Sandy Spring Friends School Beestblog

Most of my daily e-mails are “inter-office” – teacher to teacher, administrative type to teacher; I’m trying to figure out how to respond to those with grammar and spelling mistakes. Perhaps I notice these more because I teach English, and grammar and spelling matter to us English teachers. Many of us at least. They should matter to anyone who wants to communicate it seems to me. I’m not a math teacher, but I care – and notice – when my paycheck is wrong. I’m not a history teacher but I make sure to get the right president when I’m complaining about him.

I don’t understand how teachers can be so…unconcerned about details. Isn’t it our task to show kids that details matter? Whether it’s a series of dance steps, a series of chemicals, or a couple of adjective endings, details matter. Your partner won’t be there to meet you if you get those steps wrong. The reaction won’t happen if you are off by a chemical or two. Or it might happen all at once, and the men in the yellow suits will show up soon after. Sloppiness matters in class – why not in communication? You won’t let your students be sloppy on a test; why are you?

“But,” you say, “it’s just a note. You know what I mean. This is like chatting, like using an ‘ain’t’ at the lunch table. Were this a legal contract, a test, an assignment, I’d take care, I’d get it right.” But why should I – or you, for that matter – believe that? “You play like you practice” I told my tennis players; “lazy in practice, you’ll be lazy in a match.” “I’d take that extra step if this were a match.” I heard it over and over and over. My response was always the same – you play like you practice. I’m willing to grant that a short memo to me is the equivalent of practice, that you’ve got bigger, more important fish to fry. But you play like you practice. Unfortunately.

Mark Twain has been in the news recently. I figure it’s always a good day when Mark Twain is in the news. First it was for his recently (maybe not so recently now) released autobiography – volume one thereof. It’s a brick of a book; anything where the footnotes at the end equal in page numbers the pages of text is a bit of a daunting read, probably. I did notice that Amazon listed it as the third biggest seller around Christmas time. Makes you wonder how many households have already turned it into doorstops by now, doesn’t it?

He was also in the news more recently for another publishing phenomenon. Some well intentioned academic type has reworked old Huck and, apparently, improved it. Why else would you change an author’s words, unless to improve what he, or she, wrote the first time? That’s called editing. As you probably know, the word “nigger,” which occurs over two hundred times, has been changed to the more palatable, more acceptable “slave.” Never mind that’s not what Twain wrote. This w.i.a.t. has not edited Twain; he, or she, (I can’t be bothered to check) has bowdlerized Twain.

Thomas Bowdler was a fellow of the early 19th century who published The Family Shakespeare, Shakespeare with “the naughty bits” taken out. He wanted to offer, he said, an edition of Shakespeare more appropriate for women and children. Now, imagine what would happen if we were to offer in our classes two editions of books, one for the boys and one for the girls. Next year I’m doing Chaucer; guys get the real Miller’s Tale. Shoot – the whole General Prologue. Women – you get this other one more in line with your feminine tastes and sensibilities. I’m also doing American Lit. again; guys will be reading Winesburg, Ohio. Gals – you’ll have to do some outside reading because there are a couple of stories there that aren’t appropriate and that you won’t be reading. Part of me would like to try that next year just to see what would happen. As a wise sage from the history department once said, it would be like someone kicked the lid off of hell. And appropriately so.

I don’t choose books to be offensive. I don’t choose books to make people feel bad. But women in Winesburg clearly take it on the proverbial chin; the book offers a world view that is not ours. Never mind that Sherwood Anderson is as appalled as you might be by that world view. He is simply recording honestly. Same with Chaucer, whose world view too is radically different from ours.

We’re becoming 19th century puritanical, Victorian England. We laugh at those folks, we scoff at them, but we’re them. Soon we’ll be covering the legs of pianos, ordering chicken bosom sandwiches and wheeling Tess through a mud puddle in a wheelbarrow because “good girls” don’t allow themselves to be carried by single men. Words have power; we know that. That’s why words matter. Literature can make us feel uncomfortable; we know that too. But that can be a good thing. Let’s not hide our heads in the literary sand.

I was treated to an e-mail the other day – I’m not sure why; it was offered as an “interesting teacher’s perspective.” I won’t quibble here with whether it is really the teacher or the perspective that I am to find interesting; I suspect the latter. I suspect too I would loath the teacher – though I guess that’s not to say she still might not be interesting.

