In order to earn an endorsement for the history class I was hired to teach early in my career, I took a class on early American history. The text book itself was a single volume covering the entirety from a bit about Mesoamerica up to the 2008 election. It was the last section that really stood out to me: Seeing a watershed event like the 2008 election and the Great Recession written down as if just another chapter in a history book was kind of strange.
Amazing how much has changed in a dozen years. Future history books are going to have quite a time trying to conceptualize all that we've experienced lately. It might easier, on one hand: YouTube, social media, and a digital record of ever expanding depth will allow for documentation unparalleled in the history of the human experience. On the other hand, that quantity of information is impossible to sort through, contain, or do justice to. What's omitted from history books is sometimes as instructive as what's left in. When the experience of 2020 is complete, what will be remembered? Australian fires? Presidential impeachments? School dismissals? Pandemic deaths? Pandemic protests? Black Lives Matter? Peaceful protests? Police riots? William Barr's abuses of power? Rumors about Senator Lindsay Graham's sex life? A handful of memes? The list can go on and on…and we're only in June. Of all that's there, the question that lands closest to home is the one about school dismissals. What does it mean to restart school in the fall of the hell-year known as 2020? Though I tend to avoid the Wall Street Journal, this article they posted about the failures of remote learning caught my eye (and my click). There's plenty to unpack here. First of all, perhaps a few questions about the goal for the final quarter of the school year. What did people expect from crisis schooling? Did parents/students think to have a parallel experience to in-class, in-school instruction? Were students dismissed mid-March with a promise that their education would not be impacted by this catastrophe? If so, then remote schooling definitely didn't work. And, as an educator, I didn't think that it would. However, if one's expectation was that the students would still be presented with some of the curriculum, some of the opportunities to increase their skills, some of the knowledge that they would otherwise have gotten, then it did work. Honestly, if a parent thought that helping their kid from home with their school work was going to be the exact same as when the kid was actually at school, that's on the parents' failures. I wasn't teaching my classes--I was trying to help my students learn something. That's it--and that's not even what my normal goal as an educator is. Education has a lot of problems. One happens to be that there's a huge amount of assumptions and traditions that mandate the way that we operate. In Utah (the only state I've taught in, though much of the US is similar), we have a certain quantity of school days (180) that must be held, as well as a certain number of in-seat hours (990) that are expected. When you consider that 180 days out of 365 isn't even half of the year (despite having two thirds of the calendar), it quickly becomes apparent that something doesn't quite match up. We assume our students are in school for nine months; our traditions (multiple three-day weekends, Fall and Spring Break, Thanksgiving holiday, Winter Break) actually change that. In my school, with the different schedules for finals, our three-week intensive called Winterim, and these traditional school breaks, I have approximately 42 days (not counting regular weekends) wherein I don't work with my students and the regular curriculum. This doesn't count the 90 or so days of summer break. This is the system that I grew up with. It's the one that I've always taught in. I'm not (necessarily) advocating its change. I'm instead pointing out that when we think of a school "year", our calendar says something quite different from the actual in-class experience. If someone were interested in shifting around any of these scheduling concepts--say, to reduce the amount of time during summer break, or having shorter days over a longer time period with fewer breaks--there's a lot of ossified tradition to overcome. Many parents (and I include myself here) look forward to the summer break as a chance for family trips, relaxed schedules, and long-standing activities. Childhood is tantamount to summertime (and Christmas, I'd think, for many) in the minds of a lot of adults, and it's only fair that they want to share those beloved moments of their youth with their children. So changing that in a widescale way is working against the current on almost every level. What we expect through this (and other academic traditions) is that our children will come out on the other end educated. And, for the most part, I think this can be a successful plan. While it isn't ideal, the reality is that we have a highly literate society (in that we can read; whether we can process ideas and think about what we read is a different discussion) and our education system can find and refine a lot of talent. But its success isn't predicated on that it exists: It's based upon the way we educate. It's no surprise that when we change the way we educate, we don't get the same kind of successes. One of the educational buzzwords (which has faded in my dozen years of teaching) is "backwards by design". The principle is a good one, I think: You consider what you want a student to be doing at the end of the unit, and then work backwards to see how to get them there. Kind of obvious, isn't it? Yet it's not unusual--at least, in my experience--to think, Hey, I'd really like to teach this particular topic…and then fail to figure out what the ending looks like. The default for many is a test--something that does a good job of measuring how well a kid does on a test--but maybe an essay? A handful of problems