So, I really wasn't in any kind of trance when I was writing last time. In fact, I don't think I ever go into any kind of transcendental state when I am writing. The only change I feel as a writer from when I am not writing is that I now am more aware of what I am thinking and less able to make sense of the world.

What I mean by this is that when I am just thinking, I can begin to put things together, to synthesize and combine. But when I write, I don't seem to have that luxury. Besides, now I have to go put out the trash...

I just read an interesting article by Bob Yagelski from SUNY Albany. It is about the importance of writing as an experience as opposed to writing as a means of creating texts. Many of the writers he talks about seem to get into a sort of Emersonian trance like experience and well...

Laurel is hungry so my trance is over.

perfection

"Why do people want to spell tacos with an apostrophe? Here it is again!" This is my daughter talking about a local ad in a penny saver. Some time ago, I had gone into Hot Harry's Burrito Bar and complained to one of my ex-students about their spelling of Taco's on the window in front of the restaurant. He said he had mentioned it to the boss some time ago, but I think he was covering. Probably only a handful of people ever notice or care. They have fixed the apostrophe.

The larger question is for myself. Why do I care? The error did not "hinder comprehension" in any way. The answer to this is layered somewhere in Nietzsche's idea that it is in our nature to impose our will on the world, to make it conform to the standards we create. He says that all moral systems are "natural" in the sense that they always operate at an almost instinctive level. We almost always feel that somehow, somewhere, deep down, we are right. Nietzsche said we cannot abide by Laissez Alles (Let it Go). We must insist on things to conform to a rule.

This may explain why when playing Dicetopia over the break, Whitney and Laurel had to check my list of six letter words beginning with the letter S. You got 30 seconds to come up with the longest list. Mine was the longest by about two or three words. I thought we would just say how many words we came up with and be done with it. But Whitney asks, "read off your list" to me. Like I need monitoring... I was a famous cheater as a child, and I continue with that tradition, at least from her point of view. I consider my cheating simple carelessness with a slight benefit to me. I misread one of my words, and they both pounced, saying that has seven letters. Now Laurel pulls her pencil out and starts crossing off things and I'm down to 10, equal to the number she had. Now I'm feeling attacked and singled out, so I look at her list. It has a combination "word" made of two words, so I cross that off. Then I read another one that is misspelled, and so I cross that off too. And to press the issue, I'm not allowing possessives, so their's is out too! Why not just Laissez Aller?

Let me tell another story- actually two related stories... It's Christmas Eve, and Pastor Dave is giving his children's sermon and he explains that Jesus' birthday is on December 25. I look over at Whitney in the other choir loft, and she looks back and we both shake our heads- no, we are saying via telepathy... no one knows when Jesus was born; that date was taken from a Roman festival celebrating the winter soltstice. Everyone knows that! Stop lying to the kids. Laissez Aller? It's Christmas Sunday now, and I've gone to church with Jane and Vinny. No one to kibbutz with in my pew because the Cervonis are ushering. So the pastor starts explaining how journeys are so central to the human story, how the Greeks told so many stories about having to go do something somewhere and get back safely. I'm thinking... yes, my sci fi and fantasy kids would be thinking, yes we know all about the Quest! It is the core to any adventure story. A knight, a princess, a dangerous road, a dragon, a dark knight (nemesis), a holy grail, and a deeper lesson learned. That's the formula. But this pastor starts well, and then makes a terrible error. He says, as an example, "Like Ulysses and the Golden Fleece..." I start thinking... Odysseus never went after the golden fleece- that was Jason with his Argonauts. As soon as we return to the house, I'm on line checking. Yes, Ulysses has a golden fleece adventure, but that's some lame video game. The real Ulysses/Odysseus never did that! Did he bother to check? I know.... Laisses Aller, right?

Right now, I'm going to have to go on line because I can't remember if the phrase from Nietzsche is Laisses Aller or Laisses Allez. If I'm wrong, and it's the second, I'll need to go back and edit this post so that it's right. Or maybe I'll try... just this once... to laisses allez.

Undercover Boss

Having read a website about Undercover Boss and then being in the room while it was on.... tells me that either the entire website is a scam or ... people are idiots with no idea what they're watching. The whole show is simply stupid. The format is forced and obvious, the writing is tedious, and the story... I should say "story" because it's not a story in the sense of being interesting or having characters...

The website was all complimentary and gushing about how interesting it was to see a boss working in his own company. Like we were supposed to believe that any of this was real. And when I say real I should say "real" in the sense of being not set up in advance and mediated and programmed. Before I go into the problems with reality and representations and the differences, let me just say that this is really bad television. It certainly isn't art.

