There are a lot of structural fractures that COVID-19 is exposing--flaws in our systems that have long been pointed to, decried, and targeted for change--that are now cracking under the weight of a prolonged shutdown and potentially greater problems down the road. Some are critical--healthcare access, availability, and usage; political programs, including and especially elections; civil rights, understandings of liberties, and repercussions for abuses of power--while others are of a more minor or middling importance.
Grades, I would argue, falls somewhere in the middle. Here's the thing about grades that educators have long groused about: They don't mean anything. Of course, that's only partially true: Money doesn't mean anything, but fiat intersubjective agreement has given us enough traction with the idea that it is, indeed, worthwhile (even necessary). Grades don't mean anything, except for in all the ways that they do. Our American system runs an alphabetical gamut from A to F (skipping E because reasons), with the ostensible meanings being centered on C for average work. In many schools (though not mine), the D rank is a type of failing (though some use it as a passing grade) and means "below average". The B range is "good" or slightly above average, and the A range is used for an indication of excellence on the project, assignment, or course. We all know this--we went to school, after all. There has been lamentation about grade inflation for a number of years, with the basic thrust of the argument being that "an A doesn't mean what it used to". And while there is some truth to that, it misses the point: an A in 1969 might have been much more rare, but it in no way expresses a qualitative meaning about the A. Aside from shifting standards in content and delivery (what counts for "good writing" is a mercurial thing at best), what is actually being graded? Syntax? Rhetorical moods? Accuracy? Expression of knowledge? None of that information is recorded in the A. It's become a mark in a gradebook, a note on a transcript. That issue hasn't changed simply because the calendar has advanced. None of the grades that go to a college admission board has ever explained anything beyond the fact that the student received an A. There's no indication of whether or not the kid cajoled the teacher to give him extra credit or petitioned the administration to have a grade changed. It is not (despite what many wish it to be) an indication of meritorious effort and reward. It is a highly imperfect and disproportionally regarded attempt at measuring student knowledge. In fact, if you were to ask teachers what they mean by the grades they give, you'd likely be surprised the diversity of answers. Some view it as a type of communication: "In my class, your level of effort and comprehension is about 75%. Hence the reason you have a C." Others look at it as a type of mastery over the content: "Your skills in this subject are still burgeoning, so you get a D--you have much to learn, young padawan." Yet others conceive of grades as an average of what has transpired in the class: "You wrote a very good essay but your homework was incomplete and incorrect. I'll just average that together and it'll be, say, a B+." If you've ever looked over the sundry disclosure documents of a high school student, you'll see that every teacher expects something different and renders grades based upon their own subjective (though, I hope, clearly articulated) rubric. This is where the "grades are like money" concept breaks down. You don't go to the store and feel uncertain how much your dollar bill will be worth. Sure, the prices may be higher or lower than you anticipate, but no one looks at the dollar bill and says, "That's only worth eighty-five cents here." Yet that's exactly what we do in our different grading systems. Consider the dreaded English essay. If a student writes a paper about, say, the inclusion of feathers on non-avian dinosaurs, how should I grade that? Ought I to remove points for a failure to use commas correctly? What if they assert that feathered dinosaurs are a passing fad in the paleontological world? That's as factually incorrect as misusing a comma, but should that matter in the paper (remember that it's an English paper). And, of course, I know that the factual assertions are incorrect, but that's because I'm an armchair dinosaur afficionado. If it were a paper about, say, the correct air pressure of footballs in the NFL, I wouldn't know if the kid made a mistake there. And this goes along with any subject: Should a student's math teacher demerit a paper if there's a spelling error? What if the math teacher doesn't know her grammar well enough? And while you could argue that an English paper ought to be graded on English paper standards and a math paper on math paper standards, you're again invoking separate standards, which in no way demonstrates student comprehension of anything save a very slender sliver of what's being graded. (Additionally, in what way is a false assertion correct, regardless of the class in which it happens?) A point in one class is not the same as a point in another class.* A grade from one teacher of the same subject is not the same as a grade from another. And yet that's exactly what we pretend our GPAs indicate--a type of standardization that doesn't actually exist. We all likely have memories of a class that was particularly hard for us. In my case, it was the AB Calculus class that I took my senior year. I was never very good at it, I ended up with a 2 (out of 5) on the AB test, and an A- in that course. It required a significantly larger output on my part than the A I earned in my AP English class. Yet, on my transcript, what did it matter? Anyone looking at that transcript would say, "Wow. This kid is solid in both mathematics and language arts." And they would be grossly misinformed. I'm terrible at mathematics. This isn't just false modesty: I'm not just bad with numbers, I don't even know what to do to the numbers to get the answer I'm looking for. A calculator only works when you know how to use it, and I basically don't. I'm not saying I didn't deserve the A- I got in AB Calc…but I'm not saying that I did, either. I don't know what that A- is supposed to say, what it's supposed to mean, and I was there to get it. As far as problematic linguistical resources, grades are a doozy of one.** Of course, there's more to it than just that. Grades have metamorphosized. Now they are also supposed to be barometers of a student's overall self-image. ("She's a good kid: She has a 4.0.") Concepts of self-identity are tied into the idea of "an A-student", so much so that after the student has demonstrated the skills the grade is supposed to measure, post-semester requests about "giving just one more point of a credit so that I can get an A" are not uncommon. Enormous amounts of stress related to grades comes on teenagers throughout the education system. As cases of depression and attempted suicide increase, the role of grades to act as a type of canary in the coalmine has also increased. Grades are now tasked with warning about mental health problems, while at the same time adding additional stress to a young person's life. Little wonder we focus so much on them: We view grades as a kind of panacea and affliction, the cause of--and solution to--all of our academic problems. When a student's self-image is connected to her GPA, desperation and poor choices often come along with it, to say nothing of existential crises on a mind that is not yet equipped to deal with ontological shocks. Much of what happens in high school is