The gist of the e-mail seems to be, taken from this person’s blog, that one, let’s call her Legion, takes great pride, when asked by a student for a pencil or a piece of paper, in refusing. Not for the reason I have been refusing the same request for years – that is, that you are to remember to bring to class every day the tools you will need to perform in that class. Just as you don’t expect the carpenter you hired to borrow some tools to put up those new cabinets, so too… you get it, right? No – this forward thinking educationist seems to see it as her place in life to remove paper, pencils, writing – that sort of outdated, outmoded, “in the box thinking” – and replace them with something better. She calls it “technology,” and wants to teach kids to use it “instead of paper to solve problems and organize ideas.”

Where to begin? First, “technology” does not solve anything, any more than “biology” cures diseases. But that’s petty. I shouldn’t expect her to be able to express herself clearly; she’s an educationist, fighting on the frontlines. She has bigger fish to fry than worry about clarity of expression. She is “responsible for sending good digital citizens out into the world.” (That’s become the cover-all, the phrase du jour, the El Dorado of contemporary education: “citizens of the world.” Modern teachers, those who are teaching for the future, are no longer satisfied with producing kids who can read, write, count, and think; nope – the forward thinkers, the teachers for the 21st century, are producing “world citizens,” sometimes even “digital citizens.” No matter that first phrase doesn’t really mean much, is either a tautology or, more probably, an impossibility). But I wander.

You cannot know how depressed it makes me to know that there is a colleague out there somewhere who thinks she is doing some children a favor by refusing to let them write something down, and pointing them instead to some digitalized, expensive, soon to be outdated piece of “technology.” And, while we are at it, that someone here closer to home thinks this is something I should be made aware of, might find interesting. This poor zhlub thinks she is doing education. God forbid we use paper to solve a problem or a pencil to organize an idea. It is, after all century 21 – and that’s what we should be educationalizing for.

It is a mystery to me how men and women, inhabiting the same planet and even the same household for years can look at the same event and see something so totally differently.

My kids, son and daughter, each made a rather significant move recently. My daughter, who has been living at home since college graduation a year and a half ago, decided she was in a rut and up and moved to Chicago; no job, no connections, no prospects (yet – knock on wood). She just wanted a change. To which I say huzzah. Within a week of moving she needed a doctor, which she found, who referred her to another, a specialist. Yesterday was the second appointment. We’ve both been nervous for a week now; my wife worried about Alex’s health; I’ve been worried that the doctors might not accept our insurance.

My son too recently moved; after about 9 years in Atlanta he’s now living in Baltimore with two high school buddies. They live just off of Patterson Park. My wife’s first question when he described the place was “is the neighborhood safe?” My first question was “are there any good neighborhood bars or restaurants close by?”

I don’t think I’m particularly callous, and I don’t think my responses are that out of the ordinary. For a guy. I want my daughter to be healthy; I just assume she will be, that everything will be fine. Same with my son; he’ll be fine, it’ll be OK.

Most every Sunday I call my mother who is – I won’t say how old, but old enough (just) to be my mother. She’s living on her own in Florida. She’ll talk, I’ll listen, for anywhere from 10 to 20-some minutes. When my wife comes home she’ll ask me – did you talk to your mother today? Yup. How is she? Fine. What did she say? I don’t know; that she’s fine. How long did you talk? Fifteen minutes. And that’s all you can say – that she’s fine?! Well – that’s the gist of it, that’s the important part I remember
And yet – I could tell you who played in the basketball games last Saturday and Sunday AND who each team had beaten in the previous round to get to Saturday or Sunday. What’s strange is my wife doesn’t even know who Butler or VCU are.

Charlie Marlow, the narrator of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, says “You know I hate, detest, and can’t bear a lie…There is a taint of death, a flavor of mortality in lies.” I’m a big fan of Charlie Marlow.

We don’t take lying very seriously here at Sandy Spring Friends School. We say we do. We’re not alone; pretty much any and every educational institution says they take lying seriously. I’ve always thought it odd that so many places – schools – will give a person any number of chances to reform when that person gets caught in a lie, and then another one, and then another one, but will expel immediately and without question a student caught with drugs on campus. Drugs can ruin a person’s life, there’s no question about that; but a lie can ruin the life of the community. In fact, lies make the continued existence of any community untenable.