It's almost like we're supposed to believe that a CEO cares about his employees. For the sake of a good reality show.... he can act this way... so nice to see the big man have his heart break listening to his employee's hard knock life. Will he return to the board room and give his workers a chance to unionize or raise their wages? Please. This garbage is just set up to make us all think that someday a boss will listen to the workers. The real world is far more complicated than this. Real bosses would honestly replace every worker they have with a computer if they could.

It's nice to see a phone operator seeing the issue more clearly than the boss. His apparent "disappointment" with his Machiavellian customer service person is just a sham. Anyone who thinks this CEO "learned" all sorts of lessons needs to do a .... reality check.

I remembered one of my thoughts I intended to blog on...

There are now Elves on people's shelves? It has been explained to me that the elf watches the child and reports back to Santa on the child's behavior. The parent moves the stoolie elf from place to place to increase the illusion and the sense of Big Brother watching...

This sounds much like Jeremy Bentham's design for a prison, called the Panopticon. You can look it up... Foucault writes about Bentham's ideas in his book on punishment. I can't recall the title. Anyway, Bentham said prisons should be designed with all prisoners on the outer wall of a circular structure with the guard in the center. The prisoner would have what appeared to be constant supervision from the guard because he never knew if there was anyone watching, and the guard had total access and could hide from the prisoner's view.

My suggestion for truly effective Benthamite control of your children is to put an elf on the shelf with a voice in it that can scare the kid as well. As you see the kid misbehaving, the elf would say, I'm telling Santa!

We were driving down the highway this week and my daughter was disturbed by a billboard with a big nasty cop in the frame.... The words said something to the effect of "we see you when you're speeding" She was disturbed by the use of Santa as a law enforcement tool. But aren't we already using Santa as a law enforcement tool?

I would like to share an observation from Machiavelli's The Prince: "The Romans never liked the dictum we constantly hear from the wise men of our day, that time will take care of things... the Romans liked to take care of things... because time will sweep everything before it and can bring good things as well as bad, bad things as well as good" (14),

I'm not sure why I liked this so much, except to say that I often fall back on time as if it were my back yard hammock. If I don't want to bother with something, I avoid it, figuring that time will work it out in the end. Of course, I'm not much of a Roman. Like the wise men of our day, I am far more likely to let time take care of things.

Where was I?

The blog problem for me is that I often forget what I consider my best thoughts. If I could blog simultaneously while driving, I would be famous by now because I swear I am brilliant when I drive. By the time I get to my computer, the great thoughts are just so much pablum. Here I am trying to remember the great idea I was going to write about. Was it politics? Religion? Education? Who knows.

I must say, on the political side, I can almost bear to watch the news these days. For a while there I had pretty much given up any hope. The tax compromise that Obama signed this past week was pretty hard to swallow. Many commentators wondered if he was just too soft to do the job. And I started to wonder too. What happened to the guy who actually ran on a platform of increasing taxes? For the first time in my memory, a president said he would raise taxes and then went back on his word and didn't raise them (on the wealthiest Americans). His explanation for this was that it was good for the country and that was the best deal he could get with the Republicans.

Was this just a case of hard nosed pragmatism? Or was it something weaker and less noble? Can a person who actually looks out for the well being of most of us (a utilitarian) still govern today? I started to wonder. And then, before I knew what was happening, Don't Ask was repealed and they were passing the STAR treaty and they even managed to make commercials less offensive. One congressman who voted against this last measure was reported to have asked, "when are we going to stop... will we start controlling what can be advertised soon?" Moments like these really make one wonder if there should be a minimum test for members of congress.... Anyway, I have a bit of hope for the future of American Politics... for now...

Philosophy of Facebook

Today in philosophy class, we talked about my facebook observation... the one where I decided that facebook is a series of unrelated and pointless events lacking any cohesive narrative (no meta-narrative). My students explained that I am just clueless, which is probably true, and that was just my point. My cluelessness is evidence of the fact that I lack the context from which I can gather any significance regarding the events. On this same line of inquiry, and for the same reason, my sister in law said she had read a teenager's facebook entries and could make no sense of them. She had no understanding of the overlying (or underlying) narrative.

We also talked about blogging. One of my students (J) asked a fairly simple question: why would anyone blog? Another student asked what a blog was (J2). We determined that it is all about ego. Somehow, somewhere, the blogger must be saying to him or herself that what I have to say is so important, that it must be put out there for others to read. MJ was right about this (not Michael Jordon)- one must believe what one says is true to want to put it out there for people to read... even if no one else is reading it. At that point they all made fun of me because I told them that even my wife refuses to follow my blog...

