Conclusions Regarding Teaching (and maybe other things...)

I have been fortunate to work with teachers and teenagers for the past twenty years. Both of these groups are populated with interesting, brilliant, delightful, generous people. And those other people too. At their best, these are people that make you feel, think, and act better than you actually are. At their worst, you understands felonies through a whole new, more sympathetic lens. I have been on both ends of the continuum, both as a student and as a teacher. I have come to some conclusions which may be accurate, and they may not, but they help me stay on the tightrope, instead of strangling someone with it. If you work in one of those schools where students are expected to be jerks, and teachers are expected to be unarmed police, then you are in need of more than I can give, and reading this will probably just piss you off. Sorry.

Conclusion #1 – You don't have to like them, but you do have to do your job. This goes for both students and teachers. You want to like them all, to see the value in their unique contributions, but it ain't gonna happen. With students, this is particularly tricky, because I really do like most of them, especially individually. In groups the Knucklehead Factor tends to be exaggerated, but if you know what they are like by themselves, it is much easier to respond. But there are those other students. Usually they are not the kids that “act out” (teacher for “be an asshole”), have “trouble staying on-task” (teacher for “goofing-off), or who “do poorly on their work” (teacher for, well, “do poorly on their work). Most of those kids are engaging – they are offering an opportunity to interact, and they usually are responsive, if you can be creative enough. It's the kids who won't react at all, who do C-/D+ work, never talk, and resist participation in any activity that tend to get to me. They rarely look at you, and when you do talk to them they look at you as if you are a moron for not recognizing the wall around them. These kids are very careful to keep any and all traits that you might like stashed away where you will never see them. Hard to like them. And it's sometimes infuriating that they sit in your class, and refuse to avail themselves of the gift that is you.

But that's their choice, and they do have a choice. A person can simply choose to not engage. Or, they may choose to engage with other teachers, just not you. So you do your job. You put the good stuff in front of them, you do what you can to convince them that if they take it they will be better off, you make sure that their parental units are aware of what is happening, and you keep an eye on them. They don't want you to, but you do anyway. That's the job. As for teachers, reread this, substitute “teachers” for “kids”, and “supervisor” for “parent”, and it's about right.

Conclusion #2 – Mobility is essential. I used to call this “flexibility”, but some people don't like the idea of other persons determining what they should do, so now I call it “mobility”. See how I did that? They made me change my word, but I get what I want, so I'm cool with that. Watch a good tennis player getting ready to receive a serve. The player will usually sway back and forth, and then, as the opponent goes into the toss, their feet will start moving, almost like they are jogging in place. They don't know where the serve will be, and they need to be moving, ready to react. They don't complain that the opponent made them move, or feel bad because they were not perfectly placed before the serve and had to adjust – their job is to be ready to return the serve, wherever it is.

We need to be like that, and it's hard. We are not in a game of batting things back and forth . We want our students to get somewhere, to advance, to come further into this wonderful world of rational thought, interesting people and ideas, and skills to discover, interpret, evaluate, and use them. And, often, they don't wanna go. They are happy right where they are, thank you very much. And so you try to pull them along, and that is where it all goes wrong. When you pull something, it digs in its heels. It tries to go the other way. It becomes invested in resisting you. It needs you to fail. We know this – what we sometimes don't realize is that we started it. When you try to pull something, the very first thing you do is it plant your feet, which is a nicer way of saying “dig in your heels”. You try to get them to go the other way. You become invested in resisting, and you need your “opponent” to yield. And we are teaching this.

Mobility. You can't move with your feet firmly placed, and we want our students and ourselves to move. If a student is stuck, there are tools that they can use, and there are tools that we can use, there are dances we can do, and there are shiny things that we can flash in front of them. If we can't create a situation where the student chooses to move, then we have a problem that can't be solved by just pulling. As for teachers, reread this, and, well, you know,

Conclusion #3 – We have to take care of each other. This is true of many professions, but it is especially true for teachers (and for ministers, but that's a different thing). We need to get what recognition we get from other teachers, and we need to recognize that need. Students are delightful (sometimes), and it is wonderful when they realize that we did something that helped them, that changed them. But we can't rely on them. We can't put students in that position, and we can't look for our affirmation from them. It is not fair, it is not helpful, and it is not their job. Administrators can be excellent, they can be helpful, and they can teach us much, but their job is different. It is not their job to pay attention to who is in need of support, advice, or a drink, and we would not want it to be. We have to take care of our own. We don't have to stand all together in a circle and sing “What A Wonderful World”. We don't have to be all together – you have your little group that takes care of each other, and I'll have mine, and we may even talk shit about the other group. It doesn't matter. What matters is that in this job, we need to keep an eye on each other, and we need someone to keep an eye on us.

