Oh, Yeah. It's On.

Well, back again after my longest absence ever. Almost done with summer teaching, and soon will be working on another chapter for my book about education. That's where you, dear readers, come in. I need your thoughts on how schooling should be. I'm especially interested in school as it should be from the ages of 12 to 18. I have long suspected that there are problems for this age group, particularly those who are not ready, willing, and/or able to be Tools o' The Man. They find school a place, like, say, prison, where they are forced to do their time, and then they will be free at some point. Some stay the course, some opt out (drop out or GED), and some sell out. By "sell out" I don't necessarily mean sell their souls, but they do in some way come to a compromise position in which they are forced to put up with some shit they otherwise would avoid like the plague, because not to do so would endanger their future well-being. This, of course, is a kind of economic/cultural blackmail that keeps kids in school.

Anyhow, might there not be some better way to go about keeping people interested in school? Personally, I'd like to see a more open system, under which kids get greater and greater autonomy as they make progress. I'd like to see less emphasis on grades and testing. I'd like to see students exercise their passions in choice of topics to learn. For example, if you like horror films, why the heck is that not something that can provide the content of a class teaching basic skills like reading and writing? If you like to blow shit up, why can't that be part of the science curriculum? Okay, granted, that might be problematic, but the point that I'm making is not: People will spend long hours, under brutal conditions, in order to pursue something that interests them. Why can't school systems act upon that simple fact. It would probably help kids who hate school, and might also be good for getting the "good kids" to worry about something besides their grades--When they get to college, they often care more about the grade than the learning, to their, and my, detriment.

So, what do you think? What are some potential alternatives to how schools presently are run that would allow students more autonomy and more joy in learning?

The Mouth Giveth, and the Hand Taketh Away

Well, I'm back after a much-t00-long absence. Call it laziness. Call it a lack of inspiration. Call it anomie. Hell, you can call it Bob if you'd like. I have reasons. Not good ones, but reasons nonetheless. But that's not what I want to talk about today.

Let's talk about money. In this case, federal money for education. After taking a quick look at the budget figures for the Department of Education, I noticed something that really isn't that surprising. The Federal Education budget is shrinking. Still. Again. The first cuts in nearly a decade came last year. This year's budget does the same thing. Again, I'm not surprised. If there's one thing that I've consistently found to be true, it's this: Politicians mostly talk about education in order to pimp children so they can build their political images. As I've already suggested in other entries, mostly "education reform" is about looking busy and taking up conceptual space. Most folks think, "Well, at least they're doing something about education." Unfortunately, if these people who are "doing something" did the same thing to, say, their ludicrously oversized SUVs as they are doing to education... Well, let's just picture that, shall we? Think of a Hummer H2. A hulking monstrosity. A gigantic, fake, piece of shit (much like the Preznit). Okay, now picture yourself. Picture yourself with a sledgehammer. With a cutting torch. With other various implements of destruction and construction. Let's "reform" that bitch, shall we?

First of all, given that vocational education is soooo pre-9/11 thinking, let's go ahead and cut that shit out with our torch. Think of it as, oh, the driveshaft of our H2. You never really think of why it's there. It's hard to see unless you get under the vehicle, but it's really fucking hard to get to work without it. Besides, the military offers so many vocational choices! You poor, stupid bastards can go ahead and join up. I hear they need lots of people, and there are recruiting offices nearby. Okay, the driveshaft is gone. Let's replace it with one of those magnetic "support the troops" stickers on the back of the H2, okay? What next?

Educational technology grants. They help us figure out whether all this reformin' is doing the job. After all, there's really no need to know whether "reform" is hurting or helping things. We'll just pretend we know. Don't you know that education is a faith-based exercise anyway? Reality is just a dodge anyway. We'll just do a whole lot of magical thinking. Clap our hands. Pray for rain. Things will just turn out right anyway, right? For this, we'll need some wire cutters, and maybe a prybar. We're gonna rip out the brainbox. We're gonna take out all the warning lights. Now if there's a problem, we won't know about it. Then we won't have to deal with it. We can just keep on truckin'! Next!

GEAR Up! That's the program designed to help low-income students get into and succeed in college. Gears? Well, those are in the transmission. Surely that will have to go next. But not all of it, no not all. Let's just take first gear, and maybe second. Then we'll slap that baby back in. Some might say we need those gears. That it's hard to get going without them. Bullshit! If you can't get moving, that's your own problem. You should have been born on a downslope. It's nobody's fault that your parents didn't succeed. That's life kid. Maybe you can get some of your homies to give you a push start. Or maybe... Hey! The military! That's a great place to get your education started. 1-800- GOARMY. All the commercials say so, don't they? Now what?

Arts in Education (check), counseling (check), state grants for incarcerated youth (check), civic education (check). Let's just call these, collectively, all the things that make the H2 experience prettier and more comfortable than the military version of the Hummer. So, let's scuff the chrome and paint, bust out a window or two, tear out the stereo (but leave the speakers), rip out the leather and padding on the seats, and smash all the lights and turn signals. Now it looks like shit, is uncomfortable as hell, and you can't even listen to the radio. Plus, not even we can tell where we're going any more. Shit, we're only getting started and we already need a mechanic. Now there's an idea...

Let's make it as difficult as possible to get teachers to teach these kids! Let's cut student loans for teachers who want to improve themselves. Let's hack out teacher recruiting for high-need areas (The poor don't need education anyway. Anybody can carry a rifle.). Less money for work-study in college. Cut scholarships. There ya go. Hmm, what have we done this time. Well, we just pummelled the damned mechanic in the head with our handy dandy sledgehammer, we cut the hands off the mechanic's assistant with our cutting torch. We quit running ads to hire more mechanics. We cut mechanic training programs. Done, done, and done. Boy, this H2 doesn't run. It looks like shit too. I sure as hell don't want to ride in it. What else could we possibly do?

Oh, I know. Let's go ahead and cut the money for the "safe and drug free schools" programs. [Note: These are more or less bullshit anyway, but we've heard so much about how great they are for so long, well, I just figured I'd point out that they, all of a sudden... well... aren't needed or something.]. Sweet. Now we'll let some drunk asshole drive this bitch, okay? If he can get it moving, of course. And if not, well, he can just shoot at random passers-by.

So far, I think we all agree, we've really done a number on this H2. Truth be told, I've only talked about a few of the proposed cuts. There's more. Much more. But there's also an underlying problem: That of priorities.

Looking at the budget forecast for FY 2007 (see above), let's compare defense and educational spending. The entire Department of Education will receive $64.5 billion dollars. States will also appropriate money, but not nearly as much as they get from Uncle Sugar. The Department of Defense will receive $504.8 billion (that's half a trillion to you and me). That money does not include any additional appropriations for, say, wars with Iraq, Afghanistan, and (potentially) Iran. Did I mention that the military recruiters are looking for a little help here? The Department of Fatherland er, um, Homeland Security, which includes the Coast Guard, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Immigration and Customs, among other things, is kind of a mixed bag. Overall, it's supposed to decline a bit. However, The actual amount of money spent for FY 2005 was $101.2 billion. The budget for FY 2005 was $31.4 billion. So, we spend three times what was budgeted, through additional appropriations for disasters, emergencies, and other additions to spending not in the original budget. Given that, the actual spending for Defense and Fatherland (why do I keep doing that?) Homeland Security will probably be much higher, given that additional appropriations for terrorist threats, hurricanes, etcetera have not been factored into the budget forecast.

Somehow, I'm not so sure that The Department of Education will receive such largesse from our friends in the Congress. Fuck the kids? (check) Destroy the future? (double check) What's next? Wait for Armageddon? Yeah. That's the ticket. Let God bail us out. As for me, I'll do my best to vote these fucking idiots out of office come November, and do it again in 2008. They are up to no good.

They talk and talk and talk, and say nothing of substance. They lie, they obfuscate, and they fuck the rest of us. Here's an example I came across just today:

Talk to the Unitary Hand

by DarkSyde

Wed Apr 19, 2006 at 03:17:01 AM PDT

One of these things is not like the other:

[WaPo] President Bush told Montgomery County students yesterday that math and science are "cool subjects" and warned that the country would lose jobs overseas unless more funding is devoted to the disciplines.

One of these things just doesn't belong:

[Link] Student activists joined 35th District Assembly member Pedro Nava and 23rd District Congresswoman Lois Capps in front of the UCen yesterday to speak out against recent federal cuts to education. ... "The president says that higher education is key," Capps said. "That he would pass a bill that cuts $12 billion - the greatest [cut] in history - it's hypocrisy."

Checking local job offers, starting pay for a math and science teacher with the expertise to teach pre-calculus and calculus is about 29,000 dollars a year. Starting pay at a number of corporations requiring a similar level of technical proficiency and four year degree in software/engineering, or technology oriented business & management ranges between 46,000 and 56,000 a year -- with the business majors making the most by the way. The firm with the most job listings and best pay range makes jet skis ...

Remember how we were promised that high tech was America's future? Remember how the "reformers" freaked out about how bad American students were in science and math. Could these be the same people who are now outsourcing a lot of those tech jobs to India. Software code is very easy to ship. Indian students are just as smart and work for cheaper. Hell, a good many of them went to American universities. High tech's a sucker bet. So, get a business degree. Learn to play golf. Join a frat. Learn to schmooze. If you're not too poor. If you go to a good high school. If your grades don't suck. If you have a home life that allows you to do so. If you're not black or brown. The military pays less, but, hey, at least they're hiring. America's plutocracy gets richer from oil and defense and security (oh my!). America's poor get nothing. Sometimes they get dead.

