Adolf or Therese?

One of the joys of taking a sabbatical (of sorts) is the change in routine it provides. A most pleasant change in my life has been decreasing the amount of AM talk radio chatter I listen to. Instead of this chatter, I've been reading more. Currently I'm reading St. Therese's Story of a Soul and William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Talk about an odd couple.

Power or Love?

What I've gleaned so far from Therese is an overarching idea (as simple as it is counter-cultural): success doesn't mean very much. As a public school teacher who became immensely bored by both the utilitarian praxis of the "educrats" and mindless slogans such as "every child can succeed," Therese's life is of great interest. She accomplished nothing that changed history, nor was she was responsible for a technological innovation that made life easier; rather, she simply made her entire life an offering to Christ's merciful love. She had one insight and ran with it. Now, she's a Doctor of the Church and her life is a compelling answer to the title of a book by Wendell Berry -- What are People for? Her life indicates that what ultimately matters is love, not the gods of power and success or blood and iron.

Enter Adolf

I've read many books on the Second World War. I even took a course entitled Nazi Germany (the professor was such an expert on the subject that it was no mere academic exercise -- his mannerisms while lecturing mirrored those of Adolf Hitler, which was at once hilarious and eery). But it is reading Shirer's book at this time in our history that I've been truly chilled by Hitler.

As I listen to AM radio (right and left, chocolate and vanilla), I see little corporals running through trench-works; I smell stale beer and acrid cigarette smoke in a beer hall; I hear the thud and scrape of heavy boots on cobblestone streets. Perhaps I have an overactive imagination.

Enter Ideology

What is not imaginary is the delusions of ideology. Not simply the delusions of a particular ideology (be it national socialism or communism), but the fact that ideology is never able to admit its inadequacies. In The Religious Sense, Luigi Giussani notes that ideology takes an aspect of reality and makes it "into an absolute" (p. 95). Herein lies both the appeal of AM radio and its reductionism, which could be fatal to the republic if it were taken seriously.

The Virtues of "The Village"

The Village provides a window for understanding that adults and parents - always and everywhere - propose a way of life to children. This is no less true for successful, career-oriented parents living in a plush gated community than it is for Edward Walker and friends in the film.

The Better Portion.

The crucial difference between these two ways of life is that the villagers take seriously (and choose deliberately) what kind of life is to be preferred: one in which economic prosperity is the highest good or one in which an authentically human life can be lived? The villagers have chosen the latter and it seems in many ways to be a better choice.

Authentic Goods.

Despite the fundamental deception of the village's founding, the community possesses some authentic goods. While I would be loathe to suggest that the end justifies the means, the admirable qualities of this mythical place include charity, humility and fellowship.

Fellowship. When Noah Percy (Adrien Brody) misbehaves or murders, he is put in "the quiet room." The greatest punishment available in this community is to be shunned or isolated. Throughout the film, the villagers have a lively life together and truly enjoy each other's company. Whether it is sharing a community meal or washing the dishes, people stay together.

Humility. Although the village is founded upon a presumption that seems to say, "We can create a world without pain," Edward Walker (William Hurt) possesses the humility to ask, "What was the purpose of our leaving? Don't forget, it was out of hope of something good and right." He is thus willing to let the whole ideological edifice fall away if innocence can be protected. He adds: "If we did not make this decision [to go to the towns to seek medicine], we could never again call ourselves innocent, and that in the end is what we have protected here: innocence!" One is reminded of what Jesus says about scandal:

If any of you put a stumbling-block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea (Matthew 18:6).

Naturally, the "scandal" of a society built upon deliberate omissions and falsifications does not disappear because of the founders' desire to protect the innocence of the children.

Charity. No one can fault the intentions of the villagers. Who, if given a choice, would refuse a good life for his son or daughter? Yet it is not mere theoretical love that is displayed in the film, but concrete actions:

• Edward's agreement to allow Ivy to fetch medicines from the towns while knowing full well that the entire social order may collapse as a result of the secret being made known.
• Ivy's willingness to risk her life for the beloved, Lucius Hunt (Joaquin Phoenix).
• The security guard's willingness to protect Ivy's secret and not exploit her.

Theoretical versus Actual

I can't help but think of the Amish as a kind of point of reference in the film. The villagers are a kind of fictional doppelgängers with respect to them:

• the Amish are religious but the villagers are secular and therapeutic
  
• the Amish possess historical rootedness but the villagers create a history and culture from some raw materials and their collective imagination.
• the Amish are willing to let their children risk living with "the English" as they reach adulthood, whereas the villagers are fiercely insular.

Thus the Amish possess in reality something greater and more human -- precisely because they have a tradition and are faithful to that, not a mere ideology.

Infinite Jello?

One doesn't generally think of ineffable sadness and longing with punk rock, but Dead Kennedys manage to pull it off with "Moon Over Marin." Told in the first person, the song is a lamentation over a toxified California coast and the protagonist's desire to find meaning through routine and the hope of a stable cosmic order.

In this dystopian future, our narrator is privileged enough to own some beach front property amid a "crowded future" and "still find[s] time to exercise" "on my beach at night." The beach itself seems to be the coast of the Valdez oil spill gone mad and global:

Another tanker's hit the rocks
Abandoned to spill out its guts
The sand is laced with sticky glops

Despite the horror, he concludes, "There will always be a moon over Marin."

Jello Biafra -- longing for the Infinite. Who woulda thunk?

The Vices of "The Village"

I couldn't help but be reminded of this passage in Aladair MacIntyre's After Virtue after viewing M. Night Shyamalan's The Village:

A crucial turning point in that earlier history [i.e., the Dark Ages] occurred when men and women of good will turned aside from the task of shoring up the Roman imperium and ceased to identify the coninuation of civility and moral community with the maintenance of that imperium. What they set themselves to achieve instead -- often not recognizing fully what they were doing -- was the construction of new forms of community within which the moral life could be sustained so that both morality and civility might survive the coming ages of barbarism and darkness (2nd ed., p. 263).

While there are clear parallels between the fictional inhabitants of "the village" and say, a Benedictine monastery, the divergences are fascinating. I think the differences (of course on is fictional, the other historical!) can be attributed to the differences between ideology and faith. Luigi Giussani defines ideology this way: "Ideology ... is based upon an aspect of reality ... taken unilaterally and made ... into an absolute" (The Religious Sense, p. 95).

1. Suffering. This "partial aspect" of reality taken to an extreme is the desire to eliminate suffering (especially in the form of violence) by leaving behind "the towns" (the big city) and isolating the community into what appears to be the late 19th century. Thus absent from the community are tools of violence and technology. Naturally, suffering cannot be willed out of existence -- it is intrinsic to the human condition. Much of the story hinges upon how the characters deal with balancing the desire to protect utopia and to care for innocent victims of misfortune.

2. Evil's Ubiquity. All of the founders of the village have a box in which they keep reminders of their prior lives. These serve as physical reminders of the pain and sorrow that is found in the towns outside. Yet in reconstructing a 19th century world it was also psychologically necessary to exaggerate the nature of violence and evil found in modern cities.

3. Myth or Lie? Perhaps the most brilliant creation of the founders is "Those We Don't Speak Of" -- imaginary creatures that surround the village and serve as means of insulating the next generation from the temptation of leaving home. Unlike the Amish, the villagers make it impossible for their children to explore a different world. And yet there is a certain truth to the creatures because the world outside the village is hostile to much of what the villagers have constructed: mutual dependence, cooperation and affection. Although "made up," the creatures do express a truth.

4. "Our Therapist, Who Art in Vienna..."

a. Godless? But at bottom, the village is not sustainable. By my reckoning, God is mentioned once. Several times we hear this prayer: We are grateful for the time we have been given. It is a curious prayer. It references a What but not a Who. And yet if one follows the logic of this prayer, one must necessarily encounter a Giver.

b. "Church" and Community. It is not until toward the end of the film that I was able to make sense of the meetings in the church-like structure in the village: the elders gather together, often in a circle to discuss issues before the community, but it has the physical form of group therapy. This goes beyond the pragmatic need to govern the community but speaks of our human need to connect with each other.

This film has many layers but it can certainly be "read" as a cautionary tale against utopian aspirations. Next time I will discuss the "virtues" of The Village.

Why Nietzsche Matters

I went with some friends to a lecture entitled "GOD IS DEAD - Friedrich Nietzsche vs. G.K. Chesterton." Dale Alquist was as entertaining and humorous as I expected he would be. Yet I was a bit disappointed in one aspect of his talk and it also came out in how he answered questions about Nietzsche afterwards. It involves this question: How seriously should one take Nietzsche?