with answers in the back of the book? If, however, the educator knows what the ending looks like--the kid understands how to use MLA citation in a paper, let's say--then the beginning is pretty straightforward and sets the kid down the correct path. The end of the year for me is absolutely by design: I have a specific goal and emotional conclusion that I work all year to arrive at. That's how my class works. But it can't arrive at the ending I've designed if the course shifts abruptly and permanently. Did my class "work" the way I expected it to? No, of course not. How could it? Its entire output was predicated on an input that I could no longer do. I think that's what's stuck in my craw about the WSJ article. Not a single regular teacher set out in August 2019 with the expectation of concluding a full quarter of the school year in a remote learning environment. We weren't designing for that endpoint. It could never work for that reason. But what did work? Schools limped on, of course, struggling to figure out how to balance everything from everyone. We did provide content to students--who may or may not have done what was asked of them. Students weren't homeschooled--they learned at home. Any homeschooling parent worth their salt could tell you the difference. And that was something we did with about two days' preparation. This is not to toot my own horn, but to instead contextualize the effort that was required. Normally, a teacher will spend an additional two to four hours a day (roughly averaging and making generalizations) figuring out lesson plans, grading assignments, and preparing for the next day's work. By breaking the needs down into smaller, daily chunks, we're able to remain flexible (in case something didn't work and needs fine tuning the next day) yet not overwhelmed. I make it sound tranquil, but for many the process of teaching is very much laying down the track as the train comes running up from behind. The longer a person teaches the same curriculum, the easier it is to know what she's doing at any given time. This is where innovation and improvisation can come in, as the teacher's skill in the curriculum allows for deviations that weren't possible before. All of this can be implemented in a steady, consistent manner (not that it always is), and the teacher is able to course-correct as needed. By being with the students on a daily basis (in my case; obviously, block schedules are a thing), teachers are able to see what went wrong in their own delivery, where students were confused, and maintain their own sanity by not having to repeat themselves sixty-plus times. That is the process that, via assumptions and traditions, we have constructed as teachers (with the obvious caveat that every teacher's experience is different and unique so mileage may vary). That's how we work. It allows a huge amount of autonomy, as fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants teachers are able to crank stuff out in time for class, while pre-planned-for-the-past-six-months teachers have their routines to keep their ships sailing. Now take all of that skill, intuition, preparation, and planning and demand a new way of delivering content, all within two days. That's what we teachers ended up having to do in mid-March 2020. In my case, I said goodbye to my students on Friday, and some of them I haven't seen since then--and summer has arrived. I now had to figure out how to explain my curriculum, how to encourage participation in discussions, how to communicate my expectations, all on an ad-hoc basis with sundry schedules over which I had no control. Posting an assignment online is not the same as telling students, in person, what I expect of them. The goal of the last quarter was not to deliver my planned content: It was to support student learning in a crisis. That's what I did. And, as far as that goal is concerned, it was successful. Almost all of my students went through and learned something because of what I did. None of them learned what I wanted them to learn--the end point was frustrated--but they didn't not learn. When we ask if teachers failed, students failed, or the system failed, the answer is obviously "Yes" to all three. However, that's grading with a rubric that doesn't fit anymore. We did not make the most out of a less-than ideal situation, but neither did we fail to do our jobs. We did the most with what was available to us--a technique that, especially in Utah, we have been forced, time and again, to utilize. Despite the best efforts of me and millions of other teachers out there, students on the whole are at a lower place in their educations than they would be in a typical year. That much I agree with, and the graph in the WSJ article is a disheartening one. We educators are well aware of the loss of educational progress that happens over a three-month summer. For some students, they're going through a six-month break. Their learning is going to be hampered, potentially for the rest of their academic life, because of COVID-19. This is a tragedy that's going to take years to heal. I will say, though, it's certainly possible that we can make some lemonade from the lemons of the academic year 2019-2020. But I'll save that for a different post. 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. 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. Over the many hundreds of essays I've vomited out and then published to my website without even running over it again for editing purposes, I have written about Harold Bloom, in one mode or another, quite a bit. On the whole, I've long liked his work (with qualifications intact), but haven't put a lot of effort into reviewing his works lately. Now, however, with the cantankerous old scholar passing away this week, I thought it might be fitting to throw my own two cents into the well of well-wishers and detractors who are commemorating and excoriating the legacy he's left behind.