Sela. Pause and reflect upon this.

--The Reverend Doctor

That's Soooo Gay!

I haven't published in a few days. We just got a new dog, and lots other stuff has been going on. I also haven't had anything I was inspired to write about. Until now. I was reading the forums at Augusta Underground yesterday, and discovered a thread about Brokeback Mountain. Now, I know some of the guys who were posting, and don't know most of them, but what I discovered was that a lot of them are (1) grossed out by two guys kissing and (2) worried that Hollywood is entirely too politically correct (i.e., w.r.t. homosexuality and race matters). I found myself wondering why the fuck they care. I mean really, who cares if "Humpback Mountain" as one person called it, won an Oscar? Mostly it sounded to me like high school locker room paranoia about gays. Really makes one wonder why supposedly hetero guys are so threatened by two guys getting it on. Is it true, perhaps, that we hate and fear most what we despise and fear about ourselves?

I mean when I think back to my high school days, I was about the same way. Being labeled a fag was one of the worst things that could happen. My friend Evan (a confirmed bachelor, if you know what I mean) was assaulted by redneck jocks at his high school. They beat him up, duct-taped him, and tossed him in a dumpster. I've always had a vexed relationship with the queer aspect of sexuality. On the one hand, so much of my life I've been surrounded with the uber-macho front of, for example, sports, the Marine Corps, punk rock, etc. On the other hand, I have had... experiences, shall we say, the first of which was in the Marine Corps. With a Marine. Well, with all of those fabulous uniforms, I guess it's not too far a stretch. Frankly, I really wonder sometimes how many supposedly straight men in the military have had a taste of the love that dares not speak its name.

The more I live the more I think that most people sort of fall somewhere in between totally hetero and totally homo. I've heard estimates that about 10% of the population is gay or lesbian. I wonder if it's also a fact that only about 10% of the population is completely heterosexual. I'm not saying that everyone in between is partaking of the full smorgasbord of human sexuality, but rather that they have the potential, the tendency, to be attracted sexually to people of the same sex. But there's a problem with it: These feelings and tendencies conflict with the cultural assumption that one either is or is not straight or gay. So, a lot of people have to overcompensate to reassure themselves that they are so totally straight. Methinks they may protest too much, if you know what I mean. If they really are so very not-a-fag (!!!), then why the constant obsession with and kneejerk reactions to all things queer? That may be a bullshit argument. I'm not sure. Nonetheless, where does all the consternation about queerness come from? Obviously people have strong feelings about it, but if you're not a religious freak, then why worry about who someone else fucks, if not to bolster one's own sense of righteous heterosexuality? As Dan Savage wrote in Skipping Toward Gomorrah, and I'm paraphrasing here, what could someone possibly do to a person who wasn't gay that would make them want to gladly, joyfully, lustfully have same-sex relations? What's the problem, then?

Anyway, so what does this have to do with schooling? It's this: As hard as growing up is, how much more difficult must it be for queer kids? When everyone and everything around you (for the most part, at least) militates against what you feel in your heart. When there are people who will condemn and assault you. When your family will disown you? When you loath yourself. When you wish you were dead. When you are so very much in love with someone who literally would turn the school against you if they knew about it. Think hard about that situation. What a brutal and austere lifescape for queer kids, especially in some schools. Rural areas must be hard on them, especially. Religious schools must be, shall we say, hellish. Military schools? Please. Rejection, beatings, ostracism, mockery, with no end in sight? No wonder queer kids kill themselves at such a high rate. It's hard enough being a teenager without also being queer.

I really get tired of hearing people complain about, mock, and frantically distance themselves from all things queer. What are they afraid of? Frankly, it speaks volumes about how hyper-masculinity, for one example, is more a reaction than a state of being. Think about it. One of my writing teachers, of whom I've already spoken, Ehud Havazelet, remarked that, "Isn't it strange how nothing ever happens in Western movies until the men are far away from the women?" Cowboys are pretty damned gay when you think about it. Many of the male bastions--bodybuilding, the military, the police, martial arts and ultimate fighting, and so forth--are, upon analysis, pretty gay. Kinda "brokeback," shall we say (thanks to the Boondocks for that one). Brokeback, in this sense: Something that on its surface is so very manly (e.g., cowboys, NASCAR, ultimate fighting) that upon analysis seems gayer and gayer. Even those sad soft-porn magazines for young men (e.g., Maxim) are more or less Cosmo with pictures of "hot chicks" (and a surprising (or not) number of "hot" guys. Hmm... Really makes you wonder doesn't it?).

One last observation. When my daughter was born, I was teaching at Georgetown College in Kentucky. The school was Baptist and most of the kids there were pretty conservative. I can't remember how it came up, but one of the guys in my class, a starter on the National Championship Georgetown College football team (Sweaty men, tight pants, so gay), asked if I wouldn't be upset if my daughter ended up being a lesbian. "Of course not," I told him. "Why would I?" He was flabbergasted. He literally could not conceive that I wouldn't be devastated by such an outcome. What I didn't say to that student was this: "I love my kid. I don't care if she's a lesbian. In fact, I'd much rather her be a lesbian than to marry some hyper-religious redneck asshole like you, you barely closeted, self-loathing little faggot." I'm so glad I'm able, at times like that, to show some restraint.

Sela. Pause and reflect upon this.

In With the In Crowd: organizations, mob psychology, and alternative education

Today I was reading some Education News. This article caught my eye. Apparently, the New York City school system has a rubbish bin for its problem students:

“Out of '‘Site' Education”
Thursday, March 2, 2006
by Bernard Gassaway

Over the last two years, while serving as Senior Superintendent of Alternative Schools and Programs, I have visited New York City public school programs in church basements, housing projects, homeless shelters, storefronts, suspension centers, juvenile detention centers, and prisons. I ventured into places that few department of education officials would dare go. Most pretend these makeshift programs do not exist. Worse, they pretend that these children do not exist --– out of sight, out of mind.

The school system's response to children who do not fit is to place them out of 'site.' The familiar cry, "“Lock '‘em up and throw away the key,"” is more of a reality than you might realize. The New York City Department of Education's (DOE) way of dealing with children who are described as disruptive is to treat them like criminals. As states across this country have moved toward privatization of prisons, this current administration has opted to follow suit and outsource education. DOE establishes partnerships with community-based organizations (CBO) to service children who have historically been failed by the system. These children fall into the following categories: suspended, homeless, pregnant, over-aged and under-credited.

By outsourcing services for our most challenging students, DOE concedes it is not willing to meet the needs of these children. In fact, the organizations being bankrolled and contracted by DOE to serve these students cannot meet their needs. These organizations will never admit it; to do so would be to bite the hand that feeds them. However, they have told DOE officials they will not service special education students. These students are considered too far gone and beyond help.

Read the rest of this, as it is quite informative and, I think, important.

Are the same trends toward privatization happening in the more commonly recognized forms of carceral systems (i.e., prisons, asylums, etc.) occurring in U.S. schools? I think that they are. More and more, parents, who are led astray from their children by hucksters posing as educational experts, attempt to regain "“control"” of their children through oft draconian methods. Some send their children to special places to get them straightened out. Sometimes, as the article referenced above suggests, we do so through special programs for "“troubled"” and "“at-risk"” youth, that enable parents, private organizations, and the State to articulate increasingly tight systems of surveillance, control, and punishment. I am aghast at where this might take our schools and where it might take us collectively as a society.

This disturbing trend, as marked the emergence of increasingly hellish prisons, government detention facilities , and behavioral modification programs, particularly B-Mod programs for youth, seem like an Orwellian nightmare in the early stages. In about thirty short years, we have gone from a society oriented toward humanitarianism to one oriented even more strongly toward dehumanization. I would assume that most folks would be disturbed by this, but it doesn'’t seem to be the case. I have a theory as to why this is happening. Let'’s call it the parable of the Mob and the Innocent Bystander. In this story, I want to illustrate how organizational psychology and mob psychology have something in common. I also want to talk about how most people, aside from those brave enough to dissent, stand by and let things like this happen, or, in some cases, join forces with the Mob.

Reading books like Bill BufordÂ’s Among the Thugs, a inside view of hooliganism in European football (i.e., soccer) has influenced my understanding of crowd behavior. I have come to the conclusion that when you get a bunch of people together they no longer act as individuals, but as something else. Sometimes being in a group allows people to act out in ways they wouldn'’t even think of in closer company. Crowds act differently than individuals. This helps to explain riots, revivals, concerts, and other mass happenings. They feel different. They allow individuals to become part of something far larger and different. Under such conditions, people will do some fucked up things. When everyone is involved, one'’s own actions seem like a part of a larger whole. There is an element of anonymity, of intensity of perception, of intensity of purpose, that is simply not possible otherwise. Millions of screaming sports fans and attendees at music festivals and religious happenings could no doubt testify to how that feels and what happens as a result.

