Note: I wrote this as a response to NPR's ongoing "This I Believe" series. I shared it with my students today but thought other folks would enjoy reading it.
One of my idols in this world is a professor of
literature at Yale University, a man by the name of Harold Bloom. Before I understood anything about metaphor,
pathos, or verisimilitude, I was reading books by Dr. Bloom on things like Alice
in Wonderland and Rudyard Kipling.
What I was coming to terms with was a very simple question related to
the act of reading and learning (which might be two words describing the same
action): If I claim to have no time to
read this now, then when? And If I don't attempt it, who will? My answers to these questions form the basis
of the kind of teacher I am today.
Sometimes I look upon my profession and status as a
kind of last line of defense (though I am not given to war metaphors). Hence my answer: I have to attempt this
thing, this teaching and helping students become better and deeper writers in
their own vein, because I have no certainty that anyone will ever perform this
service again in their lives. Also: How
can I claim I have no time to do now what I have to do (grade papers, plan my
lesson, talk to students about their writing) when tomorrow brings me a new set
of demands on my time? These questions
and answers invariably bring to me some of the most famous words by the late
Dr. King when he spoke of “the fierce urgency of now”. Today is the day you will get feedback on
your writing and style and today is the day you will realize that thing or
trick that makes you a better writer.
Today is the day that a minor, humdrum sentence becomes through the
skill of your pen and the wit of your mind something amazing to dazzle others
in a blinding rhetorical light of articulate prowess.
One of my favorite movies is Pixar’s
“Ratatouille”. In that story, we are
reminded on several occasions that the most mysterious thing about cooking (or
any creative artistic endeavor) is that anyone
can do it. “Anyone can cook!” Chef
Gusteau exclaims. And that anyone which
is everyone also refers to you.
I believe that you want to be a better writer and I
believe in it so whole-heartedly because I want you to be a better writer. In short, I believe in you.
You are eight years old, soon to be nine, and tomorrow you go to school to take the first of what will unfortunately be many, many, many state level high stakes tests that too many people believe say everything about not just you and your mental acuity but everything about your teacher, your school, and your community. Sadly, this couldn't be further from the truth as these things are just tests. They are a single snapshot from a single perspective of how well you seem to grasp some academic concepts: reading, math, science, a sense of history. As such, I would never tell you not to care about them, just as I would never tell you to not care about school. Learning and education are the single most important thing in your life right now and should be for a good long while.
Yet the world around you has chosen to blow the importance of these tests so far beyond normal that now we must add artificial weight to them. And because I do not possess the tools to change that, I am sorry. I am sorry that as you went to bed tonight the only thing you wanted to talk about was how many questions might be on the test. Because, you see, I care what the test asks about because that's the nature of learning and growing. Will it ask you questions about ancient Egypt or modern China? Those are wonderful and important things to know. Know your world; know math; know the planets and ask about gravity. In fact, let's learn about gravity together because, damn, it still confuses the hell out of me.
But it kills my soul when we talk about whether the multiple choice questions will be in this format or that for that is truly irrelevant information to the cosmos. So don't get me wrong: I hope you do well this week. I hope you walk into all 6 days of this test (Monday through Monday) and find it easier than you expected. I hope each afternoon you look over at me when I get home and ask, "What's the big deal about these things anyway?" And I hope if you do hit a snag, a question that seems really obtuse, that you stop, take your time, think it through and answer it to the best of your ability.
I hope you do well not because I want to see perfect scores.
Not because I want to compare you to others.
Not because I think it says something about you or your teachers.
See, I want you do to well so you can grow up and end these things for your children. Survive this hideous hydra-like beast so that when you are done and out and grown... you can slay it once and for all.
Do one thing everyday that scares you. Several weeks ago, before Spring Break, several teachers in the English department with me got together to brainstorm how we should structure this coming 2 single week remediation blocks of time our school was putting in place starting April 15th. We had a lot of options combined with a lot of restrictions. Make it fun! But don't let kids get out of hand! Make it educational! But don't let kids be bored or fall asleep! Relate it to state standards and the testing format and the individual student needs in your room and the school climate as a whole and whatever you do don't - don't - ask for help funding any of it. Typical edu-babble stuff. But the heads that came together settled on a pretty good plan: take the AP Language students in my classes, for whom the end-of-course reading test was a breeze and ask them to help work in a one-on-one fashion with some of the kids in other 11th grade English classes, for whom the reading test was a literal barrier to graduating high school. Create the best and most powerful form of teaching and learning known to man: the personal kind. I have to admit that I worked for a good week on how I would approach my kids to ask for their help. I didn't want to deceive them into thinking this would be easy or every minute would be barrel-of-monkeys fun but at the same time I thought this was an opportunity in the most up-close-and-personal way anyone could ask for that we could bridge the single biggest divide at school. Once I realized that my kids would benefit from this too, the appeal wrote itself. It was melodramatic in places but never dishonest. "What if that hour a day," I remember saying, "is the longest period of time in their entire day that someone listens to them in a positive way and helps them?" That might be over-the-top but no one who works in a public school in this country could refute its essential truth. See, in the end, I hoped to dispel the stereotypes that tend to get built up in schools on both sides of the divide. I wanted to tear down the sense that some of my students labor under ("Well, they're all just lazy over there") as well as misconceptions other students have about them ("Well, they're in AP classes because they're just plain smart"). This goal would be combined with the more academic one: helping students who otherwise might not pass this standardized test to actually pass it. And that was my greatest appeal. To my kids: "You hate this standardized test and you have every right to. But you are not the ones it is out to get. So what if you foiled not just this test but the suits and ties in Richmond who made this test and sit so smugly in their offices thinking no average level English kid could pass this test? What if through your effort and your attention and your work you helped that student whom the test knows can't pass it... to not just pass it but blow it out of the water?" It worked. I had double-digit signups in all my classes. Then I got nervous. What if it didn't go well? What if personalities clashed? What if a series of infinitesimal things added up to a gigantic failure? worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewingbubblegum So this week we started. Monday I spent 5 minutes with my kids fielding some questions and generally going over how things would work. It was all very structured: icebreaker activities, a little bit of reading comprehension but nothing deadly dull. The first half was the getting-to-know-you bit and it went... well. Actually, better than that. It was like kids from different sides of the country or even other countries were meeting for the first time and finding... they had a lot in common. There were some great conversation starters. One question went like this: Which administrator really gets on your nerves? Two students from different classes would pair up and something like this emerged:
"Hey I'm Kylie."