foundational but forgettable, a crucial moment of growth off of which much of the future is built, yet not nearly as significant and important later on as it feels in the moment. Grades factor into that complex system in all sorts of ways, for both good and ill. This, I think, is another component to our insistence on their use. With the structural blows to education that COVID-19 has given us, it's time to consider what we mean by grades. We've inherited this system through endless years of tradition; unfortunately, it's not a pure system from the outset, and even if it were, the pressure on grades to do more than they can has evolved it into a vestigial component of education. There are alternatives to what we want out of a responsibility system*** and that would, of course, come with compromises and changes. While I plan on figuring out some of these alternatives, I think the bigger question is this: Do we want to change this system? We have an unheard-of possibility in the current circumstances to radically and permanently change how we communicate about a student's growth and acquisition of knowledge--or (and this is crazy, I know) maybe something else about the student besides just rote memorization or academic business as usual. Ought we to change what we do? Can the massive lemon that is COVID-19, which has upended grading so fundamentally that the past term is, in my view, a complete waste of time‡, be turned into a lemonade that serves all students better? Are we willing to shift things enough to make education more accessible, equitable, and purposeful? And are we willing to pay the price that such a change will inevitably cost? --- * Though I've often wondered about a school wherein teachers set a price for a grade, with each assignment acting as a type of "payment" for their work, which they then would be able to use as currency for their grades. It sounds nightmarish to me. ** Speaking of problematic linguistical resources, there's also the damage that a grade-based "misstatement" can render. A friend of mine was studying Greek in college. He did well in the class--got an A--but learned effectively nothing because of how his professor ran the course. When my buddy went on to the next level of the language, a different professor expected skills that my friend's transcript said he'd attained, but hadn't really mastered. To this day, his Greek is weak (better than almost anyone else he knows, of course, but for a classics major, surprisingly shallow), and it stems from that parallax gap between praxis and practice. *** I use this phrase deliberately, mostly because I didn't explore this other facet of grades in the essay proper: One of the reasons we teachers like grades is it's a way of generating habits within students so that they grow, learn, and enhance their skills. It's one of the few ways that educators have to manipulate student behavior so that they act in a way that's designed to help them grow as individuals and as learners. Of all the reasons that grades are beneficial, this is one that makes the biggest difference to me. I've taught classes where the grade is irrelevant--"Automatic A, I just expect you to work while you're with me"--and I've had mixed results. Highly motivated students tend to do fine with that, but those who might have worked more diligently had there been a higher grade expectation ended up providing middling work at best. That, again, puts pressure on what I mean by an A in my creative writing class--what's "A" about what they did? That they came to class and wrote? That they wrote well? That they demonstrated some form of learning? Should a creative writing class be more prescriptive? All of these sorts of questions spiral out of the concept of grading, even in a low-stakes elective class. ‡ I view the final quarter of this semester to have been a waste of time, as far as grading goes. None of what a grade can communicate is coming through. None of what I'd like for a grade to do is worthwhile. And though academic institutions will have to keep in mind that applicants who went through Q4 2020 might need some sort of accommodation, that kind of memory likely won't last long. Besides, who hasn't been affected by COVID-19? My first grader didn't get the same education that he should have. How many repercussions will that have going through the rest of his career? It's all well and good that the class of 2021 might have colleges be more lenient when looking at their transcripts, but what about the class of 2031, whose entire schooling careers have been permanently shifted by what has transpired these past few months? With the end of the school year whimpering its way toward graduation, I decided to host some low-expectation online offerings for this week between the end of our school's finals and the official ending of the school year. To that end, I set up a couple of Dungeons and Dragons campaigns, a music-sharing get-together, a Random Stuff I Know™ © ® chat session, a Socratic discussion about David Foster Wallace's "This is Water" speech, and a book club on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. I had diminishing returns as the week went on, with only three or four students attending the Random Stuff I Know™ © ® and Socratic discussions. Still, it was a lot of fun to see some of these students again, and to have an hour or so of chatting about something that wasn't curriculum-based.
Today was the day I hosted the book club, and it was a low-water mark in terms of attendance (only one student came) but a high-water mark in terms of discussion. This is unusual: There's a critical mass of students that are usually needed for a high-quality discussion, and who is in that quantity also matters. Typically, if a student wants to have a one-on-one discussion, it's because she has some specific problem or question that she wants help working through. As far as a book club goes, however, a one-on-one session doesn't necessarily inspire me with confidence with the potential of the conversation. However, when the only student showed up, I was relieved to see that it was Becca--one of my favorite students from one of my favorite families. She had finished reading Alice's Adventures in Wonderland earlier this morning and was willing to spend an hour talking with her teacher--now former teacher, I suppose--about this piece of children's literature. I'm really glad she did. I won't go into all that Becca and I talked about--though we managed to range from some light religious comments to deep questions about identity and incorporated some Harry Potter and Shakespeare quotes while we were at it--but instead want to focus on the question that is the inspiration for this essay: What is a classic? This is one of our foundational questions that we pose to our students when they come to my school. We're a liberal arts school built on the concept of learning from "the classics", which we use in both its traditional (that is, the great works of Homer and Virgil) and broader (our students read The Scarlet Letter, for example) sense. It makes sense, therefore, that we try to define our terms when we say that we want to study the classics. When I ask my sophomores what they think a classic is on the second day of school, they often give some good, albeit incomplete, answers. "Something that's withstood the test of time" is frequently put up there, though it's an easy enough idea to challenge. (Is The Princess Bride a classic of film? Can any film be considered a classic, as the form is barely over a hundred years old?) We talk about it being required in school, even though that isn't a required