Facebook rules

And yet, the only conversation I've had about the similarities between the Annales school and facebook was with my sister on facebook. I suppose I might say that what Facebook lacks in depth and seriousness it makes up for in exposure. Can't beat em?

The First Rule of Facebook

Thus, wars etc. have no more importance than whether I am writing in my bathrobe. I'm returning to the blog world... for a while...

This was an entry I made on facebook. I have to be honest- I can be honest here because there are very few people reading it, and if they go to this blog, it's their own fault.

Facebook is about the most superficial and shallow experience I can think of. You are limited to 420 characters, and so your thoughts have to be jammed into sound bites. Second, your "status" is pretty much a way of telling people how cool you are or sharing things with people that really don't matter.

I read the news feeds and think... I don't care if you're shopping. How is that significant? Yes, it is interesting because I know you, but that's about it. Of course, that's the point of a social network isn't it? My first paragraph above refers to an entry I made on face book. I had written some 900 words or so about the Annales school of history (French). I went to Wikapedia and pulled off a description of the approach they had to history in which all meta-narratives are called into question and deconstructed. Once you deconstruct all meta narratives, all events of history are of equal (or no) value. Thus, the fact that I am sitting in my bathrobe typing my status is of equal value to the fact that North Korea bombed South Korea.

Thus, facebook makes events significant to only my "friends" whether they want to see what I'm thinking or not. In the end though, there is a meta narrative even in facebook. No one wants to read what I'm thinking, and so I will probably lose all my friends because I am not staying within the unwritten rules of facebook. I think there is almost an unspoken rule much like the one in Fight Club... the first rule of facebook is that no one talks about facebook on facebook. Except newbies like me. Thus, I need to learn the rules of facebook, otherwise, my friend list will go down to zero and it will be more like blogging, except that I need to cut my posts down below 420 characters...

Giving credit where credit is due...

My image above (of a coffee cup and a glass of milk) are borrowed from my daughter's collection of photos... I couldn't ask her permission to use it as she is sound asleep... mea culpa Whit!

Just a little update on my dog metaphor. Due to Whitney's heroic efforts in the ravine, both Gable and Thumper are safe at home and Thumper is looking up at me as if to say, why did you link me to a wandering Siberian Husky? Inde has to work into this metaphor somehow. Inde is the dog who is perhaps a little like Switzerland. He never does anything wrong except occasionally steal food when no one is watching. In our last adventure, Gable was 3rd Reich Germany and Thumper was Poland. I suppose no country should enter into a linkage like that. In fact, Gable has always been a bad link for other dogs. He once dragged one of my other dogs into a highway. Note to self: don't hook any dogs to Gable. Applying it to world politics? Avoid crazy dictators.

Speaking of which, if you haven't seen "Fairgame" (the Valerie Plame story), it is worth seeing. You'll need to figure out which crazy dictator I am referring to (Sadaam or W?). Watching that movie, you have to wonder how Dick Cheney and Carl Rove are still allowed to comment on world politics. They pretty much demonstrated their lack of sound judgement a long time ago...

The problem with metaphors and owning dogs

Yesterday I attempted to compare Robert Shuman's continued support for European unity to my bright idea to attach my Husky to my Australian terrier so that they could not run away. It has been working pretty well. Shuman's theory was that if he could tie other countries together economically, they would find it much more difficult to fight militarily. What I used as a comparison is that when countries (and dogs) are left to operate on their own, they run amok. Tied together, I argued, they are more likely to stay in bounds. This morning, my analogy exploded when I went out to get my dogs, and they were no where in sight. My assumption was that they were probably near by. Bad assuption. After driving around the neighborhood, I returned to the ravine behind our house to call for them. I could hear Thumper (the Terrier) barking. I could not climb down the bank without risking re-injuring my ankle... and I was wearing a bathrobe, so I risked my daughter's life instead. She clambered down the ravine and found them tied together to a tree. Suffice it to say, I will not try out this tie them together theory again.

The question is, does that mean that Shuman is wrong and that countries should not tie their fates together? Does the fact that my metaphor exploded all over me this morning have any import on world politics?

This morning, South Korea responded to a North Korean bombing by sending fighters to return fire. Are we just tying ourselves to a Husky who will drag us into the ravine here?

My attempt at a rough draft of the new Rebel Rebel paper

Unfortunately, I can't cut and paste it in here. I wrote it in Word, and will not retype it. So... look at the links on edline if you are curious...