A lie undermines the very foundation on which any relationship is based. It undermines language itself. See Jonathan Swift and the Houyhnhnms here – logical creatures that they are, they don’t even have a word for lie and can’t understand the concept. Why would anyone do that which contradicts the basic purpose of communication, Gulliver’s Master Houyhnhnm asks?

We know, and Swift implies too: because people are selfish. Which is another reason I am always so amazed at our apparent tolerance of lying here. We claim to be, certainly most at SSFS claim to be, selfless people. Most are probably aware enough of our own shortcomings that we don’t claim to be nothing but selfless, “other directed” people. But that’s the language in which we so often speak, the goal we so often set for what we do. So why do we so often tolerate such selfishness, so much “me first” behavior when doing so runs counter to what we profess AND brings into doubt the continuation of community?

I suspect one of the reasons we are so tolerant of lying is that lies are all around us these days. “We are greeting you with this recorded message to improve service” we are told whenever we call a company or organization. “We are making the container smaller (though we hope you don’t notice) in order to provide what customers told us they want,” says the orange juice/yogurt/ice cream/you name it company. One of the things I find so despicable about Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck is that I don’t believe they really believe all they are saying. And when someone says “Take up your arms!” was intended to mean take up your arms to vote, that person lies too.

I swore to myself, when I began this blog, that I would never get into politics. So back to Conrad… Is it really that big a deal, I know many students would ask, to say about the homework assignment “it’s in my locker; I’ll get it to you after lunch,” when the plan is to do the assignment at lunch? Is it that awful a thing to say “the paper was on my computer and somehow got lost in the power outage last night. Can I turn it in Monday?”? And I’m not even going to get into the lie of omission, parents; perhaps you don’t think you are lying when you call up to “excuse” your kid from class for the day when what she’s doing is finishing the research paper that’s due, or writing those college essays. But you are. Check your ethics textbook.

Perhaps I am being idealistic (that’s me – Mister Starry Eyes; that’s what they call me at home) but I think it would be a much cooler thing, would send a much greater message to the world if instead of signs that said “smoke free campus,” or “drug free campus,” Sandy Spring Friends School had the reputation for being a Lie Free Campus. If lying is like dying, as Marlow says (and it is), then the truth is like living. And that, if you know your George Fox quotes and your Quaker history, is the Truth.

Ours is an intrusive society. A fellow can’t turn around today without being asked what he feels about this, how he feels about that. Dinner time at my house has become unplug the phone time as it seems every evening is interrupted with a call from some poor zhlub after my opinions on – I don’t really know what, as we never get that far. But my thoughts and feelings sure must matter to somebody out there. Here at school I am often being asked to take part in a “small group discussion,” where I am again asked to reveal my thoughts, but mostly feelings, on a wide range of topics introduced by someone I know professionally but with whom I would not ordinarily be having this sort of conversation. To further add to my consternation I am told that my thoughts and feelings will be recorded and later taken and shared with the whole group. There’s a real selling point.

This in one of the reasons I love the Anglo-Saxons. And the Vikings. They didn’t care what you thought; they didn’t care how you felt. They especially didn’t care how you felt – unless you were soft and could be used as a pillow. (Not really.) They cared only what you did, what you had done. That was what mattered – what you did. They were, on the whole, a private, close-mouthed bunch.

I offer as my hero of the month the girl in the following story, a story my brother tells about his time teaching on the Tohono O’odham reservation in Sells, Arizona.

On the first day of class he would ask his students to write a one page essay, about anything. At the end of class she dropped her essay on his desk and followed her classmates toward the door. He called her back. She had written only two sentences – beautiful handwriting, perfect grammar and spelling – but had said simply “My name is (her name). I live in (such and such) village with my parents and my brother and sister.” That’s pretty good, he told her; good spelling, good grammar, nice handwriting. “But I asked for a page.” “Everything else I know is private.”

My hero.

We’ve been reading Plato in class these days, several of the Dialogues thereof. One of the things I try to make clear when we do is that what he has to say is just as relevant today as it was 2500 years ago. Some of the language might have shifted meaning a bit – what he means by piety is not exactly what we mean – but what lies behind the word choices is every bit as important today as then. But it occurred to me that the old boy is probably better off dead. What would happen, I wondered, if we moved Socrates into the modern high school?

