Rick Santorum's empty-headed comments on JFK's speech on the separation of church and state, as well as his dismissal of university education, call to mind John Adams on education:
“Before any great things are accomplished, a memorable change must be made in the system of education and knowledge must become so general as to raise the lower ranks of society nearer to the higher. The education of a nation instead of being confined to a few schools and universities for the instruction of the few, must become the national care and expense for the formation of the many.”
That's a private letter, but in his draft of the constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Adams writes:
"Wisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused generally among the body of the people being necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties; and as these depend on spreading the opportunities and advantages of education in various parts of the country, and among the different orders of the people, it shall be the duty of legislators and magistrates in all future periods of this commonwealth to cherish the interests of literature and the sciences, and all seminaries of them, especially the university at Cambridge, public schools, and grammar schools in the towns; to encourage private societies and public institutions, rewards and immunities, for the promotion of agriculture, arts, sciences, commerce, trades, manufactures, and a natural history of the country; to countenance and inculcate the principles of humanity and general benevolence, public and private charity, industry and frugality, honesty and punctuality in their dealings, sincerity, good humor, and all social affections, and generous sentiments among the people."
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Look Homeward, Angel
Reactions to Thomas Wolfe are severely divided these days. Elizabeth Hardwick, writing on the occasion of the centennial of his birth in 2000: "He is too much, too many rhapsodies, an inundation. Not a man you'd want to deal with. Drunken pages and drunken he often was as he prowled the midnight city. And yet the mystery of the books is that they are written with a rich, fertile vocabulary, sudden, blooming images, a murderous concentration that will turn everyone he meets into words."
I have always loved Walt Whitman, who if he has written perhaps some of the worst lines of English poetry has also written some of the best. So I'm well prepared to take on Wolfe's linguistic exuberance and fascination with his own powers of perception. Knowing his reputation, I expected the repetitiveness, the snobbery, the offhand racism, the inconsistent characterizations masquerading as something more under a load of narrative and descriptive detail (Gant's mother Eliza suffers the most in this respect).
What I didn't expect was the bitter comic self-consciousness that expresses itself in terms of national identity. Just two examples. First:
Then, for the first time, he thought of the lonely earth he dwelt on. Suddenly, it was strange to him that he should read Euripides in the wilderness.
Around him lay the village; beyond, the ugly rolling land, sparse with cheap farmhouses; beyond all this, America -- more land, more wooden houses, more towns, hard and raw and ugly. He was reading Euripides, and all around him a world of white and black was eating fried food. He was reading of ancient sorceriers and old ghosts, but did an old ghost ever come to haunt this land? The ghost of Hamlet's father, in Connecticut:
'......I am thy father's spirit,
Doomed for a certain term to walk the night
Between Bloomington and Portland, Maine.'
He felt suddenly the devastating impermanence of the nation. Only the earth endured -- the gigantic American earth, bearing upon its awful breast a world of flimsy rickets. Only the earth endured -- this broad terrific earth that had no ghosts to haunt it.... Nothing had been done in stone. Only this earth endured, upon whose lonely breast he read Euripides. Within its hills he had been held a prisoner; upon its plain he walked, alone, a stranger.
O God! O God! We have been an exile in another land and a stranger in our own. The mountains were our masters: they went home to our eye and our heart before we came to five. Whatever we can do or say must be forever hillbound. Our senses have been fed by our terrific land; our blood has learned to run to the imperial pulse of America which, leaving, we can never lose and never forget. We walked along a road in Cumberland, and stooped, because the sky hung down so low; and when we ran away from London, we went by little rivers in a land just big enough. And nowhere that we went was far: the earth and the sky were close and near. And the old hunger returned -- the terrible and obscure hunger that haunts and hurts Americans, and that makes us exiles at home and strangers wherever we go.
Later, Wolfe describes Gant (modeled on himself): for me, a portrait of the Tea Party voter in an especially depressing election year. Watch the movement from contentment, which first appears to excuse Gant's political ignorance and apathy, to discontent to fantasy to -- the most brilliant move -- fantasy that "found extension in reality":
Yet, Eugene was no rebel. He had no greater need for rebellion than have most Americans, which is none at all. He was quite content with any system which might give him comfort, security, enough money to do as he liked, and freedom to think, eat, drink, love, read, and write what he chose. And he did not care under what form of government he lived -- Republican, Democrat, Tory, Socialist, or Bolshevist -- if it could assure him these things. He did not want to reform the world, or to make it a better place to live in: his whole conviction was that the world was full of pleasant places, enchanted places, if only he could find them. The life around him was beginning to fetter and annoy him: he wanted to escape from it. He felt sure things would be better elsewhere. He always felt sure things would be better elsewhere.
It was not his quality as a romantic to escape out of life, but into it. He wanted no land of Make-believe: his fantasies found extension in reality, and he saw no reason to doubt that there really were 1,200 gods in Egypt, and that the centaur, the hippogriff, and the winged bull might all be found in their proper places. He believed that there was magic in Byzantium, and genii stoppered up in wizards' bottles.
I stayed up late to finish the book, and I'm glad I did: another sleet storm hit around midnight, short but intense, just like the one that caught me today as I biked back home to the NIAS from Leiden. On my slanted skylight window, the noise of the sleet is thunderously beautiful.
I have always loved Walt Whitman, who if he has written perhaps some of the worst lines of English poetry has also written some of the best. So I'm well prepared to take on Wolfe's linguistic exuberance and fascination with his own powers of perception. Knowing his reputation, I expected the repetitiveness, the snobbery, the offhand racism, the inconsistent characterizations masquerading as something more under a load of narrative and descriptive detail (Gant's mother Eliza suffers the most in this respect).