Mr. Alquist's answer was "not very"; in fact, I would say he was downright dismissive of Nietzsche. I think this is a mistake at two levels: first there is the theological virtue of charity; second there is the cardinal virtue of prudence.

Let's begin with charity. Love for another (even those odd "neighbors" who live the seventh heavens of academia, namely, philosophy professors) suggests that if people take a man and his ideas seriously and he's had a profound affect upon the shape of our civilization, this is worth our time and consideration. This doesn't mean personally mastering Nietzsche's work, but saying, "Hey, he has had a profound influence and I'd like to understand what draws you to him."

I've always been a bit frustrated in my reading of Nietzsche because it is not clear to me when he is posturing or when he is really serious. I'm not sure Nietzsche knew, either. Yet I think he worth taking seriously in way that, for example, Krapp's Last Tape by Samuel Beckett is not.

Why might prudence dictate opponents of Nietzsche take him seriously? Perhaps because we are all Nietzscheans now and it would behoove us to understand how we got this way. Granted, we are "soft Nietzscheans" inasmuch as we don't follow the logic fully, but can we truly say that we don't at times live "as if 'God' were 'dead" and organize much of our social order and relationships something very akin to Fredrich's "will to power"? If that last sentence has no resonance in your life, I salute you, while at the same I wonder if some special Providence has not protected you from the present age!

Nietzsche is a prophet -- not in the line of Melchizedek, but more like Flannery O'Connor's Misfit in "A Good Man Is Hard to Find": one who unwittingly can bring one to Christ if, and only if, we take seriously what he says, even if we giggle at the absurdity of his life.

Let's not forget that although "Satan fell by force of gravity" (as Chesterton tells us), Christ took him just seriously enough to be his undoing -- and to perhaps have the last laugh.

Public Education's Missing Link

After teaching for ten years in three public high schools and one prison, I’ve arrived at an adequate answer to this question. But before I give my answer and attempt to justify it, I invite the reader to answer this question for himself.

What is missing from public education is a recognition of the students’ humanity. The central educational problem today is not declining test scores nor illiteracy nor the absence of prayer nor the evident excess of immorality and violence. These are mere symptoms. It is the public schools’ (reduced) vision of the human person: “citizen, consumer, worker” are the approved secular end-products of public education. But each of these conceptions of the person reduces the person to a means to an end, to a mere function. One need not be an Immanuel Kant or a Karol Wojtyla or even a believer to notice that there is something profoundly amiss with the anthropology of public education.

This is especially disturbing given the whole backdrop of so-called school reform: schools are urged to gobble more and more of a child’s time and what is the vision that the school has for the child’s destiny? The greatest good in public education is “success,” which is as pernicious as it is vacuous. After all, being successful simply means accomplishing what you set out to accomplish. Although I have not met even one public school teacher who would suggest that being a successful axe-murderer is a worthy goal, there is nothing in the doctrine of Successism that could rule this out a priori.

Success for public educators generally means graduating from high school, going to college and getting a good job. All of these are good things, but the rub is we’re made for great things, not merely good things. Indeed, we are made for the Infinite! But the secular ideal – with its so-called religious neutrality – is to immerse one in the here and now but to simultaneously suppress the deepest yearnings of the heart that are provoked by a meaningful engagement with reality.

Thus in public education everything gets short-circuited: the mystery of affection and sexuality is reduced to mutual indifference and “safety”; the desire to know the Origin of everything is dumbed-down to a superficial approach to evolutionary biology while a hostility between faith and reason is presumed but never argued for; religion, when it is even touched upon, becomes a realm of one opinion versus another, but it is never taken as a serious proposal for one’s life.

The practical reality that faces us is something truly Orwellian: in public education ALL RELIGIONS ARE EQUAL BUT SOME RELIGIONS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS. Agnosticism rules the roost and it is unquestioned.

For Catholics and others who reject the public schools’ great sin of omission, and recognize their own responsibility for their children, there are several positions to take. One can wish and pray that the State will recognize its obligation to help fund all schools (public, private, parochial), but the risk is seeing the Second Coming before that happens. Or one might say, “Well, you get what you pay for,” so public education isn’t so bad and perhaps an hour or two of CCD and/or taking an interest in my child’s formation will “inoculate” her from secularism. Or one might opt to send their children to a Catholic school if it’s financially viable. Others look to homeschooling as a way to ensure that both solid academics and Catholic doctrine get communicated. Still others homeschool and find some form of one day per week enrichment program (public or private) that helps with the more difficult subjects or simply gets the kids working with their peers.

My wife and I have done all of these at one time or another (except for the Catholic school option) and have found that what matters most is being attentive to the needs of each child, every year. While the powers that be are blind to the glorious destiny that awaits all of us in Christ, this is no reason for us to settle for the inanity of secularism.

Toward a more complete education

I recently began teaching a couple of classes for homeschooling parents looking for some enrichment options for their middle- and high-school aged children. This has me thinking about the feasibility of offering courses specifically for homeschooling families.

The ten percent principle

Well, I don't know if it's a full-blown principle, but the idea is something like this: Catholic high school tuition runs between $7,900.00 and $11,225 in northern Colorado. Suppose you're homeschooling your kids and you realize, "Geez, I can't meet all their needs. A little help would be nice." Would a one day per week program be worth 10% of $10,000? Would $500 per semester be economical enough to consider courses in math, science, religion, etc?

Further, could such a program be made financially worthwhile for prospective teachers? Class size of 15 x $500 = $7,500 divided by four teachers means $1,875 over 15 weeks means $125 per day - which is top-end for what districts will pay a substitute teacher. Materials, rent, and other incidentals also need to be factored in.

It just might work.

Why Conspiracy Theories Fail

Perhaps this post should read WHY CONSPIRACY THEORIES FAIL. In any case, I came across this fascinating audio of Art Bell interviewing this guy who claims to have been part of a secret project to make things invisible.

Here's the link: http://www.archive.org/details/ArtBellPhiladelphiaExperiment_1

Please don't tell THEM about it.

I think I discovered the fatal flaw of all the conspiracy theorists: they over-reach. I was almost convinced about this secret project until the guest indicated not only was an invisibility project part of this but time travel, "free" electrical power, UFOs, the one world government/New World Order -- in short, there is one global conspiracy controlling everything.

Ho, hum. A theory that explains everything finally explains nothing.

I think I get the impetus to buy into conspiracies: we see things that the dominant theories of reality fail to explain and look for a cause that is comprehensible. Everything would be different if THEY were not working behind the scenes to prevent good from naturally emerging from the world.

All this strikes me as a way of getting at what orthodox Christianity claims: the world is dragged down by the Evil One who would love to thwart every human desire for happiness and eternal life.

So, perhaps the conspiracy theorists actually under-reach: the evils of this world are not reducible to secular explanations.

News! Masters become Slaves...

It is known by everyone who was taught in a public school that there are really only two ways to make more money (three if you count going into administration): (1) years of creditable service or "time served" and (2) education. Time flows at a constantly velocity, so one can not accelerate the years, but moving up the pay scale is something one can do by taking graduate courses or by earning a Masters or Ph.D.

Here's something curious: full-time teachers in a full-time graduate program. Hmm, does anyone really think it is possible to have the cake and eat it too? The "system" would seem to believe it, for otherwise a provision outside of this insanity of working full-time and going to school full-time would not be encouraged.

Two cases:

Case #1: Jennifer J. (a social studies teacher at a Denver high school). Jennifer was in a media and technology class taught by David Hildebrand at the University of Colorado, Denver. It was a fascinating class. Texts included Albert Borgmann's Holding On to Reality: The Nature of Information at the Turn of the Millennium, Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death and other works. One evening I was talking to Jennifer after class and she was really angry at the professor. Apparently he had said that in his opinion she was trying to do too much and that her academic work was suffering as a consequence. I asked her, "Well, what are you getting out of this course? How did your last paper go?" She said with work and the course, she was just having trouble concentrating, but she was sure if the professor would just give her more time, she could get it all done. In other words, Doctor Hildebrand was correct!

Case #2: Myself. While working at a charter high school in the Denver area I was working on my alternative teaching license. As I recall, we had classes every other Saturday with a lot of reading and analysis in between. It was a lot and it trivialized teacher education. Not necessarily by design (though it does not take a rocket scientist to realize that if one is doing full-time graduate work AND holding down a full-time job that one of these will suffer), but certainly by consequence. I tried to balance the demands of the job and of the program, but both suffered to some degree. Naturally, my family suffered, too as I became increasingly insufferable that year.