What put me onto this dichotomous thinking was a tweet (not worth dredging up right now) about how all of the laudatory essays about Bloom were written by males. And, to be certain, my quick search for a news report (as opposed to an op-ed) for Dr. Bloom's death proved to be rather tricky, as everyone had a take to give--and almost all of them were, indeed, by men. (This one from the Mary Sue has some nuance, as well as treading over familiar critical ground.) And, being as I am a guy-fellow, another think-piece about Dr. Bloom really would be one snowflake among a blizzard. But I'm going to do it anyway. And here's why: Harold Bloom was one of the best professors I never had. It's difficult to reconcile the impact of a person's work when so much of (in this case) his work is tied up in something that I also love. He gave me the vocabulary of a Bardolator, with a concept of how to read Shakespeare that provided a pathway into the Bard that I may not have otherwise found. He was the anathema that we all spoke of during the Wooden O Symposium 2018 where I presented. I've heard him quoted (and, more often, misunderstood) in casual conversations about Shakespeare. His polemical, belligerent, curmudgeonly character (or, perhaps, caricature) gave me a sense of validation in loving unabashedly what I love. This is a mighty gift: Aside from salvation, I can think of no thing that will better a human's soul than being able to hear Shakespeare's multitudinous voices. These are difficult voices to hear, in part because of the four hundred years of static that makes some of his nuances garbled or missing. But Bloom's ear was attuned to Shakespeare's levels in a solid, committed way, and his ability to express that was masterful. And though he may have missed the mark occasionally (how occasionally depends on how much you've read of him and how much you agree with his fundamental positions), his unabashed love for richness in literature is inspirational, powerful, and worthwhile. Yet he's accused of having sexually harassed one of his students*. This is not something that ought to be swept under the rug or dismissed as a "those times were different"--no, it's still wrong, regardless of timing. The tension of what to do about this--the tangled knot of separating the art from the artist is a Gordian one that I've yet to undo--makes accolades conditional at best and ill-distributed at worst. How much poor behavior is excusable? Ideally, none at all, but in a real world that isn't divided into Death Eaters and everyone else, there has to be some level of forgiveness? "Treat every man after his dessert," asks Hamlet, "and who shall 'scape whipping?" Does the art that's created likewise generate exculpation? It's easier for me to pass off poor behavior as a quirk of personality in someone like John Milton or William Shakespeare--men whose art is, undoubtedly, more impressive than Bloom's--in part because they're far removed from me and my time. Any direct victims of them are no longer hurting; so is that long enough? Oh, sure, I definitely acknowledge the misogyny or racism that their particular works endorse or operate with--I don't pretend their violations aren't there. It isn't a really satisfying answer, but it's the best I can come up with for my centuries-dead idols. Modern artists, however, are in a different situation. Those they harm in their ascent are still living, too, and dealing with the consequences of their crimes. (And a few months away from the comedy circuit doesn't count as penitence or "being cancelled", Louis C.K., no matter how much you may think otherwise!) How long does pain preclude progression? This is not an easy question, and it spirals into larger and more important dialogues than the death of an august literary critic. And that, I think, is part of what makes hard writing any sort of eulogy for the man so difficult. He contributed mightily to the English language, and was as staunch a defender for aesthetic beauty and humanistic value as you could find--provided the aesthetic beauty was one that he likewise recognized. Part of his charm was his belief in his own correctness--it also, paradoxically, was one of his great detriments. His unflappable assurance allowed him to make assertions that people still grapple with--that Shakespeare "invented the human" is perhaps his most visible one--and his sense of unassailable interpretation gave us a great deal to think about. That is a valuable thing. It is no easy thing to do, what Harold Bloom did. Regardless of whether or not you agreed with him, he made you think and stretch. It isn't like the nonsense of other poor polemicals such as Ben Shapiro where two seconds' thought lets you know the guy's an idiot and should be dismissed**. Bloom may not have hit the level of his idol Shakespeare in being a writer who can be embraced or rejected but never ignored, but he still managed to make a large impact. To paraphrase and invert Othello, Harold Bloom wrote wisely, but perhaps not too well. Still, as far as writerly goals go, he will be someone continually debated for at least a generation--far longer than the half a year a good man may be remembered, according to Hamlet. Harold Bloom probably would smile at that. --- * As a matter of principle, I believe Naomi Wolf--and, let's be honest: A crusty old white guy who believes in the unfailing superiority of the white West as a cultural zenith not thinking women are objects for his use? Yeah, not very likely. ** Easiest example: Benny boy argued (with a straight face no less) that people on the coast shouldn't worry about climate change and rising sea levels because they can "just sell their houses" and move elsewhere. Sell them, I suppose, to Aquaman, right Ben? Every year, I get to talk to my students (notice the preposition: to, not with, though at may be the most appropriate choice) about Shakespeare's best play, Hamlet. Every year, I promise myself that I will keep my comments to a minimum to allow the students an opportunity to express their thoughts and to get lost in a worthwhile conversation with them about one of the many powerful topics that Shakespeare so beautifully raises. Every year, I break that promise.