And that, I think, is it. The Thing. The Holy Grail. The Hokey Pokey. Do your job, stay mobile, keep an eye on each other, and usually everything is gonna be alright. Pax.

Charles and the Saturday Night Special

I should start by stating that I am armed.

I do not have a stockpile of weapons, and I do not think I would be safer if I walked around strapped, but here in my home, I do have a pistol and ammunition.

We Americans have a thing about guns. Actually we have two things about guns - we love them and we loathe them. Generally, we pick a side, but I imagine that there are those who do both. There are a few of us who do neither, and I am one of those. I love to shoot, but I do not love guns. Firing weapons is exhilarating - owning them is a pain. I’ve fired a number of different guns - military weaponry (M-16, M-60 ), hunting rifles (30.06, some Winchester that was rated to bring down a Kodiak bear with one shot that a friend bought to bring on a trip to Alaska;  after about three shots your shoulder hurt so much that it was difficult to get off an accurate shot - not fun), shotguns of many varieties and sizes, and pistols from .22s to .44 magnums. A lot of people have more experience, but my point is that I know a bit about guns, have played with them some and, frankly, they are fun. Probably not for everybody, but for many. There is something about firing off a round that touches something in me so ancient that it is pre-linguistic. The closest thing to it that I have felt is the sensation I get when I am fishing, and a trout hits the lure or bait, and there is that tug on the pole, followed by the quavering of the line. I suppose the two share a common hunting or dominance theme, so perhaps it is related to that.  Have at it Dr. Freud. In any case, shooting is fun.

And it is dangerous. Bullets kill people. People use guns to kill people. I knew a few people who have been killed with guns. One was killed by his wife, with a gun that I had shot years before. I used it to plink at rocks, she used it to kill a man. I don’t know how that happened - I knew and liked them both, but something bad happened, and she seems to believe that she had to shoot him. She may be right - I really don’t know. I liked them both, and I see no reason to disbelieve what she says. She may be alive today because she had access to the gun - certainly he is dead today because she did  It is not my place or within my abilities to decide if what happened was criminal or was necessary.

In the past month or so there have been two high profile multiple shootings - one in a movie theatre in Colorado, and the other at a Sikh temple. Today there was another shooting in New York, near the Empire State Building. The initial reports indicated that it was another seemingly senseless act by a crazed person. It turned out to be a former employee shooting a former boss. The other casualties were the shooter himself, and the ten or so people injured by ricocheting bullets as two police officers, almost certainly justifiably, fired fourteen shots at the man. The point is that we have become accustomed to the random violence dispensed by a person with a large quantity of ammunition and the means to use it.

Guns are fun, and guns kill people. The same can be said for many drugs or dangerous recreational activities.  The situations are not perfectly analogous. Most recreational deaths happen to people who have assumed the risks involved in their activity - they choose to free-climb, skydive, base jump, or whatever. Drugs mostly kill the persons who actively use them, but frequently they also kill others - passengers in the “other” car, etc.. On the other hand, most people who own or use guns will never be injured themselves, nor will they ever injure another with their weapons. Drugs we regulate or ban, recreational activities we admire. Guns we love and loath. Sort of like the British Monarchy.

