I attended a seminar yesterday on the Constitution and the ways in which the document continues to change and evolve as society does. It was a fascinating day – much more so than I imagined it would be – and I’m eager to sign up for the rest of the programs in the series.
One of the panels featured a lawyer who does extensive work with issues of privacy. After her session, I made my way to the front of the lecture hall to try to get a moment or two with her, which she graciously offered me. I quickly told her to story about what happened to me at CHS last year, giving her a thumbnail sketch of the proverbial ‘facts of the case,’ but stopping just short of the fact that I was let go at the end of it all.
Her very clear and unhesitating diagnosis of the situation was that a school representative, working with the express permission of a parent, has the right to disclose personal information of a medical nature about said parent’s minor child. It seems that HIPA has a clause that allows for the release of information by the subject party or the subject party’s legal representative – in this case, a parent – and, in the absence of a clear school policy forbidding such disclosure (which there wasn’t), there is absolutely no wrongdoing if said school representative gives information about a student to the school community.
The attorney literally gasped when I told her that I’d been let go as a consequence of the story I told her. She went on to tell me that I absolutely had actionable cause (which I’m not going to pursue) and that this never should have happened.
I said the things that I said that day with the express permission of Sweet Pea’s parents (and Sweet Pea concurred when she was well again and I was catching her up on what was going on at CHS). I knew what I was doing was right when I was doing it, but I walked away from the conversation yesterday feeling incredibly vindicated.
This was today’s offering. It’s a letter from Pat Conroy, the author of, among other things, The Prince of Tides, in response to hearing that a school board in West Virginia had challenged the inclusion of that novel and another of his works, Beach Music. The letter was published in the local newspaper, and the challenges later failed.
Letters like this make my proud to do what I do. To the Editor of the Charleston Gazette:
I received an urgent e-mail from a high school student named Makenzie Hatfield of Charleston, West Virginia. She informed me of a group of parents who were attempting to suppress the teaching of two of my novels, The Prince of Tides and Beach Music. I heard rumors of this controversy as I was completing my latest filthy, vomit-inducing work. These controversies are so commonplace in my life that I no longer get involved. But my knowledge of mountain lore is strong enough to know the dangers of refusing to help a Hatfield of West Virginia. I also do not mess with McCoys.
I’ve enjoyed a lifetime love affair with English teachers, just like the ones who are being abused in Charleston, West Virginia, today. My English teachers pushed me to be smart and inquisitive, and they taught me the great books of the world with passion and cunning and love. Like your English teachers, they didn’t have any money either, but they lived in the bright fires of their imaginations, and they taught because they were born to teach the prettiest language in the world. I have yet to meet an English teacher who assigned a book to damage a kid. They take an unutterable joy in opening up the known world to their students, but they are dishonored and unpraised because of the scandalous paychecks they receive. In my travels around this country, I have discovered that America hates its teachers, and I could not tell you why. Charleston, West Virginia, is showing clear signs of really hurting theirs, and I would be cautious about the word getting out.
In 1961, I entered the classroom of the great Eugene Norris, who set about in a thousand ways to change my life. It was the year I read The Catcher in the Rye, under Gene’s careful tutelage, and I adore that book to this very day. Later, a parent complained to the school board, and Gene Norris was called before the board to defend his teaching of this book. He asked me to write an essay describing the book’s galvanic effect on me, which I did. But Gene’s defense of The Catcher in the Rye was so brilliant and convincing in its sheer power that it carried the day. I stayed close to Gene Norris till the day he died. I delivered a eulogy at his memorial service and was one of the executors of his will. Few in the world have ever loved English teachers as I have, and I loathe it when they are bullied by know-nothing parents or cowardly school boards.
About the novels your county just censored: The Prince of Tides and Beach Music are two of my darlings which I would place before the altar of God and say, “Lord, this is how I found the world you made.” They contain scenes of violence, but I was the son of a Marine Corps fighter pilot who killed hundreds of men in Korea, beat my mother and his seven kids whenever he felt like it, and fought in three wars. My youngest brother, Tom, committed suicide by jumping off a fourteen-story building; my French teacher ended her life with a pistol; my aunt was brutally raped in Atlanta; eight of my classmates at The Citadel were killed in Vietnam; and my best friend was killed in a car wreck in Mississippi last summer. Violence has always been a part of my world. I write about it in my books and make no apology to anyone. In Beach Music, I wrote about the Holocaust and lack the literary powers to make that historical event anything other than grotesque.