What I didn't expect was the bitter comic self-consciousness that expresses itself in terms of national identity. Just two examples. First:
Then, for the first time, he thought of the lonely earth he dwelt on. Suddenly, it was strange to him that he should read Euripides in the wilderness.
Around him lay the village; beyond, the ugly rolling land, sparse with cheap farmhouses; beyond all this, America -- more land, more wooden houses, more towns, hard and raw and ugly. He was reading Euripides, and all around him a world of white and black was eating fried food. He was reading of ancient sorceriers and old ghosts, but did an old ghost ever come to haunt this land? The ghost of Hamlet's father, in Connecticut:
'......I am thy father's spirit,
Doomed for a certain term to walk the night
Between Bloomington and Portland, Maine.'
He felt suddenly the devastating impermanence of the nation. Only the earth endured -- the gigantic American earth, bearing upon its awful breast a world of flimsy rickets. Only the earth endured -- this broad terrific earth that had no ghosts to haunt it.... Nothing had been done in stone. Only this earth endured, upon whose lonely breast he read Euripides. Within its hills he had been held a prisoner; upon its plain he walked, alone, a stranger.
O God! O God! We have been an exile in another land and a stranger in our own. The mountains were our masters: they went home to our eye and our heart before we came to five. Whatever we can do or say must be forever hillbound. Our senses have been fed by our terrific land; our blood has learned to run to the imperial pulse of America which, leaving, we can never lose and never forget. We walked along a road in Cumberland, and stooped, because the sky hung down so low; and when we ran away from London, we went by little rivers in a land just big enough. And nowhere that we went was far: the earth and the sky were close and near. And the old hunger returned -- the terrible and obscure hunger that haunts and hurts Americans, and that makes us exiles at home and strangers wherever we go.
Later, Wolfe describes Gant (modeled on himself): for me, a portrait of the Tea Party voter in an especially depressing election year. Watch the movement from contentment, which first appears to excuse Gant's political ignorance and apathy, to discontent to fantasy to -- the most brilliant move -- fantasy that "found extension in reality":
Yet, Eugene was no rebel. He had no greater need for rebellion than have most Americans, which is none at all. He was quite content with any system which might give him comfort, security, enough money to do as he liked, and freedom to think, eat, drink, love, read, and write what he chose. And he did not care under what form of government he lived -- Republican, Democrat, Tory, Socialist, or Bolshevist -- if it could assure him these things. He did not want to reform the world, or to make it a better place to live in: his whole conviction was that the world was full of pleasant places, enchanted places, if only he could find them. The life around him was beginning to fetter and annoy him: he wanted to escape from it. He felt sure things would be better elsewhere. He always felt sure things would be better elsewhere.
It was not his quality as a romantic to escape out of life, but into it. He wanted no land of Make-believe: his fantasies found extension in reality, and he saw no reason to doubt that there really were 1,200 gods in Egypt, and that the centaur, the hippogriff, and the winged bull might all be found in their proper places. He believed that there was magic in Byzantium, and genii stoppered up in wizards' bottles.
I stayed up late to finish the book, and I'm glad I did: another sleet storm hit around midnight, short but intense, just like the one that caught me today as I biked back home to the NIAS from Leiden. On my slanted skylight window, the noise of the sleet is thunderously beautiful.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Settled in and thinking
So what was the nature of my Rembrandt revelation? Svetlana Alpers, in her famous book The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century, argued that Dutch painting should be understood as describing the world as it is seen, rather than as imitating or alluding to the world (or texts, or language, or traditions). She put together the northern European interest in seeing the world more clearly through telescope or microscope with the close attention to detail that appears in the earliest Dutch Madonnas and landscapes, and then lets the concern with seeing guide her through the paintings. She was able to notice new details about the experience of seeing -- how, for instance, landscape artists like Ruisdael played with the placement of the viewer. As the viewer of a Ruisdael landscape, where exactly are you standing? It's not clear: perhaps a neighboring hilltop? A low-hovering helicopter? And she puts into words the marvelous feeling that many Dutch landscapes convey, the sense that there's a world beyond the picture frame, that the frame of the painting exists almost by accident, that it doesn't act so much as a window as it does a surface.
And with the surface is where I started to see Rembrandt afresh at the Mauritshuis. I've never had much patience with Rembrandt's meditative studies, especially the self-portraits. (Dramatic corporate pictures like Nightwatch captivate me.) There are too many of these studies, they seem gimmicky, they're burdened with the weight of too many pretentious scholarly claims (the invention of the individual, etc.), they often convey a sense of self-pity that gets on my nerves (though not as much as the complacency of your standard Rubens portrait). This 1669 example above, in fact, fit all these categories, and when I first entered the room I walked by it without stopping. I went instead toward his Homerus, kitty-corner to the self-portrait.
For many minutes (was it Robert Hughes who said you need to look at a painting for an hour to get a sense of it?) I just couldn't find my way in. Homerus is a brown study, "rich with pathos" you might say. I was about to give up: and then I caught something that doesn't show up on the tiny copy above, a sheen of almost sheer paint in broad vertical stripes on the right-hand side, almost invisible unless you look very closely. I couldn't identify the color: brownish-black? But immediately it struck me as a much subtler version of the dramatic stripy effects in Francis Bacon's Innocent X -- to the degree that I began to wonder whether Bacon's Study was as much a reaction to Rembrandt as to Velasquez. There was something happening on that surface that, I thought, had nothing to do with the clichéd questing blind gaze of the figure. But then (I thought in the next moment), the effect relates somehow to the subject of the painting: it's inches away, one can only ignore the figure by doing experiential violence to the work. Perhaps simply virtuoso texture-creation? Or something else: not the veil before the poet's blind eyes, exactly -- the near-evanescence of the effect made it impossible for me to interpret it as in representational terms -- but a gesture toward the cloudy distance that separates us from Homer, a gesture toward the impossibility of representing the distant past.