This helps me to understand, also, why individuals'’ behavior inside of organizations (e.g., clubs, gangs, churches, corporations, and so forth) departs from their private behavior. For example, Lyndie England, the famous face and scapegoat of the Abu Graib prison scandal, probably behaved much differently under the circumstances of her fame than in more normal circumstances. When we create organizational structures that more or less process human beings, producing more ideal human "“products,"” there is a greater and greater danger that the individuals in the organization, driven by that larger organizational purpose, will be able to treat any human "“dysfunction"” in that organizational system (e.g., poorly behaved children) as less than fully human. This ignores that human beings cannot, logically, be dysfunctions in an organizational system, unless one's thinking about organizational functioning assumes that people are less than human. To assume this is to make a categorical error. Human beings are not the same thing as organizational "parts." Children, prisoners, the insane, the mentally challenged, the crippled of mind, limb and spirit, become human sacrifices on the altar of organizational mission.

We must be careful to remember that education is always, always, always about human relationships. When we allow organizational mission to occlude that, and to create the conditions that breed dehumanizing behavior, and sociopathic personalities for that matter, then we do not serve humanity. We don'’t help anyone by forcing every individual into conceptual cubby holes. But it happens every day. We break a lot of these individuals as they are made, with increasing forcefulness, to comply with organizational rules, roles, and outcomes. More importantly, people who fail to fit well, who get broken in the process, are personally to blame for their victimage. Those who are made to fit, easily or not, and survive the process, often have, themselves, internalized the logic of their oppression. Even if we think, for example, that a teacher is unfair, and school sucks, it is difficult not to pay attention to what one'’s poor grades are supposed to mean. Very few people who make passing grades have sympathy for those who don'’t. They feel lucky, skilled, and maybe a little bit righteous about it. They succeeded where others failed. Failure, of course, is a matter of not having the right attitude or not applying oneself or--—Fates forfend!--— resisting the attempt to mold one'’s cognitions and behaviors. This trend toward sameness and blame for failure to conform may be the greatest danger facing our public schools. It stifles creativity, arbitrarily rewards conforming behaviors, and lays the groundwork for scapegoating those who pose a problem for the smooth functioning of the system.

Do y'’all get what I'’m talking about here? If so, feel free to post me some examples in the comments.

Sela. Pause, reflect, and get pissed.

Cooking With Doc Johnson

This morning in the Johnson household, we are having a fine breakfast (and you wondered why I was a fat bastard).

I am making a baked omelette. I first had this when I interviewed at Wayne State University in Detroit. We went out to this local IHOP style restaurant that's famous for its ridiculous omelettes and pancakes. It was the first time I'd encounted a baked omelette. They seem to cook a bit fluffier. I'm cooking mine open-faced, rather than fucking around w/ making the fold. It'll be fine that way too. The ingredients, in the order they went into the 12 inch cast iron skillet:

Minced garlic and sweet onion
Egg mixture (includes 6 eggs, a dash of milk, chopped turkey pepperoni, basil, ground pepper medley, greek spice)
Chopped spinach
A light layer of provolone and white cheddar (shredded)
Diced Tomatoes
Chopped baby portabello mushrooms
Another light layer of same cheeses
Smoked turkey



Bake it for about 20-30 minutes at 350 degrees. You can tell when it's done if it doesn't wiggle in the middle when you shake it a bit.

Serve like you'd like to. We're having some turkey sausage on the side. Some days we might make grits or biscuits or maybe some toast, but I'll probably skip it this morning. The other side is fresh strawberries.

Now, don't you feel like you've learned something today, even if it's just that you are hungry?

Living in the Moment

Now, I will finally get around to talking about what alternatives we have to magical thinking about transcendence. If you remember from my January post, I suggested that the way people approach education leads them to assume that what we most should concern ourselves with is the goal. And that having gone through the process of training or education, one has attained a state of enlightenment of sorts. We are "trained" or "educated" or whatever it might be. This is, I now suggest, a kind of magical thinking. If we approach education in this way, then we encourage people to treat the time in the classroom, or time studying, or whatever else, as part of some sort of ritual. They simply must go through the required steps, and then they will attain the desired transcendent state. As I also suggested in that earlier post, it just doesn't work that way. The end of training or education is always just a new beginning. The very existence of time prevents us from reaching some perfect state. Nonetheless, there seems to be a pronounced tendency to concentrate on goal over process, destination over journey. As a result, people may end up getting less out of most things than they could.

Further, this tendency is reflected in the packaging (as a commodity) of education, the pacing of learning, the kinds of assignments used to assess learning, and the very need for external accountability in the first place. To be clear, it is important to have goals and objectives for learning. However, when the goals and objectives become more important than the process of learning, when outcomes become more important that the person doing the learning, then education gets dehumanized. The process of education becomes a process by which we learn to be less human. Goal oriented thinking about education has developed in a way that requires that education be about the endpoint rather than the process. The grade is more important than the knowledge: More important for later schooling, for seeking a job, for determining one's value as a learner, for receiving scholarships and financial aid, and for a variety of other reasons. Practically, because of how education is framed, students very rationally seek to achieve the highest grades possible. In fact, some students get very, very angry when they don't get the grades they are certain they deserve. They question, complain, accuse, threaten, weep, argue, appeal, rationalize, and more or less manifest any behavior that they believe will manipulate a teacher to change an unwanted outcome.

I personally had a graduate student in a course on public education reform formally complain to administrators of a school I taught at. He called me unfair, incompetent, a joke, and a variety of other things. He impugned my motivations, my abilities, my knowledge of the topic, and so forth as loudly and as publicly as he could. He called for my removal from the course for gross incompetence. Why? Why did he do this? Because he got a B instead of an A. That B, he told me in one of many abusive emails I received, had lowered his overall GPA by 0.04 points, and probably had torpedoed his chances to get into law school. This is goal- and outcome-oriented thinking taken to its extreme. When a course becomes just one more thing to check off on one's transcript, and when the people who teach it have the option either to recognize one's excellence or to become obstacles to one's success, then you have more or less ignored the process of learning and why it exists, and fully dehumanized the people doing the learning and teaching. Commodification of education leads to commodity fetishism, which leads to dehumanization of the process of learning.

Oddly enough, the way things are set up from primary to post-secondary to graduate education almost always lead to this kind of thinking. We are trained from an early age to experience education as a series of outcomes: grades received, usually, or degrees achieved, or some such rot. These things are not unimportant, I think, but certainly an over-emphasis on them leads to collateral effects.

If, instead, students were better able to pace their own learning, better able to tailor it to specific personal interests (where possible), and were led to worry more about what they are learning instead of what grades they are receiving, things might be different. Think about it this way. If one wants to become a great writer, it's not a matter of getting an A in a writing course. It's more a matter of learning by doing, by looking at exemplary writing, rote practice of grammar, spelling, compositional forms, etc., working with people who are interested in doing and learning about writing, and so forth. When I was a sophomore or junior at Oregon State University, I took a Short Fiction Writing course from a guy named Ehud Havazelet. On the first day of class, we walked in, and he was sitting at the desk. He said nothing to anyone. He was looking at a class roll or a syllabus or a gradebook or something like that. At the appointed time for class to begin, he looked up and silently took an accounting of the students in the room. He asked, "So, you want to be writers?"

We voiced timid, confused agreement. Of course we did. Why else would we be taking his fucking class if we didn't?

"Well," he asked, "why aren't you writing?"

The rest of the quarter, he spent teaching us to love literature, to recognize talent, to try to say something more real than cliched, and to want to learn to be better writers. I got a B in that course, I think. It was the best grade I received as an undergraduate, though I earned many A's.

So, you want to be educated? Then why aren't you educating yourselves? Why do I need to threaten you with a grade in order to get you to want to know about these things, to be able to do what I'm trying to teach you to do? Where is your interest in getting good at this stuff?

Strangely enough, as a result of that course, I have never stopped wanting to be a better writer. I've never stopped being interested in the mechanics of writing, in different modes of writing, in well-written works, and so forth. Ehud Havazelet taught me how to see that these things were more important than any grade I might receive. Being a writer is not about the assignments or the grades; it is about the craft of writing.

Sela. Reflect upon this.

Back Again, and Some Ideas About Teaching as Performance

Well, folks, I'm back again after a longish absence. As Motherbuster (that motherfucker) has pointed out, I'm am, in fact, a "ding dong hole" for leaving y'all hanging here. I can only say that, through a combination of laziness, burnout, and other things I've been doing, I've been lax in posting. Well, I shall endeavor to do better, by and by.

Oh, and, by the way, I shaved my beard and moustache for the first time in eight years. It's fucking weird. I look younger by about 8-12 years, and I've discovered there's a fat bastard living underneath all that hair. Not sure I like him much. Freaked out my 4 year old daughter, too. She's never seen me barefaced. But there were reasons. The real one is that I did it for my wife, for Valentines Day. She hasn't really complained, as such, but I've been getting kind of a vibe about it for about the last two or three years. So I did it. I was also kind of curious, so there's that. Obviously, that led to the situation where I got to teach students who had seen me in both states, as well as colleagues, family friends, and others. I hated that. I don't like being scrutinized like that, particularly when I can't really say, "What you lookin' at, bitch," or some other clever rejoinder. However, I found myself thinking about a sort of top-ten list of reasons my face is now bare. Here are a few:

So I can lie better.
My bald dome got jealous.
I like to feel my lover's balls on my chin.
So I can pick up teenaged chicks.
To free the furry, woodland creatures living there.
Kept getting mistaken for Vlad Lenin.
Too fat to be mistaken for Stone Cold.
What do you mean? I never had a beard.