part of the definition…if that makes any sense. There are a lot of other things that they come up with, of course, but the picture should be coming into focus: The understanding of what makes a classic is hard to pin down. Part of that comes from being able to apply it to other media, which I think is a crucial component. The Greeks may have invented poetry, but we've other ways of communicating beyond that now. The concept of film, I think, is really helpful, as it's old enough to be a given in our culture, yet new enough to force additional understanding onto the definition of classic. (Can video games fit into this definition? Yes. Do they? Very, very rarely.) As Becca and I talked about why Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a classic, we pulled on the concept that is partly satirized in the last chapter of the book. In Chapter XII, Alice is brought as a witness in the trial of the Knave who supposedly stole the tarts. The White Rabbit throws in a poem (supposedly a confessional written by the accused) that ought to help clear things up. Unfortunately, the poem is so vague that it could be applied to a great many of situations. "'I don't believe there's an atom of meaning in it,'" says Alice (114), and she's basically right. It's imprecise and is not particularly worth interpreting. The King agrees that it would be better if the poem were meaningless, because then he wouldn't have to interpret it. But he can't help himself, and he starts to "botch the words up fit to [his] own thoughts" (Hamlet 4.5) in an interpretive pretzel that strains to get the poem to mean what the King thinks it ought to mean. Becca and I noticed that this impulse to interpret a book of nonsense is a similar sort of action that the King is doing himself. And that's when we cottoned onto the idea that additional meanings of interpretation are what mark a piece of work as a classic. The text itself is comparatively narrow--there are only two epic poems by Homer, and Virgil has but one masterpiece (and Shakespeare, building off what came before, created a dozen masterpieces because Shakespeare is incredible)--but it invites, encourages, and (most importantly) allows additional interpretations. The boundaries of the story do not confine the meaning of the story. A classic, therefore, insists that the ways into it and out of it continue to expand. Time allows us to see what pieces have endured this sort of hermeneutical expansion--which is why we often think of classics as "old"--but that's more of an outgrowth of its richness. Part of how it does that, I think, is via a return to the beginning. Sometimes that's through direct invocations--Frankenstein's frame story brings us back to where we started, for example--and sometimes it's a matter of thematic closure and the protagonist's completion of the goal. However it comes about, there's a revolution that returns to its starting point: Alice wakes up next to where she'd fallen asleep; Peter Pan refuses to grow; Dante leaves the "straightforward path" of true worship until his theophany amongst the stars. This provides closure, but also encouragement: "You saw one thing this time through. Go again, and see what else you discover." Talking it over with Becca, it was this second component that made such a difference. Today marks the last day of her time at my school: She graduates next Friday, and there aren't any more lessons for her to attend. Even my extracurricular get-togethers are ended. Much like a classic, she has now returned to where she began, asking (and, I think, perhaps, answering) the question that began her entire educational path at my school: What is a classic? In that sense, her classical education was an interpretive journey through the classics, forming her own classic in her growth as a human and a seeker of truth. Being a part of that journey is why I love being a teacher. Being a teacher of history is being a purveyor of stories, and though I fancy myself a raconteur of sorts, I try not to be the guy who never lets facts get in the way of a good story. History, however, is far from stable, and conclusions about events or people can shift by new research, expansion of knowledge, or other unexpected twists. Moreover, there's always a frustration that hindsight provides. Clear mistakes to us were difficult choices in the past, and sometimes a person's decision to go one way instead of the clearly more logical choice leads to thinking that maybe there's something more sinister going on…
Yeah, sure, but I don't buy into most conspiracy theories. This is something that frustrates some of my students: Shakespeare wrote his plays, Pearl Harbor and 9/11 happened without governmental collusion, and we landed on the moon. Having these stances is less fun than being conspiratorial, but it's more accurate. Sure, history is a lot less disappointing when viewed from the pragmatic realization that mundanity is the norm, but I want fantastical plots and scintillating lies in my fiction, not my reality. Enter Rob Brotherton and his book Suspicious Minds: Why We Believe Conspiracy Theories. This isn't a takedown of sundry, popular conspiracy theories (though he definitely brings up issues about things like the Truther movement or anti-vaxxers); instead, he looks at all of the reasons why we're interested in them in the first place. Familiar and common rhetorical and "logical" parts of discussing conspiracy theories with others are brought to light. For example, he points out that within the worldview of a conspiracy theorist, lack of evidence is more important--and more significant--than actual evidence. This sort of thinking is maddening for someone like me, who prefers seeing how things really are (inasmuch as that's possible). There are all sorts of psychological ticks that make people think the way they do, so it's nice for me to be able to at least understand why they're coming at the world the way they are. Brotherton writes clearly and has copious endnotes to back up his claims. The one I struggled with the most is the thesis of the whole book: We all believe conspiracies to one degree or another. And, with the messy difficulties of being human, we are unable to get the whole picture of anything--another frustration for someone like me. Perhaps what is frustrating is that there are conspiracies--they just tend not to be as convoluted, precise, or sinister as "crackpot" conspiracy theories. Because there are small-scale, relatively insignificant conspiracies does not mean that there are large-scale ones, though the desire for that to be true is (now, because I've read the book) more understandable. I guess I just wish that people were honest and we could believe the best about each other. For a person with depression, I sure have an optimistic hope for the world (just not as much for myself). If you're interested in learning about how people think, then Suspicious Minds is a good choice for you. I think it'll help open your eyes and blow the whole thing wide open. Read what They don't want you to know! Read Suspicious Minds. Yesterday, I had an important topic to discuss with my students: Beauty. I go through the same conversations annually*, hitting similar points each time through. Normally, I really enjoy the conversation on beauty as it's something that I think is really important. Not only is there more to discuss than "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" or, just as tediously, "beauty is only skin deep", but despite such platitudes, there's still a lot of emphases on what it means to be beautiful. That takes time to break apart and to look at critically.