Today, students gave their end-of-project presentations on the play. I ask them to recreate a scene or a monologue to perform for the rest of the class. They can make them into videos, too, so there's always a lot of awkward camera shots and strange editing decisions. In other words, I get to see my favorite play maimed and mauled by sophomores doing their best (sometimes) to make sense of Shakespeare's writing. It usually is a good time and I don't take it too personally. Yet this year has given me pause. Not that I think there's anything wrong with the project (it could stand to be tweaked, probably, just like everything I do), it's just that I feel a bit disconnected. Hamlet's death was discussed with the class yesterday and I was in such a rush to give them a chance to do some writing that I didn't get to chat with them about what it all means. I guess I could have switched the calendar around a little bit and given myself a bit more room…but I didn't think of that until it was too late to change anything. And this has led me to wonder what I hope to accomplish by…well, teaching at all. I've long held the opinion that my best contribution to the profession is by generating worthwhile moments of thought and interaction with powerful texts and emotionally-moving history without being overly concerned about things like tests or quizzes. I don't feel that I'm giving "authentic" assignments, either--mostly because the artificiality of how school is structured means that there's too much guesswork for what a student will do in her life (though that may be a too-pedantic approach). I'm just asking students to extend themselves into the stuff we're learning about. The thing is, I know that this process works for what I am hoping will matter--at least, in the short run it does. Juniors and seniors who've been in my class do think back to their time as sophomores with affection (and those who don't rarely bother to even look at me in the hallways), and very often some of what I've tried to get them to think about has remained with them through the rest of their high school experience. That's gratifying, and I'm glad that, in that sense, it's working. But I also feel that I'm not adequately preparing them for what they're supposed to be able to do in the future. Or, rather, I'm not ensuring that what I've taught them--and here I'm thinking a lot about grammar or MLA formatting or objectively right/wrong concepts--sticks with them. When one the teachers of the juniors asks why students can't correctly punctuate dialogue or a citation, that's on me… …Or is it? How much responsibility do I have for a student's retention? I recently reread a part of Mark Edmundson's Why Teach? in which he beautifully (as he always writes beautifully) recounts the impetus for his own intellectual growth by being in a particular class in his senior year of high school. This class, despite his best efforts to the contrary, made him an avid reader and unlocked the vivid kind of writing that makes his books a joy to read. Surely much of what he writes is fabricated, cobbled together from what happened, what he thinks happened, and what he has convinced himself happened, but the point is that his teacher, Mr. Meyers, changed him in a tangible, unforgettable way. I'd guess that Edmundson feels like he's a better person than he would have been had he not taken that class. Does having my students mumble their way through part of Act 5 of Hamlet make my students better people? Are they tangibly improved because of what I ask them to do? Can me gassing on for forty-five minutes about all the parts I like of Hamlet really be the sort of life-changing instruction that my students need? I don't know. I don't know how I can know, short of hunting down former students and subjecting them to something I rarely did as their teacher: An essay test of what they learned from Hamlet. Talk about irony. In which I get political… There's a longstanding platitude--and who can challenge a platitude, save, perhaps, Plato, but then it's just platotudes on platitudes--about fishing. In its many iterations, it tends along these lines: "If you give a man a fish, he eats for a day; if you teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime." I most often hear this idea expressed by devotees of supply-side economics and/or American conservatism/libertarianism. Its superficial meaning is, I think, pretty clear, but--like most aphorisms--its simplicity and superficiality overshadow the deep, inherent problems of the idea. Consider this poem by Kahlil Gibran, one of the most criminally underrated poets of the 20th century: Once there lived a man who had a valley-full of needles. And one Though less known as far as parables go, this one, I fear, more accurately represents the mindset of those who espouse the Fishing Proverb*. And, more than that, I think it comes from a misunderstanding of what's required of people within the Fishing Proverb. The premise is simply: A man comes to you and is hungry. "Teach him to fish" is not a bad idea--it is a useful skill that will sustain him, perhaps for the rest of his life. It's something that can benefit him and, provided he passes on the information to his children, subsequent generations. In many ways, that is literally what I've dedicated my life to doing: Teaching others so that they can benefit and pass on what they've learned.