Re-energized and now curious, I turned to the self-portrait. Again it eluded me: I felt impatient and bored. Then I began to notice the red and ochre threads of paint in Rembrandt's grey hair--or rather, since I'd noticed them earlier, this time I started to think about them. Ghosts of color, they rusted his head, combining with the black and grey patches in the pinkish face to create the effect of fleshy corrosion. The theme is extended in the bloody scrapings of vermilion over the black waistcoat. And here the astonishing mastery of paint, which never ceases to astonish, did the work stylization nearly always does: it distanced the pathos, made the painting a matter of surfaces rather than depth (the false depth that tends to self-dramatize both the subject and the viewer of the painting), re-made the work as something not to fall into but to reflect on, in the deepest sense of the word "reflect".
I still have more to see in Rembrandt, but this was a major step. Today I travel to the Franz Hals museum in Haarlem with the other NIAS fellows. I hope to see more Ruisdaels and -- something I wouldn't have said before Saturday -- more Rembrandts.
Monday, February 13, 2012
Gerhard Richter
After a week of freezing cold and several inches of snow, it's raining today, and the serene view of trees outside my slanted office window, very slightly fogged from the heating unit just below it, recalls Gerhard Richter's blurred landscapes, like Troisdorf (1985):
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I got a chance to see Vermeer's View of Delft at the Mauritshuis on Saturday, my favorite Vermeer, along with everything else in that famous collection. It was about 22 or 24 degrees, too cold for your average tourist, I gather, because the galleries were nearly empty.
As happened to me most memorably in the MOMA Dada show, I had a revelation at the Mauritshuis, regarding Rembrandt. More after the Five Minute Lecture downstairs.
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I got a chance to see Vermeer's View of Delft at the Mauritshuis on Saturday, my favorite Vermeer, along with everything else in that famous collection. It was about 22 or 24 degrees, too cold for your average tourist, I gather, because the galleries were nearly empty.
As happened to me most memorably in the MOMA Dada show, I had a revelation at the Mauritshuis, regarding Rembrandt. More after the Five Minute Lecture downstairs.
Thursday, February 9, 2012
In the Netherlands
Blog silence is due to transition to the Netherlands Institute of Advanced Study, where I'm basking in the literal glow of the sun setting over the North Sea coast and the metaphorical one of having time to myself to think and write. They look after us very well here, and my colleagues are a fascinating, friendly bunch.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
SOTUS 2012
Opening: celebrating leaving Iraq, daring the Republicans not to cheer, not to call leaving Iraq a "victory."
Now there are "no Americans fighting in Iraq." [Not in the armed forces, perhaps, but we're still indirectly paying for mercenaries there.] "Courage, selflessness..."
Reminder a couple minutes in: Osama bin Laden is dead.
The armed forces win because they work together. "Imagine what we could accomplish if we worked together." [But we're not an army: we're a diverse collection of individuals, boisterously so. Unfortunately, he'll come back to this at the end. Ring composition.]
Education; high-tech manufacturing. [Manufacturing? Yep, this is a key theme of the speech. Wonder if Obama read this terrific article in the Atlantic about the challenges of change on the manufacturing front in this country?]
Yes to energy "that we can control."
Yes to "an economy built to last." [Unfortunate auto industry associations.]
Rewarding responsibility, rewarding hard work. [A missed opportunity. Surely an orator as good as Obama could find some way to talk about why the economy has changed, why blue-collar jobs don't pay like they used to, why corporate ethos has changed to allow for late-career lay-offs and gigantic pay raises for successful -- and failing -- CEOs. But no. Rather --]
"We can do this." Grandfather made it on the GI Bill, grandmother on the assembly line.
"This is the defining issue of our time": how to keep mid-20th century opportunities alive.
Restore an economy "where everyone who works hard gets a fair shot."
"Bankers made bets and bonuses while everyone looked the other way." [Did I write too soon? Is the big-picture critique on its way?]
Finally: "The state of our union is getting stronger."
Manufacturing, again. [Scratch comment above. The laundry list of tax credits and spending programs begins. Shades of Bill Clinton.]
I saved the auto industry. GM is top of the world, ma!
Stop tax deductions for companies that outsource jobs. Lower taxes for companies hiring in-country.
Support community colleges and partnerships with business.
A jab at teacher unions. A call for merit pay and firing bad teachers fast.
Raise the minimum school age to 18?
Colleges and universities had better keep costs down! [But why have they gone up?]
Let illegals who go to college become citizens; let foreigners who earn college degrees here in the US stay here.
Expand tax relief for small business.
Spend more on research.
Spend more on energy research.
Spend more on clean energy subsidies.
Open more domestic oil fields and gas resources.
The Department of Defense is going green! [What a relief.]
Responsible homeowners need to be able to re-finance easily.
Regulation is good. [The base knows this: and he doesn't really make an effort to convince the unbelievers. Another missed opportunity.]
The Deficit. "We need to make choices." We need to tax millionaires. This is not "class warfare"; it's "common sense".
Americans are cynical about Washington. So let's "ban insider trading" for members of Congress. [Insider trading? That came out of nowhere. But the real problem is: not a whiff of real reform of lobbying (a missed anti-Newt opportunity); not a breath of campaign finance reform. But then again, the pig doesn't set the trough on fire.]