And so forth. Oh well, I can grow it back later. We'll just have to see about that. But I digress...

So much of being a professor is being on stage in front of others. I mean this in the sense that Erving Goffman suggested. A dramatistic approach to cultural analysis assumes at least that there are "frontstage" and "backstage" areas in our lives. There are both public and private parts of our lives and selves. There also are a range of culturally acceptable and unacceptable roles to perform. As a professor, I am often in performance situations. I mean this in the sense that people expect certain things from me. Also, I am self-aware of my performance as a professor. I have to navigate a variety of topics, and a lot of them are political. I've become increasingly wary of pissing off random conservative fucktards who might object to the terms and content of my analysis of those topics. I also want to teach some lessons about being an educated person. How to become a good writer and speaker. How to think things through. What it means to be a leader. What it means to be a professional. What it means to be a citizen of a community. Finally, I am a bit vain. I like to ham it up a bit. I feel like I can get some extra energy from the audience. I feel I'm better able to reach people and get into the learning. As a result, I've become increasingly sensitive to my "mojo" in public spaces. I think there are days where I feel like I must have some sort of extra pheromones going or something. People are very attentive and positive to me and what I say. They're into it/me. I am the center of the universe. Other days, not so much. I feel all but invisible. I can't control these things particularly well most of the time.

All in all, teaching is both rewarding and exhausting. Performing is fun and terrifying, too. So, I find myself doing about three or four different things during a lecture or class activity. It's hard to keep control over what's happening. I have little faith in over-preparation. It tends to make my performance more canned and boring. I try to have a good grounding in what I'm talking about, a rough lesson plan, and then I just go from there, working with my class in order to get somewhere valuable with the lesson. I don't always try to control where they destination is, but try to move intutively from class discussion to something that I can give back my classes. I try to put myself in a good position to drop some knowledge on them. When it works, it's like... hard to describe. Exhilarating. Like driving fast. Like riding a roller coaster. Maybe not that intense. It's a sense of flow, of connection. That's mostly what I mean, but also very energizing. Sometimes the energy lasts after you're done, and sometimes you feel drained. I think the emotional tone, positive or negative, has something to do with that, but I'm not really sure.

On top of it all, you also must do it. You have no choice but to do your job. You have to teach and deal with colleagues, and do all of the things you must. I don't always feel like me, if you know what I mean.


Anyway, I'm back.

Just Looking for a Way Out: Education and transcendence

Sorry for the infrequent posts lately. Between vacation, the start of the semester, and other factors, it's been hard to find the time and the mindspace for writing. I will try to do better.

Today, I want to talk about how the structure and nature of American (and most) schooling makes us just want to get done.

In so many ways we live to follow the sun,
In so many way we exalt and fail as one,
In so many ways we want so bad to be done,
In so many ways we show our pain in unison.

--Bad Religion, In So Many Ways

Think about it this way. School is not a prominent part of most peoples lives in the same way that, say, television is. We don't look forward to getting out of bed, getting to class, and soaking up that good knowledge. We don't seek out extra opportunities to learn, to test that learning. More or less, we just want the day to be over. We treat it just like any other job we hate. We go in, do what we have to, get done "serving our time" and leave. Moreover, when the learning is really over, like when we get a diploma or degree of some kind, many people seem to act as if the learning really is over. Whew! Never have to do that again! How does that happen?

A long time ago, for my doctoral thesis, I wrote about my experiences in Marine Corps bootcamp. In that work, I suggested some of ways recruits are transformed from civilians into Marines. I discussed two main concerns that theorists should consider: (1) the physical environment and (2) the mental/conceptual environment. That is, they can make you do things and they can make you think about things. The things they make you do include stuff like living in particular conditions, marching, doing physical training, and other things. As you do these things, the environment seems more and more natural to you. As you learn more and more about your place within the larger hierarchy of the services and the Marines in particular, you recognize that you are growing, changing, getting closer to the end. Your body and your capabilities become more Marine-like. Your mental landscape contains more Marine-like content; and you can see yourself passing specific landmarks on the training landscape. More or less, you are forced to recognize that you are moving toward some end--you are becoming something. Becoming that something will help you be what you strive to be: the ideal, the apex, the ultimate. You will have transcended your earthly form to become a Marine. You will be powerful, worthy of respect, just below God and the angels in the cosmos, and well above those fuckin' squids in the Navy, the Army doggies, and those useless fuckin' zoomies in the Air Force. As for slimey civilians... well, you used to be one, but you ain't' no more.

So you leave bootcamp feeling like you're done. You're a Marine, and fuck everyone else who ain't. Of course, you find out once you reach the Fleet that you're just another puke. Just some newbie straight out of boot, don't know his elbow from his dick. I, for one, found this completely disconcerting. No sooner had I gotten there (wherever "there" was) than I had to embark on a new journey. That bastard, Time, continued to throw the viscitudes of life into the mix. Of course, I never unlearned the idea that one could be done, completed, perfected once and for all.

Clearly, this is a problem in more than just bootcamp. How often, for example, have you, dear readers thought this: "If only X will be over, then everything will be settled once and for all." Maybe you thought it about high school, or college, or military training, or wedding planning leading to the ceremony itself, or whatever else. You felt, more or less, like once some terminal point had been reached, you would be able to rise above all of the strife and suffering you were going through--as if it's ever really over. Here's the word to use for that: transcendence.

The notion of transcendence is, I believe, inherent in our conceptions of school, work, and life. We feel like if we can just get to a certain point, then we will be living in a veritable heaven-on-earth. This is, of course, a hundred pounds of bullshit in a one-pound bag. However, I can understand why most people get the feeling that it might be true. My favorite theorist, Kenneth Burke, has a way to understand this situation. It hinges on his definition of the human being. This explanation is taken from the Virtual Burkean Parlor at Purdue University:

First published in abbreviated form in The Rhetoric of Religion (1961), and then expanded in later versions in The Hudson Review (Winter, 1963-64), Language as Symbolic Action (1966), and a 1989 CCCCs presentation, Kenneth Burke's "Definition of Human" encapsulates many of the key tenets of Dramatism, his theory and philosophy of language. In its final form, the definition reads:

Being bodies that learn language
thereby becoming wordlings
humans are
the symbol-making, symbol-using, symbol-misusing animal
inventor of the negative
separated from our natural condition
by instruments of our own making
goaded by the spirit of hierarchy
acquiring foreknowledge of death
and rotten with perfection.

That is, we are animals that define our world with language and other symbol systems. That use of symbol systems can be done in ways that are creative, true or false. We can separate, using those symbols, things into categories of like and not-like. We can say no or not. We dwell differently from other animals, sheltered from the brute realities of an animalistic existence. We categorize and order the contents of our environments, both physical and conceptual, in order to know, to have power over, and to place, everything in its "proper" slot. We know we will die, and try to order a perfect world to compensate for the fact that we will not endure for long.

Basically, we structure our conceptual environments in such a way that those environments come to reflect our needs both to fit in and to progress toward some end. Burke suggests that what this leads to is profound guilt. Since we are "rotten with perfection" we seek to perfect ourselves through victimage or through mortification; that means we either are whipped into shape or we whip ourselves into shape. Having done so we consider ourselves redeemed of our guilt. And probably that would remain the case, except for the fact that time continues to pass. We are never, until death, done (and perhaps not then, though I have my doubts). We, of course, cannot be perfect, so the cycle begins again.

I have the feeling that Burke has a lot in common with my favorite philosopher on this issue. Jiddhu Krishnamurti said:

Has it not been the human cry, for millennia, to find out how to live peacefully, how to have real abundance of love, compassion. That can only come into being when there is the real sense of '‘non-me'’, you understand. And we say: '‘Look, to find that out' —whether it is from loneliness, or anger, or bitterness '—look, without any escape.'’ The escape is the naming of it, so do not name it, look at it. (Beyond Violence, Ch. 6)

Here he suggests that we try to escape from something that bothers us--loneliness, anger, fear, etc. To bring Burke in here, we more or less see an imperfection and seek to transcend it. Often in order to do so, we must name it, categorize, make it into something concrete, so that we can embrace its negative, and thus, find redemption. Krishnamurti suggests that this is a false move. We may move beyond one thing, but end up stuck in another. The door out always leads to somewhere else. The act of escape is productive of even more dissatisfaction. Instead, he suggests, we should learn to pay attention instead. We should inhabit, fully, the thing we seek to transcend. In another of his writings, Krishnamurti applies this to education, suggesting that the movement toward security (order, in Burke's terms) goads us to worship hierarchy and the notion of success (perfection, according to KB). This only leads to dissatisfaction, because all we can never be done:

Conventional education makes independent
thinking extremely difficult. Conformity leads to
mediocrity. To be different from the group or to
resist environment is not easy and is often risky as
long as we worship success. The urge to be
successful, which is the pursuit of reward whether
in the material or in the so-called spiritual sphere,
the search for inward or outward security, the desire
for comfort--—this whole process smothers discontent, puts an end to spontaneity and breeds fear; and fear blocks the intelligent understanding of life. (Education and the Significance of Life, Ch. 1)

So, by our nature, by the nature or our symbol use, by the passage of time, we structure our lives in such a way as to give the illusion that we will someday be able to find heaven on earth. To be a certain way, to have had certain experiences, to have passed certain milestones, to have certain material things, to be in certain relationships, surely those achievements will make us happy. But, in the end, we discover that every accomplishment, every possession, must eventually loluster lustre. We are left empty, impoverished, alone. Strife is, because we strive. We don't exist in the world. We move through it, try to get beyond it, because certainly there must be some perfect, all-fulfilling place we can move to. There, finally, we will be happy. But, as the old saw goes, no matter where you go, there you are. You cannot escape from yourself. You cannot escape from the world.