The problem with using the platitude as a type of panacea for the problems many are faced with is in the first part of the premise: The man is hungry. Who can be bothered to learn to fish when one is about to expire? Using the Fishing Proverb as the response of a person to another's need gets us Gibran's poem, "On Giving and Taking". There's nothing inherently wrong with the man who lived in the "valley-full of needles" believing and giving a discourse on an important topic. That isn't his sin; it's that he gives her something that doesn't help her right now. Ought the mother of Jesus to learn about Giving and Taking? (Well, frankly, she has a better idea of sacrifice than almost any other human, I would argue, but let that go.) Sure. Timing, however, is rather important, and she needs something the man has. And not just what the man has, but what he has through no effort of his own, and an enormous abundance. The fact that he's awash with needles--so many more than he could ever truly need, and giving away one would in no way diminish what he has or could have in the future--is a crucial detail. The mother of Jesus doesn't go to one without and demand of her; she goes to one with bounty and requests a tiny boon. Though the broader principle of Giving and Taking is surely one from which she could learn, the mother of Jesus doesn't need an education at this juncture: She needs a needle. When pundits invoke the Fishing Proverb, it's often as a rationale against handouts and government subsidies. While there's plenty of room to figure out who (and, perhaps, to a certain extent, what) should receive governmental assistance in whatever form, I most often hear the Fishing Proverb used as a closing argument against welfare for the laboring class. (I never, incidentally, hear those same pundits argue against welfare for the corporate class; indeed, they often seem quite vociferous about tax cuts at the top somehow magically benefitting the remaining people below.) The idea, of course, is if you "incentivize laziness", then people will rely on governmental assistance ad infinitum and then where will we be? The thing about the Fishing Proverb is, even if it's only taken at face value, it is not the abnegation of responsibility for the "you" in the proverb to take no action. In fact, it insists on something quite different: The "you" in this is supposed to teach "the man" how to fish. It presupposes that you not only know how to fish, but that you will also take the time to impart that knowledge. In other words, it insists that the person petitioned devote time and energy to imparting skills to those without. Though less explicit than "On Giving and Taking", the Fishing Proverb is still a call to action. In our modern day, money has become the shorthand for almost every interaction. Karl Marx: "The bourgeoisie…has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous 'cash payment'." Be that as it may, ours is a world wherein labor's value is entirely monetized, and the greater potential for monetization, the greater we value that labor. Intrinsic value is ignored--there's a reason people tease humanities majors--because worth has become tied to capital. (The current president was, by some, regarded worthy of the office on the sole qualification that he was a businessman--as if running a business and running a country are somehow comparable.) If this is the way in which we communicate, if economics is the new lingua franca of the modern/post-modern society, then money is the way to provide the "time and energy" component of the Fishing Proverb. Through money, then, we can teach hungry men and women "how to fish". (Additionally, it is through money that we can help feed a man for a day…long enough, in other words, that he can learn to fish.) And that's my job. As a teacher, I am in charge of a very small sliver of my students' overall education. I recognize that--I am one of six or seven teachers that they have each day, during one school year. In the grand scheme of things, I've very little chance to make a difference in the students' lives. That realization--for me, at least--is part of what inspires me to continue to teach as well as I possibly can: I've a limited window of opportunity that I** don't want to waste. Teaching is the potential remedy to the Fishing Proverb's problem, but what of "On Giving and Taking"? In this, we see a clear condemnation of the objectivist's creed that greed is a virtue. The man in the valley has much, much, much more than he could ever worry about consuming or using. He is asked to share a very small piece of his unearned bounty with another; instead, he bloviates about why others should think hard about giving and