"I'm Jaron."
"So, what answer did you give to this one?"
"I said Mr. Brown."
"Oh, really, like, why?"
" 'Cause he always up in everyone's business when he don't need to be, you know?" "You mean like dress code?"
"Yeah."
"He busted a friend of mine last week for that. So stupid."
"Yeah, one time he told me..."
And there they went. Two students who normally wouldn't even look at each other in the hallway much less smile or converse found pretty neat common ground. Those kinds of conversations typically morphed into ones about classes and subjects and friends and family and home and...
It was working; it was really really working.
Tuesday was the next test. Would these somewhat forced friendships stand up over more than a single hour? Would the kids want to work together again? Tuesday was a bit more academic with tiny bits of test prep thrown in. Average level kids read a passage, got some help with pronunciation and vocabulary, then together with my AP kids banged away at some main idea and tone questions. There was prodding and questioning in the right places: "Why do you think he phrased it that way?" "What point is she making?"
I rewarded the kids who got top scores with candy (always a winner with teens) and dangled the reward before those who came close. Another chance; another little passage and this time, you can do it! 90% or bust kids! All of that went really well. I don't know that we changed comprehension levels or reading skills or anything so grand. But the average level kids spent an hour working on skills without the fear that an adult was watching of grading or judging. It was just two kids with a common goal. (That goal being candy; I mean, let's not kid ourselves here.)
As the period closed down, I let them stop about 5 minutes early. "Take a break," I said. "Chat it up; bell will ring soon. Enjoy your candy."
Then, as I was passing a pair of students, I overheard them talking, probably picking up the fragment of a conversation from earlier.
"So, you were saying..." one of my kids prompted.
"Yeah, like she was all screaming at me and I wasn't gonna take that so I walked out 'cause don't no body scream at me."
"Where did you go?"
"Naw, it was late and I didn't want to go like all the way to my aunt's house so I slept in the back seat of the car while my mom cooled down."
"Just like hung out there?"
"Sorta. I mean, her boyfriend showed up so I didn't go back in the house until like 2 in the morning but whatever. Ain't like she never thrown me out of the house before."
I snatched a quick glance at my kid and her face, her expression will be forever imprinted on my brain. I will never forget because it spoke volumes. It said:
My God. It's you. I know all about you but only because I've read about you or heard about you from my teacher's. I'm a doctor's kid and I've never not been allowed in my own house at night. But you're here in front of me and not in the words on a page or in a newspaper article. I'm not trying to visualize you or imagine anything about you because you are here in front of me telling me this story and I can't believe my god you exist here in this school in the classroom right next to mine and somehow I never knew and you're here. It's you.
My student didn't say any of that out loud. The bell rang a few moments later and the other girl smiled and hurried out. Another bell to another class to another teacher. Nothing this kid hadn't dealt with before.
Except someone sat and listened to her in the most positive and re-affirming way for possibly the longest period of time anyone would that entire day.
Still plugging through Zen. Ran into page 150 earlier today and two adjacent paragraphs hit me with completely opposite effects. The first:
The real University, he said, has no specific location. It owns no property, pays no salaries and receives no material dues. The real University is a state of mind. It is that great heritage of rational thought that has been brought down to us through the centuries and which does not exist at any specific location. It's a state of mind which is regenerated throughout the centuries by a body of people who traditionally carry the title of professor, but even that title is not part of he real University. The real University is nothing less than the continuing body of reason itself.
Most of this sits well with me as it echoes Thoreau in my head. Tear down the structures, the things of this world that tend to represent thought and intelligence and wonder and yet still I have my mind and in my mind I have the images and feelings associated with those things. Similarly, tear down the institutions responsible for instilling learning within us, deny them accreditation, do what you will and the process of learning and thinking and growing will still take place. In this way, great education is not contained within walls anywhere, a sentiment the great thinkers of our race would agree with (Socrates, Twain, Whitman, Hemingway). It also suggests the idea that teaching is something pretty innate as it contains the sum total of the desire to help another. In this way it is an expression of ego but also of altruism.
The next part thus:
In addition to this state of mind, "reason," there's a legal entity which is unfortunately called by the same name but which is quite another thing. This is a nonprofit corporation, a branch of the state with a specific address... But this second university, the legal corporation, cannot teach, does not generate new knowledge or evaluate ideas. It is not the real University at all.
