Phillip Roth – The Plot Against America
Michael Chabon – The Yiddish Policemen’s Union
Alice Munro – Open Secrets
Ian McEwan – Enduring Love
Charles Dickens – Hard Times
Frederick Douglass – Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Henry Adams – The Education of Henry Adams (first five chapters)
Louis Wirth – The Ghetto
Jack London – John Barleycorn
Calvin Trillin – Tepper Isn’t Coming Out
Arundhati Roy – The God of Small Things
Benjamin Kunkel – Indecision
Archive Page 2
I plan to enter a doctoral program in Urban Education Policy in Fall
2007. I will study part-time while continuing to teach high school English. I
have taught in the same public alternative/transfer school since I entered the
profession four years ago through the NYC Teaching Fellows program.
Throughout the next five to ten years I will be actively
engaged in study, teaching, and research directed at improving urban education.
Using the forum of aimlessmiss, I plan to record my thoughts and
experiences in hopes that the practice of writing will assist me in documenting
the development of my ideas.
For those unfamiliar with the latest NYC DOE lingo, the "aim" is an integral part of any satisfactory lesson plan. It should appear in the upper left-hand corner of the board, printed legibly. Pretty handwriting goes a long way toward earning a positive reputation.
The aim is essentially the goal for the class period. Each literacy coach I’ve had insists on a different formula for writing the aim. Some say it must be an open-ended question, others prefer the gerund expression, and still others just prefer whatever aim they come up with. I use the gerund/infinitive expression model, though I generally keep the same one for the length of the unit, and I alternately label it the "goal" or the "focus." (Here’s an example: to analyze Tennessee Williams’ use of literary elements in A Streetcar Named Desire. Brilliant, huh.)
My academic and professional interests are varied – surely I
have ideas and biases, which is to say I approach this project with 26 years of
life experience – but I do not at this time seek to advance any particular agenda.
My question to readers:
To what extent is the character development, of the individual as well as the group, reflective of historical memory? If history is largely defined by and for the victors at the expense of validating victims’ experiences, what role do outsiders have in making judgments and casting blame?
This afternoon I read Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. I’ve also almost finished The Ghetto by Louis Wirth. The Wirth book is a sociological study that examines how the physical
and social space of the ghetto influenced the development of
specifically *Jewish* characteristics over the last century, give or
take.
Douglass vividly depicts the psychologically crippling effects of having one’s humanity denied under slavery. The negative impact of slavery on the black family is well-documented. Many of the African American students I have taught (to distinguish among the *black*-skinned; here I exclude immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean) look back to life in the pre-emancipation and pre-Civil Rights eras to explain away the condition in which they find themselves today. Many guilt-susceptible liberals also indulge this theory. Certainly there is truth here, but I think its easier to blame the past than to fess up to a less flattering present.
On an unrelated note, another popular scapegoat among kids in Brooklyn is the CIA, also known in the circles I frequent as "the man," for allegedly having intentionally introduced crack to the inner cities for the purpose of keeping black folks down.
Yesterday I watched an interview with James McWhorter on one of those CUNY public television segments with remarkably low production value. A linguistics professor at Berkeley, McWhorter is best known as the author of Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America. Which I found repetitive and rather poorly written. But anyway, McWhorter asserts that most of the troubles of black Americans are traceable to their own learned helplessness, much more so than to any structural legacies of slavery, segregation, or even the racism that is so salient in contemporary America. McWhorter can get away with blaming the victims; he’s black (very light-skinned, I might add, like cafe au lait). What about the pig mentally challenged?
Is it, as Peter Gomes claims in the introduction to the Signet Classic edition of The Narrative, because:
Race is the continuing moral dilemma of America, and the inheritance of slavery its ineradicable moral stain. The further we are removed from the circumstances of legal slavery and legal and social racial segregation, and the more eager we are to move beyond that inheritance and on to other issues, the more persistent that awful legacy becomes…
The problem of race in America is a tragedy of Greek, even biblical, proportions, where indeed the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generation, and beyond.
Is race singularly taboo in American culture, more so than religion or class? Why do we get so uncomfortable around it?