Neither class, it seemed, was interested in pursuing the conversation (ironically, as it turned out) beyond a superficial level. Disappointed in my performance--and, admittedly, the assembly schedule messed things up, too, which was a minor factor, though a factor nonetheless--I decided to not repeat yesterday's schedule. We have a lot of things that matter in the course right now: We're studying the French Revolution, reading Les Miserables, and watching a (rather poor) adaptation of the same. They haven't even hit the Terror and I'm supposed to get them through Waterloo…which only barely helps them understand the world that Hugo is describing in his book. You'd be forgiven if you wondered why, with only four days of work left to me (for scheduling reasons), I could be so far behind. Well, it's simple: There's a lot of interesting stuff to talk about in the book. While it isn't my favorite novel of all time, Les Miserables is always enjoyable. There're a lot of worthwhile lessons packed into the overflowing pages that even our abridged version can scarcely contain. There's just a lot to talk about, and I don't like shortchanging the profundity of the conversations so that the factual stuff can be there, too. The sad thing is, after yesterday's dismal work, I was only too glad to pass the learning onto the glowing rectangle. We watched a large swath of the film adaptation of Les Miserables, then spent the remainder of the day watching a documentary about the French Revolution. Yipee. I'm not the kind of teacher who regularly uses movies/documentaries as curricula, but rather one who likes to supplement what I'm teaching with these extras. I do this, of course, because I like to look long and hard at the principles a piece of text is trying to convey. Normally, my students are eager to come along, seeking extra connections and interrogating their own ideas. This week, not so much. The one advantage to having the students do so much passive "work" is that it gave me a chance to read--a constant need for me and the students, as our abridgment of the story is still 600 pages long--and refresh myself on what tomorrow is supposed to be like. In this case, the day wasn't a waste, but I can't help feeling as though I've let the students down. I know that learning is ultimately on them--it's one of the few things that I agree with from Demille's writings on education--and I can't take responsibility for their failures. That doesn't change the fact that it leaves me more than a little upset at the state of things. Tomorrow will likely see a return to the text--a chance to explore another aspect of the world of Les Mis--and, I hope, a greater investment on the part of the students. If not? Well, I still have about an hour to go on that documentary… --- * No, I don't get tired of teaching the same thing every twelve months. I find that the familiarity of the content, mingled with fresh perspectives of new students, and the fact that I haven't taught that particular lesson for a year makes for a good mix. What I can't handle is doing the same thing multiple times in a day. Because of how my school runs, I teach a total of four classes, though two of them are two periods long. I used to teach three classes, each two periods long. I couldn't handle that kind of repetition. I found that I stopped caring about the conversation after a second pass, so I eventually asked to have two smaller classes--Shakespeare and creative writing--to counteract burnout. ==== Hey, friends. I have been releasing essays on my website for a couple of years now at a pretty steady rate. I'm happy to do so, as it benefits me as a writer and (I hope) you as a reader. I also think that, as a writer, it's okay if I believe that my work has some value monetarily as well as emotionally. To that end, I've created a Ko-Fi account, which is basically a way to give an online tip to a creator whose work you appreciate. The idea is, you can buy them a cup of coffee. (That's what the of the website sounds like, if you're curious.) I'm not charging for any of the content on my website; instead, if you'd like to toss me a cup-le (see what I did there?) of bucks to show your gratitude, that would be cool. I'd totally appreciate that appreciation. If you don't? No problem. We can still be friends. As always, thanks for reading! My hand hurts from signing so many yearbooks. My unending popularity probably comes because I sign anything that the students put in front of me, regardless of whether or not they wanted me to write in it.
I like yearbook day. I think the chaos of the day is counterbalanced by the sense of closure, excitement, and bittersweet energy that comes with saying goodbye. We have graduation tomorrow, but that's not an official school day. Kids come to this last day because they want their yearbooks and to see their friends. Otherwise, why would they bother? So, yeah, it's totally a bribe to get them to return for one last huzzah. We always have an assembly where students are awarded for their achievements during the year. We applaud and cheer and smile as kids gain recognition for all sorts of things--different departmental awards, exemplary behavior, service. One thing that was particularly cool this year was the grand total of scholarships awarded to individuals of the senior class: about $2 million. For a graduating class of 94, that's a pretty hefty number, if I do say so myself. Despite the fact that we didn't have a quidditch match at the end of the assembly, I'm still sore. My coworker started an ultimate frisbee team this year, which did very well under his tutelage. We used the annual sports match of faculty versus students, but with a disc instead of a quaffle. I have to admit, I was more than a little jealous: his practices were daily (I think?) from 6:00am until 7:30 or 7:45am, with tons of that hideous running that so many sports require, and he was able to recruit something in the neighborhood of more than 40 students. I had to cancel quidditch because I couldn't get a dozen kids to consistently show up. I don't hold any animosity to my coworker. I'm really happy for him, actually, as he's a passionate ultimate frisbee-er (frisbeeer? Frisian? Discean?) and that sort of support is encouraging. But I can't help but feel a sense of rejection by the broader school culture. Most everyone who tried quidditch really enjoys it, but not enough to make it a priority. So I passed the torch, but out of a sense of duty and reciprocation, I also played. I'm not good at ultimate frisbee, and I haven't run since, like, November, so I wasn't much of a help to the faculty team (we lost on a next-point-wins catch). After the game was over, I showered and changed, then went out to the gym where tables and chairs had been set up. I never buy a yearbook. I missed getting one my first year, so I figured, if I can't have the whole set, why bother? I've regretted that, but not enough to course-correct. On the plus side, it means I don't have to worry about losing my book, or kids writing something mean (they probably wouldn't). Those aren't much when it comes to "pluses" for not having a yearbook, but it's what I've got. I wrote and drew (usually a piggie, or sometimes a bee, and occasionally a cartoon Shakespeare) in easily over a hundred kids' yearbooks. The time was pleasant, even enjoyable. Normally, the kids start trickling free around one o'clock. This year, it was three and still students stuck around. I find this surprising, in part because summer is now here. Officially. So why hang out at school any longer than necessary? But I think it also speaks to the way the students feel about the school. For a lot of them (obviously, not all), it's safe, it's home. They feel comfortable and accepted. My school, for all its faults, really does something real to a great many students. I have some ideas about what they might be, but there's always a granular piece of je ne sais quoi that is a part of the school's success. And maybe that's a worthwhile essay in and of itself. But I need to stop. My hand hurts. It was yearbook day, after all. Listening
