Democratic Conversation

Questions are democracies’ currency. There is no subject unqualified for scrutiny. Shields of authenticity and stamps of approval in a dynamic cultural and political environment ought be rare. Questions cause changes of mind; answers help implement those changes.

Thomas Mallon has asks, in the Spring ’07 issue of The American Scholar, some 10 difficult yet revealing questions of Americans vis-á-vis the teaching profession, the learning pool, and how the twain shall meet for some synergistic—if not energetic—education. He likewise wraps these around a couple philo-practical questions that equally challenge writers, the American intelligentsia, and plain ‘ole John and Mary Q. Public. Mallon, a novelist, former professor at Vassar College, essay contributor to national magazines, and past literary editor at GQ, today sits on the board for the National Endowment for the Humanities.

None of Mallon’s questions is rhetorical. At least, I don’t think they are, even if Mallon chose not to venture an answer to any of them. The questions are in fact not particularly unique, and have mostly been bandied about in one form or another for decades, if not at least a century. One can argue that answers to such questions have been essayed by outsiders to the system in myriad forms—posing different ideological stances and reaching opposing conclusions given any particular decade in which they’ve come along—and so why not put them directly to those who teach, learn, and write?

Yet today there may be one unique element to Mallon’s questions that has not been seen before: we live in an extraordinary global culture of arts, informations, entertainments, educations, and businesses unseen or codified before. Some of this comes from trade progress, while a larger role is taken by the Internet’s ability to bring ideas to individuals at the click of a mouse. All these factors create competition between governments and between people (countrymen and foreigners) that has and will force whole nations into patterns of success or failure. Why? Because the need to keep up, grow, or surpass those systems that are now behind, around, or in front of any nation sets its people into a crucible. There is no more ability to sit on one’s laurels (if there ever really was, or for very long anyway). Success pressure is now as constant as geophysical forces that create diamonds.

So to Mr. Mallon’s questions (italicized) and to my answers—perhaps as idiosyncratic as the questions themselves, though I have tried to answer in the spirit and seriousness with which the questions are posed. I answer these questions from the perspective of a writer, journalist and one who has taught in elementary and high schools, community colleges, and one private arts college. I don’t sit on any cultural boards, but it sounds like a fun sideline.

1. How can American professors learn to write about literature that isn’t a crude, pseudo-technical insult to the text it’s supposedly explicating?

Answer: Learn from those professors who do write for the student and general reading audience. To name a few: Mark Edmundson, whose wonderful meditation titled Why Read? asks and answers many of Mr Mallon’s questions, sometimes with more bite and wit, and answers with ample evidence; William S. Gass, more teacher than popular writer, by his own admission, is always interesting, always erudite; and then there is the lightning rod of controversy Harold Bloom who, say what you will about his politics and highly idiosyncratic nature toward literary study and writing, has helped bring millions of readers to read better books.

Many, many professors write for quality publications—book reviews and biographical studies, cultural examinations, essays on literary subjects—including The Atlantic, Harper’s, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and countless mainstream literary journals whose editorial integrity disallows unclear, ineffective prose. Likewise, the world’s best writers have put their opinions out there against the literature of their (and past) ages, with varying commercial success, including Italo Calvino’s Why Read the Classics?, Vladimir Nabokov’s collected lectures and the always entertaining “How to Read a Book”, and Milan Kundera’s The Art of the Novel and the newly published The Curtain.

I must say this for Mallon: Here, here! for asking the question. The problem as he states it lies often, I think, with how the academic (perhaps even that “popular writing” academic) asks his and her students to write. “Clear, effect writing” is what all academics want of their students, yet often the academic falls back on the writing style demanded by the so-called learned journals academics themselves must publish in for their own survival—and on whose placement tenure committees give so much weight. This style encourages the “in language” of the academy, a not-very-clear way of saying something that many people would argue against if they knew what the hell the writer was talking about.

On the other hand, who ever claimed academics knew how to write well, anyway? They are not, in fact, professional writers, in the sense that journalists, arts critics, or book authors can claim to be: accessible to both experts and a wide audience. Simply put, academics should look at professional writers for “how it’s done.” It’s not a difficult education program: write clearly and offer evidence to back up assertions. With practice, it’s not very difficult.

I do wish Mallon would have given examples (or named names) of a “crude, pseudo-technical insult” style of writing. Perhaps his mind revisited Foucault and Derrida, the great explainer and masterly dissembler? Both would get my vote: have you ever read Derrida’s collected Essays on Literature? Surely, however, Mallon does not pile all academic explication into the same putrid basket.