This discredits learning in a way that contradicts what I see in the first graph. The narrator/author seems to want to separate the experience of school from learning. Ok, he has precedent there. Twain: "I never let schooling interfere with my education." But the difference, I think, is the belief that learning CAN happen anywhere. It is not confined to the classroom ("I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately") but neither is it, by definition, mutually exclusive of the classroom. To defend the first and refute the second is illogical. University structures may suffer flaws, as all organizations do, but until our culture produces enough roaming Socrates to meet with the masses under the tree of knowledge, then we need organization. Question the method this learning tradition operates on, sure; but do not demolish its foundation or you remove the argument for learning altogether.
Suppose a child is born devoid of all senses; he has no sight, no hearing, no touch, no smell, no taste--nothing. There's no way whatsoever for him to receive any sensations from the outside world. And suppose this child is fed intravenously and otherwise attended to and kept alive for eighteen years in this state of existence. The question is then asked: Does this eighteen-year-old person have a thought in his head? If so, where does it come from?
Years ago, well decades ago, I was perusing the bookcases in the E.C. Glass library when I came across a book that looked mildly interesting: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M Pirsig. I read the jacket cover, picked it up with the intent to check it out but never did. Why? Who knows. Did I see some Shakespeare or John Donne? That sounds like the 17 year old me. So imagine my surprise when, again perusing the stacks of the high school where I became myself, I again found this book. This time, I thought, I take it up. Here and now with all this reading and learning behind me surely the book will resonate.
The excerpt from above is from one of the sections the narrator describes as a Chautauqua, which a quick Google search indicates is a kind of "adult education movement" in the United States some time ago. A scan of its history suggests it was a kind of pseudo-intellectual movement for somewhat non-intellectuals in the country to espouse whatever was on their minds. I'm instantly on my guard: there's way too much anti-intellectualism in this country as it is, if you ask me. "I'm not smart and I'm proud of it" seems to be the new American motto. "Science is for sissies" and so forth.
So the story, such as it is, divides itself between these metaphysical/spiritual ramblings and a loose narrative about a motorcycle ride across the northern states of the country, from Michigan to Montana. The narrator, his son, and a couple of friends. He's aloof in a "I'm thinking about big things" kind of way. And some of the big things are interesting: Kant and the history of empiricism. But for the most part the narrative seems to be a gimmick to hold his dis-separate thoughts together. As such this reminds me of another philosophy book I read a couple of year ago, Sophie's Choice. My response to this book is much my response to that one.
Meh.
I like spilling words as much as the next person but there's something about philosophy books couched in literary traditions that don't sit well with me. Here's an intriguing narrative, the author seems to hold out there. And while you're on this cycle with me let me expostulate what beauty is and the empirical rationale for finding both truth and beauty in the world.
Sigh. Can I get off at the next town?
My 17 year old self was probably wise to take a detour with Shakespeare, whose philosophy is second to his art, as it should be. Hamlet provides us a more complex and powerful world view than any pop-philosophy book ever has. There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreampt of in your philosophy, Horatio.
Some of this analysis is not just though. I have to admit to being turned off on page 128; I've never found my way back to the author or narrator after he said: "From that agony [read: ancient man] of bare existence to modern life can be soberly described only as upward progress." Not sure that giant factories that pollute our rivers and deforest our planet, weapons that can annihilate us several times over, and technology that pulls us away from sunlight and fresh air can be described by any rational human being as "progress".
I suspect 50 more pages and I'll be returning to my Thoreau and Whitman as replenishment for my soul.
A little less than a month ago I laid out my initial argument for our sense of pathos in Hugo's perennial masterpiece, "Les Mis". I suggested that the convention of our affection as being Val Jean and his charge, Cossette, were wrongly founded. If we are indeed asked to "pity" those in miserable circumstances, then surely Hugo as a relevant artist of words would provide us with reasons to feel such pity. My thrust, then, was three-fold: Javert, Eponine, and ultimately Fantine. I consider that side of the argument "the bright side" or the optimistic one. At least, as far as one can be optimistic in a book (and time period) of pretty complete despair. This time, though, comes the negativity.
I knew even after my first reading that while Jean Val Jean was cut after the martyr figure, the heroic Victorian man who sacrifices all he has for another, and thus at least mostly deserved the pathos that Hugo seems to artificial dress him in, the little tyke, this Cossette, had none of this. I couldn't initially say why; but now I think I can. And it has everything to do with conscious ignorance.
Cossette is born into ignorance, one might argue. Her mother leaves her at a very young age with the almost Dickensian Thenardiers. They manipulate her and her mother for nothing short of a king's ransom. They fake report illnesses of the child to exact more money from the mother. This of course leads Fantine to her ultimate debasement and one could argue her death. But Cossette is never aware of any of this.
What does she know? She knows she's unhappy. She knows that the Thenardiers' children get better clothes, better toys and dolls, a better life (such as it is - though one could argue it's all squalor). She is never aware of her mother's last desperate hour to see her; she is never aware that Val Jean, whom she comes to call Father, risks everything including his life several times over to keep her safe - not only safe but comfortable and happy. After he liberates her from the Thenardiers and escapes Javert it is some time before we see the two of them again. And when we do, how impoverished are they? Well, see, that's the thing. He has set up shop in Paris and works here and there providing her with pretty nice things. She gets a childhood that most Victorian girls of impoverished backgrounds never get: walks in the park, pretty clothes. Oh and love.