As frequent readers of my writings know, I find reasons to get myself to Barnes and Noble. This past weekend, I went because my son had a coupon for a free treat at the café there, so I went. Since I had some extra cash to spend thanks to legislative money (a perk I didn't know I had: I can spend up to $200 and be reimbursed for it, provided what I purchase is for the benefit of my classes. I've purchased some tech for my computer, a couple of history books, and even some Dungeons and Dragons stuff for the mentoring class I'm teaching), I picked up a book called Okinawa: The Last Battle of World War II and Dungeon Tiles Reincarnated (essentially, board pieces for D&D campaigns). Tonight, due to family circumstances, I found myself there again. Normally, I don't protest at going to Barnes and Noble, but twice within five days is a bit excessive for me, unless I have a specific thing I'm looking for. But, at the same time, I'm not about to not go to Barnes and Noble. I mean, they need the foot traffic, right? To look busy? Anyway, my wife and I were floating around the "Buy 2, Get One Free!" table when I saw Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together In The Cafeteria? I'm (always) trying to wrap my head around the race issue in America, so, despite the fact the book is twenty years old (though this is a revised and updated version), I picked it up. If I get this, I thought to myself, and Ancillary Justice by Anne Leckie* and The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin, I'll be able to pick up a lot of good stuff for about thirty bucks. Hey! That's how much Christmas money I still have! With these hopeful thoughts, I tucked Why Are All the Black Kids under my arm and shifted to move away from the table. A voice behind me asked what I was thinking about when I picked up the book. Surprised--this is Barnes and Noble, after all, and one does not usually make eye contact there, to say nothing of striking up a conversation--I turned to see an older gentleman pointing at the book in my hand. Having picked up so many titles in just the last few minutes, I couldn't remember which one I was holding. I glanced down at the title, then up at the speaker. "Oh, yeah," I said, unsure of exactly how I ought to feel. "I'm still trying to understand why we struggle so much on the racial issue." I could feel my face heating up in a flush of embarrassment. He smiled, then started talking to me, saying that the biggest issue--the reason we still struggle with racism--is because of our inability to listen. That started a forty-or-so minute long conversation with the man, during which time my wife and I were given a wide-ranging travelogue of the man's life. His time in the Army; that he'd served for nine years; his time as an aspiring physicist; his ideas about patents; his sister who had a master's in nursing; how many trees he'd cut down; the time he'd had a medical student miss his vein and puncture his left bicep; why he lived in Utah; how important grants were; how he taught second graders scientific notation; the time he was almost arrested in SoCal because the cop thought he was a gang banger; and much, much more. It was a dizzying experience, one reminiscent of plenty of conversations I had whilst serving my mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints down in Miami. While what he had to say was obviously important to him--and I didn't want to interrupt, especially since he started off chatting with us by saying that America's problems come about because we don't listen--the thing that I most wanted to know about was what his thoughts were about the racial divide. And though part of me wanted to engage him on the topic, it didn't take long to see that it probably would've roved away. I don't know what he did in the Army--he wore both an Army Corps shirt and baseball cap--or whether or not he saw action. He told us--twice--that he was sixty-two, so there's a chance that he went into some dangerous territory on more than one occasion. Nevertheless, one of the things that I try to teach my students during these World War units is that, regardless of what one thinks about war, veterans deserve our respect and gratitude. I also thought of one of the things that my professor said while I was studying the Wars in university: "Basically, 98% of veterans return crazy. The other 2% were crazy before they left." I disagree with that statement on a practical level, but I think he was speaking from an emotional point of view, not a statistical one. The point that I always take off of that is the fact that no one passes through war unchanged. And, as I consider it more carefully, the majority of veterans that I've met have a similar tendency to rove and roam in their discourse, or--on the opposite end--be hyper focused in everything that they do, say, and think with an unparalleled intensity. This veteran was more soft-spoken than other vets I've met, and eager to share and explain what he'd learned. So I listened. And listened. And listened some more. Eventually, we parted ways, me shaking his warm, brown hand and thanking him for his service. I said it was nice talking with him--which was true--and then I wandered the store another few minutes until my wife's hunger put us homeward bound. One of the things that I've been trying really hard to do--and, I believe, is part of the reason I'm still on Twitter so often--is to understand other people, other points of view. To try to keep my own point of view from being the default, to recognize my own biases. I can't do that if I'm not willing to listen. So I shut my mouth and I listened to a Black man who was an Army vet and a second grade teacher and an owner of dozens of patents pending. I think, even if I don't remember everything he said, that I learned something as a result. --- * As I typed this, I realized that Okinawa and Ancillary Justice are both by people named Leckie. The late Robert Leckie is, according to Wikipedia, a Purple Heart veteran, having fought in the Pacific during the Second World War. Ann is a much-buzzed-about science fiction author. I don't know if there's any relation, but I thought it was kind of a funny coincidence. Take Note
I realized, around the tenth grade, that I wanted to be an English teacher. English was the subject that I understood the best, and having a career that didn't depend on math skills appealed to me. Not only that, but going back all the way to my seventh grade year, I had always had an English teacher whose class I liked and whom I respected. Indeed, with the exception of my eleventh grade year, I like all of my secondary education English teachers--and there's something to be said about having an inspiration, encouraging teacher. As I went through my teenage years, I read a lot of books--few of them classics, to be honest, though I did ask for The Complete Works of Shakespeare when I turned eighteen--and so I grew to be a bibliophile. Once I started having more discretionary money, I turned into a guilty tsundoku, though I will say that I still read. But my acquisitions far outpace my perusals. Part of the reason that I've slowed down in my reading is because of video games. I'm not going to try to dodge that one: Video games are easier to enjoy and have a strong ludic quality to them that books pretty much don't. Sure, you can gamify things, I guess, but that isn't really the point. Especially after a long day of heavy intellectual effort*, having a way to decompress that is entertaining and interesting is a wonderful thing. But I've ruined even that. Let me back up: When I was in college, I was very reluctant to write in a book. I would take care never to bend the spine too far on my mass market paperbacks because I didn't like the unsightly cracks--a habit that I continue to this day, as the surprisingly good-shape most of my books enjoy attest to. I mean, I didn't like it if I lost my bookmark part way through the reading: I wanted to have the same slip of paper marking my place from when I started to when I finished. This reverence for books meant that underlining, summarizing, highlighting, starring, or whatever other annotative tricks people do didn't come to me until much later in my life. By that, I mean, in the last three or four years. My school is one that's focused on liberal arts and the humanities. I teach a class that's both English and history, with a Socratic approach to the curriculum. That means that I'm doing a lot of reading in a handful of different areas. Since I teach the same texts every year (for the most part), I finally cracked and began to mark up my books. While I don't do this for my cotton candy reads (I won't, for instance, be marking up The Dinosaur Princess as I work my way through it), almost all of my history books are now being marked up. I highlight things in my Kindle editions when I'm reading on my phone or e-reader. I found that, while reading God: A Human History that if I didn't have a pencil with me, I didn't want to read it. It's now so bad that I dropped a handful of dollars on pencil holders that are supposed to be affixed to tablet computer cases to more easily hold a stylus. I stick them in the back of the book so that I can keep the pencil at easy access. (Though these use adhesive, and that