2. How can current undergraduate instruction in the humanities, mired as it is in jargon and political faddishness, hope to inspire at least a portion of the most gifted students to enter academic life rather than, say, business school or TV production?

Answer: Gifted students gravitate toward their intellectual “gifts”—mathematics, history, science, philosophy, art, writing, literature, music—despite jargon-prone instructors or those few who actually push their individual-political view inside the classroom. Likewise, generally speaking, from the evidence I have seen and read, and from those thousands of students I’ve taught and spoken with, few felt worn down by instruction into “settling” for business school or TV production. In other words, if you’re business oriented, you’re going to enroll in business classes (which, if we do a word-to-word comparison, we’ll find much more jargon and political huckstering than in humanities departments), and if you feel akin to the literary or philosophical edges of life, you overcome any poor instruction, departmental politic-gamesmanship played out in the classroom, and uninspired reading lists encountered along the way.

To meet Mallon’s question head on, in fact, is to buy into his assessment of humanities departments’ teaching skills or supposed agenda. I do not agree with his truth shading. Perhaps most professors do use phrases along a student’s academic path such as “paradigm shift,” “statement,” “learning simulation,” “discourse,” and even “your grades are horrible.” If so, then more learning potential for the student, I say. This is the English language, the American students’ native language (for the most part) and so they should learn how it works, what words mean, how to speak, to write, and to discuss various subjects using a variety of terms both general and specific, if at least always clear and effective.

What the real question for humanities departments is “How long are you going to be held hostage by students and education bean counters who view As and Bs as student rights once the tuition check has cleared?” Students must be re-educated in the nature of education: they must perform in order to get good grades, and thus succeed in gaining an understanding about how knowledge is acquired. Soft grading does not do this; catering to the “consumer” never rightly establishes the teacher-student relationship. Success in school is not getting the diploma. Success is how you have used your mind to figure out systems, found patterns, learned to communicate effectively, to write, and to answer intellectual questions and solve practical problems. An extended problem of poor learned (and teaching) is that too many students find that ‘school’ has ended with the fanfare of throwing mortarboards in the air.

3. Are we willing to make the effort to teach a new generation—one that’s never known a world without the wildly accessible Web—that words and ideas can in fact be owned, at least for a period of time?

Answer: Perhaps not; too few role models exist in society to effectively teach this, a fact gained simply by watching the news, observing the American culture of “Not my fault!” mentality, of course politics, or simply looking out the window. But those who make the effort—teachers, mostly—can start by stressing the effectiveness of The Golden Rule. Of course, the spectrum of business and government has hampered basic civic education for generations: businesses cheat from each other, steal ideas not their own to make money, and pass on the savings in Research & Development to consumers in the form of overpricing everything to get that last red penny from kids’ pockets. Don’t agree? When’s the last time you spent under $100 for a decent pair of gym shoes?

On a more intimate scale, perhaps, we can teach our children—because of course learning right from wrong begins in the home—that breaking both real and philosophic laws have consequences. This is basically the same way humans begat society and the notion that you don’t simply steal the neighbor kid’s lunch money because you can, or murder your spouse for spite. This being the paradigm, we humans still have a way to go, obviously. Education by example is increasingly hidden behind people who talk shit, shiny objects, and television.

4. Even so, are owners of intellectual property willing to realize that longer and longer copyright terms are doing more to inhibit than promote creativity?

Answer: Owners of intellectual property, for example books and music, have every right to own their works as long as they live, and to have that ownership pass to their heirs, for a reasonable amount of time. This does not prohibit creativity, but in fact enhances its chance to flourish because of market forces that demand writers, artists, musicians, scientists, etc., to supply their followers with new, better stories, songs, paintings, inventions, and what all.

Let’s also look at the root of Mallon’s question from a different perspective: could we not replace his obvious inference to writers and artists—recall “words and ideas”— with that of scientists and manufacturers? When a CEO of a pharmaceutical company, or its scientists, die, should people then get their Prozac, Cialis and Viagra for free?

5. How can the contemplative mind survive in the multitasking, ADD-inducing world of digitization? Are we willing to face the downside of this great electronic boon? Do we really want students reading electronic texts of the classics that are festooned with more links than a Wikipedia entry? Aren’t a few moments of quiet bafflement preferable to an endless steeplechase across Web page after Web page?

Answer: The contemplative mind turns off the digitized world every day and picks up a book, or writes in a journal, or sits quietly near a window, or takes a walk down the street or in a wood. Any contemplative mind knows this already—the 12 year old who disowns video games and watching television sports, or the 21 year old in the midst of that digitized life among college friends. Conversely, the non-contemplative mind sees boredom in everything. The difference between the two is personality. Isn’t this obvious enough? The world has intellectuals and it has dumb asses. Hasn’t it always been thus?