To those who see finishing Camus' essay much like Sisyphus pushing his rock up the hill, know this- there will be an end to it. Of course, this, Camus points out, is what we all hope for- a finish line to give meaning to the journey...

My struggle with Qs 15-38 (pp. 297-306)

How does Camus feel about history? He says it can then "no longer be presented as an object of worship"(302). Instead, history is an opportunity to be rendered fruitful by vigilant rebellion. Thus, we cannot simply sit back and conclude from history that the struggle is over. Tension continues. History is to be struggled against. "It is those who know how to rebel... against history who really advance its interests"(302).

Camus says that Christianity has replied by the annunciation of the kingom and of eternal life, which demands faith. Camus explains that this waiting has worn us down, postponing for too long. Materialism tries to answer the problem (the injustice and the suffering of the world)by saying that all things are determined by physical laws and that there is no sense in complaining. We should all just wait until (as Marx and Hegel argued) it sorts itself out. Once again, this requires faith in the future. This is why Camus sees Marxism and Christianity as being so similar.

So to whom shall we turn? Sisyphyus was Camus' hero in the 1930s, but now it is Prometheus. Camus says that "an injustice remains inextricably bound to all suffering" and that Prometheus' silence cries out in protest. His power is the power to rebel. This idea of Prometheus bound is probably asking us to look at Aeschylus' play... see Wikapedia- "Prometheus Bound". He is punished for thwarting Zeus' plan to obliterate the human race. Thus Prometheus is the rebel against god, but he does so for the sake of mankind. After irritating Zeus even more (he refuses to tell him that one of his own descendents (Hercules) will try to overthrow him), Zeus casts our hero into the Abyss with a thunderbolt. And what has man done with this gift? He "has seen men rail and turn agianst him... until all that remains ... is his power to rebel in order to save from murder him who can still be saved (you and me?) without surrendering tot he arrogance of blasphemy"(304).

This story might seem similar to another one you've heard before. The heroism of Prometheus is that he has a "strange form of love" (304) which rebellion cannot exist without. Abandoning God, these types are condemned to live for those who, like themselves, cannot live... for the humiliated. Those who like Karamazov cry, "If all are not saved, what good is the salvation of one only"? Another example of this kind of strange love is that of the Catholic prisoners who refuse communion because the Church made communion obligatory. Thus, they risk their own damnation to allow man the free will to be damned. "This insange generosity is the generosity of rebellion"(304). Thus, rebellion (in its purest outburst) gives birth to existence. It is love and fecundity or it is nothing at all. This rebellion, Camus recounts, is contaminated, forgets its origins, and becomes a murderous machine (see Hitler?). But at the end of this tunnel, there is a light. One we already can sense or feel, but for which we must fight (struggle). Beyond the limits of nihilism, we are preparing a renaissance (new birth).. but few of us know it, says Camus. Now go read "The Second Coming" by Yeats and read about Kalyayev.

My answers to #s 1-14 (297-306)

I am going to take a stab at the questions on Thought at the Meridian here...

What attitude? The attitude is simple: "we are." It is the group dynamic. The individual has "need for others who have need of me and of each other"(297). Camus is no silly hippy singing Kum ba ya. He admits that this individualism is "in no sense pleasure," but he "cannot allow either myself or others to debase" our common dignity. Whose struggle might this be? Yours. Mine? Sisyphus'. It is the struggle of any individual in a group. Is Sisyphus alone? Yes, just like you and I are alone in our personal struggles, but we are not alone in that we all are alone. Paradoxical, but true?

What has happened to revolutionary trade-unionism? Camus says that despite the great gains of unions for improved working conditions, the "ideological Empire has turned socialism back on its tracks"(297).

Rebellion's association with with truth is that "Rebellion...relies on reality to assist it in its perpetual struggle for truth"(298), but it is an inverse relationship. Rebellion goes from top to bottom and truth works from bottom to top.

Thus, "if it (rebellion) wants revolution, it wants it on behalf of life" (298).

Commune against the state, concrete society against absolutist society, deliberate freedom against rational tyranny...altuistic individualism aginast the colonization of the masses"(299). Camus explains that these contradictions (oppositions) express the larger opposition of moderation and excess. This becomes a major theme for Camus. He is returning to a Greek ethos (See Aristotle's Means between Extremes) that encourages finding a limit to rebellion. Camus denies excess. The rebel rebels in order to pronounce an all or nothing philsophy, but in the end, this results in uncontrolled violence.