Sela. Pause and reflect on these things.

Next time: What are our alternatives to these problems?

Sometimes I Just Hate Teaching, Pt. 2

You know what? I was wrong. Dead wrong. I taught my class of business students for the second time, last night. They're going to be a fun bunch. Yes, they are getting business degrees, sure. They also seem like they're genuinely interested in the class, did well on their first presentations, and seem like a bunch of nice folks. I guess I'm just a dick sometimes. But where does that come from?

I guess most of my anger/hatred of the business community comes from the assholes that run it. Not the middle managers. Not the peons. Not the folks who are just trying to get by. It comes from the business executives who want to make over education in the guise of late-modern capitalism. Sink or swim, Bobby and Cindy! Pass the test or fail America! It comes from the self-satisfaction of people who claim to be self-made because they turned their inheritance, and their families' connections into a successful life. It comes from being on too many campuses where the business departments, because they are the business departments, have more resources, more status, and better facilities. I do not like, nor do I trust, America's hereditary plutocracy. People like the Bushes don't know how things are for most folks, nor does it seem that they really care to any great extent. They don't have to. But that's them.

Students at my university are the have-nots. They are the kids (and grown-ups) who want to have a chance to make something of themselves. They believe that a business degree will help them achieve that goal. I sincerely hope it does. It will probably be a long slog for a lot of them, given that they are barely able to afford school, many of them are parents, they don't have friends and connections in high places, and they don't have rich parents and grandparents to bail them out when things go sour.

That's why I'll do my very best to make sure they learn something useful in my class.

Did I mention I was wrong?

Sometimes I Just Hate Teaching

Every job has its downside. Some always suck, and some often suck, and some rarely suck. No job fails ever to suck. As much as I love my job, even it sucks sometimes. This semester I have encountered an aspect of my teaching that I'd just as soon have avoided. This semester I am teaching business students. To be frank, I would rather teach freshman public speaking than teach business students. The course I'm talking about, Professional Communication, is taught in my area, but the content and approach are partly mandated by the Business department. More or less, I get to teach a bunch of business students how to write and present as professionals. So, you're probably wondering, what's so bad about that. Well, I'm glad you asked.

The first thing is this: Business students are people who mostly want to be told how to do something. They don't want to learn, they want to pass. They need me to tell them how to communicate, because, like many other students (but especially in the case of many business students) they see the learning process as a hoop of some sort. It's a necessary step in satisfying their major requirements, but that's about it. Rarely does someone come into a class saying, "Hey, you know what? I'm interested in learning about this stuff. I don't even care about what grade I receive." The funny thing is, people who take that approach often do a lot better than those whose orientation is toward success rather than toward learning. Furthermore, students have a tendency not to do things on their own that would allow them to be successful. For example, they read (maybe) if they are forced to, and write only if they have to. As a result, writing and reading are neither pleasurable nor as natural if they could be if those students did them more regularly. More importantly, they don't really do those things very much on their own. As a result, they continue to struggle, and hence to avoid. This is especially true in "instrumental" or "technical" majors like business and some of the sciences. That is, the learning is see as a means to an end. In order to know how to do something, one must be shown how to do it. And, having been shown, one assumes that one knows how to do it. As a result, I will teach students how to use email, write memos and reports, and so forth. Once they pass the class, they, for the most part, will believe that they have learned those things sufficiently that they no longer have to worry about them. They have, in effect, transcended the need for further effort toward learning. It is an orientation that treats things like reading, writing, and speaking as "skills," instead of "arts." As a result, students, and particularly students in the instrumental majors, have a tendency to think in very localized and short-term ways about what a particular learning event is "for" or why it is "useful."

Second issue: I am more or less teaching these students how to be better tools of The Man. That's my job, I realize, but it still makes me feel icky. I'd feel almost the same (though not to the same degree, certainly) if my job was to teach hookers to suck cock, and to do so in such a way as to get their johns to drop that load ASAP, rather than, for example, prolonging and enhancing pleasure, taking pride in technique, experimenting freely with one's approach, and so forth. I'm teaching them, in the words of Larry the Cable Guy, to "git 'er done." (sorry Brandon). Now, that's all and well. We need to know how to get things done. The problem arises when we only worry out how "useful" something is in achieving that end. In fact, we may get to a point where things are only "useful" if that help to achieve some immediate need, some preconceived end. Witness, for example, the decline of the arts and music in the public school system. Notice the decline of creative writing at the college level. These are the things that suffer as a result of the instrumental orientation toward learning. The problem with this is that it assumes we can know in advance every specific thing that could be useful. We assume that knowledge is unitary, linear, rational, and so forth. We learn to fetishize those things, and to diminish or even to demonize those things the value of which we cannot immediately recognize.

With this class, I fear that's the thing to which I will be contributing. Not only will I not be enhancing love of learning, creative work and expression, and so forth; I will also be called upon to actively suppress those tendencies. That's what sucks.

The Doctor is In... Okay, maybe not

Hello, you three! I'm back (kind of). Just wanted to mention that, yes, I have been absent over the holidays. Needed to recharge the batteries after a long semester. Today, I'm off to Atlanta to film the Neon Christ reunion shows, and will get back Sunday night. School starts on Monday, but I hope to have something to post on Tuesday. 'k?

See you soon!

Just Do It (if you want to)

Let's talk about sex. Good. Now I have your attention. I mean that quite seriously, though. Today I'm going to ponder some about the topic of young people, sex, and freedom.

My understanding of history suggests that a person's freedom is based at least in part on his or her (and particularly her) control of "the means of production," or in this case, reproduction. Michel Foucault's History of Sexuality is one place to understand this dynamic, and how it has evolved in the West. One could also certainly look at gender and sexuality-based rights movements for insights. If you are at all interested in this topic, I encourage you to do so. For now, my treatment of the issue will be considerably less erudite, and perhaps at times, crude. So sue me.

Here's more or less the gist of my argument. In the United States there is remarkably little attention to providing a robust understanding of sex for young people. In the public sphere, the tendency seems to have been to more or less try to pretend that puritanical prudishness is sufficient to "protect" kids from the evils of sex. So, we have the Federal government pushing abstinence-only programs as if the are (a) effective and (b) enough. That, I think, is bullshit. I will not belabor the point here, but I do encourage you to read up on abstinence-only programs and reach your own conclusions.

I think that this tendency to treat every public controversy as if it were a crisis, and to produce, of course, favored solutions as the only course of action, has reduced public thinking on this and other topics to all new lows. In fact, particularly when talking about children and adolescents, this tendency is especially pronounced. I encourage you to look at this book and this one to hear some interesting arguments about kids get used as pawns when advancing an agenda of social control. More or less, these hot button issues tend to be framed in such a way that children are seen as a public problem, a menace to society, or possibly as willing or unwilling dupes of unsavory individuals and organizations. Notice, please, that the prevailing discourse on youth does not seriously entertain the notion that young people can or should make substantive life decisions over, for example drug use or sex. "Just say no." That's not a particularly useful or realistic way to approach these issues.

Now, back to the sex issue in particular. We have one very prominent public debate on young people's sexuality, and a whole slew of issues that never get much play, if any, because they tend to make "responsible adults" uncomfortable (to put it very lightly). So they get ignored. Here, I'm talking about the weird and "fucked up" kids: The various freaks, queers, experimentalists, and others with "abnormal" sexual urges and tendencies. Perhaps all those "Girls Gone Wild" videos will encourage parents to at least admit the possibility that their precious little girls (and boys?) get their respective freaks on, sometimes with their best friends... I wouldn't hold my breath. I wonder, sometimes, how many of those ladies' fathers have bought their own daughters' work. Wouldn't that be rich to witness? Pseudo-puritanical dad of sorority girl sees her (and her roommate!!!), getting down and dirty in public. How do you broach that during the family dinner? But I digress.

The "queer" kids, however they are understood as "queer" (e.g., gay, lesbian, bi, transgendered, androgynously gendered, in some way kinked, or whatever) are more or less ignored in the public discourse, if not actively demonized by the nation's moral scolds like James Dobson, Bill Bennett, and Jerry Falwell. Public discourse about queer youth, even when it occurs, tends to come from the mouths of "experts" and other adults. Rarely are children called upon to give voice to their thoughts and positions. When they are, generally it tends to be in the context of yet another study of the particular "crisis" adults are concerned about, or to give testimony about what fucked up individuals they are. This is particularly harmful given the rising numbers of religiously-based, private behavioral modification programs for these kids. Given that they are religiously-based, they tend to lack adequate supervision from the relevant child welfare authorities, lack a robust understanding of the bases of sexuality, and more or less attempt to control things that may not be controllable, resulting in incalculable damage to young people.

I won't even grace these people with serious attention. They don't understand, they don't want to. They make me angry, and I need to keep that at a distance for now.

