The Uses of Not Knowing

Let's eavesdrop on Nietzsche for a moment:

"Forgetfulness is a property of all action."  The man of action is "without knowledge:  he forgets most things in order to do one, he is unjust to what his behind him, and only recognizes one law--the law of that which is to be."

True dat.  

If you work in an institution of some sort, institutional memory can inhibit your new idea.  But if you can discard the past, then you can do something new today.

In The Lonesome Dove Captain Call call knows about not knowing:  "It wasn't rational to think of driving cattle over eighty waterless miles, but he had learned in his years of [rangering] that things which seemed impossible often weren't.  They only became so if one thought about them too much so that fear took over."

Or as Mark Twain wrote, "To succeed in life you need two things: ignorance and confidence."

Or best of all, Han Solo's answer to C-3PO as they head straight into an asteroid field.  C-3PO cries "Sir, the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately 3,720 to 1!"

To which Han replies "Never tell me the odds."

"The Year of Living Biblically"

This is the second book I've read by A.J. Jacobs, the first being "The Know-It-All."  It's a pretty popular book, a best seller in fact, and it looks like we can expect something from him every few years.

A.J. specializes in immersion journalism, of which there are countless examples these days (guy saves his garbage for a year and writes a book about it, woman eats only local food for a year and writes a book about it, guy eats only at McDonald's for a month and makes a documentary about it, etc.).  

Heck, I've even done it with some students of my students: web.me.com/thelastpintaturtle/Voluntary_Simplicity/Home.html

So what is A.J. Jacobs up to this time?  In "The Year of Living Biblically" he follows the Bible literally for an entire year.  That means the good stuff, like doing unto others, and the crazy stuff, like not sitting in a seat if a menstruating woman sat there.

And what do I think? 

It's . . . fine.  Mildly good.  And mild in general.

First, he's can be funny, in a non-threatening kind of way.  At one point he writes about a religious charity looking for a publicity boost, and they get one "when Bono and his sunglasses joined the cause."  Or later, when he talks about Exodus 23:19, which orders us to not boil a young goat in the milk of its mother, he writes "I think--with a little willpower and a safe distance from farms--I can make it for a year without boiling a baby goat in its mother's milk. . . . [W]orse come to worst, I could boil the baby goat in its aunt's milk."

But why wasn't I too impressed with the book?

First, as much as I hate to say it, immersion journalism is beginning to play itself out.  You might have new idea for your stunt, but doing a stunt in the first place is no longer original.  When I hear of the next new immersion journalism idea, I'll probably just shrug my shoulders and think, "Oh, right, I guess no one's done that yet."

And immersion journalism can seem a bit like a cheat to me.  It's as if the plan is to throw yourself into some crazy circumstances, and then crazy things will happen to you, and then you just report the craziness, and your writing will therefore be compelling.  I had this suspicion about my creative writing thesis, which was largely about my time in Tanzania.  Even if I don't excel at writing, I did see Masai men eat the raw eyeballs and drink the raw blood of their livestock.  And that content alone provides its own vivid imagery, no matter how I string the words together.  But what if the prose itself had to carry the day?  Tell James Joyce to write about two men meeting for a drink, and he can have one of the best short stories I've ever read.  He didn't need eyeballs or blood to pull it off.

But second, and more importantly, I find the book just too accommodating.  Jacobs doesn't want to rock any boats, doesn't want to make any extreme claims, doesn't want to do anything except make sure everyone gets a fair shake and their due respect.  That's good and admirable, but I'm not sure it makes for powerful writing. When accommodating everyone you never quite say anything new, or anything memorable.  Henry David Thoreau (who's time at Walden might be the first real immersion journalism, or still the best literary stunt I can think of) wanted to "brag as lustily as a chanticleer in the morning, standing on his roost, if only to wake my neighbors up."  But when it comes to a hot topic like religion, Jacobs does no bragging, steps up to no roosts, and makes sure all of his neighbors sleep well into the morning and wake up of their own volition before he might speak with them.

But Thoreau-esque authors take the opposite approach.  Here's the opening line from an essay by environmentalist Derrick Jensen:  "Every morning when I wake up I ask myself whether I should write or blow up a dam."  That's a sentence I remember.

Which means I may have to defend the Sean Hannitys and Bill O'Reillys of the world.  They are on their own roosts trying to wake up their neighbors (but their ideas just happen to be very, very wrong).  Even though their views are reprehensible, I'll still give them a few minutes of my radio time very now and then, because at least they working with an edge.  They'll make me angry, but know I'll have an emotion to feel in the first place.

And the mild-mannered Jacobs might be a part of a bigger trend.  Here is Professor Mark Edmunson's description of his current undergraduate students at the University of Virginia:

An air of caution and deference is everywhere. When my students come to talk with me in my office, they often exhibit a Franciscan humility. "Do you have a moment?" "I know you're busy. I won't take up much of your time." Their presences tend to be very light; they almost never change the temperature of the room. The dress is nondescript: clothes are in earth tones; shoes are practical -- cross-trainers, hiking boots, work shoes, Dr. Martens, with now and then a stylish pair of raised-sole boots on one of the young women. Many, male and female both, peep from beneath the bills of monogrammed baseball caps. Quite a few wear sports, or even corporate, logos, sometimes on one piece of clothing but occasionally (and disconcertingly) on more. The walk is slow; speech is careful, sweet, a bit weary, and without strong inflection. (After the first lively week of the term, most seem far in debt to sleep.) They are almost unfailingly polite. They don't want to offend me; I could hurt them, savage their grades.