taking. Lest the comparison I'm drawing is too subtle here, I'm arguing that the American concept of economics is morally debased and men like the man in the valley should not be allowed to act in this way. I'm arguing that a more socialistic approach to the economy is morally superior to the supply-side economics that is currently destroying*** the lives of so many. And this leads me to my final excoriation: The Utah legislature, following the example of Rep. Christ Stewart (R - Utah), has recently made a more deliberate and clear push against socialism (and, because the idea of nuance in American politics is, apparently, impossible, communism as well). In the case of Stewart, he has made an Anti-Socialism Caucus to show…well, I'm not entirely sure. Ostensibly, the "marketplace of ideas"**** should allow the free intercourse of ideas, much like a "free market" should allow the buying and selling of goods without a lot of governmental intervention. Stewart's hypocrisy is hardly the point: Socialism as practiced in the United States is very mild, and is pretty much seen as using taxes to pay for public services…including his paycheck as a representative. I, as a teacher, get my money through taxes--and, as a worker in the state, I pay taxes, too. Like, 30% or so--percentage-wise, twice as much as a person like Utah Senator Mitt Romney did back in the 2012 election (remember when presidential candidates released their tax returns so that we could see if there was any pecuniary conflicts of interest?). I own a house, so my property taxes go toward, eventually, paying me. (It's weird, frankly.) How does this tie into needles and fish? The requirement of the Fishing Proverb is that we help teach those who do not know how to take care of themselves. This idea is not radical, but it does require money. Teachers in particular are in demand for this very thing, as well as being very poorly paid for it. Especially in Utah, we have a continual growth segment of the population: Children. As the linked article points out, one in five Utahns is a child. These are those who need to learn how to fish. But, more strikingly, is the fact that one third of those come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. (and if you don't think that economic disparity is damaging, you have some research to do). These are the ones who are--sometimes literally--hungry. If we are to take the Fishing Proverb seriously, then being dead last in per-student spending needs to end. Yes, Governor Herbert has proposed an increase--one that translates into a 4% increase on the WPU (how much the state spends on each student). That pushes Utah out of 51st place and into 50th (D.C. is on the list) place, assuming that the extra $280 Utah is adding per student isn't matched by Idaho--the current penultimate place on the list of per-student spending. Granted, the numbers are from 2016, and a lot can change between those numbers and what we actually see implemented. But the point, mixed metaphor though it may be, stands: Utah is more interested in being the man in the valley-full of needles rejecting the mother of Jesus than in truly teaching hungry children how to fish. --- * There are worthwhile distinctions between parables, proverbs, aphorisms, and platitudes, but I'm eager to explore the broader idea and will use them all interchangeably. ** Admittedly, not all teachers feel the same way, but that's their problem…and their students', actually. So, yeah, that's a bit of a problem. There are solutions--imperfect, as almost all solutions are--but they're not the point of this essay. *** I know what I wrote. I certainly wouldn't claim that socialism is perfect. I'm also not such a lackluster student of history as to assume that the crimes of capitalism and the crimes of communism are somehow comparable. Both systems have led to indescribable suffering and misery; both systems have furthered people's lives in positive and fulfilling ways. I reject the idea that capitalism's only alternative is communism, and I assert that there are ways to improve the lives of more people than capitalism can provide. **** A poor way to derive truth, honestly: The popularity of an idea does not equate with the validity of the idea. Just ask Socrates. Another goodie from Mark Edmundson, Why Teach? is a collection of thoughts about what it means to be a teacher in the twenty-first century. More than that, however, it's about what it means to teach the humanities in the twenty-first century. More than that, though, it's about what it means to teach the humanities at a college level in the twenty-first century. In other words, it has a more limited audience than the first book of his I read, Why Write?