worries me; I'm only using these in books that I got really cheap, so I don't feel as bad about permanently damaging the book.) At this point, I feel like I should explain my notetaking process. When I see something that I like, I will underline it with the pencil. That means that my book mark has to be a sturdy piece of plastic or cardboard. I have old Magic: The Gathering cards that serve well, but I also have a bunch of old teacher identification badges. Those are the best, because they're credit card sized and made of plastic, which means that they don't get bent or worn out the way cardboard does. If something I like is longer than one line, I won't underline it. I use an open ┌superior half-bracket for the opening of my highlight, then an inferior half-bracket for the closing part. ┘** If, within the bracketed section, I find something of even greater emphasis, I'll underline that place. But what I always have to do, after marking it, is writing something. Sometimes it's as small as a star, indicating that I really like what I read there. Other times it's "Hmmmm" because I don't know what to think. Sometimes it's a quick synopsis of the part, so that when flipping through I can more easily find the particular detail. Sometimes it's a thought that occurs to me that I jot down in the margins. But I'm always talking back to the book. This sort of interaction is not possible when I'm playing a video game or watching a movie. But with my video game Winterim this past January, I began journaling what I was thinking whilst playing the game. I did that specifically for the class, and when the course had finished, I slipped that journal into my desk drawer and figured, I won't be seeing that again for a long while. I was wrong. It started with my replay of Final Fantasy X, which had a lot better story structure than I remembered, and it made me think of some potential essay topics. I pulled out that journal and would jot down the thoughts as I went along. It's not as nice as having the actual text there, and they're only notes--not journal entries or ruminations like I did during the Winterim. And then, foolishly, I decided to play Metal Gear Solid 4. I've played the game I don't even know how many times. It was the sole reason I bought a PlayStation 3 back in 2008. As I worked my way through Solid Snake's final story, I kept my journal on the couch next to me. That is a talk-heavy game (to put it mildly), but there's a lot to think about in terms of gameplay, meaning, nostalgia, conclusion, and storytelling. In fact, I have twelve or thirteen pages worth of notes from the fifteen or so hours I spent playing the game. So now my notetaking obsession has trickled over to things that don't lend themselves to notetaking. I'm pausing my playthroughs of games in order to jot down thoughts here or there. Many of those thoughts are going to end up in these essays, I'm sure. In fact, were it not for the fact that MGS4 is so complicated and requires so much thinking, I would likely have started trying to poke at that game today. Instead, I wrote this about how I write notes. How meta. And, y'know, now that I think about it, maybe that's why I liked playing Overwatch so much (besides the fact that Overwatch is an incredibly fun game to play): I didn't have to take notes on it. --- * I'm certain there are teachers out there who don't feel that they're intellectually stimulated by their job. I am not one of them. While sometimes I fail and sometimes the students fail, on the whole, my days require a huge quantity of mental energy. While it isn't as view-broadening as my final year in college, I think that my job right now is one of the more mentally and emotionally draining things I've consistently done. ** The digital version doesn't look quite the way I like it, but it gives you an idea. I have a love/hate relationship with the two apps that I use for my audiobook needs. The love part is, when I need a book or want to try out something new, I can check out (and checkout) any number of titles that I wouldn't otherwise find time for. I've mentioned a bunch on here before, so I'm not going to link to them, but I mean things like Good or God?, 10 Books That Screwed Up The World, We Were Feminists Once, All The Single Ladies, and The Bible Doesn't Say That are some that leap to mind readily. They're all at different levels in terms of their content, but the fact that I could try them easily because these apps are connected to my library account--and, therefore, I don't have to pay for them--is how I get more reading done than I would otherwise.
The hate part is that the selection can be unreliable and the apps themselves more often than I care to experience, buggy and poorly conceived. (I still have yet to figure out why audio players on smartphones are so crappy. Why not have the play button be huge? Why not make sure it isn't easy to accidentally tap the back button when you really meant to pause it? Why do we still have scrubbers, the absolute worst way to hone in on a specific part of an audio track?) As with any library, there's also a limitation on the titles available at any given moment, to say nothing of the titles' variety at all. Nevertheless, I use both OverDrive and RBDigital (OneClick Digital) to keep something rolling pretty much all of the time. And of all the different titles that I have enjoyed, nothing quite tops the Modern Scholars series, available on RBDigital. Each is seven and a half hours long (give or take) and take the conversational tone of a professor lecturing on his (or, on rare occasions, her) area of expertise. These Modern Scholar lectures are available for purchase a la carte, but they're pretty pricey. Having the cost defrayed through the library's purchase of it makes these courses possible. I've listened to lectures on the English language, science-fiction and fantasy literature, Dante's Inferno, Winston Churchill, the peace accords in Paris after World War I, the Enlightenment, and a bunch of others. These lectures help me grow as a person, as well as give me insights and information that I can then share with my students. And though I don't give them as much attention as they deserve (I listen to them as I drive around, do the dishes, or play video games), I am almost always happy with what I get to take away. The one that I finished most recently is a lecture series by Lawrence Schiffman called The Hebrew Scriptures. Schiffman walks through a scholarly approach to what we know about the writing, compilation, and meanings of the Old Testament based upon archaeology and textual analyses, mingling insights about the ways in which interpretation and tradition have modified the ways in which the Bible (which he uses interchangeably with the term "Hebrew scriptures") has been understood. I took this course after finishing Good or God?, and that change of tone was really appreciated. In fact, that's probably the biggest thing about this lecture course. It's clear that Schiffman is Jewish, as he would never pronounce Yahweh, instead spelling it out. Yet, despite that religious conservativism, he gave a fairly objective look at the evidences--both independent from and intratextual to--the Bible has with regard to whatever theme he was discussing. His final lecture, for example, is about the impact of the Bible--this time, meaning both the Tora and the New Testament--on our Western culture. He observes, rather than renders judgment on, the ways in which invocations to or acknowledgements of God abound in our society, from our money to parts of the Declaration of Independence, but also notes areas where there are tensions and possible issues if a separation of church and state isn't maintained. Rather than landing on one side or the other, he simply states that this is a thing and moves on. Some areas he makes more firm assertions, and these are usually justified. That the Bible is the foundational text of our modern culture is undeniable, and he declares it as such. The ways in which the New Testament respond and allude to the Old are likewise delivered in a forthright manner. This kind of rigor was the kind of thing that I appreciated more than what I got from John Bevere's book. While his was hermeneutical, Schiffman's feels more analytical, and I liked that. One of the most intriguing parts that Schiffman discussed, for me at least, was the concept of a biblical prophet. Since I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the idea of prophet is a familiar one. However, what the prophet was in ancient times and what the modern-day prophets are like is more of a Venn diagram than a circle. A distinction I particularly liked? For Schiffman, a prophet is one who