The love triangle was inevitable, I suppose, as most Victorian literature functions on it in one way or another. But I wonder if that's half the problem: Marius love Cossette; Cossette loves Marius back (once she knows who he is) but they can't meet; so Marius uses Eponine to get to Cossette. And of course, Eponine loves Marius. While some love triangles function dramatically it strikes me that the most notable instances of love triangles in literature are comedic, not serious. (Think Shakespeare in Twelfth Night.) So this begs the question: why do we feel bad for Cossette again? Because she born in bad circumstances? Sweetie, get in line. Because she can't be with the one she loves? The one she saw across the park for the first time yesterday afternoon. Once again, see Shakespeare who did the distance-lover-thing first and better. Anything left? Pity her because Marius is compelled to return to the barricade and fight in the Revolution? Except he survives, once again, because Val Jean risks his life to drag him (unconscious lover that he is) to freedom.
I think it's the Eponine thing that really bugs me. Marius is making a choice: the more beautiful woman? The one who appears wealthier? The one who is out of reach? That's a pretty classic trope: want the thing you don't have (Cossette) rather than what's faithful and right in front of you (Eponine). And while it doesn't make me like Marius, at least I know his type. But Cossette. I can't pity her. Because she never knows any of this. Hell, she allows Val Jean to be cast out while her new husband thinks he is a Royalist traitor. How's THAT for thanks? And when they both figure it out: his deathbed of course.
In this way, she's the ultimate one percenter. Born to squalor and degradation. Lifted out by someone kind and benevolent. Completely unconscious of her fortune or how it came about for pretty much the entire novel. Completely unconscious that the man she loves is hurting someone close to him... for her. Just... unconscious, in so many ways. I suppose then it's fitting he is dragged away from battle literally unconscious.
It's worth noting that the characters I suggested last time as deserving our pathos: Javert, Eponine, Fantine... these are characters who are the opposite of unconscious in every way. They are AWARE. They understand in a deep and metaphoric way their place in this struggle and story. They are, to quote Dr. Bloom, "free artists of themselves". Interesting that their freedom then, in a sense, requires the ultimate sacrifice from each and every one.
Note: This is part one in a two part series on Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. Today's installment focuses on his concept of protagonist.
Nineteenth century European literature, with a few exceptions (e.g. Dickens), grates on my nerves. I admit this openly both here and in my classes as my policy with students is: honesty, in all its forms. I thin my primary issue with Victorianism (which I argue extends beyond English in the time period - most of the continent is affect by the modes of representation) is that even as many writers attempt to deride the social conventions of the age (money, style, status) they typically play right into those norms with their protagonists. Either these individuals end up happy and married or dead. The Bronte sisters, George Eliot, even Tolstoy aren't immune to these trappings. I've heard a few people defend Jane Austen from this trend but she's actually the primogeniture. (That's another entry entirely though.) Dickens, as I mentioned above, is the only standout.
And then there's Victor Hugo.
For years I was not a big fan of Hugo mostly because I found his sense of pathos too deeply rooted in the traditionally established Victorian mind-set. Then I started teaching Les Mis a few years ago and I found myself rethinking his place in the stereotype of the age. Then I saw the musical/movie/social event of the holiday a month ago. And I think I found what separates him. Not as much as Dickens distances himself, mind you; Hugo's not that good. But buried in the layers of 19th century misery is a tricky argument.
I'm going to start with my thesis: Jean Val Jean is not the moral protagonist of the novel. Neither is Cossette. And they are not my focus today.
I think Hugo drops us enough hints to suggest our pathos should be bestowed on other characters. A quick review of pathos to make my point: Pathos suggests the unending and sometimes irrational pity we feel for (a) particular character(s). Good authors make us pity the right ones: Dickens, Magwitch; Shakespeare, Lear. The bad ones miss the mark: Tolstoy, Anna Karenina. But most Victorians are caught up in the huge cast of characters they feel indebted to create. So it is with Hugo in Les Mis: Val Jean, Cossette, Javert, Thenardier, Marius, Eponine, Fantine... just to name a few. But here's my point: the two big names of the story, the ones most people walk away remembering and talking about don't do much to be worthy of our pity. And if pity (pathos) is Hugo's design, then I think it's accurate to say he had others in mind.
1. Javert. I'm going to roll out my controversial example first. I have argued to my classes earlier this year that Javert seems to have shading of the lawyer, Mr. Jaggers, in Dickens' Great Expectations. They both represent the driven, professional, don't-pity-me personality. In Jaggers' case though it's earned and kept. He remains aloof from the true action of the story even as he manipulates it to some extent. But Javert drives not only plot and pathos but also resolution. When Val Jean spares his life at the barricades in the end, it's obvious the Javert's world is upset. This is not how criminals are, he seems to be thinking. He can't reconcile his perception and the reality of the man he is chasing. This culminates later in his suicide at the river. His world is essentially already over when he makes that choice; the jump into the icy below is simply the sum total of what can become of his physical form. How does an in-alterable law coalesce around the penitence of a man wrongfully imprisoned? In Javert's case, it doesn't. Hence: oblivion. But in that demise and the choice of that demise Hugo provides us with enough commentary of Javert's epiphany. It seems to me epiphany, above all modes of representation, are designed to sway a reader's heart by virtue of the fact that the character can never act on it.
Indeed, we sense Javert's change from the barricade to the suicide. We hope (a feeling he would NEVER want from us) the change can create a new man, one a bit more nuanced in his application of the law. In the best of Dickens, we see this transformation play out time and time again against different backdrops. But alas, Javert cannot (will not?) reconcile this new self to his morals. He cannot see his way to this New France that the revolutionaries speak of either. (Notwithstanding they are all killed, minus Marius.) This completes our pathos.