It's also good description of the authorial voice in "The Year of Living Biblically".  Jacobs never changes the temperature in the room--but I think I read in search of those temperature changes.

The Advantages of Not Having Anything

This summer, for some reason, I was struck by how little I have compared to my friends. I've got friends who own cars, homes, homes with new additions, summer homes, big screen TVs, big wardrobes, multiple computers, iPhones/Pads/Pods, big sofas, dining room tables, yards, driveways, investments, 401Ks, diversified portfolios, etc. These were friends who were exactly like me long ago, when we were high school pals or sharing a crappy house in college.

And I wondered, what happened to me? Why don't I own anything? I have no property, no car, no television, no stereo, no summer home, and a meager wardrobe. I've got some books, and a teacher's pension (which they always threaten to take away). What did I do wrong? I kind of felt like there was a homework assignment I forgot about that everyone else did.

But there is one advantage to not having anything. There's nothing to rob.

My home in Somerville was robbed yesterday. At 1 pm in the afternoon someone popped off a screen and climbed through a window. They went through the house and ransacked everything. Three laptops from three of my roommates were stolen, along with a couple of nice cameras.

My room? Well, when I walked in there was stuff strewn everywhere. The thief opened drawers, threw out their contents, and looked for something of value to steal. There was nothing. I almost feel like I let him down.

He even came across my crappy, old, out-of-date iPods. Yes, I have two iPod shuffles. They were the first two versions ever made: no touch screen, barely any memory, and the haven't been sold in retail for years. Both of those were taken out of a drawer and were thrown on my bed. Which means the thief saw them, COULD have put them in his pocket, but decided it wasn't worth it.

All he took was a cup of change. It wasn't even my little dish of quarters, which were on another shelf and harder to find. It was just a mug of pennies, nickels, and dimes--$8 at the most. I don't even think it was worth it for the robber, but he might have taken it just because he was angry that I had NOTHING TO STEAL.

Being poor has its advantages. You should try it; it disappoints the right people.

Mr. Jordan on the First Day of Class

Now that I'm adept at Cambridge urban slang (see previous post) . . .

MR. JORDAN: Yo yo, what's poppin' slimes? What's good? I'm Mr. Jordan, and this English class is gonna be mad hard but mad fun. Just so you know, I do get aggy when my students act like sherms and turn in work late. So make sure you swing me your assignments on time so I can peep them right away. You'll need to go ham on my tests, and just so you don't get completely salted, make sure you study mad amounts and dog it out. If I rash you on some of your papers, it's only because I want you to be a better writer. More than anything, when you dip from this class I want you to be good with language . . . so next time you see a dime and want to spit g's at that shorty, you'll have a facility for more poetic, creative ways of speaking.

STUDENTS: On dogs Mr. J, on dogs. (Then turning to each other and murmuring to themselves) I feel like I'm really connecting to this teacher. He is speaking our language, the language of our urban upbringing.

Slang at CRLS

CRLS is the school where I teach. The only public high school in Cambridge, MA. It stands for Cambridge Rindge and Latin School. Try saying that 10 times fast.

It's categorized as an urban school, which mostly means it's a place where black students attend. Or low-income students. Or low-income black students.

I'm heading back there next week, and the students will be in the classroom the day after Labor Day. Which means I should brush up on all the slang I learned last year. Here's my growing vocabulary list:

"we're sherms" - we're spacey, we're not being smart
"swing" - pass (as in "swing that pencil to me")
"peep" - see (as in "let me peep that book")
"dog it out" - tough it out
"to rash" - to criticize
"on dogs" - fair to say, I agree
"to dip" - to leave abruptly (as in "gotta dip," gotta leave now)
"ham" - hard as a motherfucker
"what's poppin' slime?" - what's going on? (followed by "nothin' five.")
"what's good?" - what's up?
"spittin g's at a shorty" - hitting on a girl
"mad" - very (an oft used intensifier, as in "that test was mad hard")
"aggy" - mad, angry (from aggravated)
"she's a dime" - she's a good looking girl (a ten)
"forcing it" - trying too hard, one step too far
"jackie" - whatever
"salted/saulted" - you got burned, you got owned (uncleared whether it comes from "salt in the wounds" or "assaulted")

Under Attack

It's strange. I sort of feel that, as a public school teacher, I'm under attack. With the current assault on unions, with the national budget crisis, with constant talk about the deficit, it feels like a lot of politicians and much of the public is coming after us. Supposedly we are fat cats, we've got bloated pensions and salaries, we're the excess and the drain on the economy.

Funny, I've been a public teacher for 17 years and I don't have enough money to buy a home or condo. Because I moved from Illinois to Massachusetts, I'm not contributing one dollar to any kind of pension this year. I have a very modest retirement ready for me when I turn 62. Many of my friends my age are earning six figures by now, and I'm far from from it.