is "not a foreteller, but a forthteller." In other words, prophets aren't about describing the future, but instead how one should live--holding forth God's truth for people to accept. In the Mormon tradition, we sustain the Church leaders as "prophets, seers, and revelators". But I have long scratched my head as to what these different words were supposed to mean. It sounded like it was repeating itself, honestly. But put in the light of Schiffman's explanation, the role of the prophet is to explain how one ought to live, the role of the seer is to explain what is to come, and the role of the revelator is the one who uncovers meaning. In Mormonic terms, at least, this makes the most sense to me. A second point from Schiffman backs up my own understanding of how scripture ought to work in people: Namely, to look at ways in which it can be understood as a metaphoric, or symbolic, explanation. Job, he points out, was considered by many rabbis as not a real person, but instead a story that is meant to mean something to its hearers. This approach to metaphor versus literalism is one that is one of the greatest battlegrounds (though I dislike using that phrase) in biblical understanding that we have. The entire premise of Young Earth Creationism is predicated on landing firmly on the literal side of the Bible, but the tradition and understanding of the Bible through scholarly and rabbinic tradition doesn't hold to this sort of thought at all. Symbolism and metaphor are mighty teachers, and Schiffman's structuring of how and why some stories fall into these categories was refreshing. Because these are lectures, I found my attention waning when I was listening to them for too long, or when I had to leave off and then try to remember what was being discussed. The app lets me listen to the reading as fast as double speed, and whenever I tried that, I felt like I was out of breath the entire time. I settled for 1.5x the regular speed, which is a pretty fast clip. Retention of what he said, of course, was not at the all-time high. Additionally, really interesting points can't be marked for later retrieval (a major downside to the listening of a book), and there were some parts that Schiffman didn't really clarify for me--the Dead Sea Scrolls is the big one. Nevertheless, it was an interesting lecture. If you have a library that partners with OneClick or RBDigital (they're the same thing), I would definitely recommend you check out any of the Modern Scholars lectures generally, and The Hebrew Scriptures specifically. During my teenage years, I played in a band. Well, to be more accurate, I played bass guitar in a band. To be even more accurate, I was the reserve bass player in a friend's band, called in to substitute whenever the real bassist couldn't make it because of parents. We were called The Moon Monsters and we played our own derivative brand of original ska music, taking cues from Five Iron Frenzy and the Aquabats. We had a horns section, lead, a couple of guitarists, and a drummer. It was quite the collection.
I'm really grateful for the time I got to spend with the Monsters. We played a couple of shows that were a ton of fun--in the silly, anxious way that one has fun as a teenager--and I had some experiences that I couldn't have had any other way. (Indeed, it's memories of those moments that I makes me worry about what chances my kids will get as they age, particularly since we aren't pressuring them to pick up an instrument.) And, as most things about high school tend to be, it's both encouraging and embarrassing to think about: On the one hand, it's inspiring to know that I really did learn and grow from those experiences. On the other, it makes the warm ooze of embarrassment slip down my face when I think of how ridiculous I was. In many ways, I was much more sure of myself then than I am now, and though naïveté accounts for most of that, I can certainly pine for a time when I felt as though I understood the world and my place in it. But, like many of the potentially greatest bands in the world, we all went different ways after graduating high school. I think I have the EP my friend recorded (I wasn't asked to participate, since I wasn't an official member, but I did play as a special guest in an early couple of cuts from the demo), but I really don't know for sure. That effort has evaporated, transforming from a real experience into the vapors of memory. Like any high school kid with a guitar, I imagined myself both better than I actually was, and destined to be a part of something larger. I wanted to make a band with a creative name that really lived up to what I perceived as my greatest strength: My imagination and creativity. Plus, I love big words (a perennial sesquipedalian, I). Add to that my observation that the letters CE were carved into almost everything--though no one knew why--and I realized that, were I to create a band, I could do what the Stone Temple Pilots did, and have my initials be part of a ubiquitous brand. Putting all of these considerations together, and you have the name of a band that never was: Consistently Eclectic. I can't fault much of the logic behind it (and I like the paradox inherent in the phrase), but the name itself isn't as punchy as I thought back when I dreamed it up. My plan was to take disparate sounds and let them be--heavy acoustic parts because of my love of the Dave Matthews Band, along with horns and ska-like rhythms because of my love for that brief moment in music history. Some rock, some funk…whatever we wanted. We wouldn't be defined as a particular type of musicians, because we were--obviously--consistently eclectic. I never got past the name, really. After I got home from my mission and in the early days of my marriage, my friend from the Moon Monsters would come over. He and I would write songs with the idea of cribbing styles that we liked--a Muse-style song, an Rx Bandits-style song, a Live-style song--and turning that into something, but we never really went anywhere with it. I still remember (and occasionally play) a lot of those songs, but my own self-consciousness about my voice prevented me from feeling comfortable in writing or singing the lyrics, and without other musicians to be around, I could never find the momentum I needed to launch another band. Since then, life has complicated itself like a recursive fractal and I'm not likely to ever try that again. Originally, I started this essay out to say that I try to be consistently eclectic with what I write about here--and that much, I think is true. I have essays of all sorts, ranging from profound to political to polemical--but I realize that the quasi-regret of never pursuing more from music is worth looking at, too. After all, life is nothing but the perpetual cycle of choice and consequence. Sometimes those choices are clear and direct, like when I had to decide to marry my wife (easiest decision of my life). Sometimes the choices are expected and worthwhile as a result (I'd file my mission in there). Sometimes the choices are habitual and engrained (like my pursuit of English and reading). But sometimes the choices come because of different currents that are unintelligible until farther down the path. I didn't pursue music because I was busy reading and writing, working my way through school in a job I hated and dealing with, what I realize now, a hefty dose of depression. I didn't make Consistently Eclectic because I wanted other things more. There's nothing wrong with that, of course. That's the great secret of living: You'll never be able to do all you would mildly like to do. I still get to perform every once in a while. At the school, we sometimes put together a teacher band and I play the guitar for that, as well as a bit of guest starring with the orchestra during the Christmas/Winter Concert. Those little drips are enjoyable, and they're a bit of a payoff for the hours I stand in the cramped corner next to my bed where my guitars sit. But I also read, write, play games, raise a family, and teach--among other things--and that's a good thing to have, too. In this way, I suppose, my life has the variety and routine enough that I could say that, while I haven't a band of the name, I can say that my life really is consistently eclectic. Winterim 2018 has been quite a different experience than Winterim 2017. The latter was a whirlwind tour of Western Europe, sliding from Germany to Belgium to France and then to England. It was a life-changing and profound experience, fueled by eagerness despite jetlag and a deep sense of history. Though there were some (read: many) mistakes in my approach to that tour, I think of the World Wars Tour as a highlight of my life.