What did I really learn in an alternative teacher program? My biggest "lesson learned" was that public education is extremely superficial. For all the reams of data and analysis, education is seen to be about technique, not passion; manipulation, not wonder.

What is the meaning of this post's title -- Masters become Slaves? It is only this: by encouraging teachers to work and to study to the point of exhaustion, sheer frenetic activity is encouraged and thought is siphoned off. If education is a "communication of yourself" (Julian Carron), then teachers willy-nilly communicate their own busyness to their students.

In other words, stressed-out teachers keep their nose to the grindstone and encourage their students to do likewise. The message is "It's not who you are that matters, but what you do."

Rather than facing the riddle of existence, it's "busy, busy, busy" (as Kurt Vonnegut has it in Cat's Cradle). Or as those of a more theological mind have put it: Bad Infinity -- the multiplication of the finite (be it sex or shopping or booze) to make up for one's own nothingness, one's lack.

That's how slavery gets perpetuated.

The McNamara Effect

In his fascinating history of the United States Air Force, Walter Boyne discusses the priorities of Robert Strange McNamara that "created a climate of fear and [placed] a value on reporting rather than on doing."

Boyne continues:

Numbers -- whether it be of the bodies counted, sorties flown, bombs dropped, or Congressional delegation visits -- became the be-all and end-all of the military system McNamara shaped.

Report numbers were transformed from black dots on a page to truths that were quantified, defended, and extrapolated from.

Whole bureaucracies sprung up to create the numbers, challenge them, and mold them into new requirements for more numbers (Beyond the Wild Blue, 2nd ed., p. 160).

Any teachers out there who can relate to a climate of fear and an obsession with "measurable outcomes" and "growth"? I can sure relate to it. We know what the McNamara Effect was on that war in Indochina: hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians dead for no purpose.

What the end game is for public educators who embrace McNamara's approach is yet to be seen. I'm betting Ho Chi Minh wins.

"Honey, I shrunk the kids (and myself)!"

Teachers and parents (not to mention students) often deplore the increased use of standardized tests and assessments. That horse has been pulverized into subatomic particles, so I don't wish to dwell on stadardized tests, per se; rather, I'd like to briefly explore what existential or spiritual factors may lead to inordinate desire for "hard data" or "proof of learning."

In God at the Ritz, Lorenzo Albacete describes two elements of human work.

Human work has an "objective" and a "subjective" meaning. The objective meaning of work measures progress in terms of practical tasks accomplished. The subjective meaning of work measures preogress in terms of the fulfillment of the deepest needs of the human heart (140).

A moment's reflection will reveal that test-taking represents a desire to obtain an objective accounting of what a student knows and can be expected to accomplish in the future.

So far, so good: parents, employers, and indeed the student himself all have legitimate needs for this kind of knowledge. The danger is when the objective eclipses the subjective. In other words, when human desire and its fulfillment are marginalized or ignored, the result is alienation.

The student begins to reduce his conception of himself to what is needed to please others or to do "what's important" according to measure of those who hold power. Good grades are not nothing but they don't answer the question, "What, in the end, makes life worth living?"

The teacher too is put into an awkward position: When promotion and tenure are linked to student performance according to what is measurable (and only to what is measureable), a "reasonable" (if amoral) teacher will focus on teaching those knowledge, skills and abilities that are testable -- to the detriment of the immeasurable.

Each of us knows from real life that the immeasurable, is, well, immeasureable. The most important things in life are non-quantifiable: affection, self-giving, generosity, etc.

Question: Where are those places where human flourishing is encouraged?

"School vouchers on hold" reads the headline

in today's Denver Post.

Mark Silverstein of the ACLU exhibits an audacious amount of metaphysical naivete when he applauds the (for the present) ban on funding for "a child's religious education." Perhaps he has been out of school for so long that he's forgotten that all approaches to education necessarily posit a "point of view" or "hypothesis of meaning." These are fancy terms for religious and philosophical commitments that an individual educator (and education systems) lives by.

After ten years in public education I became convinced that the dominant creed (or religion if you prefer) was Successism. Successism is quite simple: it is the belief that public schools exist to ensure that children succeed. To what end or purpose? Well, that's the question we dare not ask nor answer because it would unveil our nihilism, or sheer utilitarianism at best.

All education, especially public education because of its denial of philosophical moorings, promotes a creed and is thus necessarily "religious."

How TFA is gutting public education

Some of the best teachers I've met came through the Teach for America pipeline. Young, zealous, and super-smart. Very decent folks.

So why the provocative title to this post?

Perhaps I should have said, "How TFA might gut public education." That may be more accurate. Karl Marx was famous for running all problems through an economic filter, and there may be something worthwhile in asking, "What's the cost/benefit of a TFA teacher versus other teachers?"

This might be too vague. Let's take it from another angle: in this time of scarcer resources, are administrators "better off" hiring inexperienced but enthusiastic teachers or "seasoned" (i.e., old) teachers with years of experience and advanced degrees?

In the current education climate, "better off" is often defined as appearing to always do more with less; maximizing resources, in other words. Since public education tends to mimic corporate structures, the goal is to have interchangeable teachers who can do whatever needs to be done. Since individuality is really a matter of indifference, then Cheapest is Best.

So, yes, administrative careerists will naturally use "raw material" that is cheap in order to keep within budget. That's to be expected.

Teach for America is having some unintended consequences. Ultimately bringing down wages and exchanging experience and competence for enthusiasm may be just two.

Bad Poetry

Bad poetry has a cathartic affect in the writing.
Like a bad wrapper, words spill out like lightning.
There is not much of substance to be found,
But an interesting stream of consciousness doth abound.
I never studied seriously those who went before.
A simple layman and a bore.

In College

In college an English teacher said I had some skill
With words and such but I didn't believe her much.
Then a historian said, "Great historical sense!,"
To which I replied, hoarsely, "But I never get off the fence."

Lastly a philosopher said, "You're among the best,"
But I was shy and too self-aware;
I was fearful of the implications and
tossed it away as a jest.

To Thomas

Eliot wrote poems
That I'll never beat;
He saw more deeply,
Looked more lovingly,
Cared more intelligently,
Listened with an attentiveness
Not found today on our lonely streets.

Still, I'd like to find a way to somehow compete.
Perhaps invent a genre at which all will gasp.
Or show talent that is above reproach.
Nevertheless, imitation ain't so bad.
In that sun-drenched heaven,
I hope this faint effort
makes him glad.

Useless

To be useless

In the tupperware state.

Nothing to be done

Save refrigerate.

Blood boiling,

Stomach churning,

Ever-willing to

Exaggerate.

The soft contours

Of life

Can lead one

To believe

That nothing

Is at stake;

That the noblest

Emotion is hate.

Step back from the abyss

Which yawns so great;

Step into a void

That nullifies Fate.

Here's to the Misfits

No, not the band, but those who have a bond or kinship with Flannery O'Connor's antagonist in "A Good Man Is Hard to Find." Yeah, that Misfit. I love his self-description:

“Nome, I ain't a good man,” The Misfit said, “but I ain't the worst in the world neither. My daddy said I was a different breed of dog from my brothers and sisters. 'You know,' Daddy said, 'it's some that can live their whole life without asking about it, and it's others has to know why it is, and this boy is one of the latters. He's going to be into everything!'”

After some recent events I've thought about the "it" that seems like an obstacle for me professionally. I think what gets me in trouble every time is that I'm not a partisan or true believer or company man -- whatever moniker one would place on those who line up and salute the dominant position or point of view.

Here's an obvious truth you'll never hear in a school of education or from a school district official or teacher's union rep: When someone says, "This is good for kids, so we should do it," he or she really means: This is good for kids based upon what I/we think is good for kids, so you better get in line with me/us -- or else!

Education, Institutions and Accountability (Part I)

Earlier this week there was a horrid article by Susan Greene in the Denver Post entitled "Who would Jesus fire?" that lamented the firing of a Director of Religious Education at a Catholic parish because of her sexual immorality - oops, I mean her "preference." Ms. Greene was mortified that a church and pastor would actually expect a staff member to practice what she (allegedly) teaches, namely, such things as the sacrament of marriage and lacking that, sexual continence.

This article did get me thinking about what it is that secular institutions such as public schools and universities do stand for. Is there anything beyond competence in subject matter? I think there is very little that would get one censured or remove from a post unless the activity were illegal. That's a fascinating thing, really: secular has come to mean all is permitted unless it is illegal. Thus, in theory, if bigamy were legalized (and with the push for gay marriage, it is difficult to find grounds to argue against bigamy), the bigamist would have as much job security tenure as anyone else.

Beyond these moral questions, the deeper question is, "What do institutions of learning stand for?" Hmm.

Ian McEwan's Saturday

Surely McEwan is an artist. But an artist at the service of what, exactly? If absurdity rests in answering a question that hasn't been asked, then near absurdity would seem to also consist of mundane answers or simply skirting deep and provocative questions. The latter is my take on Saturday.

The story begins with Henry Perowne waking early and seeing a burning aircraft fly across the sky of early morning London. This sets him on all kinds of metaphysical musings:

If Perowne were inclined to religious feeling, to supernatural explanations, he could play with the idea that he's been summoned; that having woken in an unusual state of mind, and gone to the window for no reason, he should acknowledge a hidden order, an external intelligence which wants to show or tell him something of significance (16).

But for Theo's [Henry's son] sincerely godless generation, the question [of theodicy] hasn't come up. No one in his bright, plate-glass, forward-looking school ever asked him to pray, or sing an impenetrable cheery hymn. There's no entity for him to doubt (32).

But these musing don't extend into or penetrate far into Henry's world. His agnosticism or practical atheism seems to be summed up here:

Perowne regards this [religiously motivated behavior] as a matter for wonder, human complication beyond the reach of morals. From it there spring, alongside unreason and slaughter, decent people and good deeds, beautiful cathedrals, mosques, cantatas, poetry. Even the denial of God, he was once amazed and indignant to hear a priest argue, is a spiritual exercise, a form of prayer: it's not easy to escape from the clutches of the believers (17).

God, religion, faith - these are superstitions at best, violent perversions at worst. Not realities at the very heart of human experience. So what is the driving force behind Henry's life? Work, it would seem. He and wife Rosalind are typically modern here:

Well, in ambitious middle life it sometimes seems there is only work. He can be at the hospital until ten, then it can pull him from his bed at 3 a.m., and he can be back there again at eight. Rosalind's work proceeds by a series of slow crescendos and abrupt terminations as she tries to steer her newspaper away from the courts. For certain days, even weeks on end, work can shape every hour; it's the tide, the lunar cycle they set their lives by, and without it, it can seem, there's nothing. Henry and Rosalind are nothing (23).

Yes, nothing. This is profoundly insightful about the nature of modernity: without something constantly pecking at us, we disappear. I don't say it isn't in some sense true, but I do insist that it is outrageous. That McEwan doesn't discern the outrageousness of it furthers my outrage.

I don't want to give away the ending, but it seems to me that the questions set forth above are answered by a certain flattening of these questions. It is enough to do one's duty as an Englishmen and a surgeon. Human questions? These must stay within the realm of the pragmatic; if it is mysterious, it can't exist.

Newspeak, Eduspeak (Part I)

The latest buzzword: effective. Colorado children need effective teachers; every student deserves an effective teacher; teachers will be evaluated on their effectiveness.

Hmm, let's define effective: "producing a decided, decisive, or desired effect" (Merriam-Webster).

Once again slogans and jargon are taking the place of thought. Left out of the discussion is what constitutes or is the defining characteristic of "effective teaching." I'll take my cue from Walker Percy's Lost in the Cosmos here and see if I can shed light on the question by posing several possibilities of what the effective teacher is or does.

(a) The effective teacher is one who connects with all of his students and helps each one of them to explore the mystery of the universe in unique and unexpected ways. This teacher is like Socrates, Jesus and Buddha all rolled into one, except he does not alienate anyone. He is able to impart wisdom simply by his presence. All of his students are above average and getting better and better, every day and in every way.

(b) The effective teacher improves all students' performance on standardized tests and clearly the students learn other great things as well. He's loved by all.

Question: Did you notice the farcical quality of options A & B? If not, you are probably a political commentator, politician, or a member of a non-profit organization that concerns itself with education reform. It is unlikely you have children of your own or that you are a teacher or spend much time on this planet.

(c) The effective teacher figures out how he will be evaluated and maximizes his efforts in these areas. If effectiveness is measured by standardized tests, the teacher focuses on techniques and imparting knowledge of these things. If, on the other hand, his evaluation depends on something else, something else is what the teacher delivers. This teacher is like a mirror for what is asked of him by the dominant power. He is truly self-less.

(d) The effective teacher cares not a whit about the latest fad in education or his own fate because of his disinterest in said fad. This teacher is really good at communicating some very important things to some students, helping many students some of the time, confusing a few students not so often. In short, this teacher is very human.

(e) The effective teacher is a combination of C & D.

(f) The effective teacher is undefinable and unclassifiable. First because we don't know (or agree) on what we want concerning outcomes with students. Second, we don't know why some techniques "work" (have an effect on a group of students) while those same techniques in the hands of another teacher teaching another group of students fail miserably. In other words, teaching is more art than science, but, living as we do, in the age where technology seems capable of solving all of our problems, we're unwilling to admit that science and technology can't help us much here. We're back to Plato in the Meno where Socrates asks, "Can virtue be taught?" Like Meno, we want to reduce the question. Thus we spend enormous amounts of time, energy and money attempting to do what cannot be done: making education a purely rational (abstract) activity.

(CHECK ONE)

Colorado Education "Reform" Part I

Part of the subtext of the debate around SB 191 seems to be the idea that teachers should be held accountable for the one factor that is fundamentally beyond their control: the interior freedom of the student. Yes, a good teacher can help a student to have academic growth. So too might an inert teacher witness a student grow academically. Furthermore, a brilliant teacher may have a student who flat-lines or even declines in the course of a year. The teacher is one factor among many - sometimes central, other times peripheral.

Any teacher who has the courage to be honest amid all this smoke and fury will tell you that he has witnessed numerous intellectually capable student tank tests for frankly mysterious reasons. Apathy, indifference, nay, even hostility - these and countless other factors can and do reside in the souls of our students. Unless and until we embrace the Spartan ideal of putting our youth in barracks so that we so-called experts can have total control, please don't expect teachers to take sole responsibility for the academic shenanigans of students. If you do that, I will refrain from boasting that I am the reason for my students' enlightenment and growth.

Ahistoricism and education

Jeez, the abuse scandal stuff and the luridness of the media is getting tedious. At the risk adding sound and fury, here's my contribution:

The secular consensus seems to be that a good thing would be married clergy, gay marriage, condoms for all, a “zero tolerance policy” for sex crimes, and extravagant payouts for victims. This litany is trotted out as “the answer.”

I guess I don't have enough hubris to claim to know “the answer” (dear reader, please recall T.S. Eliot's injunction against “dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.”).

Those who possess worldly wisdom have what they think is the answer, but I seriously wonder how many of them have even asked the question, “Why not pedophilia?” I'm not being glib; this is a serious question.

Yes, my secular friends, in a certain sense, the Church has “brought this on herself.” It was Christianity who told the pagans (my beloved Socrates died before he got the memo) to give up pederasty. Without Christianity, without Christians, in short, without the Church, there is no guarantee that the nauseating “boy love” we find in Plato's “Symposium,” for example, would not be normative today. It was wrong then; it is wrong now, yet without the Church you wouldn't know that.

NAEP 2009 - A Personal Reflection

The March 25 edition of The Denver Post tells us that "Students' reading scores show little progress" (3A). I couldn't help but think, "No surprise, that." It seems that often overlooked by the media of the dominant mentality are the roles of parents and culture in education.

Here is a typical quotation from one invested in the status quo:

"I really think that there are tremendous implications for the quality of teaching and the development of school leadership to make sure we have high performing schools across the country," said Steven Paine, superindendent of West Virginia schools and a member of the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees the tests" (Ibid.).

God bless him, but, really? I'm grasping for a metaphor here that might convey my exasperation with the assumption that pathetic test results can be changed by tweaking the current system or that it is the exclusive domain of teachers and schools to "fix" these students. Here's a possible metaphor:

Suppose you're the captain of The Titanic and you realize there's this huge gash in your ship. Instead of dealing with that problem, you decide to retrain your observation personnel. You tell yourself that the gaping hole in your ship is really beyond your capacity, but getting everyone up to speed on the latest techniques for effective use of bincoulars is something you can control.

Naturally, the ship sinks.

Silly, right? Well, the dominant ideas surrounding education are not far from this outlandish and absurdist scenario. The "huge gash" is the students who don't read because they are in households where computers, televisions and ipods have replaced books, magazines and conversation; the ship's captain stands for those "professionals" who always have the answers but remain blissfully unaware of the questions; the training in observation and binocular use represents the pathetic attempts to overcome overriding cultural indifference among the general population by teaching teachers new techniques and strategies of dubious value.

Yesterday I was made aware of the barbarizing effect of technology on good students. We're reading Cormac McCarthy's The Road in one of my English classes. I'm blessed with this small cohort of students who have superior reading abilities. I started the class by asking the group if they had been keeping up on the reading. The majority have and it shows in their penetrating observations about the text.

After class a student approached me and said, "I have a confession to make. I haven't done the reading." (This really surprised me because he had advocated strongly for this book at the beginning of the trimester.) He continued, "This weekend we got Netflicks and I've been watching all of these killer movies. I've got to stop." I said, "Yeah, you only have so much time and space in your life and if you do one thing, it means you can't do another."

This student is in a great place: he has sufficient self-awareness to recognize that if he follows the logic of entertainment, it will displace reading.

How is that this high school student can see it but the educrats can't?

No, Virginia, you can't have it all. If you want an education, you'll simply have to unplug.

For the Sake of the Children

Hearing this phrase is also grounds for reaching for the proverbial Luger or perhaps a reason for paying close attention to what the speaker says next.

On talk radio and during an interview
A local radio station (KHOW) has a show called "Caplis and Silverman" co-hosted by Dan Caplis and Craig Silverman; they are a great pair - far more interesting than, say, Hannity and Colmes were. Last week they were discussing a sick out by Boulder Valley teachers. Caplis was suggesting that everyone should agree to do "what is best for the children." Hmm, sounds good. But so does "pro-choice" unless you think deeply about what is being chosen. Yet unlike the "pro-choice" mantra, "for the children" is far more ambiguous.

Short term or long term?
In my experience, "what is good for the children" is sometimes proposed without reference to what is good for teachers. I've heard administrators say such things as "this isn't about teacher comfort, but what's good for the students" in reference to an inane and insane requirement that teachers call each student's home at least once per week. This was at a charter school where the parents were predominately Spanish-speakers. Call 120 homes in a language I don't speak; this benefits whom, how exactly?

On the "Caplis and Silverman Show," Dan Caplis was suggesting that teachers should always do what is best for the students, not themselves. (Not to get Kantian here, but does Mr. Caplis in his law practice do what is best for his clients without reference to himself - does he routinely foreswear compensation?) Implicit in this naive remark are at least two facts:

1. What is "best" for the children is rarely univocal.
Is it always best that teachers stay on the job and never strike? Well, that would depend on the rationale for the strike. Teachers might be striking because of bad adminstrative policies that "dumb down" the curriculum or teachers might be asking for an unreasonable pay raise; in the former case one would say, "strike," in the latter, don't.
Is a longer school day always best for the children? It depends on how the time is spent and what provision is made for teachers having adequate leisure [I find it interesting that the only people I hear say how "easy" teaching is, are either (a) incompetent teachers or (b) more likely, those who don't teach]. I met a guy recently who was fired from a charter school chain because he suggested that teachers have more time to meet together and fewer contact hours with students. In other words, because he was concerned about an "assembly line" approach to teaching, he was deemed to not be a "team player" (even as he was asking for more time for "the team" to coordinate their activities!)

2. What is bad for teachers is also bad for students.
Suppose you have a cadre of teachers that always believes a principal when he says, "This is good for the kids, so we're going to do it," and these teachers nod their heads in assent. If the administrator is wise, benevloent and saintly, then, well, perhaps all of these good things shower upon teachers and students alike. If however one lives on this planet, we would soon find out that "what is good for the children" (for now we'll assume that these are actually good things) -- things such as longer school days, more instructional time, and more lively instruction -- these things have a price that teachers must pay. Let's take them in order with the assumption that there are no changes in staffing:

A. A longer school day. This means that either teachers make their families and friends suffer by cloistering themselves away and continuing to grade papers long into the night and skip time with the family or these teachers, say, "Screw it, I used to ask for essays, but now I don't have time to grade them, so I'll start handing out multiple choice quizzes" or some other time saving measure. In the long term, students pay the price.

B. More instructional time or "contact hours."
Teachers teach more but they might also communicate less. A great booklet I recently read was Julian Carron's "Educating: That is, a Communication of Yourself." Carron makes it very clear that the most important thing a teacher communicates is not content per se, but how the teacher views all of reality. This is not pie-in-the-sky, but quite concrete. More contact hours may translate into uninspired teacher, which helps no one.

C. More interesting or lively instruction.
This one kills me: the vision of the teacher as entertainer and the assumption that students should be distracted into learning. In any event, where does the time for creativity come from? It has been taken away. If the teacher does make instruction more entertaining, it will in fact be less interesting; bells and whistles will have replaced curiosity and wonder.

Abstractions are useless
What I love about teaching is that reality is unavoidable. My students challenge me to ask daily why I do what I do (and if, in fact, it is worth doing!); I cannot just fall back into some ideology to explain reality: they won't let me.

Those who use ideological phrases like "it's for the children" aren't working with the children (even if there is a classroom of kids in front of them); they are working with abstractions. In The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them, E.D. Hirsch has a great glossary of terms and he shows how eduspeak is a dodge from thought. Let's add "for the children" to the list.

Plato I

A Return to Sanity
Pretty bad when reading about a guy who is on trial for his life over trumped up charges seems like "sanity." In comparison to Dewey, Socrates is a breath of fresh air (whereas Dewey is largely stale error). There are so many things to learn about through the "Apology." Something that struck me on this rereading was Socrates' patience in explaining the context of how accusations arose against him. How preconception and prejudice led to his indictment; how he did indeed do things that were, in today's parlance, politically incorrect.
Two for One
As I mentioned previously, taking up an ancient text was motivated by a desire to get some distance from the modern mentality (well represented by John Dewey). Reading the "Apology"
and Aristophanes' "The Clouds" (a first) was also motivated by the opportunity to teach an undergraduate Philosophy course. I was able to get what I think is a very good translation by C.D.C. Reeve - it's certainly more readable than the Jowett translation (see The Trials of Socrates at http://www.hackettpublishing.com).

Dewey VII

Later, Dude!

Let God be the judge between you and me, Mr. Dewey! I tried (and tried) to read your book with an open mind in order to understand what is attractive about your thought. As I mentioned before, Experience and Education came highly recommended from a man I admire and respect (Dennis Littky), so I thought, "OK, I'll give Dewey a second chance."

I did so. When you went from obscurity to obscurity, I pressed on; when you used ordinary words (i.e., experience, freedom, purpose, etc.) in the most peculiar ways, I remained open to the possibility of some good emerging from my Herculean labors. While I can say that I do have some vague notion of what your approach to education is all about, I would have to emphasize "vague."

The Scientific Method

Were I forced to say what you say the essence of education is, it would run something like this:

Education is most authentic when it uses the scientific method as its means and ends: one hypothesis leads to another "truth" that serves as a stepping stone for another hypothesis which leads to more and more transitional truths, which lead to more and more growth.

I'll pat myself on the back for such a concise statement of your thought, but I freely acknowledge that it might be inaccurate. But this summary does seem to sum up your love for science and it as a model for education. But I think you are patently wrong on this score: If education is all about life, then take a look around and see how life is more than "science." Science reduces reality to what can be managed, manipulated and manufactured. Education-as-science is something ultimately inhuman.

A final quotation

On the last pages of Experience and Education you write:

What we want and need is education pure and simple, and we shall make surer and faster progress when we devote ourselves to finding out just what education is and what conditions have to be satisfied in order that education may be a reality and not a name or a slogan (90-91).

"Finding out"? "May be a reality"? I believe, sir, that the primary purposes of writing non-fiction are either to understand better some aspect of reality one is wrestling with or to communicate some truth to others one has discovered. It seems to me you have done neither.

Farewell, Mr. Dewey. I shall now take the advice of that great theist, C.S. Lewis, and read an ancient text after I have read your thoroughly modern work.

(Mutter, mutter! Twenty two days of reading his book and all I have are rambling posts and a raging headache! Mutter, mutter...)

Dewey VI

Authority the Unavoidable

Such was the title of a chapter in Chesterton's What's Wrong with the World. In the fourth chapter (Social Control) Dewey deals with the role of the teacher in the classroom and gives us the image of children at play as a point of contrast and comparison. With children at play we find an example of "social control of individuals without the violation of freedom" (54).

Dewey rightly indicates that the teacher often has an "undue role" that is forced upon him because of school design. I agree. He goes on to claim that in the "new schools, the primary source of social control resides in the very nature of the work done as a social enterprise in which all individuals have an opportunity to contribute and to which all feel a responsibility" (56). These seems a little fuzzy and seems to ignore the obvious: in both traditional and new (now old) schools, authority is imposed from without. The freedom of the students is conditioned upon the willingness of the adults to give it to them (I'm not suggesting it should be otherwise, only that it is true in both cases).

I have seen numerous times when group projects quickly devolve into one or two students taking responsibility for what gets done and feeling (rightly) resentful at the slouching mass of students who have nothing to contribute.

Put me in, Coach!

Dewey claims that when schooling is more of a social process, "The teacher loses the position of external boss or dictator [no, I assure you, he wrote that] but takes on that of leader of group activities" (59). Sounds good; sounds democratic. But wait a minute. This transition is based on Dewey's earlier comparison of schooling with games. This image seems inapt on several points.

First, games have a natural attraction to kids that need no external mandate (at least before XBox and associated lethargy-makers); schooling is required.

Second, games cannot be sustained for prolonged periods of time. When you're done, you're done (Dewey might go so far as to urge the modification of the school day to fit the "needs" of the students, I don't know - I wouldn't mind a two-hour teaching day!)

A third thing that bugs me about the game image is that it implies that fun and "engagement" (now there's a thorougly misused term) are coextensive with education. I think this is patently false. Perhaps a more realistic metaphor for education is exercise. It requires self-discipline and endurance, but it possesses moments of fun and engagement. If I approach exercise with a gamish mentality, I shall soon slouch back into my couch potato self.

Next time: the role of the teacher and the myth of the teacher as the Great Architect.

Dewey V

An (The?) End in Itself

I well remember Aristotle's insistence that in the moral life, happiness is paramount. It is also an end after which we seek no further end. Once one is happy, satisfied, blessed -- the journey, in a sense, comes to an end.

Dewey's insistence on growth as good when it leads to more growth, which leads to still more growth made me think of Aristotle. Think of The Philosopher in this sense: What Would Aristotle Think (or WHUT)? I don't know what he'd think of Dewey's ideas about education, but I don't think he'd like his ambiguity.

Biology and Teleology

For Aristotle the moral life has a clear end - happiness; for Dewey, education has no end beyond vaguely differentiated, on-going (infinite?) growth. With Dewey's materialism, he surely recognized that life runs up against its terminus in death. So it seems the life Dewey envisions goes something like this: Growth, growth, growth, annihilation. You, me, everybody.

Here we find yet another case of "bad infinity," where the need for the infinite gets projected onto finite realities. In focusing on growth the way he does, Dewey is at odds with himself, for how can life (existence) come to an end but growth never come to an end?

Question: Did Dewey ever confront this riddle?

Dewey IV

Progress and Democracy

In Chapter 3, Criteria of Experience, Dewey says that "one thing which has recommended the progressive movement is that it is more in accord with the democratic ideal to which our people is commited than do the procedures of the traditional school..."(33). It is interesting how Dewey links "the progressive movement" (in education, presumably) with "democratic ideals." He paints both the "new education" and "traditional schooling" with such broad strokes (perhaps even bordering on caricatures of the latter) that he has failed to demonstrate this thesis. How odd for a man who takes the methods of science for his model in educational philosophy.

Questions:
#1 Because a school is more "democratic" (whatever that might mean), is it a better school?
#2 What evidence would validate Dewey's thesis?
#3 What evidence would validate it?

Dewey's Mythical Anthropology (or why growth will not suffice for man)

Again and again Dewey highlights how education is all about growth. But a nagging question for me is: Is it possible to have the goal of growth as "the" end in education ["the educative process can be identified with growth" (36)] without a fairly definite idea (or ideal) about what this growth ought to tend toward? I think one must have an ideal, lest growth simply be an end in itself (growth for growth's sake), which leads towards ambiguity, incoherence, and perhaps even nihilism.

All of this growth talk by Dewey makes me think of the various schools of Utilitarianism with their future-oriented calculi: whatever brings the most happiness/pleasure for the majority, well that's the right thing to do. By invoking growth and the way he defines it without a goal for the human subject, one seems to be always stuck in the future (perhaps this makes the term progress apropos indeed).

[At some point it would be interesting to look at Dewey's ideal of growth in light of the biological fact of death. If death is the end for Dewey, then why bother with all this growth? Growth would seem to lead only to nothingness. Maybe later we can look at this.]

Dewey's growth (unlike Aristotle's flourishing, which is linked to excellence), lacks any end beyond more growth. "Growth without end, amen." Such is the prayer of Dewey.

I'm not persuaded. Dewey has the ideal opportunity to address the concerns people have about his definition of growth (really, a lack of definition) and how he would distinguish "good" from "bad" growth: "[A] man who starts out on a career of burglary may grow in that direction, and by practice may grow into a highly expert burglar. Hence it's argued that 'growth' is not enough; we must also specify the direction in which growth takes place, the end towards which it tends" (36). Indeed, we must; however, Dewey never does.

The closest he seems to come to a specification of ends is to say that good growth is the growth that has "opportunities for continuing growth in new directions" (36). Coming back to our burglar, we would seem to have no way of judging whether or not the "school of theft" is educative or mis-educative: if he grows in skill and expertise, this might be enough. Who ultimately is the judge of growth untethered from tradition, ethics and anthropology?

Questions:
#1 Is it reasonable to accept such a premise (growth and its inherently subjective nature) when it is on its face so incoherent? (If one were to say the goal of eating is more eating - would this persuade anyone?)
#2 How can a thinker who is all about democracy and community base his educative project on such a subjective premise?
#3 If it is possible to build democracy and community on such a principle, is it not necessary for the community (or the majority) to be in charge of creating conditions for appropriate growth or defining what is appropriate? (I'm tending toward thinking this is what Dewey is suggesting at some level.)

Next time: something about Dewey's use of biblical allusions or his definition of the aim(s) of education.

Dewey III

One out of three ain't bad

I had hoped to discuss what John Dewey thinks experience is, how it can be (or cannot be) communicated, and its telos, but at least through the second chapter, he has not given a defintion of experience. I had assumed that he would provide a definition because he says, "To know the meaning of empiricism we need to understand what experience is" (25).

Communicating experience. He does suggest that teachers help students experience things in an orderly fashion: "It is [the educator's] business to arranged for the kind of experiences which ... engage [the student's] activities and ... promote desirable future experiences" (27). Something curious about this the lack of his discussion of inter-subjectivity. That is, he does not discuss how one can create a lesson that is for one student a powerful, life-changing experience, but for another student it is "boring." (What teacher hasn't seen this?). In any event, we'll see if he goes into communication of experience in more detail.

I'm happy to report that he does define what the end or goal of experience is: further future experience. No joke. Here are a couple of examples:

Any experience is mis-educative that has the effect of afresting or distroting the growth of further experience (25).

"[Y]oung people in traditional schools do have experiences [but the trouble is] their defective and wrong character -- wrong and defective from the standpoint of connection with further experience" (27).

Wholly indepedent of desire or intent, every experience lives on in further experiences. Hence the central problem of an education based upon experience is to select the kind of present experiences that live fruitfully and creatively in subsequent experiences (27-28).

"[A] coherent theory of experience ... is required by the attempt to give new diretion to the work of the schools.... It is a matter of growth, and there are many obstacles which tend to obstruct growth and to deflect it into wrong lines" (30)

All of these are from Experience and Education, but this zinger comes from Democracy and Education: "The educational process has no end beyond itself; it is its own end" (59).

If this is accurate, I think Dewey's view has staggeringly negative anthropological implications: humanity has no goal, no center, no point of reference beyond "growth" or the "educational process."

Questions so far in this chapter:

#1 Why doesn't he discuss his own experience (either as a student or as an educator)? This chapter is entirely too disengaged from any discussion relating to students and teachers (not even anecdotally do either show up).

#2 Dewey thinks that the empirical sciences "offer the best" kind of educational organization but he doesn't say why. Why?

#3 Is it ultimately coherent to say the primary purpose of education is to have experiences that lead to more experiences, ad infinitum? To achieve that goal, one could play in traffic, take hikes, read books.... Anything would seem to achieve the goal of richer, worthier, better experiences.

#4 How does Dewey's thought converge/diverge from Aristotle? I was think of Dewey's growth and Aristotle's flourishing. Are they compatible?

Dewey II

I remember a talk that Lorenzo Albacete gave a dozen years ago in Denver. At one point he said something like this: "All of these people running around talking about their experiences, but they're not talking about ex-perience because it's all about them.... All real experiences come from the outside, not our own subjectivity."

For some reason I recalled Albacete's remarks in my reading of Dewey. I'm now delving into chapter two of Experience and Education and I'm finding that Dewey seems to suggest something erroneous about what experience is and how it can be communicated. But first, something positive about Dewey (lest I never get there!):

The belief that all genuine education comes about through experience does not mean that all experiences are genuinely or equally educative (25).

Again, experiences may be so disconnected from one another that, while each is agreeable or even exciting in itself, they are not linked cumulatively to one another. Engergy is then dissipated and a person becomes scatterbrained (26).

Just so. An experience is not merely a "something" that happens, for then we would talk about the experiences of monkeys and lions; rather, an experience requires a something, an event, but also reflection and an understanding of what the event means. Otherwise it's just one damn thing after another.

Next time I'll pick up on where I think Dewey goes off the rails with his understanding of what experience is, how it can be (or cannot be) communicated, and its telos.

John Dewey I

Just started John Dewey's Experience and Education. It's come highly recommended from someone I admire and respect; others have spoken highly of Dewey too. I'm trying to be open to anything me might have to say that could be useful.

As an undergrad I took a philosophy course devoted to Dewey's thought. What a mortifying experience. Terrible writer. And vague. Mystifications from a famous pragmatist. Well, everyone - especially one departed - deserves a second chance.

Experience and Education is allegedly a clear and concise overview of Dewey's approach to education. In the preface he says that he will "call attention to the larger and deeper issues of Education" (p. 6). We'll see. I'm open - no, really.

The Joy of Spring Break

How useful to step off the merry-go-round that teaching can be. Intense year, intense semester. Stepping back gives perspective (good, bad, ugly).

Began and finished Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five (Vonnegut is so "unsummarizable" that I will merely point out that he has a great capacity for showing the depths of our human needs in a way that is always funny, profound, and unresolved - he was the president of a humanist organization, after all).

Began Augustine's Confessions and Chris Hedges' I Don't Believe in Atheists. Augustine is moving and deeply personal; Hedges not so much. Trying to "dip into" Augustine a little each week (I think I've got what I can out of Hedges' book, so I may stop reading - God love reporters, but they seem to have a real knack being superficial and annoying.)

Augustine on Cicero's Hortensius: "What won me in it was what it said, not the excellence of its phrasing" (p. 38, Sheed translation).

David Brooks on Obama's Education

No Picnic for Me Either is the title of Brooks' March 12, 2009 piece in the NYT (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/13/opinion/13brooks.html?_r=1&ref=opinion).

Here are my thoughts on what Brooks had to say. He seems completely correct at this point:

"We’ve spent years working on ways to restructure schools, but what matters most is the relationship between one student and one teacher. You ask a kid who has graduated from high school to list the teachers who mattered in his life, and he will reel off names. You ask a kid who dropped out, and he will not even understand the question. Relationships like that are beyond his experience."

Just so. A minor oversight here is that relationships, while not wholly dictated by school structures, are certainly influenced by these structures. They can be more or less human. Although Brooks doesn't mention this school model by name, it sounds like he is familiar with the Big Picture model. They focus on "relevance, rigor and relationships" and are having some tremendous results.

Now for the Great Lacuna: What about our need for total meaning? Do human relationships exhaust our need for Relationship? Hell, no. Here is the problem with all reforms that don't acknowledge our existential depths: they possess an emaciated anthropology that doesn't admit of the Mystery. The teacher may possess it (and in this case, no power in the world can suppress it), but if it isn't given tacit acknowledgment, we're really just deluding ourselves and our students.

We seem to still be a long way away from acknowledging the depths of reality in education. Given the way government funding limits what schools can say about ultimate reality, we have a real dilemma on our hands. Like something out of the film The Village, God has become "Him we don't speak of" in public education. (For how absurd jurisprudence has become in this area, read about the coach in New Jersey who is forbidden from joining his players in prayer - as if students are too stupid to separate the coach from the State! )

(Here's a link to that story: http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2009/03/supreme_court_rejects_east_bru.html)

The courts can continue to stifle the freedom of adults in the name of the liberation of youth, but the questions of the heart cannot be silenced. Let us pray for the courage to educate in a fully human way - no matter what the obstacles.

Revisting Fight Club I

What does this film have to do with education?

That's what I asked myself as I watched it again for the nth time. I think that the short answer is "more than you'd think."

The protagonist (for clarity I'll call him "Rupert") seems to have everything going for him: a decent job, a condo, the ability to afford Ikea products, etc. Yet he can't sleep. In fact he's had severe insomnia for a year. Materially he's full; spiritually, empty.

Rupert finds temporary solace in attending support groups for people struggling with disabling and life-threatening diseases (significantly, the first support group is for men with testicular cancer). It is only temporary because he finds that the presence of another impostor at these support groups, "Marla" (played magnificently by Helena Bonham Carter) means he once again cannot sleep. Marla serves as a provocation, both in Rupert's attraction to her and his need to move beyond a mere emotional catharsis to physical violence (those who think the point of this film is violence have completely misread it, I think).

Beauty and violence serve as points of transcendence for Rupert. Ultimately beauty wins out, but violence serves as a channel of grace (in a way that I think Flannery O'Connor might well appreciate) and, ultimately, love. This film is about the irrepressibility of the heart and our need for meaning and friendship and love.

Dead Ends

Admittedly, the film is more about what does not satisfy the human heart. There is a veritable laundry list of what does not satisfy our deep human needs. Tyler's "homily" deserves to be quoted in full here (found in full at http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Fight-Club.html, but I've modified it to reflect the dialogue as found in the final edit of the film)

I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who have ever lived -- an entire generation pumping gas and waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertisements have us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need.

We are the middle children of history, man, with no purpose or place.

We have no great war, or great depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives. We were raised by television to believe that we'd be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars -- but we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed-off.

Tyler finds that violence does not satisfy his need for total fulfillment. What materialistic society offers is not an adequate answer. He will choose a two fold path: violence that moves from his fellow man to the structures of economic injustice in society, and the path of friendship and love (via Bob and Marla). The former has the louder voice in the film, but the latter wins out.

The Path of Communion

It might sound irreverent to call this a religious film, but I think it is (albeit in a very confused and halting fashion). There are clues sprinkled all around: (1) Rupert's tears on Bob's shirt that mimic Veronica's Veil; (2) the secrecy of the fight club "liturgy": like the early Church, outsiders are not let in ("The first rule of fight club is that you do not talk about fight club"), the fighting occurs in a basement (cf. the catacombs), the doors are closed to the initiated; (3) after Bob's death, the members of Project Mayhem take up a definite liturgical dimension: "His name is Robert Paulson; his name is Robert Paulson..."

It is Bob's death that shakes up Rupert to begin asking serious questions about himself - again, for the first time. Ulimate violence leads to a moment of grace: asking the questions that matter. Bob's death leads Rupert to discover two profound things: first, he is not who he thinks he is (or rather Tyler is not who he seems) and second, his profound love for Marla (he sends here away on a bus for her safety and confesses that her good is more important to him than her presence).

A Happy Ending and Beginning

Rupert's rununciation of holding on to Marla allows him to free himself from his shadow, Tyler. By beginning to love the other, he can finally have affection for his own humanity and emerge from the toxic shadow of Tyler. The form this takes is a kind of dying of self; a kind of 9mm exorcism. ("The kingdom of heaven suffers violence - the violent bear it away"). From this violence to self, the tenderness of a reborn Tyler emerges. Marla takes pity on Tyler and her love overcomes all the dysfunction and abuse.

As civilization is levelled by the bombs, Tyler and Marla hold hands to behold a new beginning. They are now equal: witness the way their clothing matches (Tyler has not pants, only boxer shorts which match Marla's skirt).

But what does this film have to do with education?

Ultimately, this film reminds me that the needs of my students cannot ever be met merely by material satisfaction. That going to college is a worthy goal, but is not sufficient for happiness. It reminds me that education is "always more." That it is openness to reality if it is real education.