People cuss in my books. People cuss in my real life. I cuss, especially at Citadel basketball games. I’m perfectly sure that Steve Shamblin and other teachers prepared their students well for any encounters with violence or profanity in my books just as Gene Norris prepared me for the profane language in The Catcher in the Rye forty-eight years ago.
The world of literature has everything in it, and it refuses to leave anything out. I have read like a man on fire my whole life because the genius of English teachers touched me with the dazzling beauty of language. Because of them I rode with Don Quixote and danced with Anna Karenina at a ball in St. Petersburg and lassoed a steer in Lonesome Dove and had nightmares about slavery in Beloved and walked the streets of Dublin in Ulysses and made up a hundred stories in The Arabian Nights and saw my mother killed by a baseball in A Prayer for Owen Meany. I’ve been in ten thousand cities and have introduced myself to a hundred thousand strangers in my exuberant reading career, all because I listened to my fabulous English teachers and soaked up every single thing those magnificent men and women had to give. I cherish and praise them and thank them for finding me when I was a boy and presenting me with the precious gift of the English language.
The school board of Charleston, West Virginia, has sullied that gift and shamed themselves and their community. You’ve now entered the ranks of censors, book-banners, and teacher-haters, and the word will spread. Good teachers will avoid you as though you had cholera. But here is my favorite thing: Because you banned my books, every kid in that county will read them, every single one of them. Because book-banners are invariably idiots, they don’t know how the world works—but writers and English teachers do.
I salute the English teachers of Charleston, West Virginia, and send my affection to their students. West Virginians, you’ve just done what history warned you against—you’ve riled a Hatfield.
A friend of mine on Facebook pointed me to this article this morning.
No, really; go and read it. It won’t take you but a minute or two. I’ll wait…..
….. Back? Okay, good. So, remember how I keep telling you that the Universe has a way of putting things in my path at just the right moment? Well, later on this afternoon, I came across this. No, really; go and read this, too (it’s even shorter than the Ebert piece, and there’s a video of the moment at the end).
All of this has got me thinking about the expectations we have for education, and about the attitude that some of us in the culture have developed as relates to what it means to be an educated person.
Exactly when did it become uncool to be smart? At what point did we decide that ignorance – in speech, in manner, in comprehension – was a virtue? When did it become okay to mock smart people, and to treat educated people with, at best, disdain or, at worst, antagonism? Since when did “educated” become synonymous with “elitist”?
For all the lip service we give as a nation to the idea of education, one would think we’d be better than this. We’ve got all kinds of accountability measures, we talk a great game about competing with other intellectually forward nations, we lament “brain drains” happening to our smaller cities (and our nation as a whole) and rail at teachers for failing to truly educate our kids. We so aspire to send our children to college that we’ve reached a point where applications to those institutions are so numerous that even the best students have trouble finding places to accept them (trust me on this; every spring, I watch as seniors lose their collective shit over essays and applications and acceptance letters that sometimes don’t come).
The reality on the ground, though, under the buzz of all the rhetoric, is very different. We (the collective ‘we’ – present company excluded) don’t want to push the kids too hard, lest we damage their self-esteem. We don’t ‘make’ them read or study or perform, and when some of us try, we’re reprimanded by administrators who are getting pressure from parents who want to make excuses for why their kids “can’t” do whatever it is we’re requiring of them. As teachers, we’re told not to expect too much, to settle for what we get, and to try to make the best of what the students are willing to give us (which, most of the time, isn’t much).
It’s this sort of culture that produces the monstrosities that Ebert is railing against. From my (admittedly limited) perspective, everything from comic-book interpretations of great works of literature to a politically-correct scrubbing of Huckleberry Finn (to the watering down of curriculum in virtually every other subject, as well) is a symptom of an attitude of “what’s the least I can do?”
Granted, this is not a new thing – my generation had Cliff’s Notes, and I’m reasonably sure that some other shortcuts existed before that – but when I was a student, at least, utilizing those kinds of resources was looked down on as a variation of cheating. Now, though, we’re publishing books for use in schools that don’t even put up the pretense of challenging our students; we’re marketing these sorts of bastardizations and modifications as legitimate substitutes for the real thing.