This year, I'm playing a lot of video games. The difference is pretty stark, but I have to say that I’m feeling almost as tired as I did in Europe. There are plenty of differences in what I'm doing, so the stresses and exhaustion come from different sources. Last year, the worry of keeping the entire tour going, managing the many cogs and moving parts, ensuring that the students didn't get lost, and hitting all the cues made for a wonderful--if difficult--experience. This year, for the first time in nearly a decade, I'm teaching a Winterim alone. So I have no one to help share the load, no one to whom I can delegate. That is one of the largest reasons why I'm struggling with this year's course. The other thing about now versus then is what I'm trying to accomplish. Last year, there were all sorts of things that the tour was accomplishing, not the least of which was helping students to understand the World Wars in a more personal, intimate way. Because of where we were, I didn't have to teach them: The history was part of the air we were breathing. This year, I'm striving to broaden the students' minds and understanding of a critical theory about video games, while at the same time giving them a hands-on experience of trying to design and conceptualize a game of their own. This process has been…rough. I need a second pair of hands, but getting it was never a possibility. Feeling scraped thin, I have to rush from one classroom to another to keep the students on task, help troubleshoot ideas they have, and give recommendations based upon the lifetime of video games I've played. See, in one classroom I have a VR headset organized, giving students a chance to play the latest-and-greatest video games. (I should say, they're really enjoying the VR and the purchase was definitely the right move. Perhaps the only right move I made.) Since the equipment is delicate and expensive, I feel like I need to make certain that things are going well with the VR kids, but also have to orbit those who are working on their own game designs. This has left me physically drained, as I am on the move constantly. The second half of each day is where we both play games as a class (one student uses the controller and the rest of us watch…and laugh whenever there's a mistake) and discuss the critical theory of video games. The intellectual energy expended here is immense, and whenever I have heady or difficult topics, I find that it only works to talk about them when the class is willing to meet me halfway. Alas, I don't get that from this group. Now, that isn't to say I don't have good conversations, or that some of the students aren't participating well. Quite the contrary. There is a lot of interesting work being done, from an educational and intellectual level, that makes me happy. But I'm also working with a younger age group than I'm used to. While the class has students from ninth grade up through senior year, about half of the students come from the ninth and tenth grades. That makes the class more distractible, dozy, and dopey than I'm used to. Having to exert so much authority just to keep the class on task--a job that isn't alleviated by the older students who aren't focusing well, either--is emotionally draining. Put it together: physical drain + intellectual drain + emotional drain = one tired teacher. More than that, I get the sense that the students are indulging me by having these "conversations" but really, they just want to sleep* or play another video game. And while playing games is, obviously, a big part of the course, it isn't the only part of the course. Years ago, after going through this Winterim with my first group of students, one of the kids commented that he preferred the conversations about games more than the playing of them. Yet this group can't remain focused (or awake) enough to have more than superficial comments and ideas. I can't blame the students exclusively, of course: There's a lot of stuff that I could do better. I could give them more time to play (though some kids sleep through that part, too, so…), more time to design, or change the topics that we discuss to try to fit into something that they're better equipped to talk about. The problem with implanting any of these things--all of which I control--is that it defeats the objective of the class that I set out to accomplish. The point of the Winterim is to help prepare them for the work force (which I'm doing by having them simulate working as video game designers) and challenge them with academic rigor (which I'm doing by critically analyzing the hobby they love). So I feel constrained by the expectations which I've set out for myself, but I also feel like a bad teacher because I'm not making the class worthwhile for them. We've now completed two weeks of the three-week course, and I'm feeling more frustrated and less excited about what I'm doing than I have at any other time in my Winterim history. Considering this is the tenth Winterim I've led, that's a significant statement. What about solutions? Well, I'm a bit tapped out. I mean, aside from things like, "Get more sleep!" and "Eat better!", I don't know quite what to do. At this juncture--with a video game day planned for tomorrow (13 January 2018) where we eat a lot of food and play a lot of games and that's about it--I'm unsure what move to make. We're too deep in for any major shift, but I'm immensely dissatisfied with what I've done. In the past, I would give the final two or three days to the students to finish up with their projects. This year, though, seeing them fumble their time away (in some cases), I'm not feeling that generous. But the idea of having to teach them despite themselves throughout the final four days isn't a very exciting prospect to me. And that's why I don't know if I have any solutions. This, by the way, is one of the hard things about teaching (and, I imagine, a lot of other jobs, but I don't know those as intimately; it's a real thing in the education profession, though): Because there are so many personalities that generate the milieu of a classroom, there are some times when control is wrested from me. I can't control the specific kids who enroll in the class--I have to handle what I get--and I can't control their behaviors. I can only modify my expectations. And, in certain cases, there isn't the freedom to do that, either. Hence the sense of frustration and powerlessness roiling about my mind and heart. I suppose there are ways a better teacher than I could take care of this discrepancy, but I don't know where to go for that sort of guidance. See, each day of Winterim equals about one week's worth of a normal term's instruction. So I've essentially taught two months of classwork in the last two weeks, and I have another "month" to go. That wrinkle is one of the things that exacerbates the problem. In a normal term, irritating classes are 1) only with you for an hour or so a day (assuming a seven- or eight period long day), and 2) offset by other classes and other students. In other words, there's some variety. Though the quantity of days spent with the rough classes is greater, the time with them per day is smaller. In the case of Winterim, none of those coping mechanisms applies. Add to that the pressure that a teacher always has of performing perfectly with every lesson, but take away the chance for any sort of refining process, and it's little wonder that I'm feeling out of sorts. And here's the thing: I don't want to give up. I feel like what I have to offer these students is worthwhile and meaningful. I want them to use this class as a way of improving themselves and the world and becoming more aware of how they consume media. I think this class is important. I want them to find ways to explore games in a way that's deeper. I want them to recognize that, just because they're playing games, it's not just a game. Maybe that's it. Maybe I feel too close to the agon of it all, turning it into an agony. Maybe I should just…let be. But I don't think that would make me any happier with the results. --- * This is a particularly frustrating thing I'm dealing with, as our school, which normally starts at 8:00am, pushes back our classes by another hour. So the students aren't supposed to be to school until 9:00am, and they only take this one class--meaning that they aren't doing extra school work for anything else. They literally have one job, yet they still can't get enough sleep? It's maddening. |
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