We need Consensus. Let's Stop Fighting. Or rather, let's Keep Fighting, but Together, like members of the team that assassinated Obama. [What did he just say?]
As real bloggers like to say: Reax. As I listened to the speech -- and this is sad proof of the sharp recent decline in American political oratory -- it struck me as fairly well-constructed, effectively if not brilliantly delivered, statesmanlike without pomposity, a bit laundry-listish but a reasonable balance between concrete proposals and the typical platitudes. A safe election-year speech, as opposed to a riskier visionary one.
Yet as I type my notes, I can't help being discomfited by just how squarely conventional the speech was: how Clintonesque, how compromised, how different from the promise and the vision of his speeches during the 2008 campaign. This isn't a deep surprise to me -- I'm used to being disappointed by this president, though I'm not half as bitter as Andrew Sullivan or many New York liberals -- but I remain unsettled by Obama's choice to avoid taking the big issues. He repeatedly told his audience tonight, "we can do this." But he, it seems, cannot do this -- when "this" means hard-hitting, thoughtful, accessible analysis that grounds a powerful call for justice. Nor can he recover the freshness, the sense that here was someone thinking new thoughts, that he brought to those early election-year speeches.
And the ring composition about the military, which ended with a call for Americans to imitate the military and "watch each other's backs," was awful. What are we supposed to be fighting against? This is a good example of pro-warrior republicanist rhetoric gone bad. It leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
Now there are "no Americans fighting in Iraq." [Not in the armed forces, perhaps, but we're still indirectly paying for mercenaries there.] "Courage, selflessness..."
Reminder a couple minutes in: Osama bin Laden is dead.
The armed forces win because they work together. "Imagine what we could accomplish if we worked together." [But we're not an army: we're a diverse collection of individuals, boisterously so. Unfortunately, he'll come back to this at the end. Ring composition.]
Education; high-tech manufacturing. [Manufacturing? Yep, this is a key theme of the speech. Wonder if Obama read this terrific article in the Atlantic about the challenges of change on the manufacturing front in this country?]
Yes to energy "that we can control."
Yes to "an economy built to last." [Unfortunate auto industry associations.]
Rewarding responsibility, rewarding hard work. [A missed opportunity. Surely an orator as good as Obama could find some way to talk about why the economy has changed, why blue-collar jobs don't pay like they used to, why corporate ethos has changed to allow for late-career lay-offs and gigantic pay raises for successful -- and failing -- CEOs. But no. Rather --]
"We can do this." Grandfather made it on the GI Bill, grandmother on the assembly line.
"This is the defining issue of our time": how to keep mid-20th century opportunities alive.
Restore an economy "where everyone who works hard gets a fair shot."
"Bankers made bets and bonuses while everyone looked the other way." [Did I write too soon? Is the big-picture critique on its way?]
Finally: "The state of our union is getting stronger."
Manufacturing, again. [Scratch comment above. The laundry list of tax credits and spending programs begins. Shades of Bill Clinton.]
I saved the auto industry. GM is top of the world, ma!
Stop tax deductions for companies that outsource jobs. Lower taxes for companies hiring in-country.
Support community colleges and partnerships with business.
A jab at teacher unions. A call for merit pay and firing bad teachers fast.
Raise the minimum school age to 18?
Colleges and universities had better keep costs down! [But why have they gone up?]
Let illegals who go to college become citizens; let foreigners who earn college degrees here in the US stay here.
Expand tax relief for small business.
Spend more on research.
Spend more on energy research.
Spend more on clean energy subsidies.
Open more domestic oil fields and gas resources.
The Department of Defense is going green! [What a relief.]
Responsible homeowners need to be able to re-finance easily.
Regulation is good. [The base knows this: and he doesn't really make an effort to convince the unbelievers. Another missed opportunity.]
The Deficit. "We need to make choices." We need to tax millionaires. This is not "class warfare"; it's "common sense".
Americans are cynical about Washington. So let's "ban insider trading" for members of Congress. [Insider trading? That came out of nowhere. But the real problem is: not a whiff of real reform of lobbying (a missed anti-Newt opportunity); not a breath of campaign finance reform. But then again, the pig doesn't set the trough on fire.]
We need Consensus. Let's Stop Fighting. Or rather, let's Keep Fighting, but Together, like members of the team that assassinated Obama. [What did he just say?]
As real bloggers like to say: Reax. As I listened to the speech -- and this is sad proof of the sharp recent decline in American political oratory -- it struck me as fairly well-constructed, effectively if not brilliantly delivered, statesmanlike without pomposity, a bit laundry-listish but a reasonable balance between concrete proposals and the typical platitudes. A safe election-year speech, as opposed to a riskier visionary one.
Yet as I type my notes, I can't help being discomfited by just how squarely conventional the speech was: how Clintonesque, how compromised, how different from the promise and the vision of his speeches during the 2008 campaign. This isn't a deep surprise to me -- I'm used to being disappointed by this president, though I'm not half as bitter as Andrew Sullivan or many New York liberals -- but I remain unsettled by Obama's choice to avoid taking the big issues. He repeatedly told his audience tonight, "we can do this." But he, it seems, cannot do this -- when "this" means hard-hitting, thoughtful, accessible analysis that grounds a powerful call for justice. Nor can he recover the freshness, the sense that here was someone thinking new thoughts, that he brought to those early election-year speeches.