2. Eponine. Less controversial, I suspect, but more suspect. Part of this argument will lead to my anti-Cossette piece later in the week. Eponine deserves our pathos for two reasons. First, as the child of the Thenardier's, we are predisposed to hate her. These are wretched scum of the earth, not because they are poor (indeed, they are not; they run an inn!) but because they subsist on trickery and deceit of honest people (who are truly poor: Fantine, Val Jean, Cossette). When we meet her in Paris, after having endured her parents abusing Cossette and showering affection on their own children to the little orphan's dismay, we are instantly set against her. How far did her apple fall from the tree? We see her early discussions with Marius, born to nobility and denying it, and we think right, like she's going to stick around after grandfather cuts him out of the will. But that's not the point: Hugo needs her as the most dynamic part of the love triangle. Eponine loves Marius; Marius loves Cossette; Marius uses Eponine.
And there in that last verb is our pathos. The musical does a good job of this too. If there is something Hugo is railing against it has to be the using of one human being by another: knowingly, willingly, and yet without realizing the damage being inflicted. Eponine's looks (even through the page) are palpable. The fact that she keeps helping him even after realizing she is only paving his road toward another woman (a richer woman too) is heart wrenching. There's no other way to put it. Perhaps she holds out hope that Cossette will leave, flee to England or wherever, and Marius in his misery will turn to her. But I don't sense anywhere that Hugo means for us to take that too seriously. It will end badly for this girl. Even as it started badly for poor miserable abandoned Cossette.
3. Fantine. It took the musical to make me realize this but re-reading the novel the last few days with my students made me see it there too. Fantine, above every other character - yes above Cossette her daughter and Val Jean the stalwart poor-then-rich-then-poor Frenchman - embodies the title of this novel. We could list the ways Hugo blitzes her: she cannot keep her child, she is forced from her job by rumor and heresay, she is driven to desperation (loss of hair, teeth, virtue), she is found by the only good soul we know and short of her daughter's return: dies. She dies in the presence, interestingly enough, of not just Val Jean but of Javert. There's no indication that her death matters to him but I can't help wondering if Hugo means that connection to be more overt.
Her death appeals to pathos precisely because what Fantine wants is the simplest wish of the human heart... and the most impossible thing for the narrative. Where is my little Cossette, she keeps asking. Val Jean's only response: She is coming soon. She will be here soon. Do we begin to believe him toward the end of her life? Do we join her in hoping against hope that somehow the little girl will appear. Val Jean has sent for her. Is this true? Is it meant to make her feel better? Does it then make us feel worse than her? Do we mistrust Val Jean as a result? Whatever the case, it is clear: Fantine is the living breathing embodiment of pathos.
Next time: Why you should not feel anything for Cossette.
Hi! Sorry, big fan! And not just recently either. I'm not just a Pirates bandwagon junkie. I remember back in the day when you were just not quite there in terms of your stardom, fame, movie choices. I remember when your name spurred comments more like, "have I seen anything with him in it?" I remember educating my college friends on the more serious side of roles your played. And apologizing for your role in Tim Burton movie. Because really, Mr. Depp, you could do better.
So the standouts. "Donnie Brasco" of course. I mean, dude, you taught me the nuances of "fuhgeddabowdit"! And then you double crossed Al Pacino! And you lived to tell about it!
Most people I know have seen in part or in whole "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" and I certainly can't fault your love of Hunter S Thompson. I can respect the fun you had making that movie even if it never ends up on my list of top five Depp movies.
But I was really a disciple of your when you worked for Robert Rodrieguez in "Once Upon a Time In Mexico". Honestly, you saved that final installment in the Mariachi trilogy. Best scene: as an undercover FBI officer in Mexico going after drug lords you met with potential suspects and witnesses all while wearing a black tshirt with huge white letters FBI. Tell me that was your idea.
Not gonna lie - there was a dry spell for a bit. Part of that dry spell seems to be your indoctrination to the Tim Burton way. Oh to have a time machine and go back to change that era! I suppose I can't knock it all because we got a few good things. Well, one good thing. Your Willy Wonka rivals Gene Wilder, and that's saying a lot.
Then there was the epic, celebrity-fest that was "Pirates". Now, look, Mr. Depp I'm not here to pass judgement on your Pirates movies the way many others have. (If you're unclear though see what many call the Matrix-problem.) Fact is, I'm a big fan of your character, even if occasionally over-done. Love the way he runs, by the way. But here's the thing: I read on the Internet today that you have agreed to do ANOTHER Pirates movie. Another? After the failure that was the last one? And seriously, it was a failure. Check the box office results if you don't read critic reviews.
Though, really, the critics say important things.
So, why? Why would you do it? It can't be money. You live on the French Riviera for Goodness sake! Did Tim Burton stop calling? Is there really nothing better? There's no reason to believe it's somehow the script or story. And costars? Not even Geoffrey Rush is returning for this and he couldn't save the last one. So you must be fixed on this character in a way that is not healthy. If so, have some advice. Now, this isn't going to sound like good advice at first. You have to let it sink in really. Let it resonate. Then go with it. Ready?
Kill Jack Sparrow. You can do it. Only you can do it. Don't let Disney turn him into a cash cow of a zombie. Do it while we all remember the good times.