All this Junie B controversy has me thinking about grammar.
The Junie B series (according to the recent NYTimes article) follows a rather typical young girl through her typicalish kiddish adventures – so far so good – but the parental outrage directed at the wildly popular chapter books so adored by the Ramona Quimby crowd center on the improper spelling and grammar used by the mischievous protagonist.
I must disclaim that I’ve not read the primary documents myself, just the commentary.
Anyway, what’s got folks all worked up is this youngster’s highly realistically shaky command of the niceties of Standard English. It seems she systematically fails to adverbalize her adverbs with the requisite ly and does that thing kids her age tend to do with superlatives, saying funner and bestest.
So some uptight helicopter parents who clearly need real problems in their lives object, concerned about the example this fictional child is setting for their precious little blank slate. ”I find this the mental equivalent of toxic waste,” says one particularly annoying parent figure quoted by NYT. As if the poor kid will break out in AAVE under Junie’s influence. Her greatest failing is an overly literal application of the rules of English grammar.
AAVE has replaced Ebonics as the scholarly term for Black English. African American Vernacular English.
Now for the part where I attempt to render relevant the mental spittle dribbling down the screen. I’ll be brief.
One of my greatest responsibilities as an English teacher in the ghetto is to expose my students to the language and customs of the dominant culture so that they might have a wispy dream tendril of landing a decent job if they so wish. Imagine that most seventeen to twenty-one year old alternative high school students in Brooklyn consider it a revelation that conversating is not a word.
AAVE, Ebonics, ghetto English, whatever – is fine, a language in its own right with rules and internal logic. Like Standard English.
But the Culture of Power examined by Lisa Delpit in Other People’s Children is an exclusionary entity that cares nothing for structured rule-based languages that are not its own. And whatever the C of P says, goes.
Forget conversating; better dialogue instead.
Just home from Croatia. Image at right (thanks Sammy) of the now flaming city of Dubrovnik in Dalmatia. Which ignited three days after we left. Not sure yet if the house we stayed in still stands. Yet another layer of history for American tourists to comment on: "It’s so old… there’s just so much history…"
Notice the roofs. Some show the centuries; others are new, in a relative way, re-shingled after heavy shelling in the Bosnian War of the early 90s.
They call Dubrovnik the Pearl of the Adriatic. Or the Croatian Riviera. The Fabulous European Tourists flock there.
The city does capture the essence of PlaceTimeSpace – that is, the convergence and rigorous mixing of the physical and the temporal, creating a entirely new thing – Space.
I’m pretty wrapped up with this sort of conceptweb lately, I guess. The Jew stuff, the travel; winding slippery thoughts of my work, the students’ psycho-social identity-construction process.
Too Vague. Take Two…
I have a meeting with my rabbi tomorrow morning. Long story short, I’ve decided to convert and she has agreed to guide me through the process. The synagogue is not formally affiliated with any branch of American Judaism but is closest in ethos to the Reconstructionist movement. It does not have its own space, instead using a storefront church.
Recent reading spawned some ideas and questions which I will begin to formulate now in preparation for tomorrow’s meeting.
The link between place and identity. Yesterday I returned from a week in California’s Sonoma County, home of Jack London and wineries. London’s oeuvre was greatly informed by his travels and a near-obsessive focus on place as a locus for the psychological. London quite literally revised the natural world, thus rendering it a cultural artifact. His plans for Wolf House and other, realized structures on a 1400 acre property in the Valley of the Moon demonstrate his knack for imposing his will on the environment. Jewish characters in The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon and The Plot Against America by Phillip Roth are strikingly different in their approach to the place-identity link. So I’m wondering:
What exactly does the state of Israel represent in the modern Jewish-diasporic imagination? (Security, perhaps, or irrefutable evidence of their existence as a people?) Does Jewish identity depend on the existence of Israel? Is diaspora life inherently deficient?