And the ring composition about the military, which ended with a call for Americans to imitate the military and "watch each other's backs," was awful. What are we supposed to be fighting against? This is a good example of pro-warrior republicanist rhetoric gone bad. It leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
SOTUS blast from the past
For over a decade, just about every year, I've taken running notes on the State of the Union speech. Some flashes of yesteryear: guess the year!
"We will answer every danger and every enemy that threaten the American people."
"Our faith is sure."
"...excessive litigation..."
"...faith-based programs...transform America one heart and one soul at a time."
"God does miracles in people's lives."
"End partial-birth abortion." "No life should begin or end for an experiment."
"Our calling as a blessed country..."
"...scattered network of killers..."
"Many others have met a different fate. Let's put it this way: they're no longer a problem to the United States...One by one the terrorists are learning the meaning of justice."
And here's another:
"We love our freedom and will fight to keep it."
"Radical Islam is a perversion by the few of a noble faith."
"We will not retreat from the world and never surrender to evil."
"We accept the call of history to aid the oppression...We have a clear plan for victory in Iraq."
"I am confident." (repeated at least twice more)
"We are in this fight to win, and we are winning."
And just before everything falls apart:
"Unemployment is low."
"...school choice...vouchers..."
"We see a future of hope and opportunity."
Handle illegal immigration "without animosity, without amnesty."
And here's a kicker: he actually mentioned "global climate change" (which Obama did not do tonight)
Answers: 2003, 2006, 2007
"We will answer every danger and every enemy that threaten the American people."
"Our faith is sure."
"...excessive litigation..."
"...faith-based programs...transform America one heart and one soul at a time."
"God does miracles in people's lives."
"End partial-birth abortion." "No life should begin or end for an experiment."
"Our calling as a blessed country..."
"...scattered network of killers..."
"Many others have met a different fate. Let's put it this way: they're no longer a problem to the United States...One by one the terrorists are learning the meaning of justice."
And here's another:
"We love our freedom and will fight to keep it."
"Radical Islam is a perversion by the few of a noble faith."
"We will not retreat from the world and never surrender to evil."
"We accept the call of history to aid the oppression...We have a clear plan for victory in Iraq."
"I am confident." (repeated at least twice more)
"We are in this fight to win, and we are winning."
And just before everything falls apart:
"Unemployment is low."
"...school choice...vouchers..."
"We see a future of hope and opportunity."
Handle illegal immigration "without animosity, without amnesty."
And here's a kicker: he actually mentioned "global climate change" (which Obama did not do tonight)
Answers: 2003, 2006, 2007
Monday, January 23, 2012
Face-to-face vs Facebook
You've had enough of students checking Facebook and online shopping in lecture. Can you ban laptops and smartphones and tablets? Yes you can! Won't the students revolt? You can expect some push-back, but if you explain yourself clearly, firmly, and with a sense of humor, it'll dissipate fast -- and even if there are a few holdouts, you're certainly not obliged to give into them. (The exception is students with learning disabilities, which requires a note from the Moses Center.) Some students may even tell you how glad they are to be free from their cybernetic overlords.
Since many students, even sophomores and juniors, still don't know how to learn effectively in the lecture setting, the first week of class is a perfect chance to ask them what they expect to get out of the lecture and what kinds of notes they're taking -- and explain what *you* want them to take away from lecture and what you advise them to write down. Along the way, you can lay out your policy on machines and the reasons for it.
I present my no-laptops/tablets/phones rule not as a ban (though if pressed I make it clear that it is in fact a ban), but as an opportunity -- an opportunity for the students to exist for a brief time in space free from the internet, to meet and chat with seatmates instead of staring into a screen, to engage with me. As the teacher, I tell my students, I want to look them in the eye, I want to connect with them, I want to be able to ask them questions, I want some energy in the room. If they're staring at their screens, all that is impossible. Yes, of course, students doodle, doze, space out, stare out the window. But just as we work hard to develop interesting material and well-structured lectures to keep students' attention, we can keep the machines that distract them outside the classroom doors. The addiction to email and Facebook affects even the soundest students, and this policy takes the burden of choice, which is itself distracting ("is he about to say something really important or can I check my friends' status?"), off the students.
Most importantly, I tell them, if they're trying to write down everything I say -- typical of those who beg the most passionately to take notes on their laptops -- they're almost surely not *thinking* about what I'm saying, and so they won't be able to track whether they understand my points, and they will have a very tough time asking or answering questions. But lecture isn't a movie: it's an opportunity to engage and think, and students should aim to be active listeners. What does this mean in terms of concrete note-taking? I tell students to jot down my main points, the main examples supporting the points and the reasons why. I tell them to listen for the signs that reveal the structure or arc of my lecture, because part of getting the most out of it -- a skill that will help them in meetings and strategy sessions their whole lives -- is learning how to follow the verbal expression of complex ideas. There is value in training the brain to concentrate for longer than five minutes at a time. (For all these reasons, I don't hand out lecture outlines unless a lecture has been so chopped up by questions -- mine and the students' -- that it feels impossible to follow: then I post my lecture notes online.)
I've found that opening up these issues in the first week creates a healthier dynamic in the room, a sense that the lecture is a collaborative enterprise, even though (despite occasional questions from me or the students) I am the one doing nearly all the talking for nearly 75 minutes. It makes the classroom not quite a "student-centered" classroom, as the education gurus call it, but an idea-centered classroom. It also helps me monitor myself more responsibly throughout the term. Having demanded their attention and engagement, I have to live up to my side of the bargain: I make more of an effort to pause to underline the most important points in lecture, to sum up at the end of lecture consistently, and so on. When I break the news about laptops, and whenever I have to remind someone who unthinkingly lifts her computer out of her pack that she needs to put it away, I tell the class that my main reason for doing this is to use the time in the lecture hall as effectively as possible. I remind them that I'm always working on making lecture clearer and more interesting, and I ask them what arguments have been hardest to follow, what kind of information helps make points stick. (Keep these evaluative questions as specific as you can. If you ask, "What bores you in class?" you're guaranteed to get some joker who says "Everything: this class sucks", etc.)