I'll sell my inventions so that *everyone* can have powers. *Everyone* can be super! And when everyone's super...no one will be. (The Incredibles, 2004)
Anyone can cook! (Ratatouille, 2007)
I find it consistently fascinating that any moral quandary I am considering, any paradox can inevitably be traced back to the movie company, Pixar, and one or more of their works. Several weeks ago I posted an article that caught the eye of a few of my friends and students concerning some of the new teaching "fads" that I was being exposed to. (I was going to say "indoctrinated with" except I have to admit that I get no sense that these techniques, these scientific principles of teaching will ever be assessed in any Orwellian way.) I was flattered as I worried that particular entry smacked more of ranting (which I admonish my students NEVER to do in a formal way) than considered reflection. The conversations that resulted from that post which amounted to a considered support for teaching as an art form over a scientific method spurred me to think further on the issue.
Leading me to Pixar.
The tag line of Ratatouille resonates with me both as a teacher and as an individual. It says, in no uncertain terms, that no matter the perception that others might have of me, no matter what they consider to be my ability and potential, that I can through the sheer force of my will coupled with the time I am willing to devote master any skill I choose. I can devote my intellectual power, coupled with my physical exertion, and overcome obstacles and achieve new things. Even as I type that I would argue that while my physical form limits certain things I can do (I cannot for example lift a 400 lb weight currently), my mental faculties allow me to find other ways to go about solving those problems. (I.e. why am I trying to lift that much weight? And is there another way of going about the lifting that does not require my muscles?). In this sense, I see the equivalency to teaching.
I did not begin a good teacher. I started, decades ago, thinking I knew what most students would appreciate in a classroom setting (which is defined as what I would appreciate in a classroom setting) and what was basically a waste of their time. It did not take me long to realize that many of my dictates were far removed from reality. Waxing nostalgic about my school days (which I often enjoyed listening to from my teachers) held no interest whatsoever. Get to the point, get there fast, make it relevant: that was the lesson of my first few years teaching. It was only after I mastered discipline in the classroom that I found I had time for more: stories that didn't veer from the topic but enhanced it. More importantly, I found that giving my students time to relate stories that were relevant was a much greater sense of trust than my forcing archaic tales on them. Through experience and finding the right mentors (read: seasoned and slightly irritable), I found my style. In this way, I believe anyone "can" teach. And I don't define that verb in the confining, denotative way it suggests. I don't mean just standing before a room full of students and possessing a college degree makes one a teacher. Handing out a test and then collecting and grading it doesn't mean you have taught or instructed.
But with time and, most importantly, a willingness to adapt I think there is no human being who cannot come to instruct, impart, whatever to others.
Yet what I mean by "anyone" I think has been taken over by organizations and (more scary to me) companies looking to make money and package the "skill" of teaching. Here is the leap from a single rat who, against all the preconceived notions of society and humanity, acquires the repertoire of cooking to the antithesis of the second Pixar movie, The Incredibles. What is genius and ability and wonder and laudable in the one, the individual becomes communicable (without human voice, without contact even) to the many.
The villain of The Incredibles operates out of resentment that he is not a hero. He can't fly or turn invisible or stretch like elastic. So he uses his mind (which I would define as a superhero organ to begin with) and builds gadgets to allow him to defeat what he considers "super". These gadgets can be massed produced (I wonder if Pixar had it out for Henry Ford some days) and sold to everyone everywhere. And when everyone is "super"...
This seems to be the concept bombarding modern education. When everyone has the ability to teach equally well, when everyone can share everything they have with each other regardless of humanity or contact or intent, then the entire system is composed of superheroes! We all win! Except the teachers who demonstrate success in other ways. Except for teachers who reach their students and push them to perform on more than just multiple choice tests.
I suppose even this comes back to the art form. I can't always explain why something worked so well in my classroom or even where I got the idea from. I can usually figure out why something didn't work and I don't necessarily need another set of eyes or ears to tell me that. What I do need is time: my own time to consider, think, evaluate, and redesign. I have a student who is having a hard time making rational arguments? There is no E2020 program that will help them with that. But talking to me about what they believe is right and wrong on this planet and why will get them into a better mental framework faster than anything. Heck, even a back-and-forth on Facebook is more helpful than a program of algorithms that supposedly helps them argue clearer.
I bow to Pixar for putting not just words but images and characters in places that stand for what I consider to be some of the mot dangerous and foreshadowing issues to come in this profession.
I am barely 100 pages into Jon Meacham's superb and definitive tome on Thomas Jefferson, which he aptly titles, "The Art of Power". I would expect no less from the man who helmed Newsweek magazine but his prose and philosophy still surprise me in places. Pleasantly too. Early in the book, prior to the actual events of the Revolution, he rightly notes that the idea of breaking from Britain was primarily an aristocratic desire. The fiscal benefit of independence was amazingly seductive to people like Jefferson and associates Ben Franklin, John Adams, et al. As I read that, my progressive bones rankled a bit, even as I knew history must always be contextualized. Stupid wealthy white landowners plowing ahead again. But this was the Revolution! These were important principles and historic times. They couldn't be founded on arrogance. They just couldn't.