To what extent are these alternate histories rooted in the paranoid impulse v. something else? What did London have that Roth’s Newark residents and Chabon’s Sitka inhabitants lack? How can we reconcile the different psychological profiles found in the two texts, vis a vis government repression – the alarm, the sense of victimhood in Roth and the stoic resignation in Chabon? Perhaps its partly due to the different versions of what is essentially repression – malice in Roth v. institutional neglect in Chabon? Could it also be connected to the impact of Place (Newark v. Alaska) on the psychological response?
photo by adampadam on flickr
Now, what I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to the Facts, sir!
Courtesy of Dickens. The first paragraph of Hard Times. In the midst of all this summer pleasure reading I can have not managed to bring myself to read past the first twenty boring pages. Yes, I am an English teacher and yet I regularly dismiss books as "boring." But I have my reasons, and that’s the key.
I’ve been tagged by Educator on the Edge. So, eight facts:
1. I am beginning doctoral studies in Urban Education Policy in the fall. I plan to juggle teaching and a full course load for the first (next) two years. Wish me luck.
2. I am in the process of converting to Judaism. The man I plan to marry is culturally Jewish.
3. I don’t know what I wanna be when I grow up.
4. I worked at a teen crisis hotline when I was in high school. 774-TALK. Advertisements for the hotline ran on th local public access station. My first caller threatened suicide. Girl Problems.
5. I love spicy food.
6. I stuttered as a child, even when saying my own name.
7. I love my new olive green baseball cap.
8. We got back this afternoon from our week in the Adirondacks. Early Monday morning I’m going to SF and Sonoma wine country with co-worker Ms D. Be back the 21st.
Rules:
1. Let others know who tagged you.
2. Players start with 8 random facts about themselves.
3. Those who are tagged should post these rules and their 8 random facts.
4. Players should tag 8 other people and notify them they have been tagged.
And I tag:
the Pierian spring
Ed in the Apple
Are we doing anything today?
Jen in Translation
Bitch PhD
Extra Credit
Life After the Rubber Room
Lost in the Ozone
Summer is officially here. I’ve just returned from my thrice annual week of pure relaxation in the Adirondacks. Now it is time to plan for a productive summer.
Reading list
The Plot Against America (Roth) – done!
The Yiddish Policemen’s Handbook (Chabon) – done!
Open Secrets (Munro) - done!
Enduring Love (McEwan) – done!
Hard Times (Dickens) – this one and the two below for my grad program…
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
The Education of Henry Adams
John Barleycorn (London) – not my own choice, requirement of summer fellowship
Kavalier & Clay (Chabon) - for purposes of comparison with his new release
Caucasia (Senna) – part of my classroom library
Crossing to Safety (Stegner) - academic and domestic life
The Descent of Alette (Notley) - epic poem in the vein of the Inferno
The God of Small Things (Roy) – bestseller from a few years back I never read
Tepper Isn’t Going Out (Trillin) – my parents declared it a must-read
My Brother (Kincaid) - the only book of hers I haven’t read yet
Absurdistan (Shteyngart) – loved loved loved the Russian Debutante’s Handbook
The Executioner’s Song (Mailer) – 1000 pages… we’ll see…
If Murdoch were my boss I’d be slave to the golden handcuffs.
Maybe I should trash it all and go work for the Post.
As negatively as it may reflect on me, I am compelled to draw attention to the fact that a grand total of five (5) people have commented so far on my post about the public masturbator.
This is actually the most-commented-upon post in the history of Aimlessmiss the blog. No offense intended toward the five thoughtful leavers-of-comments. Your empathy is much appreciated; it really did calm my upset belly feeling.
I can’t help but wonder if I am sleeping in the wrong bed here with this urban education shtick. But you can still play with intellectually justifiable sexuality via Bitch PhD.
Self-doubt is so boring.
the perfect public high school, according to Dennis Fermoyle
Published June 23, 2007 Uncategorized 1 Comment
Dennis Fermoyle of From the Trenches of Public Ed shares his vision of the ideal high school. This guy knows what he’s talking about.
I especially appreciate the clause stipulating that administrators be culled from the ranks of the most experienced and effective teachers, and that they continue teaching at least one class. I believe that teachers would have more respect for administrators with some classroom duties, and that said administrators would be more in-tune with the challenges teachers face in the classroom.