The Royal Family and the Second Amendment are beautiful expressions of the power and the living heritage that is the nations. They were started in their nations’ youth, and continue today, manifesting the continuity of the people - their connection with the heroes of their glorious past. They are unique, defining traits of their countries, and the loss of them would be the end of the nations as they know, love, and cherish them. For others, however, they are anachronistic relics of a long-gone past - a past where the rule of law and of the people had not yet been established.  Few British subjects believe that a glorious monarch, chosen by God, provides benevolent protection for the nation, just as few American citizens believe that their assault rifles will help them defeat the combined US military forces, should they decide that the government is tyrannical. They are symbols of a step that we needed, but which we also needed to outgrow. Symbols that are expensive, either in lives or money, and certainly in the loss of a more mature people, a people who, when they were children, thought, spoke, and reasoned as children, but having attained adulthood, had put aside their childish ways.

It seems to me that both are true. What is likely needed is to either find a way to reduce the costs of keeping our talismans or to find another symbol that tells us that we are, in fact, the worthy descendants of our worthy fore bearers. It is, however, as difficult to imagine Prince William and the Duchess living in a two-bedroom flat as it is an America where patriots proudly display paintball guns on their trucks’ rifle racks. I’ll give you my gun when you give me a really cool pellet pistol? Implausible. More likely, I think, is that we will both muddle on as we are, bearing the cost of symbols that we apparently still need. Until we don’t.  In a land far, far away. Pax.

Shit, meet fan...

I am confused, which I tend to think is a good thing.  A wise teacher once told me that confusion is the first step in creating a new understanding – that one needs to dismantle what one believes to be true and truly question it before recognizing a new pattern.  Sometimes I have found this to be true.  Other times I just stay confused until the ADD train comes by to take me somewhere shinier.  So we shall see.

The shiny today is the distinction between the sexes that is, for a man of my generation, a vast stretch of war-torn landscape, hiding dangers both modern and ancient.  Primitive pit traps -  some still well-hidden, some long exposed – lay in wait alongside heat-sensitive airborne drones.  The detritus of battles forgotten or fresh ought shine some light on what we have wrought, but just when one thinks some fair generalizations might be made, another explosion shifts the ground, and what had seemed clear moments ago is lost.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.  Yeah – self evident.  When I was young, it seemed self-evident that “men”, in this case, included women.  It was common usage.  When one referred to a group of people that included both men and women, the proper term to use was “men”.   It was just grammar.  Then, around the end of high school, it seemed self-evident that this rule was wrong and wrong-headed.  To simply fold women into “men” was disrespectful and diminishing.  Women were not a mere subset of the larger group of men, but an entity to be evaluated and appreciated on their own and on their own terms.  And so we, and our language, had to change.  The process of altering the language was less than elegant, but we struggled through “personhood” and a somewhat awkward use of plurals until we seemed able to speak to one another again.  But there was still the damn door.

And here we have arrived at the first of the mines.  Even mentioning this invites scorn and judgement for being hopelessly clueless, but there it is.  The door.  Shall I open it for you?

Of course.  I am a man, and I will open the door.  But it will mean nothing other than that I am not a complete clod.  It will mean nothing.  It will not imply that you cannot open your own door, and it will not imply that we are in any way not equal.  Yes, I must open the door.  And no, it means nothing regarding a distinction between the sexes.  Except that it shows the respect that I am to express for the other, equal sex.  It’s a silly thing, but it is a thing, and the reason that it is never mentioned is that men, by the time they reach an age where some women might take them seriously, have learned to not mention it.  But it is not alone.  Our society is loaded with distinctions in how we treat the other sex, and we have not resolved this.  Nor do we need to - at least not on any particular timetable.  My guess is that sometime in the future, people who have come of age in a different time will find a balance.  And, frankly, we can all live with the ambiguity, usually.  It does no harm, and it rarely causes hard feelings, generally.  Until the shit hits the fan.

The shit, in this case, goes by the name of Todd Akin, candidate for the US Senate in Missouri.  Perhaps not Mr. Akin himself, but perhaps his now infamous words: “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”  The fan, in this case, is pretty much the whole country.

I’ve seen the anger of women who believe themselves condescended to, ignored, or dismissed.  It is not pretty, and it is not a summer thunderstorm of intense energy but short duration.  Oh no it is not.