Suggest that they take notes in a notebook. Tell them that the lecture form developed in a handwriting culture and there are good reasons to think that the typing culture isn't well suited to the lecture scene. You might also tell your TAs to ask to see their students' lecture notes in an early recitation, so that they can see what students are writing (in a non-judgmental way) and give them advice on note-taking.
Since many students, even sophomores and juniors, still don't know how to learn effectively in the lecture setting, the first week of class is a perfect chance to ask them what they expect to get out of the lecture and what kinds of notes they're taking -- and explain what *you* want them to take away from lecture and what you advise them to write down. Along the way, you can lay out your policy on machines and the reasons for it.
I present my no-laptops/tablets/phones rule not as a ban (though if pressed I make it clear that it is in fact a ban), but as an opportunity -- an opportunity for the students to exist for a brief time in space free from the internet, to meet and chat with seatmates instead of staring into a screen, to engage with me. As the teacher, I tell my students, I want to look them in the eye, I want to connect with them, I want to be able to ask them questions, I want some energy in the room. If they're staring at their screens, all that is impossible. Yes, of course, students doodle, doze, space out, stare out the window. But just as we work hard to develop interesting material and well-structured lectures to keep students' attention, we can keep the machines that distract them outside the classroom doors. The addiction to email and Facebook affects even the soundest students, and this policy takes the burden of choice, which is itself distracting ("is he about to say something really important or can I check my friends' status?"), off the students.
Most importantly, I tell them, if they're trying to write down everything I say -- typical of those who beg the most passionately to take notes on their laptops -- they're almost surely not *thinking* about what I'm saying, and so they won't be able to track whether they understand my points, and they will have a very tough time asking or answering questions. But lecture isn't a movie: it's an opportunity to engage and think, and students should aim to be active listeners. What does this mean in terms of concrete note-taking? I tell students to jot down my main points, the main examples supporting the points and the reasons why. I tell them to listen for the signs that reveal the structure or arc of my lecture, because part of getting the most out of it -- a skill that will help them in meetings and strategy sessions their whole lives -- is learning how to follow the verbal expression of complex ideas. There is value in training the brain to concentrate for longer than five minutes at a time. (For all these reasons, I don't hand out lecture outlines unless a lecture has been so chopped up by questions -- mine and the students' -- that it feels impossible to follow: then I post my lecture notes online.)
I've found that opening up these issues in the first week creates a healthier dynamic in the room, a sense that the lecture is a collaborative enterprise, even though (despite occasional questions from me or the students) I am the one doing nearly all the talking for nearly 75 minutes. It makes the classroom not quite a "student-centered" classroom, as the education gurus call it, but an idea-centered classroom. It also helps me monitor myself more responsibly throughout the term. Having demanded their attention and engagement, I have to live up to my side of the bargain: I make more of an effort to pause to underline the most important points in lecture, to sum up at the end of lecture consistently, and so on. When I break the news about laptops, and whenever I have to remind someone who unthinkingly lifts her computer out of her pack that she needs to put it away, I tell the class that my main reason for doing this is to use the time in the lecture hall as effectively as possible. I remind them that I'm always working on making lecture clearer and more interesting, and I ask them what arguments have been hardest to follow, what kind of information helps make points stick. (Keep these evaluative questions as specific as you can. If you ask, "What bores you in class?" you're guaranteed to get some joker who says "Everything: this class sucks", etc.)
Suggest that they take notes in a notebook. Tell them that the lecture form developed in a handwriting culture and there are good reasons to think that the typing culture isn't well suited to the lecture scene. You might also tell your TAs to ask to see their students' lecture notes in an early recitation, so that they can see what students are writing (in a non-judgmental way) and give them advice on note-taking.
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Should we discourage would-be PhDs?
I never learned calculus. I didn't understand basic concepts in physics until my twenties, when my partner, a philosopher of science, had the grace and patience to start explaining them to me. (This side of my education continues: just the other day, I got a refresher course in the physics of sound over a tasty dinner at Simpson Wong's new Chinese fusion place.) My ignorance is mostly my fault -- I've happily exercised my capacity of rational choice and concentrated on things I was good at and found pleasure doing -- and partly the result of baneful external influence. By the time I was twelve, I'd been convinced by a few small-minded teachers that girls weren't really suited to math (this in a girls' school!-- with terrific teachers of English, religious studies, and history, I might add). My high school physics teacher, now retired, was perfectly friendly to me on a one-to-one basis, but I have clear memories of his boasting that his AP Physics class was all boys -- proof, to him, that it was a tough and serious class.
Partly thanks to this experience, I don't have a blanket policy of discouraging students from any course of action. Who am I to tamp down another person's desire for knowledge? Who am I to say whether a student who comes late to the study of ancient history or Greek won't be the next Peter Brown or Froma Zeitlin -- or Michel Foucault, for that matter? This is what Peter Abelard would have called the sic, the "yes."
Now for the non. There are very few jobs out there.
Here's another non -- to me, the most important. I would ask any student seeking employment in an industry or government agency where questions of ethics immediately arise, say, the tobacco industry and the CIA, whether she or he has thought about the ethical implications of doing such work, if parents or friends are the driving forces in the decision, whether other desires or interests are being sacrificed and for what reason. I no longer give academia a free pass. I'll ask any student considering pursuing a PhD to consider what she or he is getting into, institutionally and ethically. The university has a lot of self-examination to do, as an institution, and I think that we need to focus intently on how we operate and how we govern ourselves before we throw more students into the churn.