Chapters later, after the drafting of the Declaration, before Jefferson is to return home to his native Virginia, four realistic reasons or rationales are put forth as the most plausible things that would have been on the Founding Fathers' minds as they decided on independence. Refreshingly, Meacham acknowledges the typical and generic assumptions about their motivations and returns these:
"Lockean liberalism, classical Republicanism (via the Renaissance), the Great Awakening, the promise of capitalism, and the hatred of debt (and the British merchants and banks who were owed the debts)" (113)
I get the first two even as I remember, and remind my reader, that the definition of "republican" has changed pretty dramatically over the centuries. And the liberalism bit. I know a bit or two about John Locke but that's not my concern tonight. The Great Awakening, too, as a historical mode is less the issue to me except to say that I have to think Jefferson knew enough of history and philosophy to use those tenets for his gain without subsuming himself to them. The last two though strike me as the most interesting.
The hatred of debt. I hear from many corners of my small little world - voices both loud and small - bemoan issues of debt today. Indeed, I recall moments in my youth when I was warned, before I even had the ability to earn money in any real way, to watch and guard against falling not debt. And now here as a teacher trying to raise a family I find debt is a close friend, even if I wish he act quite so comfortable. Yet, it's not the debt I hate. Nor do I hate the things that have forced me to acquire this comparably small amount of debt. Things around my house break, they need repair or replacement, and money is immediately the issue. This is a constant and always has been, it seems to me. I don't hate the people that hold me in debt - exactly, although a few sharp words on what banks are and what they mean today would be in order, I think. No, I don't hate these things.
So while I know the author here is correct I find myself puzzled by it. "The hatred of debt." Is Americanism, in whatever form we wish to view it, simply the desire to acquire and have with the simultaneous hope that there is no payment exacted? I hear echoes of this in my small world as well: especially leveled at those who cannot pay for basic necessities. Food, shelter, medicine. But it seems to me the situation with Jefferson and his friends, his white friends, is more analogous than that. We are not talking about people who just want bread and water. These are people who consider colonization of a new continent their birthright, their sovereign and absolute duty before their divinity. Manifest destiny, even if that phrase was years away.
I remember thinking, when I first studied world revolutions, that the American experiment was a peculiar one. The French Revolution: class warfare and the violence of independence. The Russian Revolution: systemic change of government and thus culture. And America? "No taxation without representation!" Really?
I do not believe that Jon Meacham wants me to think any less of Mr. Jefferson or his associates and I do not pass judgement on their mental faculties or rhetoric ability or philosophic achievement. None of those are in question. But their impetus, the perception of their enemy and (perhaps most importantly) what they truly meant to gain... I am uncertain of.
I sat in a large heated room today for roughly six hours with forty other professionals and listened to two very energetic women attempt to redefine what most of us believe to be "good teaching". I have a pretty grudging respect for that these two do; in the space of just a few years they are undertaking the task of transforming how we go about doing this most important of things: educating the youth. My problem is not in any of the details that they present or suggest, nor in their methods, but in the aggregate of what they and other "educational coaches" all over the country are doing, namely changing teaching from an art into a science.
Like most people, I have a clear memory of teachers from my past: which ones I consider "good" and which ones I do not. But here's the first important distinction - nowhere in my vocabulary, then and now, do I equate "good" with "skillful". And the name of the seminar is Skillful Teacher. While others might suggest that these words are synonyms or at the very least bear a great deal of similarity in their definitions, I would argue the difference resides in the sense of their art and hence is a bit undefinable by these pedagogic experts.
The teachers I count as really important in my life were ones who had a great of content knowledge and applied it not in a gimmicky or multi-faceted way but who challenged me to take ownership of the information or skills, to make them my own. Or more specifically, didn't force me to use them/it in *any* particular or specified way. They were tools, in a sense, to solve larger problems ahead. Example: knowing the rhythms of John Donne's poetry might never have been an applied skill but then coupling that knowledge/ability with other forms of writing or editing made my prose all the more ornate, made my references and arguments all the more poignant. But it didn't take a game of round robin or whatever technique is in fad for me to get that. To that end I think good teaching is not so much about the HOW over the WHAT.
I don't however want to mis-speak however. For I am certain everyone who might read these words has at one time (or more) in their lives encountered the knowledgeable teacher who would not be able go hold the attention of an art lover in the Louvre. So is this the science part? No, this is the passion part. Again, the teachers memorable in my life were passionate - they LOVED beyond all reason what they taught and to not become infected with that love and interest and passion was to be something other than humans. And certainly I have sat next to folks whose lack of passion and humanity made them seem a bit otherworldly. There is a sense, I think, in the best teaching of something so fun and exciting that to not join in and not become a part of that world is somehow illogical.
That all consuming passion is the art that I don't think this seminar or any class that I have taken about "teaching" can ever relate or delineate. I don't know if I achieve that sense of passion and commitment in my classroom - I hope I do - but I know that watching good teachers do what they do is a thousand times more instructive than the six hours I will probably spend tomorrow learning about this science that people are now convinced constitutes teaching.
Until earlier this year, I never found myself having to defend my pirate infatuation. People either shared it or humorously accepted as part of my eccentricity. In fact, it wasn't until recently that I Really started decking out my classroom in paraphernalia that spoke to my own interests. Prior to this time, I typically surrounded my students with typical teacher pedagogy stuff: motivational posters and reminders of literary and grammatical rules. Because students LOVE to look at those. And then one year, one August, I realized that I had a much better chance of getting to know my students and they me if I opened with them about the things I loved and obsessed over. Thus pirates posters appeared, along with images of Key West and Cuba. (Those are separate entries, though.) The result was positive: people liked the personalized nature of the room. It even gave some of the kids in my room who normally wouldn't have had anything to talk about something to focus on.