I cannot speak to the diminution of rape in this comment.  I have never been raped, and I am not attempting to advance an opinion on what rape victims have experienced or what they feel.  I am offended by the comment, but it is my own response, and I leave it for others better qualified to respond to him.  This is the best response that I have seen from that perspective.  I have no desire to enter into the abortion debate.  I have my opinion.  I know what facts and what values I bring to the discussion, and I believe that they are irrelevant to the phenomena we are seeing.  Akin is opposed to abortion, for his own reasons, but his basic ignorance, wilful or not, of female biology is terrifying.  This man wants to tell women what they can and cannot do regarding procreation, but either has never bothered to study how procreation works, or he has been willing to believe a patently silly idea supported by no evidence and refuted by academics and medical doctors.  All  in order to give his ideas authority.  And he believes that this will be sufficient to rally the true believers to his cause.  He wants to have the government decide intimate details of a woman’s life, using a cartoon of an idea that most high school juniors can dissect.  He is a fool, and he will come to a fool’s end.

But look a the anger, look at the rage.  And look at those who are nodding and agreeing, but who believe that this is being blown out of proportion.  Here is the danger.  We know that things are wrong, but we don’t really know if we agree on what those things are.  We want a world where we respect, care for, and love each other, but we live in a world where we really do not see and cannot safely comment on certain basic realities in our lives, and the seeming contradictions in our accommodations.  The doors.  And as long as we live like this, we will step on long hidden trip wires or, like Mr. Akin, throw ourselves on grenades of our own making.

Just over a month ago, a crazed man shot and killed a dozen people in Colorado.  The reporting of the incident detailed the weapons used, the background of the murderer, and the booby-traps he had set in his apartment.  The reporting also included stories of people desperately throwing their bodies between the killer and their loved ones -  adults shielding children, friends shielding each other, husbands and boyfriends shielding their wives and girlfriends.  But I heard not one story of a wife or girlfriend, in the panic and mayhem of the moment, offering herself up to protect her man.  Until we can also recognize this, just notice and talk about it, we are a long way from resolution.  Pax.

Religion and vilolence.

The idea that a person or a nation's predominant religion may be the cause of wars - that religious differences are such that it is understandable that religions conflict may lead to violence or even war - seems to be making a resurgence.  With our last three wars taking place in areas where the majority of people hold different religious views than do the majority of Americans, with violence in America against mosques, Jewish and Sikh temples, and southern Black churches, it certainly seems that violence does at least seem attracted to religions institutions.  But to what extent ought one think that religion "causes" violence or war?

 This question is tricky.  Fortunately, we are trickier.  For the essential tricksy nature of this type of question, I’ll refer you to Richard Feynman’s soliloquy on magnets - he’s far smarter and more interesting than I am, so read this first, and then go there.  Suffice to say that the word “cause” is going to give us some problems.

Is religion involved in some wars?  Oh yeah.  Do people explain their violent actions in  terms of religion?  Often.  Do people believe that their religions sometimes compel them to go to war?  Yup.  Do these truths make religion a cause of violence and war?  Depends.  I believe that if one is careful in one’s thinking, one will think not.

Let’s start with “war”.  Here is a fairly good definition, from dictionary.com:

          “a conflict carried on by force of arms, as between
          nations or between parties within a nation”

Assuming this is correct, we need a conflict, arms, and at least two parties in order to have a war.  Religion cannot directly create arms (in a conventional sense), so we’ll set that aside.  Can a religion create a conflict?  Perhaps.  Can religion create separate parties?  Maybe.  It depends a bit on what you believe a religion IS.

OK - now how about “religion”?  What exactly is a religion?  Here we will likely get a rich variety of possible definitions, so let’s start with some distinctions.  First, religion is not God.  Not even god.  If, in this context, we meant God, then the question would be “Does God cause wars?”, and I think we can agree that that is a different question.  So if a religion is not God, then I think we are safe in believing that a religion is created - that is, it is not the source of life or substance.  Religion, in the sense in which it is used in this context, seems to be something that is not divine, but very well may be believed by its adherents to be a path to or from the divine.  This is an important, if perhaps self-evident distinction.  Again, from dictionary.com regarding religion:

          “a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and
          purpose of the universe, especially when
          considered as the creation of a superhuman agency
          or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual
          observances, and often containing a moral code
          governing the conduct of human affairs.”