Look; I don’t begrudge anyone having to look up the word “perspicacious.” It’s a doozy of a word, and I’m betting that very few people who aren’t English teachers or avid crossword solvers wouldn’t have to look it up; it’s not exactly something one drops in casual conversation, is it? I appreciate straightforward speech as much as the next person – I’m not (always) of the opinion expressed by Martin Sheen’s President Bartlett in The West Wing that, “anyone who uses one word when they could have used ten just isn’t trying hard enough.” I will say, though, that I’d rather have ten words than live with this:
No; what I object to is the seeming disdain that came with the Amanpour’s vocabulary choice. The fact that the incident has drawn as much attention as it has – and that the word has been labeled as “fancy” with what I perceive as no small tone of sneer – is what I object to. I continue to be horrified by the attitude of students when I hand them a book that I expect them to read; the look of utter shock on their faces infuriates me every time (“But, Mrs. Chili; this book has, like, TWO HUNDRED PAGES! You can’t really expect us to READ all that, can you?!”), and forget expecting them to look up words they encounter in that reading that they don’t already know. I object to the attitude that being smart is something to be avoided.
When we have a rich and nuanced vocabulary, we’re able to express ourselves with depth and clarity. When we know “fancy” words and are able to use them correctly to people who understand them, we open up avenues of communication that make wondrous things possible. Haven’t you ever been frustrated by not having the words to describe an experience, or by being unable to convey an idea with the kind of clarity that satisfies you? Wouldn’t having access to a richer and more comprehensive vocabulary have helped that situation? Why, then, do people resist learning new ways of saying what they think? Why are people who use words with relish looked down upon as snobs and elitists?
I say it’s time we start countering that attitude. We need to stop limiting ourselves (and our children) by elevating “down home folksy” (which, to me, is a euphemism for ignorant) to an ideal. Smart matters. The more you know, the more you’re able to do – and the less other people can take advantage of you.
I don’t waste energy pretending to be someone I’m not at work. I know a lot of people who make very clear distinctions between their personal selves and their professional selves, but I am in the fortunate position of not feeling compelled to do that and, as a result, I don’t. I’m actually proud to be a very what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of person; my students would recognize me out in public because I’m exactly the same person at work as I am at home. It just so happens that this person identifies as a strongly liberal, enthusiastically progressive rational Humanist.
Part of how I express myself in my professional life is through words (no, really, Chili?!). I have a plethora of bumper stickers and posters and hangings and magnets and quotables stuck on vertical surfaces all over my room, and most of them express decidedly progressive, liberal values. Clearly, the students see (and appreciate) this, because not long after the school year started, they began coming in with things to add to my collection.
Around the second or third week of school, a student printed out this picture and gave it to me. I taped it among a bunch of other things in what I thought was a relatively non-prominent section of a filing cabinet.
I was fully expecting to have to take it down in short order. The image is a little pushy for the classroom, even for me, and even if the kids didn’t object, it is a fact that the school’s board meets in my room. I know for sure that board members often peruse my collection of sayings while they’re milling about drinking coffee and eating pastry while waiting for their meetings to begin; I was certain one of them would express concern or raise an objection or ask my boss to talk to me about it.
September… October (when a student came back from the Rally for Sanity with the Less Condos / More Condoms sticker for me)… November… December… January… February… March… April… nothing. No one mentioned it, no one even brought it up.
Yesterday – YESTERDAY – I get a message from my boss asking me to take it down. Someone complained (I have no idea who – and, honestly, I don’t want to know – but I suspect it’s one of the same kids who’s been complaining that we’re not validating his or her Christian beliefs) and, as a consequence, I’ve been told to take it down because we can’t be “advertising” sex.
My boss, to her credit, made it clear that she has no issue with the image. She’s responding to pressure from outside the school, and it’s just not a fight worth having.
I have chosen not to make a stink about this, but it is a very near thing. I think, if I hadn’t just spent the last month raging and despairing about the state of our culture, I would likely have the energy to protest. I’m just tired. I’m tired of people being too closed-minded to understand that the KIDS brought this in, that this is an image that expresses positive ideals. They would understand that this isn’t about sex; it doesn’t represent an advertisement for sex but rather is a First Amendment right to dissent, and that the message the image is sending is that while the closed-minded and ugly have a right to free speech, so does everyone else. I would fight for this if I thought it wouldn’t give my boss any more stress than she’s already getting from the person/people complaining about it. I WILL fight for this if a student notices it’s gone and raises questions. As it is, I’ve transferred the image to the other side of the cabinet where I can see it, and where students who come to conference with me will see it. I like the positive message it gives (notice who’s smiling in the picture?), and I want the kids to know that I support fully their right to dissent, but not to silence those who have something to say.
It seems that she’s been getting some heat (the intensity of which I am still unaware) from some students and parents who identify as Christian. The fact that this has been happening completely outside of my perception is part of why my boss is so awesome; she’s been dealing with it without involving me at all.