That doesn't mean, however, that the book isn't worth pursuing. In part, it might help those who didn't spend time in college studying the liberal arts, as he lays out a case for the humanities as being integral, even if it isn't necessarily lucrative. In case you're only interested in whether or not I recommend the book, and you'd rather not have to sit through a few hundred words of filler, let me just say that, yes, this book is worth reading. No, it isn't as profound or life-changing to me as Why Write? was. I really enjoyed it; your mileage may vary. What works for me about Why Teach? is that it's a book that's after a particular way of living. Edmundson's fond of the Romantics and transcendentalists--an acquired taste, and one for which I never cared much--but he tempers their exultations with wisdom and practicality. One of his professors was Harold Bloom (the first Shakespearean critic I ever read, and one whose Shakespeare: Invention of the Human continues to be an enjoyable resource to me), a man whose declarations have made him, even against his intentions, into a polemicist; Edmundson smooths those rough edges with strong stances that recognize the value others' ideas have in a way that his own professor struggles (or doesn't care) to do. This ability of blunting the more extreme strains of a poetic view of the world is one that makes Edmundson's arguments feel more grounded. He's not actually asking if we should live at Walden's Pond when he asks if we can "live" what a writer has to say. He asks us if we can find the truth in writing and see ourselves living up to it. That is what the humanities can do for someone who's willing to try. I'm reminded of a poem by Taylor Mali, "What Teachers Make", when he says, "I make them write, write, write, and then I make them read". There is so much more to life than the dollar bill, we all want to say, but few people will live that. We'll agree with Matt Embree when he sings, "We're finding out/That we know better/No number will ever replace me," but we also cluck our tongues and skip our eyes over to the envelope containing the overdue bills. We may know that the system wants to treat us like a replaceable cog, but we also feel that we're individuals from the tips of our too-familiar fingers to the backs of our heads (which we've never seen with our own eyes). Studying the humanities is about studying humans, and since we're all human, we can gain great benefit from knowing ourselves more thoroughly. That isn't to say that engineering and physics, political science and MBAs, medical journals and paleontological conferences aren't also part of being human. Edmundson, I think, would argue that the skills and tools that can only be found in the humanities are what help to imbue the "hard sciences" and non-humanities sections of human living with a greater value, a broader sense of self and purpose. If anything, I feel that Why Teach? really does apply to every teacher if only because teaching is about being passionate about living, being alive, being. It's why Hamlet's right to say that "To be or not to be" is the question. Where do we find the answer to that question? In the scribbles of others, the pulped up remnants of trees scarred with ink. In the flicker of pixels in white and black. In reading, in studying, in becoming. Of course, this book resonates with me for the simple reason that I teach humanities, in my own, idiosyncratic way. This book is saying, "Yes, Steven, you do have a purpose. Your work is important, even if you don't think you've made much of a difference today, yesterday, last week, or even this last year. You're molding them because you know the techniques, because you've read some of the greatest things that a human can read, and you're sharing them." That is the kind of thing that's nice to hear. My five year old, Demetrius, is a loquacious kid. He is halfway through kindergarten and has pretty much gotten rid of almost all of his speech impediments from previous years. He no longer says, "Dad, I'm hungary," or "I'm sweepy." Though he still doesn't always understand when to use the th sound as opposed to the f sound ("three" and "free" are only now sounding like separate words), he is, for the most part, pretty understandable. (His rendition of "Hallelujah" is "Hall-lay-you-yuh" though, and that's just adorable.)
One thing, however, is he doesn't understand the word supposed. In his ears, he hears shouldposed, as in, "I'm shouldposed to pick up my toys." As I was thinking about it, though, this word, though it doesn't really exist, fills in an interesting gap. I feel like there are things you should do, and things that you're supposed to do, and the fact that there isn't a word for the Venn-diagram center of this concept is a failure of the English language. On a less personal side, though, it brings up the idea of how language ought to be manipulated--and who ought to do the manipulating. As an English major, I've been confronted with this question for a long time. I maintain a prescriptive approach to language--that the flexibility of its meaning can only be in response to what has come before. In other words, I feel like the shifting meaning of words is not the areas where English is strongest. Prodigal is one word that, I think, needs to maintain its original sense of "one who spends generously". Other words have somehow come to mean the exact opposite of what they are supposed to mean: peruse is perhaps the most egregiously abused word, as it means to study deeply and with a single focus, rather than a light skimming as it too often used to mean. Another would be the loss of the word niggardly, which is an antonym to prodigal but has an unfortunate sonic similarity to a word that I won't be writing here. That similarity is so strong that a person once