Anyway, back on topic. To deny sexuality, sexual difference, and so forth, does kids a disservice. Adolescence is a fucked up time anyway. It's bad enough without people attempting to control your sexual thoughts and behaviors. More importantly, I think, this denial of a primary fact of life leads to a bunch of bad consequences: bad feelings, bad information, and bad sexual technique. Kids either must learn to suppress their sexual feelings or they must feel that something is wrong with them. Even straight kids who have sex don't escape the framing of adolescent sex as deviant, rather than natural, behavior. The denial also tends to control kids access to sexual information, including facts, options, info on birthcontrol, techniques, practices, etc. Some this is stuff that would be classified as "porn" by some people. Nonetheless, I tend to believe that endlessly deferring people's adult status is in itself a source of learned helplessness. After all, not long ago it was not uncommon for 14 and 15 year olds to get married and start families. When did we become so stupid that we couldn't, with good info, know what to do w/ our sexual feelings and equipment? The taboo against adolescent sex extends like a fetid blanket to cover all kinds of information, behaviors, and feelings. Finally, people who hate sex and deny it and hide it from their kids do them a further disservice. What harm is there in doing it right? How can a person become appropriately sexual, even at the "right time," or in the marriage bed, if they don't know how to use their (and their partner's) equipment pleasurably, safely, and effectively? I wonder how many fundamentalists are closet sex-fiends, frustrated by their own limitations.

In the end, the topic of sex should not be taken out of public discourse. Normalizing sexuality, of all kinds, does not harm, but helps. It helps kids. It helps parents. It helps society. Treating sexuality the way we do guarantees the marginalization of queer and kinked youth. It fetishizes a kind of blandness and sameness of human sexuality. It demonizes anything that departs from "normal" sexual tendencies. It attempts to make "natural" what repressed Christians do as a matter of course. As a result, we end up with fucked up, sad, lonely, self-hating kids. For no good reason. We also, by denying them control of their own bodies and identities, deny them the possibility of real political power. The cannot vote. They have little influence, even over their parents. Their lives are tightly controlled, defined, and commodified by people not themselves, by people who have "plans" for them: business plans, career plans, marital plans, etc. Quoth the Bard: Now that's fucked up.

We deprive kids of deeply personal and political decision-making, and try to lock them into a state of perpetual childhood. Unless they deviate. Unless they kill someone. Unless they fuck someone. Unless they take drugs. Then they are punished as quasi-adults, or they are institutionalized, marginalized, or denied. They have literally no political representation on their own behalf. It is always through the proxy of a parent, no matter what a kid may want, no matter how fucked up the parent. I'm not talking here about letting eight year olds do "whatever." I'm talking about kids between say 13 and 17, people who are supposed to begin acting like adults some day. Adults of some sort, anyway. How is that supposed to happen? We will control virtually every aspect of their lives, including their sexuality, and suddenly at 18 they'll just be adults? Really? Can't get behind that idea. Sounds like bullshit to me.

Being an adult is not about the calendar on the wall, but about the ones in your hearts and minds.

Go now, and think about sex. Do it if you'd like, by yourself or with a partner (or more). Have a good time. Give and receive freely. Most of all, embrace this part of your being. Understand and accept it, and you will probably be happier. Understand that sex is political and it can help you find personal power. But don't get hung up on it. It's not everything, just one thing. Learn it, live it, and love it.

Sela

On Being a Mentor

I'm back again after a short break.

You see, sometimes I need a little time to let ideas percolate a bit. I work by intuition at times, and sometimes force won't get the job done. It comes out "forced," awkward, mechanical, and tends to lack a significant authorial voice. In any case, I think I have something worked out, so here it goes.

I was having a discussion for a couple of hours yesterday with the lovely Io. At some point we began to talk about a class she had taken from me this semester. She was curious as to how I would evaluate it. Truly, as I told her, it was superior class, and one in which I felt I did some of my best work and my students had met and even surpassed my expectations. Then she said something funny, something that kind of took me aback. I can't remember her exact words but the meaning seemed to be something like this. When I felt that my students were doing well, she said she could tell, because I seemed like I was proud, even self-satisfied. I don't think she necessarily meant it in a negative way, but it gave me pause. In my mind, I sort of stopped to consider what she meant. Like a proud poppa? Like a manager taking credit for his employees' work under her/his "leadership"? I wasn't particularly impressed with what she had revealed to me about myself. In fact, I said, "I did not know that about myself." It really was kind of embarrassing to me, probably because I could see the truth in it. Now, mind you, those weren't the only facets of the conversation we had. In fact there were a few more flattering remarks, but kind of irrelevant to the discussion right now. I won't go into them here, unless I see a connection as I write.

What I take from this is a kind of clarity, the kind that emerges from passing from a state of self-delusion to a state of self-awareness. Sure, I always think about my "performance" (in the acting sense) as a teacher, but I don't actually get to see it. Come to think of it, I'd probably think I was kind of a wanker sometimes. Nonetheless, it's quite humbling when you realize that what you try to do is watched and evaluated(!) by others. Part of it is that I understand that teaching, getting up in front of an audience, requires that one should play a role of sorts. Please understand, I don't mean that I try to fake it. However, there is a certain level of self-consciousness inherent in the performance. I like to think that this self-consciousness is part and parcel of an effort toward improvement of performance. I have been reminded, though, that part of the performances we render for our viewing audiences is also something we do to satisfy ourselves. We like to be clever. We like to be appreciated. We like to be liked. We like to be seen as wise. We want the audience to confirm our self-conceptions, or even to confirm that we are better than we had hoped we were. We want to be... worthy. Often in my life, I have not been seen as such. I didn't really know I craved it so much, still, again, in perpetuity perhaps. At what point is the abandonment of ego possible, so that I can just get on with life?

I guess, for me, the clarity I've found has taken me to a place where I see a certain level of futility. It reminds me that I'm still trying, after all these years, not to be the biggest fucking dork in the world. And I am not always succeeding at it. Why should that matter, I'm not sure... but it kind of does. I like to think of myself differently: doing my work for others, presenting an example to be followed, being just a medium, so to speak, for the information I'm passing along. A whole bunch of important-sounding things like that. The geek that I am sort of militates against that. It's sort of pathetic. I guess that one is never really what he or she wishes to be; rather, one is just what one is. Yes, Popeye the Sailor philosophy boys and girls. I am what I am, and that's all what I am. Right? Well, maybe not. That just assumes that one is a product, like a box of cereal, with known and relatively unchanging properties and characteristics. That's true, but only partly. We also, beneath the unchanging elements that allow us to see ourselves as coherent and continuous beings, are chaotic, emergent, constantly in a state of flux, of action and reaction to the world. Sometimes, that world, that perverse, obdurate world, surprises us. It surprises us into recognizing something new, or reevaluating something old, and so forth. We don't just get to "be ourselves," because "ourself" is revealed to be temporary, partial, provisional, emergent, and so forth. The work that it takes to be a person becomes more apparent, and the fact that we have been faking it becomes all too clear.

You know, maybe I'm just being way too self-reflexive here. Maybe there are people out there who don't really match this description. The simply are so much themselves, that the world and other people are never able to make an impression. I hate those fuckers. I mean really, how can anyone be that certain of themselves? What unbridled arrogance! Or maybe I'm just jealous, because I don't think I'll ever be that way.

Wow. This has gotten to a place I didn't expect to go. I wanted to talk about something relevant to education, but instead I'm just navel-gazing, kind of doing the psychological equivalent of holding my nuts after being kicked square in my ego. Forgive me. I do see a reason, though, to talk about it, and I'll get there soon.

Teachers, particularly in college, tend to understand themselves as doing more than simply doing a job and going home. The whole edifice of my profession rests on the idea that what I do matters in larger ways than simply coming to class, lecturing, evaluating, and going away. What I do is supposed to matter to students. The way I do my work as a teacher (or an advisor, etc.) is supposed to have some sort of impact. I'm supposed to imagine myself as a role model, as someone who can show people, not just how to think, but what to be and how to live. Let's call that the messianic dimension of teaching. I'm supposed to be the secular equivalent of a priest of some sort, representing a discipline that functions like a denominational label, like "Lutheran" or "Baptist," for example. The problem is, though the congregation, as such, files in regularly, they are not always there for the reasons you think they are. They do not see or understand things exactly the way you expect them to. Most importantly, they do not see you in the same way that you see yourself. That's reasonable, and probably should be expected by someone who is supposedly an expert regarding rhetoric. Ahh... but then self-delusion creeps in, and allows you to project upon your own self-awareness an illusion of mastery. You think you have been what you sought to be, and done what you sought to do. Maybe you have. You probably also have done a bunch of other things of which you are unaware, or even actively in denial. That's where I find myself now.

I am, I have been, humbled. The task of making that kind of connection with my students is so immense as to be unachievable. There is never going to be a time when I and my students will find ourselves revealed, in truth and glory, to each other. We will never truly be consubstantial with each other in any real way. This reminds me of something that John Durham Peters (1999) said about communication in his book, Speaking Into the Air:

The authentic representation of the self or world not only is impossible, it is also never enough. Needed instead is a stoic willingness to go through the motions that will evoke the truth for others. The problem of communication is not language'’s slipperiness, it is the unfixable difference between the self and the other. The challenge of communication is not to be true to our own interiority but to have mercy on others for never seeing ourselves as we do. (266-267)

It's sort of funny to realize, in very tragically funny sort of way, that what I hope to achieve--perfect communion, total consubstantiality--is more or less delusional. Yet, that's what I feel compelled to seek in my work. I hope that I can go to a place, and meet my students there, and that we recognize each other in some very real sense. That in this moment of recognition, that we will reveal all that is important to know, and that we will accept, and even forgive, what is there in the other person, and in ourselves. Is this constant urge I have just the desire for forgiveness (for what?), for love (don't I have that already?), for worthiness (to whom, then, if not to myself?)?