The little that she told me is that there are a number of people who are expressing concern that CHS may be a hostile environment for people who identify as Christian. They’re upset about some of the issues that our books bring up, they’re wondering about the class discussions we have, they’re concerned that we’re not offering up a Christian perspective on the topics we engage.
You know what? They’re right; we’re not. That doesn’t make our environment hostile to Christians, though, any more than it makes ours a hostile environment for Muslims or Taoists or Jews or Secular Humanists.
I have often been accused of having an agenda in the classroom, and this is an accusation I do not deny. I’ve written about it before, but it bears repeating: my primary purpose in the classroom is to get my kids to think and to question and to argue. My secondary purpose is to get them to consider that there is more than one way of thinking, and while I don’t advocate that all ways are equally valid, I DO require that my students engage in some critical inquiry of the material I give them. I am sure that some of the things I ask my students to think about are things that some people who identify as Christians may find objectionable.
Honestly? I don’t care. In fact, I’m that’s kind of what I’m going for – not to piss off Christians specifically, but to push everyone a little bit outside of their respective comfort zones. That’s where the good stuff happens; we don’t grow if we don’t venture outside our boundaries. If your faith imposes boundaries that you are not able to challenge, even a little bit, then perhaps ours isn’t the right environment for you. There are two Christian religious high schools in our town that I’m sure will accept your application.
I’m not asking anyone to accept what I say as truth. I’m not putting up any of the issues or concepts we discuss in class as truth – I mean, come on; I use a speech from an admitted Nazi in a few of my classes, for crying out loud – and I’m always completely open to (well-articulated and supported) argument about anything that I use in the classroom. I make a point that my students understand that it’s perfectly okay to disagree, as long as one isn’t disagreeable; if a student argues with something that I personally believe, and that student argues it well, that student will never get a bad grade. I was impressed by this when my undergrad Ed. Philosophy professor gave me an A on a paper upon which she’d written “this is an excellent argument. I think you’re completely wrong, but you made your case extremely well.”
I’m not here to support anyone’s spiritual life. I will be respectful of everyone’s right to practice their faith, but I will not tiptoe around their sensibilities, either. My job is to get you to think, and to back up your thinking with evidence: if your belief system can’t withstand a little rigorous thinking, then perhaps you ought to reconsider your belief system.
At CHS, we do what we call “morning circle.” Every morning before classes, the entire community gets together in the common area and goes through whatever announcements are on the board before we begin our day.
I listen to NPR on my way in to work. Every morning just before 7:00, the local announcer gives one little tidbit of history when he announces the date: “Today is Tuesday, September 21. Today marks the birthday of author H.G. Wells, born on this day in 1866. The news is next.” That sort of thing. I really like that – I find it compelling – so this year, I began a daily habit of presenting a “today in history” segment at the end of announcements.
When I get to school in the morning, I scan through several websites for information about historical events, birthdays, and deaths that happened on that day. The kids seem to look forward to it; other day, we acknowledged both John Coltrain’s and Ray Charles’s birthdays, and earlier this month, I mentioned that the battle of Thermopylae had occurred on that date (much to the delight of the two or three kids who were familiar with that event). One student has even started listing events along with me; I try to go for things that the students would recognize and she finds the more unfamiliar, less famous events. She told me the other day that she does that because she wants the community to “learn something.” How awesome is that?
I discovered, on this Saturday morning, that the “today in history” is becoming a habit. I don’t have to report on today’s events, yet I found myself looking them up, nevertheless. Today, it turns out, was a pretty big day for civil rights in the U.S.; on September 25, nine black high school students entered Little Rock High School under the very real threat of a very angry mob.
Here’s one of those things that, if it hadn’t actually happened to me, I wouldn’t have believed it.
I received this email from one of my students on Monday:
I have to work tomorrow night and I will not be able to watch the Inaugural Speech and I don’t know anyone that has access of taping it or anything. Do you have any suggestions on how I can still get the assignment done? If you could get back to me as soon as possible I appreciate it Thank You, Carl.
Carl, REALLY?! Are you SERIOUS? First of all, Carl, the address was delivered around lunch time; if you didn’t have to work until the evening, you should have been able to see the damned thing on – oh, I don’t know - EVERY SINGLE CHANNEL. The fact that you’re emailing me would indicate that you have, you know, ELECTRICITY – internet, even. I’m certain that, with a minimum of effort, you can find Obama’s speech. Hell, I picked up a copy of the free town newspaper, and they’ve got a full-page spread of the text of the address. Did you try YouTube? How about CNN.com? OH! I KNOW! The White House web page. American Rhetoric? Have I offered you enough choices?