lost his job over the use of it, even though the person used the word correctly…and everyone around him thought it was an epithet. (That being said, I'm also aware of how few people are cognizant of the meaning of the word and, quite likely, would respond out of ignorance; I, therefore, take pains not to use niggardly…pretty much ever.) Again, the shedding of words that are no longer accurate isn't necessarily what I have a beef with in terms of language description/prescription: It's the mutilation of them that bothers me. As I mentioned earlier, peruse is one word that really grinds my gears. So are apropos of and enormity. The former means "with regard to" and the latter "a great wickedness", but they're misused so much that the term's metamorphosis is assumed as the actual definition. Of course, there's a problem in being a prescriptivist: Where does one draw the line that isn't fundamentally arbitrary? And, in this case, there isn't a way to delineate the English I'm trying to prescribe that isn't arbitrary…at least, not one that I'm aware of. Additionally, I have my own capitulations to certain grammatical battles: I don't push hard on ending a sentence with a preposition (as you can see from the preceding sentence), nor do I have too much of a problem with people who like to expertly cut infinitives (as I did right there). "What's the worry?" some may argue. "Who cares if the rules change, so long as communication still transpires?" On one level, I can get behind that. Having had to learn a second language, it's nice to have the contextual flexibility that allows for linguistic neophytes to still be able to say something and be understood. And I think, in many instances, the incomplete way in which we speak to each other is fine--inferences, allusions, and references to a previous part of a conversation all work to communicate, even if the grammar and word choice aren't professional quality. Heck, my essays alone show a deplorable lack of continuity with specific stylistic choices, are often riddled with typos (and why isn't it spelled typoes, anyway?), and try too hard to circumlocute an idea. So I think there is a space for less-than-perfect language. However, I feel like there's an expectation--perhaps it's a presumption--that our speech is fine as it is simply because it's our speech. It's the same sense of entitlement that people have when professing their opinion, which is valuable and important and right for no other reason than because the person expressing the opinion is the one who came up with the thought in the first place. (And, let's be real for minute: Shakespeare wasn't lying when he said, "Opinion's but a fool, that makes us scan /The outward habit by the inward man" (Pericles 2.2).) When it comes to the incorporation of new words, that's where I'm happy to drop a prescriptive stance. Without our language's ability to pull in new ideas and find ways of expressing them, we would stagnate. Having words like "download" or "bandwidth" allow us to expand our understandings. And while slang doesn't compel me to really admit a lot of additions to the language--they tend to be so ephemeral as to not warrant protracted attention or inclusion, save as a novelty--the overall use of slang and other shibboleth are valuable contributions to the language. I'm reminded, however, of a man I met in Miami once. We were at a church dinner and he was enjoying the drumstick of the chicken that had been served up. He looked at me and said, "This is a great milkbone." "What?" He pointed again at the drumstick. "A milkbone. This is a milkbone." "No, it's not." "You gotta help me change people's minds. We need to start calling this a milkbone." "No, I'm okay. Thanks, though." It's that sort of willy-nilly restructuring of the language that shouldposed to go away. The rest can stay as they are.* --- * This essay, despite quoting Shakespeare, doesn't really approach the critique that Shakespeare reinvented the language in all sorts of ways, so what's the big deal? A couple of parts to that: 1) No one else is Shakespeare. Einstein rewrote what's possible in terms of physics, which he could do, because he was Einstein. There's a reason we remember these men of genius. Their contributions are in part because they helped to establish the new rules by which we're operating. 2) Early modern English (not, as people wish to assert, Old English), which is to say, Shakespeare's English, was not yet standardized. While I could probably teleport (that is to say, "would gladly teleport") into London 1599 and be able to understand much of what was being said, there are certain things that would be nontransferable. Spelling is one of them. The use of certain words (excrement is one that pops to mind. To us, it means one thing that we expel and it isn't a pretty one; for Shakespeare, it meant a thing that's excreted, whether it be hair, sweat, or anything else) would put me at a disadvantage. Nevertheless, that's the beginning of our language. Shakespeare's power with the English language comes in no small part because he was part of the formative shaping of the whole thing. Shakespeare and the King James Version of the Holy Bible are two of the largest anchors for creating the kind of English we enjoy today. So of course he was inventing and reinventing the language: It was in its nascent format, just beginning to coalesce into what we now understand English to be. ==== 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 name 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! 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! |
AuthorWould you like to support my writings? Feel free to buy me a coffee (which I don't drink, but I do drink hot chocolate) at my Ko-Fi page. Thanks! Archives
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