For me, this really fucks with my idea of being a mentor or some kind of role model for my students. How can a person be so ignorant of the basic facts regarding himself and his desires, and how they interrelate with others, and still expect to be a model of perfection? Sort of an arrogant assumption, isn't it? I guess the important thing that I take away from this lesson is that I should not worry about what it says about me. I need to do my job, do it well, and do it with passion, but I should be careful about my expectations as to what I will get in return. To project an obligation upon my students to preserve my carefully wrought self-image is not good. Perhaps it is not particularly ethical either. I guess when you love, you want to be loved in return; however, I don't think love should be so much an investment as it is a gift freely given. Let it flow. Don't worry about what follows. Don't expect. Be in the moment. Most importantly, don't make yourself the most important thing in picture you see in your mind.

Sometimes, the students are the teachers. If teachers listen, perhaps they will recognize this to be true far more often than they suspect.

Sela. Reflect on this.

Music, and Other Reasons for Living

Well, boys and girls, I've returned. I hope you got the note from my mom. My computer really was very sick. SpyAxe had taken over my computer. If you ever get it on your computer, I pity you. However, with some help from the guys at Tech Guy Support Forums or at least me reading one of their help sessions w/ somebody else, a few freeware applications they linked to, and a little investigative process on my end (lasting, oh six or eight hours over two days!), I was able to kill it. The best part was using this little app called KillBox. With help from KillBox I got the extreme pleasure of ripping out its very guts, a little file located in my Windows directory. With normal spyware removal procedures, this file got ignored. It would then reinstall the problem. Well, thanks to the forum listed above, I got some good advice, and I could almost hear the little bugger scream its last as I told KillBox to delete it. It was a very good feeling. The rest, as they say, was a matter of time. Fuck you, Spy Axe. You were a tough opponent, but fuck you anyway. We met and you died.

Well, can you tell how much I enjoyed that whole ordeal? Off to other issues then.

Today, I wanted to talk about music a little bit. Anyone who knows me even a little bit knows that I like to listen to music. I like it a lot. I also like to listen to new music all the time, though I also go through periods when I go back to the stuff I already have, get re-addicted, and do it to death for a while. I was on a kick for a while where I listened to Bad Religion, Bad Religion, and more Bad Religion, mixed with a healthy dose of NOFX. Which is why this is about education. It happened when Yours Truly was still in graduate school, working on the dissertation.

In a way, I think I could honestly say that I might have had a harder time with graduate school if I hadn't been a punker from way back. It wasn't too hard to see that my work was political. It also gave me an excuse to have sufficient intestinal fortitude to say what I needed to in order to get done. I had a lot of friends who just never finished, and I sometimes wondered if I was going to. In those time, music really helped me a lot. The dissertation even has pieces of two Bad Religion songs in it, and in the bibliography. It really was that important to me at the time, and spoke to me in a way my professors and friends and wife could not. When I listened to The New America (not BR's best album, but it's got some good tunes), it helped me a lot. The best way to say it, I suppose, is that it helped me to reach, mentally, a sort of messianic place. I was ready to stand up and testify to the congregation. I was ready to bear witness in the streets. I was ready to rip the educational establishment a new asshole. I remember something similar from when I was growing up. Some songs just got me going so much that I felt unstoppable.

Of course, I know, I was (and am) not really unstoppable, but I was filled with the spirit, so to speak. I can understand jihad. I know what's it's like to give yourself over to fate's whims. I sort of think of it as something akin to deindividuation or entrainment, as discussed in some of the literature on crowd behavior, cults, riots, flow, and so forth. One more or less is using the music as a level of oneself, performing the music as an element of your life in the world, at least in part. Another way to think about that is to think about music as a soundtrack for your life. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm pretty prone to getting songs stuck in my head. I once had the Brian Boytano (sp.?) from the Southpark movie stuck in my head for five straight days, from the time I got up until the time I went to sleep. It got so bad that I more or less was coming up with my own lyrics for every verse, even actually applying them to my experiences of the day. Very weird. But I digress. I'm talking more about how sometimes I'll just be driving or walking around, or doing some work--basically living my life--and in my mind there's like a soundtrack, something like that. Not necessarily whole songs, mind you. More like fragments of songs that seem appropriate to the situation. Maybe I have a weird sense of congruence between my symbolic and my lived worlds. Maybe I'm also really attuned to the irony in a lot of situations that music helps me both to self-represent and to appreciate on some aesthetic level. Maybe I'm just fucking batshit insane.

Another idea here.

Can we think of schools and other organizations dealing with the public as having their own particular sorts of "music." That is, different organizations create an environment, a "vibe" that people are or are not hip to. Here's an example. My family is really laissez-faire with Christmas. We show up, we hang out, we eat, we drink, we open presents, and so forth. There's a plan, but not really The Plan. It's the vibe I'm used to. My wife's family, on the other hand, seem committed to scheduling, tight organization, general participation in every little thing, and so forth. It puts me on edge when I visit. On the one hand, yeah, I'm kind of being a dick for not dancing to their music. But on the other hand, their music sucks, and I can't dance to it. I ain't doin' the fucking Macarena, dammit! So, more or less, when we think about how a student in school might be moved by their music (in a broad sense encompassing both their self expression and their self representations of themselves and of the world to themselves), we must think also about how the music of the vibe of the school works with and against and parallel to and so on, with respect to the students' own various vibes. If they don't match particularly well, I can see the potential of a lot of ironic situations (in some student's view) or for the mental equivalent of students covering their ears, rolling their eyes, and saying, "God! This music totally sucks!"

Now I know this is a weird post, and relies pretty heavily upon the music metaphor to make a point. That metaphor is figurative, and it comes along with some baggage. It may ignore elements of human psychology and sociality. However, it is a useful tool for thinking about this with. In fact, that reminds me of something. Kenneth Burke said somewhere that literature is, "equipment for living." That is, since we cannot have experience directly sometimes, we turn representations of experience, in literature for example. It helps us to understand ourselves, the people around us, how the world works, and so forth. Starting in the fifties, but particularly since then, music and other mass and micro-mediated and marketed genres of popular culture have tended to supplant the forms of Burke's day. I think what he said still rings true, whether you're talking about literature, music, comic books, or whatever. These are the tools that we use to think with, to live with. I find it fascinating the extent to which this is so, and also the extent to which our understandings of human subjectivity tend to underrepresent these elements in the construction, maintenance, and dynamism of a person's interactions with the world around him or her.

Sela. Go now and reflect upon this.

Absent for a bit

Dear Mr. Smith:

Sorry, but Doc will not be in class today. His computer has been attacked by vicious malware (SpyAxe), and he has only just managed to fix it. He will be sure to bring a note from his internet security freeware providers when he returns to class tomorrow.

Doc's Mom

Grading is a Tool of the Man

Short post today boys and girls. I have a ton to do today, including end-of-semester grading. I don't know if I've mentioned it here before, but I really, really, really, really (this could go on for a while....) HATE grading. I don't mind evaluating work. I don't mind giving constructive feedback. I don't even mind being a hardass sometimes in order to get people's attention, so that they might demonstrate some self-respect, some respect for me, and some respect for the process of learning. Grading, though, is not as useful. Let's take a quick look at why that might be.

Herb Childress, writing in 1998, found himself wondering why students who couldn't care less about what they do in classrooms, all of a sudden became hard-working outside of the classroom context. He looked at (American) football for his answers. According to Childress:

In the school that I observed, I saw striking -- and strikingly consistent -- differences between the perfunctory classroom sessions and lively extracurricular activities. The same students who were emotionally absent from their classes came alive after school. We say, "If only she'd spend as much time doing her algebra as she does on cheerleading . . ." with the implication that students blow off algebra because they're immature. We don't usually think to turn the question around and ask what it is about the activities they love that is worthy of their best effort. We don't usually ask what it is about school that tends to make it unworthy of that kind of devotion. But if we're interested in looking at places of joy, places where students lose track of how hard they're working because they're so involved in what they're doing, places where teenagers voluntarily learn a difficult skill, places that might hold some important lessons for schools, football is a good choice.



In his analysis of football, he found seventeen (that's right, seventeen) reasons why. Here's what he found:

1. In football, teenagers are considered important contributors rather than passive recipients.

2. In football, teenagers are encouraged to excel.

3. In football, teenagers are honored.

4. In football, a player can let the team down.

5. In football, repetition is honorable.

6. In football, the unexpected happens all the time.

7. In football, practices generally run a lot longer than 50 minutes.

8. In football, the homework is of a different type from what's done at practice.

9. In football, emotions and human contact are expected parts of the work.

10. In football, players get to choose their own roles.

11. In football, the better players teach the less-skilled players.

12. In football, there is a lot of individual instruction and encouragement from adults.

13. In football, the adults who participate are genuinely interested.

14. In football, volunteers from the community are sought after.

15. In football, ability isn't age-linked.

16. Football is more than the sum of its parts.

17. In football, a public performance is expected.

Now, mind you, I personally didn't like playing football that much. The games were kind of fun, but I hated practice with a passion. I hated losing games. Winning games was great. But Childress gets something here. Ving Tsun kung fu (VTKF) was a lot more fun for me, because we don't evaluate or grade or win or lose. More or less, people have some things they're working on, they show up for class, and they work on them. There is no right or wrong, in the sense that "grading" as such would suggest. Rather, everyone is seen to need to improve and perfect whatever they're working on. So we get together in order to see more examples, and to have partners to share the work with and to do things we would be unable to do alone (e.g., two-person training activities).