First, he probably would have gotten in trouble with the counselors for beating up on the students’ self-esteem. Never giving them an answer, just suggesting where their arguments fall down would have been a real problem for many. “If Euthyphro never experiences success, how can he ever come to understand piety? You need to ease up there, Soc.” Socrates’ was clearly not a student-centered classroom.

It’s pretty clear that Socrates was capable of dealing with only one type of learner; the learning specialists would be all over him for that. When Phaedo and he discuss the nature of the afterlife it’s equally clear that just discussing was very limiting; perhaps if Phaedo had been allowed to write a poem, create a mobile, or the front page of a newspaper that one might read when one gets…there, Socrates would have appealed to Phaedo’s multiple intelligences, and Phaedo could have “experienced success.”

Crito finds it difficult to accept Socrates’ definition of justice. It’s a strict one, and many would probably find it equally difficult. No problem says today’s advisor; just drop the dialogue. You don’t want it lowering your gpa, and you don’t need the dialogue to graduate.

Charmides and Socrates discuss the meaning of self-control. This one’s easy says the nurse; there is no such thing. Everything today is biological and Charmides can’t be held responsible for most of what he does. As soon as we get his medications figured out, maybe then. But not until. The counselor agrees. As does the learning specialist.

Timaeus would have been ready to continue his discussion on the nature of the physical world, but he has a paper due today, and a test tomorrow. Plus, those pesky college essays are hanging over his head, so his parents have called him in sick today. He will be in this afternoon for the game, though.

Meno has his college essays done, has no tests or papers coming soon, and is ready and eager to talk about the nature of virtue. But he has a field trip, so he’ll be gone all day. But it’s Tuesday, a “B day,” so Socrates’ class doesn’t meet anyhow. Maybe tomorrow? No – tomorrow Meno’s grade is meeting all day with the group from Spartan’s Are People Too. They’ll be breaking into small groups – maybe…? Nah.

Like I said – the old boy is better off dead. And I don’t know that we aren’t.

Who says you can’t go home again? Hair is playing at a theater downtown, there’s a big article about growing pot in the Post, and I’m just back from if not a protest march certainly a giant rally on the National Mall. I’m 22 again and taking it to the streets. Sticking it to the man. Or not.

Yea – I was there, trying to restore sanity (though truth to tell I was there to Keep Fear Alive; my wife and daughter were restoring sanity). I was ready; I had my McCarthy button on. We all did, as I have three and was able to share. Hey – I Cleaned For Gene; I earned my stripes. Buttons. Of course, riding down on the metro I was hoping somebody would notice the button and say something. But they never did.

We were ass to elbow in the metro cars; people were getting separated from their friends, and it was impossible to move. Not to worry though, as everyone was texting and phoning and globally positioning themselves so that no groups really got separated for long. I think I like the old days, where you early on lost your friends, but immediately hooked up with some strangers, with whom you spent the day, sharing…turkey sandwiches. Then later, when everything was over and you found your friends again you would all share stories of who had the best turkey sandwiches.

Now, I have to say – I was never at too many of those huge marches; people in Minneapolis were just not that pissed off. We weren’t protesting Nixon or Kissinger, for the most part; they never made it to Minnesota. We were there showing Secretary of Commerce Frederick B. Dent, say, what we thought. That’s not a man to draw a huge crowd, though. So when I got to the Mall and saw the people I panicked. I tried; I even climbed a fence to get in, saving myself all of two blocks walk and really sticking it to the man then. (It was a really low fence.) But I couldn’t stay. There were too many people. The music (Music? Hah!) was too loud. I lasted all of 20 minutes, then told my family I’d pick them up at the Metro and I left.

On the way back to the metro station I took off my McCarthy button. What really made me sad, though, was what I learned later. Now, I’m a guy who saw Janis, right up front, three times. I saw Cream, Jefferson Airplane at the Fillmore West, the Doors; Jimi Hendrix bummed a cigarette from me. But when I was driving them home, both my wife and daughter said they were both wishing I had stayed, they knew I would have wanted to: “Tony Bennett sang America the Beautiful; you missed Tony Bennett!” They know I like Tony Bennett. It makes me sad to say this but they were right; I would have liked to have seen Tony Bennett. Tony damn Bennett. Don’t tell the Weather Underground.