NO, I do not want students to read electronic texts, but if that’s what is available and they enjoy scrolling and looking at a back-lit screen, who are we old-school types to complain? I live outside the USA right now, and so could not carry my 1,000+ book library on my back. But with the help (and my donation to) the Gutenburg Project, I have Proust’s In Search of Times Past on my computer, along with Jefferson’s Complete Writings, The Life of Johnson, Orwell’s Essays, Nietzche, the Bible, and dozens of other important (to me) texts. What’s the big deal? Go with what’s available, Mr. Mallon. Do you still have a turntable and vinyl, too?

Likewise, all those links that can take on-line readers to an explanation of the obscure reference, will in fact, I think, help them stay with that text, and perhaps to enjoy it. Some will surf through one and then another link, away from the original. But even they will get back to the original document. To take an example from “the old days”: Shakespeare wrote in beautiful, though at times archaic, language, and so too wrote in metaphor that referenced mythology, history, religion, etc. Shakespeare publishers from the 19th century onward hired eminently qualified scholars to write footnotes to explain to students and literature lovers those textual references. We call this “the footnote,” written as it is the bottom of each page (if you are lucky), or at least printed in the back of the book. So what’s the different between that textual “link” and the electronic “link” embedded in Internet texts? Besides, just like any other kid who wants to figure things out for himself (such as life), readers will still enjoy those few moments of bafflement before consulting the footnote.

I understand that to someone not of the newest generation, the digitized life can seem like ADD-inducing insanity. I am not of the “new generation,” yet I often find my attention waning because of all the digital possibilities (and paraphernalia) around me. As I write this sentence, I have music playing from one computer, Skype messages pinging in the background, and four browser tabs open, linked to my email, Arts & Letters Daily, Wikipedia, and the Oxford English Dictionary. And, oh yeah, my phone has rung four times in an hour. Working this way is, I believe, called multitasking, a silly word taken from the computer world, aptly enough, but quickly (and logically) applied to human work—even of the intellectual variety. Actually, I’m not sure when people have not ever multitasked, even though the word did not enter our language until 1966.  (James Murray, first editor of the OED, complained in a letter to a friend that he was hampered daily with reading proof sheets, writing definitions, reviewing illustrative quotation slips, writing letters, and overseeing his sub-editors. He did this for 35 years, beginning in 1882, without ever using a computer. How ever did he not go insane?)

6. Are we willing to consider the irony that our unceasing communication with one another—the dozen extra phone calls that we all now make each day; the two dozen pointless e-mails—is making us less human? And that we might have more important things to say if we could re-master the lost art of shutting up, for at least a half hour every now and then?

Answer: Here we have a distinct difference of opinion. Sitting in a room reading a book—or writing one—or in an office cubicle working a spreadsheet on a computer for some dispassionate company, these tasks make us less human. Irony is indeed in play here, because, on the other hand, talking on the phone to a colleague, friend, or family re-establishes our link with humanity. Pointless emails, and the creative thought that even a pointless email entails, is a quiet moment in, I agree, an otherwise noisome world where pointless talk is supplied by everyone from the janitor to the CEO. So yes, please, SHUT UP. And after you’ve done that, think about re-mastering the lost art of conversation as opposed to small talk, group-think, or passing along orders in the form of office niceties.

7. Are American writers, artists, and thinkers truly prepared to admit that Islamofascism is a real, and even imminent, threat to everything they are accustomed to thinking, saying, and creating?

Answer: No, most are not, perhaps. Those who have been asked are concerned. I am. Islamofascism is real, and threatens speech, criticism, and art. Those murdered in the name of “the religion of peace” have lost everything they thought was by the 21st century taken for granted: freedom to call a spade a spade. All reasonable-thinking people should find this outrageous and fight back. How to do this is, as the bard said, the rub. Teach the fanatic? Pacify the murderous religious minded? Make nice-nice with zealots? Don’t we have enough of that with America’s own home-grown religious fascists trying to change the USA into its own form of theocracy?

8. Can the National Endowment for the Humanities, even as it continues laudable effort to make Americans better acquainted with their own history, learn to resist a platitudinous rhetoric that sometimes makes it seem like the National Endowment for Classroom Civics?

Answer: No. An arts/humanities board funded in any part by the government becomes instantly a political tool kicked about by each ideological group. This board, regardless of its makeup—or perhaps because of its politicized makeup—compromises its essence to the ultimate powers that fund it, and of course to those who sit on it. As such, it relinquishes its ability to act as art’s agent because art functions—by definition—as opposition to and critic of established community norms (especially conservatism).

9. Are Americans in general prepared to admit that their writing and speaking skills are in no better shape than their waistlines?

Answer: Well, perhaps I misspoke when I said that none of these questions was rhetorical. While there is a portion of American’s who will answer for those other Americans who can neither speak well enough to answer this question with honesty and without violence. I it irony that the Americans to whom this question is directed have likely never heard of The American Scholar, much less can give you a proper definition of “American” or “Scholar.” Believe me … I am embarrassed by the potential correctness of my answer.

10. Are we also willing to admit that the universalization of English is more apparent than real? And that our general failure to know foreign languages is an act of both laziness and arrogance—one that threatens America’s legitimate claims to leadership in the world?

Answer: As someone who has traveled the world, I can say with confidence that the universalization of English is decidedly apparent, and not real at all. However, when it comes to money, and to people wanting to make it outside their own country, English is the “money language” that opens all doors. Ignorance of foreign languages is a shame on America, yet without the interconnectedness that European countries share, Americans can hardly be blamed for taking Spanish in high school and college just to read the road signs in Texas, New Mexico, Southern California, and Miami.

THERE ARE FOUR kinds of people Mallon has tried to reach with his questions, as seems obvious: The Teacher, The Student, The Intellectual, and The General-American Public. Each has somehow failed Mallon, evidently. He wants an accounting. I’m with him, frankly. I’ve encountered lots of bad teachers, poor students, self-absorbed intellectuals, and ignorant average Americans. They do not, however, outnumber the mediocre, fair, good, excellent, and brilliant that can be counted among those four groups.

Mallon, however, has not in his questions really pressed the student, that person whom he calls the “new generation.” I’m not sure why. He seems to essentially place the burden of making kids (even those into their twenties) better educated and better citizens, on teachers and “the system” of academia. This is highly unfair to teachers at every education level. It also gives students just one more excuse to lay their ignorance and/or failure in the classroom and in society on anyone’s but their own shoulders. Of course the student needs to learn how to be a student, and that should come from, firstly, home, and then within the formal school environment. Ultimately, though—and this will be obvious to many parents and to good students—kids must take their education into their own hands. The teacher has a job to do, and he and she will have that job regardless of the lazy student. In a class of 20 and above, teaching five classes or more each semester, no one can force the teacher to take responsibility of hand-holding lazy students. If a student is willing to try, I’ve not come across a teacher who did not make extra time to help. Not one! On the other hand, if a student continually refuses to be a part of his or her own education, what does anyone expect a teacher to do? At this point, we must look at the culprits: the student and the parents. So it bears worth repeating: the student must take responsibility for her and his education.

Students need to read more. Everyone needs to read more! Of anything. And all things. Particularly books (the sustained thought as written speech), magazines (opinion magazines, but also a collection of news and business magazines), and journals (monthly or quarterly) that publish articles on myriad subjects, where a student will likely find SOMETHING he or she is interested in. And if students are not willing to read—to be helpful and find interest in something that the world has to offer—hey, the world needs ditch diggers, too.

Perhaps students should be encouraged to start their own blogs, on a subject that interests them (not one chosen for them or supplied as one in a multiple choice group by the academic). I know this sounds appalling to many academics, but blogging—journaling—can transform the “not yet” (a place fertile with original thoughts and ideas) into a learning program that can make written speech and communication something people strive for. Look, people used to take pride in literacy just 100 years ago. Simple literacy! To read a book and write a letter. The journals of Civil War soldiers, from the little-educated recruit to not-much-further-educated officers, put today’s high school and many college graduates to shame. Those journals show the people of a youthful America knew how to express themselves, how to construct a sentence, how to tell a story with sustained narrative, how to think critically and engage in creative problem solving.

There is plenty to be happy about with American educators, students, and intellectuals if you choose to look. You might have to look hard, and look behind the headlines, read through the politicization of fractious rhetoric, peruse magazines and learned journals (but beware the jargon). It’s there. This thought is actually a bit more difficult for me to write without cringing a little, as much as think about, since I have been critical of these same groups for decades. With age, however, may have arose some wisdom … along with the crankiness and bitchy attitudes about the crumbling world around us.

Lest we forget, however, every generation has complained about its youth, their disrespect for parents, self-indulgence instead of concentrated work, tyranny over teachers, constant chatter, and contempt for authority. Then they grow up and attribute those same attitudes to the next generation.