Now, many people will complain that a “set of beliefs” is too restrictive.  Their religion is more than a mere set of beliefs.  It is a way of life.  It is a relationship.  It is a transcendent experience of the oneness of all.  These may all be true, but the error is in the (often unspoken) word “mere”.  These beliefs aren’t “mere”.  They are anything but “mere”.  The beliefs by which one directs one’s life, beliefs involving, perhaps, the greatest secrets, blessings and curses of the universe have no taint of “mere” on them.  But they are beliefs - they are not facts.  They may be wonderful beliefs, they may include charity, love, vengeance, justice, forgiveness, grace, nothingness, and they may, ironically, disparage “belief” itself.  But it is, I think, what we are talking about when we consider religions causing wars.

Cause.  Oo boy.  This is the hardest of them all.  The rational among us believe that there is cause and there is effect.  Ultimately, for the most rational of us, there is an Ultimate Cause (Primum movens).  Aristotle argued for this, which only encouraged Aquinas.  Fortunately, Kant came along and argued that they were both in error, and for this I will forever be in Kant’s debt.  However if we were to accept the Ultimate Cause position, then we, ultimately, would be back talking about how God is the cause of war, and that is not helpful.

Back to the trusty dictionary.com, only this time with feeling:

          cause   [kawz] noun, verb, caused, causing.
          noun
          1. a person or thing that acts, happens, or exists in such
          a way that some specific thing happens as a result; the
          producer of an effect: You have been the cause of      
          much anxiety. What was the cause of the accident?
          2. the reason or motive for some human action: The
          good news was a cause for rejoicing.

Again, we have the problem of chain of causation or, as it has become known in popular culture, the “Butterfly Effect”.  So let’s get real here.  The butterfly cannot reasonably be thought to have caused the hurricane.  Not really.  That sort of distant, disinterested chain of events is not useful for us, other than to have a bit of an “everything is everything in the cosmic interconnected web” moment.  Fun as those are, they are not really helpful in assigning blame, which is essentially what this question presupposes to exist.  “Does religion cause violence and wars” is really asking “Can we blame religion for the violence and wars?”  If our only interest is if religion is one link in the chain of events, then the answer was obvious from the beginning - of course religion causes violence and wars.  If, however, we are attempting to assign responsibility, that is another matter, and that is, I think, is the real nature of the question. 

And the answer is “No”.  Remarkably simply, the answer is “no”. 

Religions are created by people to explain, and perhaps contain, the human condition and its relationship to the universe.  Whether or not a deity is behind it (and I do believe that there is such a deity), the religion and its tenants, regulations, proscriptions and permissions are the embodiment of a peoples’ questions and conclusions regarding reality.  The religion does not exist separate from the people - it a manifestation of aspects of the people themselves.  A deity may exist without the people, but without the people, there is no religion.

If religion is the work of the people, if people create, nurture, change, and harvest the fruits of their religion, is it fair to say that it was the religion that has caused a war?  I think not.  If two people are in a relationship that turns abusive, can one person say that it was not his or her fault that he or she killed the partner - it was the relationship’s fault?  They created the relationship, poured themselves into it and made decisions based on the relationship, but the responsibility rests with the persons themselves - the real moral agents.  Likewise, we cannot excuse our actions or the actions of others by labeling them as "religious". We cannot invest our creations with the responsibility for our own actions.

It is not my place to say whether the violence or war is justified or not.  Only that it is sloppy and dangerous to blame it on “religion”.  One may believe that it was the will of the people, or believe that it is the will of God, but religion has no will of its own - it is a reflection of the will of God or of the people.  If we are satisfied with a war, credit the people, or credit their God.  If we are not, then assign the blame to the people or to their God.  Struggling with this may yield important information about the nature of both of them.  Blaming religion is a shortcut that allows us to avoid examining ourselves and questioning our Gods, and history has shown us that this well-worn path rarely leads to enlightenment or to honor.  That way lie monsters.  Pax.

Horrible Things

Some of the most challenging moments in teaching teenagers is explaining horrifying events as they unfold.  On September 11, 2001, I was in classes with dumbstruck students who expected their US History and Government teacher to be able to make sense of what had happened.  Two years earlier I was in class on April 20, 1999 when Columbine High School was attacked, as I was four years before that on April 19, 1995 when the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was bombed.  I’ve been there to talk to students about the sudden, unexpected deaths of two teachers, and the murder of a recent graduate. They are the times that try one’s soul.

There is a disassociation during these times.  You try to find an equilibrium within yourself, a balance where you can be open enough to gather and process as much information as you can, all the while closing down in an act of self-preservation.  Doing this with an audience, trying to be honest, caring, and supportive to young people while your vestibular sense has taken a walk is, as a friend of mine says, a whole ‘nother Oprah. 

The students (and you) want answers - answers that allow them (and you) to move to the next step, whatever that is.  And the truth is that those answers will be a long time in coming, if they ever do.  But the students (and you) need something now, something to use too understand, and so instead of answers, you try to move toward compassion, toward appreciation of responsibility, toward community. 

Usually we know that these are good things, but in those horrible, horrible times, when we feel the impact of their loss, we can sense the centrality of these intangibles in our lives.  We know, for a short time, exactly where they fit in our hierarchy of needs, and whatever was essential and all-consuming just a few minutes before fades back for just a little while. 

These are important things to remember.  Because as soon as our balance is restored we begin to insist on answers, and if there are no good answers to our questions we’ll come up with new questions - questions which are likely less important, but for which we think we have answers.  And the real questions are lost.

This week a young man murdered a dozen strangers, wounded scores more, and left an apartment laden with explosive and incendiary traps, apparently intending to kill police and residents when the apartment was opened.  Really, we will never know why.  The killer doesn’t really know why, though at some point we may hear his explanation for his actions.  Personally, I’m not going to give much credence to the explanations of a person who came to the conclusion that killing and maiming strangers was best thing that he could do with his time and talents.  Don’t really trust his process. 

What we will then do, what we have already begun to do, is to ask that different set of questions.   How could he get the weapons?  Why did he choose that time and place?  Why didn’t someone spot this and report it to someone?  Essentially, how can we keep this from happening again?  And we know, deep down, that we can’t.

Americans have a long list of ideas in which we believe.  Justice.  Equality.  Cheap food.  First in line, however, is freedom.  We love it.  Especially OUR freedom to do what we want.  We’re not generally as worked up about freedom for people whom we don’t know to do things that we don’t like.  Shooting guns.  Smoking pot.  Marrying matching genitalia.  If it’s our thing, it is obviously an aspect of freedom.  If it’s not, well... . 

The problem is that freedom is sometimes really scarey, and sometimes really inconvenient, and sometimes it seems like there are obvious exceptions and limitations.  Children should not be free to use alcohol or explosives.  People should not be free to take other persons’ property.  People should not be free to damage and belittle the helpless. These seem obvious, and we believe that all right thinking people would agree with us.  And yet sometimes they don’t. 

It is important to recognize that freedom implies vulnerability, and that we cannot have both freedom and protection from its exercise.  People will sometimes do bad things.  Sometimes these bad things will affect us deeply.  And we must endure. 

Soon we will be hearing more and more about the movie theater killer.  Anybody who knew him will be asked about him.  These questions will all be aimed at trying to determine what it was that we missed.  In asking these questions we reveal an expectation that if someone had been paying attention, the murders could have been stopped. 

Usually, in incidents like this, we find something, and then we try to find a way to not miss it again. This can be valuable, if it means being aware of the people around us, particularly if we have some specific responsibility for them.  But the real issue, the thing that just stabs at us, is that these things happen, and that we know they will happen again.  In the face of this, the only question that really needs answering is how will we let this change us.

I have taught teenagers for over twenty-five years, and I have to tell you, some of them are pretty strange.  I love that about them, usually.  Do I wonder if some of them might some day show up with a weapon?  Of course.  Have there been any specifically that I’ve been concerned about?  Yes.  Ones that were isolated, who had few friends and/or who were antagonized by other students.  Have I talked with colleagues and the administration?  Yes.  Most of all, I’ve talked with the students.  Talked to them, and listened to them.  Have I been influential at all?  I don’t know.  Have I missed persons who needed more?  I assume so.  Have I ever thought I ought tell the police?  Never. 

These are kids who did not need another person in their lives telling them that they are inadequate, that they are different, that maybe we don't really want them around, and no matter how it is phrased, explained, or implemented, that is what they will hear.

I understand mandated reporting for child abuse.  I have and will report any suspicions in a heartbeat.  I am willing to risk being wrong about a parent or other adult in the interest of protecting the child.  I am not willing to risk labeling a child as a threat in the interests of making us feel safer. 

Freedom brings risks, and if we are really invested in freedom, then our safety lies not in examining our neighbors' indicators of possible deviance, but in being invested in those around us, not in labeling the “other” and isolating them, but in recognizing and respecting them.  It will not be one hundred percent effective, but that is a risk I can live with. 

So when you hear the reports of one person saying that the killer was this, and another saying that the killer was that, remember all the strange people that you have known, and perhaps even your own strangeness.  Ask yourself if we want to create a society where the proper response to a person being different is to question, to fear, or to report as a threat.  Decide if you want to decide to look at others for evidence or indicators of "otherness", or if you want to see them as people - as flawed and damaged as yourself - who are looking for ways to be safe, fulfilled, and at peace. 

We’ve invested too much, bled too much, and sacrificed too much, to trade freedom for fear, or community for suspicion.  I hope.  Pax.

Professionalism, Part Two

To recap: professionalism and being expert has serious advantages, but sometimes we really get annoyed by them and need to compensate.  Fair enough.  But there is another side to this that I think is even more insidious: the tyranny of the professional.

 Let’s start with sports.  Not that long ago, kids played sports.  Baseball, football, basketball, stickball, dodge ball, kick ball, soccer, kick the can, tag, hide-and-seek.  The emphasis is on “play”, and it was just what they did.  Kids at school or in the neighborhood would get together, get a ball or whatever else was needed, and play.  Pretty much everybody played, whether they were any good or not.  They might be the last picked, but they were usually picked.  Rules and boundaries were agreed upon (that mailbox is a first down), and the rules were enforced by the players.  They had to be.  If the players couldn’t agree that a ball was foul, that a catch was made fairly, that a person was off-sides, then they couldn’t play.  The game depended on cooperation and negotiation.  My father did not like organized sports for children because of this.  He thought that the skills learned in these negotiations, the recognition that the game was more important than any one call and the understanding that one must respect the game were more important than learning the fine points of technique.  And I think he was right.  Very few people will really need to spend hours perfecting their stance, their release, or their swing.  Communication, negotiation, and respect for something other than oneself, however, are universal skills that many of us lack.  Playing pick-up games, however, will not make us expert.  It does not prepare us for being professionals.  And the dirty little (not so) secret of youth sports is that many of the parents see it as a testing ground to see if, with expert help, their child might have a future as a professional.

Kids also sing and dance.  Often before they can walk or even stand.  Ask your parents if you don’t believe me.  Music is powerful mojo.  Not that long ago, most people played instruments, and nearly everybody sang.  Now, I’ve not seen any research to indicate that people “back then” had significantly better voices than we do today, or that they were more coordinated or dexterous.  Watch the end of “It’s a Wonderful Life” sometime.  I certainly wouldn’t take the movie as gospel, but it seems like the idea that people would all get together and unselfconsciously sing together while a kid played a piano was one that the audience could buy into.  Maybe they themselves hadn’t done it, but their parents likely had, back before radio and phonographs.  Those actors were not all good singers (cough, cough, Jimmy Stewart), but it really didn’t matter. If you wanted music, someone had to sing and someone had to play an instrument.

People rarely sing if front of people nowadays, but nearly everybody, I would bet, sings by themselves in the car or in the shower.  A few people play instruments, I would wager that far more children play than do adults.  Playing music is best if it is communal - with a band or with folks singing or dancing, and as people grow older they seem less likely to take the time to do this.  It is somehow seen as indulgent, even escapist to play with a group after around twenty-five or so.  Unless you are getting gigs. 

Sports, singing, making music - things we all remember from childhood, have turned into something that we rarely do for ourselves anymore.  We have professionals to do this for us.  Even dance has gone this direction.  I work with teenagers, and they love to dance, but what has happened since the advent of the music video is that the professional dancers show them how to dance to any particular song.  At a dance, or on a dance floor with young adults, when a popular song is played, look around and you will see people copying the moves that they saw on the video.