Then this past fall a colleague of mine a school stopped into my room at the start of the year and, glancing at my walls, asked what my "thing" was with pirates. I stammered something about their being cool and a brief rundown of the whole "relate to my students" spiel but his response multiple times was simply: "but they're criminals". Something the kids like to talk about. "But Aaron, they broke the law?"
My initial reaction to this somewhat obstinate reply was to ramrod history into the conversation. "For most of the past several centuries, the difference between a pirate and a privateer was whether or not the captain of the vessel had a special warrant from a European country's sovereign." But that would have made me...
An ass.
So I muttered some kind of agreement with the man while maintaining that I was not out to corrupt our youth. Or drink hemlock. But the conversation has not yet left my mind (obviously: I'm writing about it here months later).
So why pirates?
First, I can resolutely say that my fascination with them preceded Johnny Depp, although like most of the world I was enthralled b his performance in the first "Pirates" movie, Perhaps it comes from my youth, where yearly the historical Gasparilla invasion of the Tampa Bay area was re-enacted. Perhaps my first sixteen years of life being so close to the salt water. Perhaps a rebellious nature hidden beneath the well honed desire to please. Whatever the case, pirates came to represent for me something beyond the realm of comfortable and that entranced me,
I recognize that recent events - Somali pirates, for example - provide us a closer perspective on how vicious and unethical real pirates probably were. Even tamer pirate stories like Anne Bonny and Mary Read (famous women pirates) and their mutual consort Jack Rackham contain an element of seediness that I cannot deny. And if they were so unsavory, why idolize them?
Perhaps it is not idolization as much as curiosity. To sail on the ocean for long stretches of time: this is and has been a dream of mine for some time. But it's more than that. Because pirates operated under rules that were slightly military in origin (many pirates were ex-military British or Spaniards) and yet were more flexible than that. There's a lot of joking in the "Pirates" movies about the "code" as rules or guidelines or whatever. But the more I read (and believe me I've read a lot) I think there was a sense that things were done in a certain manner, men were treated a certain way and to violate that way or absolve yourself of such restrictions was to be something other than a pirate. It wasn't so much lawlessness as other-law.
I would be remiss if I didn't offer a final thought. While I tend to revile the second and third "Pirate" movies, there is one element I identify with. The character of Lord Beckett, head of East India Company, is a cliche of course but within the cliche I find his threat interesting. There is something to be said, historically, for the idea that piracy was not threatened unilaterally by other countries and Kings, but by business ventures. That pirates made money, both legally and illegally, and companies the forerunners to corporations found that to be a threat or, perhaps more accurately, wanted in on the action says something not only about pirates but about Western culture as a whole.
In what I consider to be one of Orson Welles' best movies, "Citizen Kane", the main character Charles Foster Kane takes ownership of a newspaper and in it early days he lays out a set of guidelines for himself, his Declaration of Principles. Even though he goes on to violate not only the letter but the nature of these principles, I have always been struck by how articulate these rules were. Similarly, I knew when I wanted to embark on this new project of returning to writing that I would need something similar, a pronouncement of my own to keep me focused, to remind me on those days when it was late and I would really just rather not that getting these thoughts out is really really important.
I make no bones about that fact that I will surely stumble here and there, especially early in this attempt. It has, after all, been a long time since I have done anything like this, put my words on the page. And not just critical remarks, as I do for students throughout the school year. Those words might reflect some of me - my own predilections for well crafted sentences - but they often serve just as rails so student linguistic vehicles don't veer wildly from the cliff of reason and common sense. No, this has to be different. This has to be my edited but essentially unaltered thoughts. To whit: the words on the page are the ones I mean to be there. In this sense, my own medicine is good for me, as I have said such things to my students for years now.
So, my principles? Not many but also not alterable.
1. Details. I intend these thoughts to be as specific as I can make them. Vague and boring language is just that: vague and boring. And while my topics will surely run the gambit I here resolve not to let them be awkward flights of fancy. Having said that because I am engaged in a profession that is sensitive to the needs of the young I also proclaim I will never talk about my students, either by name or description. I will not let these words be free form for some puny rant about the frustrations of my day. This is more important.
2. Ideology. It is my sincerest wish that these words and thoughts, while they convey the things I obviously believe, don't spawn partisan bickering. I worry that such a goal is too lofty and in this world inevitably doomed to failure. By this time next year perhaps I will have fallen into the worst kind of vitrol but I hope not. I have successfully navigated conversations in both my personal and professional life that could have ended in pretty violent language but did not. In this I hope to achieve a little of what Ben Franklin called "moderation".
3. Importance. It does not escape my attention that the world of letters - not to be mistaken with the world of Letters as I teach the mindset and scope of the 18th century world - has flooded the Internet and blogs in a variety of forms exist all over. Reminiscent of Addison and Steele there are posts and responses about everything I could want I find. So when I speak of the importance of this place, this blog or whatever it become, I don't mean to other people. I mean to myself. If for a time it serves only to help me clarify my own thoughts and raise order up out of the tumult that was previously there, then it will have served its purpose. And if by happenstance other find it, read it, engage with it, then I welcome them too.
I titled this thing The Literary Pirate as I thought that accurately represented myself. I suspect the coming days I will need to do some unpacking of that phrase, again more for myself than anyone else.
Perhaps in the end this experiment - that's really what it is - remains an exercise in self-exploration. The words above, expansive and exhausting as they are, boil down to two fairly simple questions:
