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Looking Differently, Thinking Differently

September 19, 2010 in Culture

I’ve been contemplating the title of Bonnie Davis’ book. It’s the subordinate clause in the title that’s troubling: How to Teach Students Who Don’t Look Like You. As I’m reading the book, the implicit assumption is that students who don’t look like me also don’t think like me.

At its heart, this book rests on the assumption that the ideal society is the multicultural society in which all groups, diverse in their appearance and culture, live peacefully and productively. But the book seems to go beyond that and imply that there should not be a standard culture to which all members of the other culture conform in some way. All cultures are equal, with no super-culture over it.

This is not the metaphor for America most of us grew up with. America is the melting pot, we were taught. Cultures arrive and while maintaining their cultural distinctives, join part of a greater culture that requires adaptation. Historically, it is the minority cultures that, in one form or another, adapt to the majority culture. That majority culture determines the language and norms of social interaction. Thus, when someone arrives from the Caribbean, they have a choice: continue with their culturally lax view of time and show up two hours late, or adapt to the dominant culture that requires punctuality. If they’re to be successful, they have to adapt.

That standard culture has traditionally been created and maintained by white males, and therein lies the rub. The white male created the culture, but also created the racism and misogyny that we saw gradually beaten back during the twentieth century. When white men ran things, we see they didn’t even hid their sense of superiority: it’s even evident in advertisements.

Yet, we like to think, all of that is behind us. At the very least, the blatant misogyny and racism has diminished almost to nonexistence.

But in putting all that behind us, we seem to have also discarded the notion of assimilation, of adaptation. Now, it’s not the students from different cultures adapting to the teacher who generally represents the standard culture. Instead, it’s the teacher who is to adapt.

There is much to be said for this: teachers who don’t adapt don’t reach all their students. But not to expect — and teach — adaption to students is to neglect the skills they need to succeed in the cliche “real” world.

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by G. Scott

Football Culture

September 14, 2010 in Culture

We sat around, chatting as we waited for the professor to return to the course. A room filled with teachers could result in only one kind of small talk: “one time, this kid…” That swapping of war stories lasted only a few moments, though. The topic turned to football, and I was lost.

Our family has only one small television for the sole purpose of watching DVDs occasionally. Otherwise, we never turn on the television. As such, I never watch sports, and because I find football to be mind-numbingly boring (ninety seconds of milling around, chest bumping, chest thumping, huddling up, lining up, re-huddling, re-lining, ad nauseum followed by three seconds of action; repeat), I’ve no interest in spending the time and money required to watch a game live.

The whole experience reminded me of an experience I’d had a couple of years ago. I stood outside a school, listening to three men talk, and it occurred to me why our country is in the shape it’s in, why our political system is a joke, why we’re permanently in debt: we care about things that are not worth bothering over.

The three men in question were talking about college football, and to listen to their discussion, one would think that the future of Western civilization depended on this year’s college football season. They discussed coaches by name, going back twenty years; they talked about results of half a dozen games; they analyzed the records of coaches; they talked about who was in which round at this and that tournament and the effect it had on play — but I can’t convince myself that they would know who Mikheil Saakashvili is.

If Americans knew half as much about history, geography, and current affairs as they know about college football, we’d be a better country.

Yet it’s been an issue for at least 57 years, since Ray Bradbury published Fahrenheit 451. When he knows Montag has books, illegal under any circumstances, Captain Beatty says,

If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides of a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient, top-heavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it. Peace, Montag. Give the people contests to win by remembering the word to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of “facts” they feel stuffed, but absolutely “brilliant” with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving. And they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t change. Don’t give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy. Any man who can take a TV wall apart and put it back together again, and most men can, nowadays, is happier than any man who tries to slide-rule, measure, and equate the universe, which just won’t be measured or equated without making man feel bestial and lonely. I know, I’ve tried it; to hell with it. So bring on your clubs and parties, your acrobats and magicians, your daredevils, jet cars, motocycle helicopters, your sex and heroin, more of everything to do with automatic reflex. If the drama is bad, if the film says nothing, if the play is hollow, sting me with the theremine, loudly. I’ll think I’m responding to the play, when it’s only a tactile reaction to vibration. But I don’t care. I just like solid entertainment. [...] The important thing for you to remember, Montag, is we’re the Happiness Boys, the Dixie Duo, you and I and the others. We stand against the small tide of those who want to make everyone unhappy with conflicting theory and thought. We have our fingers in the dike. Hold steady. Don’t let the torrent of melancholoy or drear philosophy drown our world. (Fahrenheit 451 61, 2)

Things have changed since 1953. No one has any idea how much corn Iowa produced last year other than policy makers and PhDs. Now we’re wondering about whether or not Angela Jolie is still with Brad Pitt, whether Virginia Tech can return to the miracle days of Michael Vick.

And that’s just the way the powers that be — read: corporations and their various news media — want it. George Carlin was onto something when he said they want us stupid. It’s easier to send people off to war or convince them that this or that scientific theory is flap-doodle if the general population is more educated about Brittany Spears’ mental problems than real, substantive issues.

There’s nothing new in what I’m writing; it’s been said countless times before. Still, when one is standing there, witnessing the problem replicate itself, the reality becomes more palable, more depressing, more frightening. It’s difficult not to scream.

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by G. Scott

Walking Forward

September 10, 2010 in General, Religion

I’ve attended two RCIA sessions now. I’ve done a lot of thinking about it; I’ve done little to no writing about it. Instead of including this in my journal, I’m writing it here. It will have an unpolished, unfinished feel — as if anyone stumbles onto this silliness.

I find it difficult to make the sign of the cross. I feel like a fake, as if everyone knows that I’m only really doing it because everyone else in the room is doing it. But is that the only reason? The motions are comforting in some sense. Perhaps it goes back to the idea of sacred space to which I keep returning. Growing up in a church that considered it’s small numbers (not even 200k) to be the sole, true Christians in the world that also so lacked a sense of sacred space that it rented movie theaters and union halls for church services, I should be surprised that the idea of sacred space so novel and moving. Obviously the sign of the cross is an extension of the sacred to gestures (such as genuflecting) that also extends to the seemingly ephemeral (incense and holy water).

So why am I doing this at all? I spoke with the priest leading the RCIA sessions after this week’s meeting, and he seemed to be asking me that in a quiet way. Why? Why am I no longer calling myself an atheist but not willing to call myself much else?

The mystery of harmony goes a long way to explain it. Some proclaim, “Music is my god,” and I think that’s not very far from idolatry. There’s something in music that is ecstatic — stands outside of itself. I don’t know what would be the value in a purely material world of music. What is the evolutionary value?

Another conundrum: the problem of good. The problem of evil for Christians is in fact the problem of good for atheists. Why be good? Why is there nearly universal agreement on the basics of morality?

Then the personal, the change: since I’ve begun taking as a possibility the existence of God, since I’ve begun attending Mass regularly and praying semi-regularly, I find a certain joy that was never in my life. I find myself smiling more often than I ever have before. I find my love for my students to be deeper and more unconditional than ever before. I find my patience growing. I find a difference, in short.

I could try to explain it materialistically, but why? It didn’t work in the past. I like who I am now better than who I was then. So why fight it? Why explain it away with smoke, mirrors, and misguided attempts of applying Occam’s Razor?

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