Okay, I got some of this written already, so I'll just include it. The post will be long today, after all:

Let us say, for example, that what we want to assess is the total quantity of kung fu a student has. Assuming that this is a physical skill, we assign it to assessment of its physical manifestation. We put the student to the test. Instead of simply matching him or her against an ideal opponent, the embodiment of "the true kung fu" (a benchmark or standard), we must put him or her up against a real person, as such an ideal practitioner does not exist. Then we create a testing situation, say a sparring session. We set up a system of rules for the test, and a set of indicators to take as data from it. However, both the rules and the indicators measured must be limited to ensure that they can be assessed in the first place and that they can be taken as determinant measures of what we predefine as "kung fu." Further, if we do not want the people tested to be gravely injured, or worse, we must limit the testing situation. Suppose that we create a set of guidelines to determine legal and illegal tactics in the game defined by the test. Automatically, we limit the full range of skills the student can bring to bear in the testing situation. It may be that the skills we proscribe might mean the difference between success and failure. Even more so, the test is but a singular instance of the manifestation of the standard to be tested. Things might have gone better or worse, had the conditions of the test been different, or if different people had been involved. What might have happened in an ideal situation is, then, only a construct, one that assumes far too little possibility for error in measurement.

VTKF does not engage in such assessment. I think part of the assumption behind this is that the "testing situation" is not a real situation. One cannot assume that what is manifested at a particular time is the sum of what has been learned. Instead, VTKF substitutes a more student-driven conception of assessment. Here I will consider three aspects of it: no mistakes, constant assessment without accountability systems, and multiple bases for self-assessment.
No Mistakes

“No mistakes” is a primary principle of VTKF pedagogy. It means, more or less, that substandard performance is not really a problem. Instead, mistakes or uncertainty of knowledge indicate areas for individual improvement. They are not, however, occasions to comment on the state of the “guilty” party. The mistake happened somehow, and probably for some reason, but what is it? What is different, here, is that the standard is personalized. There is no ideal performance outside of persistence of application: even then, one must have freedom to relax, to take breaks, and not to force the learning to happen. One does what one does, and that is enough. You did it that way for some reason, and hopefully you got something out of it. Jana suggested that part of the reason for this attitude relates to the naturalness of one’s personal experience:

In a kung fu school, nothing is wrong. Everything is fine. Right now, you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be. Always. And then there’s time to work on details, you know. It’s not that it’s wrong, or that it’s been wrong. It’s just time to do this. And that’s great. It’s very freeing. Nothing is wasted. Even if you’ve been doing it one way, and now it’s time to do it this way, did you get anything from doing it that one way? Yeah. You did. So, that’s very different from standard education.

The student, it is supposed, must constantly engage his or her own practice at a meta-level, looking at what is done and how it is done, and working out ways to make it better. Energy spent on constructing crisis situations out of what is very normal and natural situation is energy wasted. This system of assessment assumes the fact of error, contrary to assessment in SBR, and naturalizes and “decriminalizes” it through the “no mistakes” frame. By doing so, it is possible, according to Bill, to make students much more comfortable with improving practice as a result of assessment, and does not discourage them from practicing:

No one ever makes you feel like you're doing anything wrong. … Telling someone they're doing it wrong isn't really going to correct the error a whole lot. They might think about it a bit more, which is good, but it's really hard to do something right being just told without actually practicing it a lot. And if you're constantly being told you're doing it wrong, you're not going to practice. If you don’t practice, you’re not going to learn.

Finally, in addition to being natural to the context of VTKF, mistakes are seen as resources for developing a more comprehensive understanding. Simply, pursuing a mistake, and what makes it a mistake, provides not just the binary distinction between “right” and “wrong,” it also provides a mechanism for self-correction, and a way to determine, by degrees and applications, what is “right” or “wrong.” Given that, self-assessment and self-correction become the basis for quite a lot of learning:

Mistakes are almost encouraged. If you’re not trying to do it, you’re not making mistakes, but you’ll never learn. So, people are really encouraged to explore off to the side and actually see why they do it. You don’t see that in regular schools. It’s set in concrete: You do it this way. They should encourage it when a kid raises his hand and goes, “I don’t see why they do it that way,” instead of just telling them to shut up. Actually letting the kid figure out why they did it that way [would be better]. (Ernie)

It is not so much that there is not the idea of making mistakes in the first place, in VTKF pedagogy. People do, in fact, make mistakes constantly. What is different from SBR is that there is no formal accountability system to dictate particular varieties and levels of performance from students. This is not to say that they are not evaluated, by themselves and by others; rather, they are not at the same time subject to value statements about the adequacy of their performance, or punished for deficient performance, at least by anyone but themselves. There is broad recognition in VTKF circles, I think, that every time one corrects a student, one alters what is both natural and desirable: the student’s own understanding of and approach to the material, which forms the basis of his or her understanding of its relevance and value, and of his or her own.
Constant Assessment without Accountability Systems

For that reason, it is important that students develop, first, a sense of the value of their own efforts. VTKF instructors try not to jump immediately on the mistakes they see, leaving experience to teach the students the “right” way to do whatever it might be, and only occasionally leading them away from the sorts of things that might cause them trouble. Jana, my sihing, spoke to me about her experiences in opening up her own VTKF club when she moved away from the home school:

I will tell my students things that are appropriate. Like you don’t just want to sit there and just stare at somebody playing a form. You want to play a form? If they ask you to watch them it’s fine. It’ll never happen, but it’s fine. But you don’t just want to stand there and watch. I’ll let them know. I wouldn’t do it if they were doing that. I would let them do it, and then I would let them know later. I’ve seen people lounge on the johng. It’s real hard not to go over and move them. You don’t want to do it while they’re doing it, because then they’ll get the sense that they’ve done something wrong. You tell them later, and in an offhand way, so they know. They’re probably just curious and want to be near it because it’s this cool-looking thing.

Some practitioners are better at laying off their juniors than others, but a laissez-faire ethos pervades the larger practice of the collective. Some people even begin to question other ways in which they have been evaluated, and the very concept of grading itself. Bill, my sidai, said in an interview:

Bill: I think that the grades only hinder performance and learning. I understand their necessity, because people need a way to see that they're learning. The students are learning and that they're getting something out of it, and to be able to, you know, say who's better or whatever. … It's just like that: People will cheat to get good grades; and people work hard and get good grades, and if you work hard you learn it, and if you cheat you don't. But then what's the grade worth, if you didn't learn anything. You have these grades. What's the point?

EDJ: Why would someone cheat then?

Bill: Because that's what we base it on. We base everything on grades. You get into college based on your GPA, so if you have good grades you get in. They don't test you really. I mean they give you the ACT or whatever, but I don't know. It just seems like the grading scale is what it's all about, and not what you learn really.

When assessment is divorced from what actually is learned, and when grades are raised to the status of fetish, then we have a problem. SBR is replete with instances of this problem, whether in terms of equating test scores with learning, or in terms of differential treatment of students based on those scores, especially the “failures.” I believe that VTKF provides a model for how a better situation might be achieved.
Multiple Bases for Self-Assessment

What underlies the individual effort of each student is his or her participation in training collectively with other members of the school. One aspect of this collective dimension comes from one of Sifu's frequent admonitions that each student should "touch a lot of hands" (work with a lot of other students during training time). That is, individual insights are derived from collective practice, during which a student brings his or her own kung fu into play with others' own versions of the kung fu. This provides students with multiple bases for comparison rather than a single "correct" basis for comparison (i.e., a “standard” or “benchmark”), whether that is simply his or her own kung fu or some other ideal of what the kung fu should be, feel, or look like.

At the same time, however, the same system of constructs (e.g., drills, forms, etc.), grounds the practitioners’ collective practice in the details of the style. Each student is free in what he or she does with what he or she already knows, but that knowledge is derived from a discrete system of possible knowledge: the VTKF system. However, this body of knowledge just seems to get deeper and more complex as time goes on; it does not get any easier.

The most important things to come out of this sense of assessment are that: (1) there is no “perfect” rendition of the thing evaluated; (2) all performances can provide the possibility for enhanced knowledge; and (3) having more collective knowledge at one’s disposal, and more bases for evaluation, means that one can learn more. I believe that one result of this is to deflect student attention, once again, in one more way, away from comparative valuation against one’s peers, and back toward the material itself.

More or less, grades can serve a useful purpose, but the way they are used in most educational situations is more about valuation of students than it is about evaluation of their work so that they feel self-motivated to improve it. If I could just have a student in my classroom for the right amount of time (which would vary), I think I could get nearly everyone to about the same level. However, I only get sixteen weeks. Then I have to value them, grade them like so many potatoes.

Oh, well... back to grading.