Here are some of the questions faculty need to ask themselves about the institutions that employ them, how they're run, and where their resources are going:
I don't think I'll succeed in turning away students from academia in large numbers, and part of me doesn't want to do that anyway. My aim is rather to get them in the habit of asking these questions in the first place.
Academics are great critical thinkers, but as I'm far from the first to note, our critical faculties wither when we turn them on ourselves.
Partly thanks to this experience, I don't have a blanket policy of discouraging students from any course of action. Who am I to tamp down another person's desire for knowledge? Who am I to say whether a student who comes late to the study of ancient history or Greek won't be the next Peter Brown or Froma Zeitlin -- or Michel Foucault, for that matter? This is what Peter Abelard would have called the sic, the "yes."
Now for the non. There are very few jobs out there.
Here's another non -- to me, the most important. I would ask any student seeking employment in an industry or government agency where questions of ethics immediately arise, say, the tobacco industry and the CIA, whether she or he has thought about the ethical implications of doing such work, if parents or friends are the driving forces in the decision, whether other desires or interests are being sacrificed and for what reason. I no longer give academia a free pass. I'll ask any student considering pursuing a PhD to consider what she or he is getting into, institutionally and ethically. The university has a lot of self-examination to do, as an institution, and I think that we need to focus intently on how we operate and how we govern ourselves before we throw more students into the churn.
Here are some of the questions faculty need to ask themselves about the institutions that employ them, how they're run, and where their resources are going:
- What work am I being paid to do? Does the institution operate in such a way that I can do that work? For example, if I am being paid to do research and teach with some service (a typical answer at a research university), how much time am I spending on service?
- Do I have sufficient administrative support? Am I losing time I would have spent on teaching and research to filling out forms, assessment exercises, reimbursements, xeroxing, maintaining websites, managing student files, and other jobs that may have been done by administrators or admin aides in the past? (Worth talking to older colleagues to get a sense of history on this one.)
- Is work on departmental and university-level committees distributed transparently and fairly? Who in the department and in the dean's office keeps track of this? If I want to raise a question about my assignments, may I do so without raising a firestorm? If a colleague wiggles out of work, who manages the problem? May I complain without being a snitch? In sum, do management procedures exist and does everyone know about them?
- Another management/accountability question. When someone's teaching is not up to standard, what happens? Is there a process in place by which legitimate student complaints can be distinguished from whining about low grades or a stern personality? Is this run by faculty or by deans who have not stepped into a classroom in years?
- Does the university reward teaching to a degree that professors are encouraged to improve?
- A few meta-management questions. Who runs the place? Aside from the president and (in many places) the provost, how many vice-presidents, associate provosts, vice-provosts, special assistants to the president/provost/vice-presidents, and so on are on the payroll? What's the size of their support staffs?
- Is the administration dominated by people with PhDs in "higher ed administration" or professional fields like law or engineering? If so, how do they value teaching and research in the non-professional parts of the academy, which we used to think of as the core -- namely, the humanities, arts, and sciences?
- What work does the institution reward faculty for? How does this work affect or connect to the students who are paying the bulk of our salaries? (True at most institutions, barring the super-endowed places like Princeton, at 17 billion and counting, and Harvard, an eye-popping 32 billion last year.)
- What procedures are in place to change the university's priorities or to establish big projects, and what role do faculty play?
I don't think I'll succeed in turning away students from academia in large numbers, and part of me doesn't want to do that anyway. My aim is rather to get them in the habit of asking these questions in the first place.
Academics are great critical thinkers, but as I'm far from the first to note, our critical faculties wither when we turn them on ourselves.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Should we punish silent students?
Sorry for this long post. I'm still figuring out how to set up a "read more" link.
When I was a student in high school and college, I loved the give-and-take of the seminar and dining-table debate: I scarcely gave a thought to the quiet students in the back or those who put up tentative hands only to recuse themselves in a panic when the teacher's eye bent in their direction. This isn't to say that I always found the scene of discussion comfortable. Unlike many of my friends, especially in college, I grew up in a family that was neither academic nor particularly invested in debate. They liked to talk, but talk, of course, is not debate. During a typical meal, my parents solicited news of my sister's and my doings, exchanged family news and neighborhood gossip, and told stories of their own -- about what they'd done that day, childhood memories and the like. To move from that to the hothouse of collegiate argument over sexuality (it was the late 80s/early 90s), the Iraq war, Andrew Ross' "Television" course (a radical offering for Princeton at that time), Spivak, Derrida, postmodern architecture -- for me, trained to attend more carefully to the table's ease and comfort than to whether we were getting anywhere with our ideas, it was a leap, and often an awkward one. Despite my sense that I was struggling to catch up with minds and tongues whetted sharp by years of parental pressure, though, silence was never an attractive option.
As a young teacher, largely thanks to memories of those flashes of nauseated anxiety, I sympathized with students who rarely or never spoke up in class. I tried notes of encouragement in my paper comments -- "Great insights here: the whole class would benefit from hearing them!" and so forth -- but I recall only one person over whom they exerted any influence. Perhaps there were one or two more.