I sent him back a terse and no-so-polite email basically telling him that I was going to offer him the opportunity to figure this one out on his own and that, if he got REALLY stuck, he should email me back.
I’m putting this assignment in writing for my class; I’ve essentially cut-and-pasted the assignment as I wrote it in the previous entry. To be fair, though, I added a bit about how, regardless of what we may think of his politics, Obama is considered by many to be an outstanding and charismatic public speaker. Dudley made a good point in his comment to the assignment post – about how students might tailor their essays to align with what they perceive my politics to be – and I will make a big deal out of letting my students know that I do not expect them to parrot to me the things they think I want to hear. I’ll get into a post about how much I really DO welcome contrary voices, but now is not the time. Watch this space.
ANYWAY, here’s what I’ve come up with as a basic rubric for this assignment. I’ve gotten away from the rubistar.com-type rubrics; I’m not sure that I want to get into all the picky details. These kids are in college; they should have a pretty good understanding of what makes a good essay, and this was the type of rubric I used at Local U. with quite satisfactory results. Here, then, are my criteria for an A paper for this assignment:
Analysis 50%:
The essay is clear and concise. The writer is able to discern the main points of the speeches and has a clear understanding of the subtleties of tone and inflection (where applicable). The writer is able to support his or her assertions with text from the speeches and is able to make both general and specific statements about the messages of the speaker. Relevant details give the reader important information that goes beyond the obvious or predictable, and those details are placed in a logical order.
Grammar and style 30%:
The language of the essay is appropriate for a work of scholarly inquiry. There are no punctuation or spelling errors, and all words are used correctly. Sentences sound natural and flow well when read aloud, and each has an obvious emphasis. Transitions are varied, smooth and logical, and the introduction and conclusion are both adequate and effective.
Format 20%:
The essay is typed in 12-point font on plain paper. All pages are stapled. All references are properly cited in MLA format. Texts of both speeches are included with the essay, as well as any notes or drafts the author produced in the writing process.
My students are going to have week three of eleven weeks completely off from our class. Monday the 19th is the Martin Luther King holiday and, on Wednesday, I’ll be coming home from DC with my family after having (hopefully) witnessed the inauguration ceremonies in person (I know, I know… us and five million other people).
I’ve decided, though, that we’ve got too little time together to give my students the week “off” – especially with the weather in the winter cutting into class meetings – so I’ve been thinking of a meaningful and relevant assignment for them to complete in my absence. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:
An important component of this class is comprehension; you’re not here just to learn how to speak in public settings, but also to understand more completely what’s being said to you. Being able to analyze incoming messages, and to make connections to new information and your own life, is a skill that will serve you well regardless of your career path.
The U.S. is getting ready to inaugurate its 44th president. Without getting into the fact that a peaceful handover of governmental power every four to eight years is remarkable in and of itself, I want to call your attention to the fact that President-Elect Obama is a particularly articulate man and quite a remarkable rhetorician (look it up).
Your assignment for week three has three parts. First, you will conduct a thoughtful and comprehensive analysis of President Obama’s inaugural address. Start with an overview of what he said, move on to consider how he said it, and investigate the speech for any underlying implications or ideas that struck you as particularly meaningful or important. That’s part one.
Once you’ve taken a good look at Obama’s speech, find the inaugural address of any other American president you choose. Americanrhetoric.com is an excellent resource for finding speeches, but I’m certain that a Google search with your president’s name and “inaugural address” will yield some useful results, as well. Conduct a similar analysis of this president’s speech, (that’s part two) and then compare the two (that’s part three). What similarities can you draw? What do you know about the historical, political, and social conditions of the time that influenced what your president had to say to the people of the country? Which president’s speech seemed more effective to you and why?
These are to be written in a single, cohesive essay (be mindful of your transitions), typed and proofread, and handed in during class on Monday, January 22nd. The essay will count as a test grade, so please put a genuine and focused effort into this work. As always, contact me if you have any questions or problems, or if you need some guidance in essay writing.
My objectives for this assignment are to get my students writing (I’m not yet familiar with their writing voices), to see how well they are attuned to the subtlety of language, and to assess their ability at close reading. Since comprehension is such a big component in the objectives of the course, I would like to get a baseline for how well they can do analysis on their own.
This is just a first draft of the assignment idea. I’m completely open to any suggestions that any of you might have to offer.
Thank You, Carl.