What's wrong with American Schools? Anthropology for Starters

The British author G.K. Chesterton was asked (along with other U.K. luminaries) by an English newspaper, "What's wrong with the world?" His response was as follows:

Dear Sirs,
I am.
Sincerely,
GKC

I think what is most atrocious in American education is our lack of regard for the humanity of the student. Often lip service is paid to things like a "student-centered curriculum" or leaving no child behind, but generally the rhetoric about children is a clever way for the adults (teachers, school boards, principals, administrators, governors, presidents, et al) to at once appear concerned about kids while retaining their hold on power.

What is lacking in far too many schools is a concern for the "I" in Chesterton's reply.

We are a homeschooling family and I teach at a public school (a damn good one, I might add). We don't think homeschooling is the right choice for all families, but we do insist that until we find schools that are concerned with our kids integral development, we don't plan on sending our kids to those schools. (The school I teach at is a high school and we do plan on sending at least one of our kids there when he is old enough)

Our culture is saturated with reductions of the human person: The person as economic cog in a vast financial machine. As a family, materialism doesn't interest us - regardless if that materialism flows from the mind of Adam Smith or Karl Marx or any of their progeny. Yet that is what most public schools offer: a "pragmatic" education that focuses on skills without reference to the meaning of life.

The justification for ignoring meaning (except in the occasional literature class) is often "church state separation." Yeah, best to ignore issues that might bring in a hail of lawsuits in our litigious culture. Or not.

Of course even the term "public education" seems to be a farce when public ideas, values, debates, religions, and ideologies are barred from the school house. (When I was crabbier I refused to use the term public education and substituted "government education," but the latter term is also misleading.)

The fundamental problem, as I see it is that we fear asking two or three questions because they could/would upset the status quo. Question #1: What is the human person? Question #2 What is education, really? Question #3: What would an adequate education of the human person require?

There's a can of worms! I have my "answers" to these three questions, but I'd like to hear what others have to say....

New Description; Similar Focus

The description for this blog since its inception read:

This site is devoted to inquiring about how a charter high school can be developed in Colorado that takes into account the human heart. "Sophia Academy" has been proposed because we take it as axiomatic that what is needful in our time, and for the next generation (hence, a high school) is Wisdom (both theoretical and practical). Our name may change in the future, but we will still be concerned with Wisdom and see this is as the sine qua non for Happiness.

The idea for a new school continues to percolate, but the focus is now broadened to include reflections on education in general, with an emphasis on a truly humanistic (in a fuller sense of the term) education. We hope to examine various bright spots in education and engage in critical reflection where there seems to be a reduction of the human person or freedom or the pursuit of truth. As before, our focus will be the high school level.

Education: Prisons and Schools

(This piece was published sometime in February, 2009 for the Denver Post online edition)

Why do our public schools lack so many public ideas? Look outside of school and find a cacophony of ideas, viewpoints and opinions; turn inward and inoffensiveness is found to be the defining characteristic. This absurdity crystallized for me several years ago as my class was exploring some point of Plato at a prison in northeastern Colorado: an inmate remarked that in prison one speaks of neither religion nor politics. “Good gravy!” I exclaimed, “Then what else is there to talk about – sports?”

Sadly, in this respect some public schools resemble penitentiaries. To exclude religion and politics from education means to radically diminish questions about where we came from and where we are going. Our schools should be places where ideas – radical and conservative alike – are argued for and against. They ought not to be places where we facilely equate high test scores with deep thoughts or assume a school is great because many students are taking Advanced Placement courses.

Part of our problem is that we don't know what we mean when we use the term “education.” In The Risk of Education, Luigi Giussani says that “to educate means to help the human soul enter into the totality of the real.” This seems to be a very satisfactory definition, but I will leave the reader to judge how well the typical public, charter, private, parochial or home-school educates to this standard.

Today our schools seem to be driven more by what can't be done than by what needs to be done. Rather than help students to discover reality, in and out of the four walls of the school building, the curriculum is reduced to a kind of lowest common denominator, lawsuit-proof, tapioca pudding: almost tasteless but inoffensive. Here are three fascinating topics that get roundly mistreated:

Sex. It becomes mere plumbing, hygiene and safety. No commitment, no adventure, no meaning. Then there's our human origins. We act as if Darwin's theory is – by itself – an adequate answer to the question, “What is man?” The more interesting metaphysical questions are entirely bracketed.

Lastly, there's God. The less said about God the better. I once had a (high school!) principal who said that because Christmas was rolling around, we teachers had best keep our mouths shut if students asked what we thought Christmas meant. While such overt censorship as this is rare, his comments do reflect a common attitude about God and education.

One can trace the problem of maligning and mismanaging God, man and sex back to a certain incoherence in the First Amendment itself. It speaks of both non-establishment of religion and free exercise of religion. Our schools seem to have taken the pragmatic course of ensuring that nothing gets established or exercised.

While none of us likely to solve the great church-state separation debate, we can surely reflect more deeply on the goals of education. Suppose that all of us – like Giussani – actually believe that young people ought to be introduced to all of reality. How might that change what we ask of schools and the kinds of graduates they turn out?

This is a question that educator Dennis Littky has asked and answered. In The Big Picture: Education is Everyone's Business, he writes, “Over the course of three decades watching kids walk into my schools, I have decided I want them to be lifelong learners, creative, ready to take risks; to have integrity and self-respect; to have moral courage; to truly enjoy their life and their work.”

Like a good disciple of Aristotle, Littky insists that these results are attainable if we keep in mind the kind of student we want to see graduate. It is possible if we help the student discover reality in all of its splendor – without setting limits on what the student might learn. What our schools need is more reality, more humanity, more risk and less ideology.

[Matt McGuiness teaches at a public school in Denver]

Letter from a Denver-area teacher

Here's a letter from a reader who wished to remain anonymous, but asked us to identify her as "Mary."

I teach English at a public charter high school and every year we get a lecture about the supposed separation of church and state as it relates to that peculiar Christian holy day, Christmas. This year's homily was particularly egregious: “If a student asks you what you think, keep your beliefs to yourself” we, the adults, were commanded. Whether I was thinking prudence is the better part of valor or if I was moved by sheer cowardice, I kept my mouth shut, thinking, “Hasn't he heard of the #@*&! 1^st Amendment?” This incident helped clarify for me what's wrong with education in America today.

Among evangelical Protestants the concerns over public education, if we can believe what we read in the papers, tend to be centered around the lack of school prayer and the teaching of evolution as “the answer” to human origins. What ever truth there may be in this old stereotype, this two-fold concern is not mine, nor does it seem to resonate with most of the people I meet. Instead, it is a concern over the violence and superficiality of public schools that gives one pause. We are a homeschooling family because of the limited curiosity of the local schools. We don't want our children's education to be a series of subtractions from reality, but a presentation of the panorama of human thought and experience – a broadening of reason if you will. Ideally, the public schools should be collaborators in the task of education, but at present they are antagonists. Antagonistic to our insistence that education be a complete education. So-called religious neutrality is a big part of the failure of public schools.

A complete education cannot reasonably exclude religion, either in its historical or literary forms, or from its more existential exigences that spontaneously arise from the hearts of students. Talking to a school board member or principal and asking him or her, “How does your district (school) conceive of man? What is the human person and what does he need?” is likely to result in blank stares at best. Professional educators can wax poetic about test scores or the latest methods and strategies for getting students excited about learning, but when it comes to the true protagonist in education, the student, their view is superficial and hollow.

In The Risk of Education Luigi Giussani takes Joseph Jungmann's definition of education as axiomatic when it comes to the legitimate range of pedagogical concerns: education ought to be an introduction to the whole of reality. A moment's comparison with my administrator's narrow (and alleged secular) vision with these two clerics' insistence on an open horizon points out how the ideology of secularism has truncated the curriculum and become (paradoxically) parochial. Yet not all administrators or school districts are this timid, so I am hopeful that more schools will begin taking the humanity of the students seriously.

The rapidly accelerating charter school movement in our state is encouraging more pluralism, but given the track record of the courts concerning religious liberty and public schools, there is a possibility that these taxpayer supported charters may be allowed to promote only academic excellence, not human wholeness. While the voucher movement seems to have stalled, perhaps the charters can take up the cause of meaning-full education reform. It will take school leaders, teachers and parents who are not beholden to the secular status quo, but it just might happen; God willing, it will happen.