Now a middle-aged teacher, I have done an about-face. Very few of my undergraduates can speak well and with confidence, and some of the confident ones shouldn't be. Most students grope for words, repeat themselves, say "like" every few words, deploy a limited vocabulary, and admit that they can't say what they're thinking. "You know what I mean?" takes the place of explaining what is meant. To paraphrase Darth Vader, I find the lack of words disturbing. Since (unlike Vader) I don't want to strangle my students -- they're doing a good enough job to themselves already -- I decided to make speaking in class compulsory, I made participation count for 20% of the course grade, and I wrote this handout:
When I was a student in high school and college, I loved the give-and-take of the seminar and dining-table debate: I scarcely gave a thought to the quiet students in the back or those who put up tentative hands only to recuse themselves in a panic when the teacher's eye bent in their direction. This isn't to say that I always found the scene of discussion comfortable. Unlike many of my friends, especially in college, I grew up in a family that was neither academic nor particularly invested in debate. They liked to talk, but talk, of course, is not debate. During a typical meal, my parents solicited news of my sister's and my doings, exchanged family news and neighborhood gossip, and told stories of their own -- about what they'd done that day, childhood memories and the like. To move from that to the hothouse of collegiate argument over sexuality (it was the late 80s/early 90s), the Iraq war, Andrew Ross' "Television" course (a radical offering for Princeton at that time), Spivak, Derrida, postmodern architecture -- for me, trained to attend more carefully to the table's ease and comfort than to whether we were getting anywhere with our ideas, it was a leap, and often an awkward one. Despite my sense that I was struggling to catch up with minds and tongues whetted sharp by years of parental pressure, though, silence was never an attractive option.
As a young teacher, largely thanks to memories of those flashes of nauseated anxiety, I sympathized with students who rarely or never spoke up in class. I tried notes of encouragement in my paper comments -- "Great insights here: the whole class would benefit from hearing them!" and so forth -- but I recall only one person over whom they exerted any influence. Perhaps there were one or two more.
Now a middle-aged teacher, I have done an about-face. Very few of my undergraduates can speak well and with confidence, and some of the confident ones shouldn't be. Most students grope for words, repeat themselves, say "like" every few words, deploy a limited vocabulary, and admit that they can't say what they're thinking. "You know what I mean?" takes the place of explaining what is meant. To paraphrase Darth Vader, I find the lack of words disturbing. Since (unlike Vader) I don't want to strangle my students -- they're doing a good enough job to themselves already -- I decided to make speaking in class compulsory, I made participation count for 20% of the course grade, and I wrote this handout:
You may find it tough to believe when you’re crammed into a windowless room in the basement of Bobst, but the recitation is preparation for many moments in your future: the start-up strategy meeting, the graduate seminar, the environmental activism group, the art/architecture “crit,” the neighborhood council, the PTA. In all these places you need to be prepared to speak your mind clearly and to explain your reasons; to listen with a critical but civil ear; to engage with others’ ideas; to think on your feet; to be willing to change your mind to incorporate another viewpoint, or even to reverse your original stance. For some of you, the recitation will be the perfect place to develop the nerve to talk (fear of public speaking affects most people). Or you’re the kind of student who welcomes the opportunity to think out loud. Or you may treat the recitation as a totally open opportunity to think about big, sometimes messy ideas—the kinds of ideas that shape the world.
Part of the point of the discussion section is to learn how to have an effective discussion. It’s not the same as hanging out with friends, but it’s not an oral exam either. So long as everyone does his or her bit, recitation will grow more interesting as you learn each other’s views and preferences.
Speaking with eloquence and verve about complex ideas is a skill that will bring you satisfaction forever, regardless of what you pursue in life. It takes practice. Some ways of talking are more convincing, thoughtful, inspiring, and well-informed than others. Part of the college experience—the reason you’re paying so much money to be here instead of living with your parents and taking courses online—is to learn how to speak in an intelligent, well-informed way. This means that your instructor may comment on your comments, so that you and the rest of the class will understand on the spot what works and what doesn’t. Don’t take it personally. Where else will you gain experience in expressing your thoughts in front of a random assortment of people? Here’s Dewey:
The winged words of conversation in immediate intercourse have a vital import lacking in the fixed and frozen words of written speech… Ideas which are not communicated, shared, and reborn in expression are…broken and imperfect thought.
The basics. We expect you to arrive in class on time capable of briefly summarizing the argument and/or the main points and themes of the reading, and to be sufficiently alert to answer elementary analytic questions. We won’t always ask for volunteers, and we won’t allow the same people to speak all the time. You should speak up at least once in each class meeting. Most recitations will include a few minutes of Q&A, often at or near the beginning. (“I don’t know” or “I didn’t finish the reading” don’t count as answers.) If you don’t know how to answer a question, don’t worry: chances are you’re not alone, and unless you come in unprepared week after week, your grade is not on the line at that moment. The key is to give it your best shot. Feel free to ask for a lifeline—for example, a passage to comment on. At these moments, the instructor is evaluating two things. Have you prepared responsibly? Can you respond intelligently to the question, even if your answer is wrong or temporarily leads the discussion off the track?
Our aim is to foster intelligent conversation about the ideas in our texts. Once it’s clear to the instructor that the class understands the main points of lecture and the readings (this can take anywhere from ten minutes to half an hour), the class shifts into a higher gear. Now the class becomes a kind of lab or brain-storm exercise or town meeting, where ideally you will take a position about an idea or a text, explain or defend it with evidence and logical argument, and listen and respond to others. From time to time, you’ll need to think “meta”—take a step back and consider criteria, methods, and unspoken assumptions.
How do you prepare for this? Do the reading, obviously, and jot down a few notes. Read the syllabus, where weekly themes are listed for the recitation. Listen at the end of Wednesday’s lecture for hints of what’s to come. Your instructor may email you to solicit questions or reactions.
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