Now none of this is bad.  There are a lot of good musicians out there playing excellent music, and wonderful singers interpreting songs.  Professional sports can be great fun.  What concerns me is not that professionals do these things, but that we amateurs have largely stopped doing these things for ourselves, and experience them more and more vicariously through the work of professionals.  Sports, music, singing, drawing, painting, sculpting, telling stories - all of these are creative expressions of our common humanity.  All of these are a part of our experience, things that we have done and enjoyed and gotten lost in.  These are things that humans do.  And we seem to have stopped doing them, to a large extent, because we have professionals, experts who do it better.

I would love for us to take them back.  There are some bright spots.  Karaoke has potential, but it generally fails.  It is often people imitating professionals, sometimes rather pathetically, and sometimes ironically.  Several years ago, in Ireland, I was in pubs where people just started singing.  Lots of them.  No one was trying to be Madonna, Rihanna, Usher, or Sinatra - they were just singing.  There have always been adult athletic teams, so for talented players there is still an outlet.  And people continue to dance (even guys).  Certainly blogging has created opportunities for the amateur writer, and people obviously crave it. Now if we can just relegate the professionals to the same level as the chefs on TV - interesting experts who give us ideas and which are fun to watch, but who bear little relation to the cooking we do every day (and which is just fine, and sometimes better, thank you very much) - I think we would all be happier, healthier, and more in-tune humans.  Pax.

Professionalism

Once upon a time, to be professional was much to be desired.  Now it is a bit more ambivalent.  Where I work, in education, "professionalism" and its various conjugates have mutated, and are now used as weapons.  If an administrator does not like your attitude, decisions or dress, (s)he will question your professionalism.  It rarely if ever has a positive connotation in actual usage.  Professionalism is the concept by which we measure our inadequacies.

My guess is that this is not confined to the ream of the educator. We Americans have an energized ambivalence to “experts”, and “professional” edges right up to it.  We want and expect the best.  The best quality, the best value, the best deal, the best steak, the best doctor and the best mechanic.  Experts tend to have a monopoly in the “best” category, but those “experts”, we think, probably think they’re better than us.  Because they’re experts.  If you want the best, you need to deal with people who think they’re better than you, and that’s not particularly comfortable.  Actually, it sucks.  So there you go.

There are several ways to deal with this.  One is to acknowledge the expertise of the person you are dealing with, with the understanding that you are an expert in a different, and more important area.  It works like this ( imagine a thought balloon, as hardly anybody would actually say this out loud): “You may be a neurosurgeon, but I’m the only one who really knows just how bad I feel, how quickly I will recover, and exactly what I want the outcome to be.  Those are the things that really matter - your skills are simply a means to the end about which I am the expert.”  Or “Yes, you are an architect, which I certainly could have become had I not (a) become a neurosurgeon (b) been busy raising these amazing children ( c) taken over the family business, and dealt with real world issues, like providing quality manicures (d) been high all the time.  In any case, I and I alone know what I want, and that is what is important, so do what I say.  Expertly.”

Another way to compensate for another’s competence is to imply that their field of expertise is, in and of itself, unimportant.  I mean, anyone can paint a house.  Anyone can tighten and loosen pipes.  All those therapists do is talk, and anyone can do that.  This is really effective, because it is often true - anyone can do those things.  Just not expertly.

As a teacher, I get to deal with these attitudes regularly.  Many parents believe that their occupation, profession, or job is definitely more important that teaching.  Those that can, do - those that can’t teach.  I mean, anyone could do that!  And, of course, they are correct on the last point - anybody can teach.  Just not expertly.

However gratifying pointing out the banal predictability of people who denigrate my profession may be, is not really what I want to get at.  It’s something a bit more general.  It is about our attitude about experts, and how it may be keeping ourselves from experiencing more of what it really can feel like to be a human - things that just a generation or two ago were part of normal human experience, but now are rarely experienced at all, and if they are it is often anemic, restricted, or (worst of all) ironic way.  Coming soon.  Pax.