one of the best our country has produced. The inherent beauty of their craftsmanship makes it worthwhile that they be considered part of the canon, and I'm not saying they don't have anything worthwhile to say. I just wish that fewer American authors feel like they have to say the same thing. --- * I got a similar feeling whilst reading Freedom by Jonathan Franzen, which is a book about adultery (I didn't read the second half, so maybe there's murder there, too). I found that I didn't like any of the characters at all, and being in their "presence" was making me cranky. There were a couple of interesting turns of phrase, and the characterization was pretty good, but I was simply not impressed by that book. Yet, according to the buzz that book generated upon its release, it sounded like the next Great Gatsby had arrived. The hollowness I hear in other American lit, however, echoed in this "modern classic". I don't think I had a real purpose in adding this footnote except to once again state that I didn't like Freedom. Though I do like freedom. Good thing they're different things. |
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