The average teacher salary is so low that it prices us out of home ownership in THIRTY TWO metropolitan areas. The average Korean teaching salary is 250% more than an American's.

There's more

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/opinion/01eggers.html

I know lots of people think teachers are lazy, abuse tenure, and are a leech on the public system. All I can tell you is that most teachers I know work hard, care deeply, and have given up a LOT to stay in the profession. In this profession you regularly hear about some teacher that decided to leave field to get into textbook publishing (or some sort of bullshit consulting, etc.), and the story always ends the same: now they make 4 times the salary. Such a move is always available, and teacher after teacher never takes it. They just keep teaching with in an undervalued profession with low pay and (for some reason) the increasing ire of a nation.

One Day We Will Be Retired and These Students Will Be Running the World

The following is the last line in an essay written by a high school junior:

"It was, clear, that, in writing 'On the Laps of Gods,', author Robert Whittaker did his research, so to speak."

Read that over a few times. Let it sink in. Say it out loud. Say it to a friend.

It's author isn't one of my students (thank God), but I am still haunted by this sentence. Where to begin? Should we talk about the enthusiastic use of commas? What it means to close an essay by mentioning the author did his research? Or to end with "so to speak," as in "I just said he did his research but I am now casting doubt upon that fact, which means my astonishingly banal comment about what any author does by definition has just been undermined for some undetermined reason"?

So yes, this quote is from an American student. Yes, this is the state of affairs. And this is an honor's student, so ostensibly it gets worse from there.

But not all hope is lost. A few weeks ago I had my class read "Politics of the English Language" by Orwell, and we discussed the crimes regularly committed against good rhetoric. When I asked the students to be aware of the state of our discourse, Conor, one of my best students, brought this sentence (so to speak) to my attention.

Conor is to academics what a five tool-player is to baseball. For the those who don't know, a five-tool player is the rare baseballer who excels at hitting for average, hitting for power, speed on the base paths, throwing, and fielding. Conor is the once-every-10-years kind of student who works hard, is extraordinarily intelligent, creative, hilarious, and empathetic. If Conor is running the world when we're all retired, we'll be in much better shape than we are now.

Pagans in Massachusetts

Cambridge is as secular and progressive as you think it is, maybe more so. That's its reputation: an very liberal town in poster-boy-blue-state Massachusetts. My students are living up to it, and then some.

This past week we've been discussing God: philosophizing about the design argument, the problem of evil, Pascal's wager, etc., and then reading poems by e.e. cummings, Whitman, John Donne and the like.

When I had similar discussions with my Mundelein (IL) high school students, it was clear about 80% of the class believed in God, and maybe 50% would have fundamentalist leanings. In Cambridge, only one kid per class might believe in God (and that one still accepts homosexuality). Every one else is a secular atheist/agnostic. If that one God-believing student dares to say something like "I do think God exists because my faith tells me he does", then TWENTY hands will shoot up in disagreement . . . an occurance I now call "the full force of Cambridge secularism."

From today's class:

MR. JORDAN: "O.K., secular Cambridge students, what if we're all wrong? What if heaven and hell really exists? Because if it does, this whole class will be down in hell one day, and I'll be there teaching. And we'll all look at each other and say 'Oooof. We really got this wrong.'"

BYRON: "Actually, God will probably just take the whole town of Cambridge and send it straight to Hell."

CONOR: "It's like God has America on a computer screen. He just clicks on Cambridge and drags it to hell."

MR. JORDAN: "And then he clicks on Texas and drags it up to heaven."

Hotmail Accounts

Last year I spent a lot of time with twentysomethings. The average age of my program was 26, so I had the chance to see what that generation was all about.

What did I learn?

That they don't use hotmail. I use hotmail, but they don't. They all thought it was hilarious I'm a hotmailer because it's so antiquated, because only old people use it. Gmail and yahoo for the young, hotmail for the old.

But this year I realized hotmail isn't only for the old, it's also for the poor. A lot of my inner-city, low-income urban students have hotmail accounts too.

So, the next time a twentysomething wants to make fun of me for using hotmail, I'll also inform them that, apparently, they like to mock poor minorities too. See how funny that seems, you elitists young'uns.

Good Will Education

Matt Damon was on CNN last night and said the following about education:

"The idea that we're testing kids and we're tying teachers salaries to how kids are performing on tests, that kind of mechanized thinking has nothing to do with higher order. We're training them, not teaching them."

Holy Moses. I agree with the young Matt Damon. 100%. I'm thrilled that he said this and tens of thousands of viewers heard. I'm glad this idea has been dropped into the airwaves. (Anytime I say something similar, I'm usually in a roomful of educators/administrators who think the opposite).

But the other notable thing is that Matt Damon graduated from Cambridge Rindge and Latin School (CRLS), where I am currently a teacher. Which raises some questions:

Did he say what he said because he got the right kind of education at CRLS? Or the wrong kind?

Will he come to visit my classroom one day? Would he be pleased or disappointed?

Did I always have an unrecognized crush on Matt D., which has now turned into full-blown love?