I do try, I really do, to avoid that old expression “when I was young….” Nobody really wants to know, and I know how I responded when someone started that speech – it’s usually a speech that’s coming . But exceptions must be made.

I don’t get the obsession many have nowadays with water. Having spent time out west this summer, I understand why some people may be obsessed with water; they don’t have enough. And from what I understand, we all need it. I guess I understand why the archeologist, or the tourist, hoofing around some desert somewhere, might attach a water bottle to her belt. But the person who climbs out of his car on the way to the mall with the purple polypropylene bottle in hand is simply showing off. You don’t think you can make it through Montgomery Mall without your trusty canteen? I love it when someone walks into Meeting for Worship bottle in hand; it gives me someone to (internally of course) make fun of for a while. Someday, somehow, we’ll all be stranded in the Meetinghouse for several hours, unable to get out; I’ll get my comeuppance on that day, I suppose. When that happens, you don’t need to share your water with me. I’ll understand.

I realize I am showing my age here. This is probably water you brought from home, filtered through one of those rocket ship shaped Britta things; “can’t trust Montgomery County to provide me with the good stuff,” you think. “And one does need to keep hydrated.” That’s how we speak today; we speak about “hydrating.” Little kids, the kindergarteners, they just want a drink. Me, I’m “hydrating.” One must, as I understand it, remain “hydrated.” Here we go again. It’s “use” versus “utilize” one more time; any old Puebloan or Bedouin can “take a drink;” me, I hydrate. And it might be rude to “take a drink” in the middle of a religious service – but I’m “hydrating.”

People can’t go 30 minutes without “hydrating?” You live in Montgomery County, for heaven’s sake. You’re probably never more than 50 steps from a restaurant, a Starbucks, or 7/11 – 6/12 and you’re worried about being stranded without water? Now, I’m not advocating this, but others of my generation will remember sports in “the olden days.” We were not allowed to drink water – “you’ll cramp up” was what the coaches told us. And apparently believed. We knew that didn’t seem to be the case, as we never cramped up while playing on our own. But that was the received wisdom, and we went along. And managed. And you now can’t make it through meeting, through any old meeting, without “hydrating?” Toughen up. Take a chance; leave home tomorrow morning without that water bottle. It’ll be an adventure for you. You’ll be living on the edge for the day – on the edge as defined here in 2010, at least. But isn’t that when we feel most alive, most vibrant – when we face The Empty Desert and make it home alive? Go ahead; take a chance. Live a little.

I loved the story from this summer about the French “escort girl” who was paid to have sex with several members of the French world cup soccer team. “But I’m not a prostitute,” she said. Which reminds me of the (probably apocryphal) story about Winston Churchill that is too long to repeat here but the punch line of which is “we’ve already established what you are; now we’re just haggling over price.”
Language is sure taking a beating these days. We are faced, almost daily, with insults to the integrity of language. “That’s not me; I am not that kind of person” says the sports star who is arrested for hitting his wife. Well, language and I would counter, that is you; you hit your wife – you are now an abuser of wives. One, at least. “People who know me know that’s not me,” says the congressman found in a love nest with some under-age babe. People thought they knew you, language and I respond; they will need to reevaluate now. Years ago I caught a student cheating on a test; he was clearly looking onto the test paper of the student next to him. I took his test, tore it up, and gave him a zero. His parents were outraged. His son could not be guilty, dad said, because “we don’t cheat in our family.” What I thought at the time but didn’t say was, “I guess you’ll no longer be able to make that claim, huh?”
There is a line at the end of Oedipus that goes “count no mortal happy till he has passed the final limit of his life secure from pain.” You don’t know, the Chorus is saying, what tomorrow will bring. Don’t make too many grand claims just yet. It’s hard to be a good person; you have to do the right thing day after day after day. And the moment you slip, the moment you smack your spouse or get in the car when drunk or tell a lie you are, by definition, an abusive spouse or a drunk driver or a liar. Kids find it hard to accept this fact; adults should know better. But whatever you do, don’t blame the language. Language didn’t do these things to you; you chose what to do. Language simply puts a label on what gets done, and on what we are going to call those who do those things. We need our language to be as clear as it can be; so please don’t start trying to bend it to fit the reality you would like to see. You may be an ass; if you are, it is up to you to do something about that fact. It is not language that is at fault.