The other big dichotomy he brings up on page 299 is between "German dreams" and "Mediterranean traditions". The German dreams are "violent", "adolescent", nostalgic and based on knowledge and books. The Mediterranean is "virile strength" and courage reinforced by the experience of life. Camus clearly approves of the second set of values. The first set (the German) can be connected with excess. The second (the Greek) is characterized by moderation.

Historical absolutism collides with an irrepressible demand of human nature: rebellious thought. The rebel continues to deny reason and struggles even though it seems pointless. Rebellion is moderation, says Camus. To insist on moderation is "nothing but pure tension" (301). Keep this tension image in mind for later, when Camus gets out his bow string later...

Camus says that nature always takes up the fight against history. The Russians inspire Europe with their "potency of sacrifice"(300), while the Americans have "a necessary power of construction"(300).

Lucifer died with God, and from his ashes has a risen a spiteful demon who does not even understand the object of his venture.

Camus' stance toward excess (characterized earlier as the adolescent nostalgic German value system based on reason a la Hegel) is that it eventually wears itself out. He says it finds its limit and sacrifices itself, returning eventually to moderation (characterized earlier as the Greek virility based on the experience of life. This moderation is a perpetual conflict that finds its equilibrium through the "impossible" and the "abyss". The impossible is (in my view) the ideal we aim for, a utopia perhaps. The abyss is its mirror negative image. It is the pit of despair (Princess Bride!). It is the absurd condition, it is Sisyphus' rage at the gods.

This brings you to the line on the sheet, folks... good luck.

If you haven't read Stanley Fish's attack on U Albany in a recent NYT article, it is worth reading. I've put the article up on my Ed line page for all to read. I've also included Matthew Arnold on "The best which has been thought and said." Here is an excerpt:

There is a view [of culture] in which all the love of our neighbour, the impulses towards action, help, and beneficence, the desire for stopping human error, clearing human confusion, and diminishing the sum of human misery, the noble aspiration to leave the world better and happier than we found it—motives eminently such as are called social—come in as part of the grounds of culture, and the main and pre-eminent part. Culture is then properly described … as having its origin in the love of perfection; it is a study of perfection …

Then try Fish... He is far from a Victorian idealist. In fact, he is irritating in his pragmatic take:

It’s not their job to value the humanities or even to understand them. But it is the job of presidents and chancellors to proclaim the value of liberal arts education loudly and often and at least try to make the powers that be understand what is being lost when traditions of culture and art that have been vital for hundreds and even thousands of years disappear from the academic scene. President Philip cries crocodile tears. Real tears are in order.

Hear any echoes of Arnold on the shores of the Agean?

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.


Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Voting them in

I've heard a great deal lately about voting people out. Those who hold these signs, shaking them in our faces, seem like very angry people. Those who repeat the mantra in less angry tones say things like, well, I really don't know what else to do.

I would suggest something as equally absurd as simply voting for anyone except incumbents. Vote only for incumbents. Absurd? Of course it is. Voting for someone who has been in office for years simply because you are familiar with the guy is no reason to vote for him. Doesn't the guy's voting record matter? Of course it does.

By the same token, newcomers need to be checked out. Would you buy a new car this way? Would you become so angry with your old car that you just said, forget it, I'm just buying a car- I don't care what it looks like or how it drives!

If you can't take the time to look into who you're voting for. Stay home. Watch another episode of Jersey Shore. I was going to make a pun on the Situation, but it just doesn't seem worth it.

Maybe technology isn't absolutely terrible

Okay, this is pretty cool. I discovered that I can link my edline pages to my blog. I can see how this might get people writing more... It certainly was easy!

Inde is back

I've just been reminded of blogging,and realized that my blog left you, the imaginary reader with the impression that I was pining away for my lost dog. Inde is back and better than ever... and worse. He will most likely join the ranks of the unemployed, and like many of the 10% of our suffering country, he also will not file for benefits, and may not show up on the rolls...

The nice thing of course is that I know there is no one reading this. There are no comments, and it is not searchable, so no one will stumble on it. Anyone who knows me has already heard me go on and on and on, so reading this would be the last thing any sane person would do.

But at the very least, I've corrected the impression that I was without dog.

Plato vs. Aristotle and the Soul of Education

Plato vs. Aristotle and the Soul of Education

McCann and Fitzgibbons

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”
Einstein

You don’t hear much in education circles these days about inspiration. What we hear is about differentiated instruction, data driven instruction, vertical and horizontal alignment, ya day a da. Listen to the metaphors. They sound like math. There’s a reason for that.

When I ask people about their best teachers or best classes, what I hear most often is that the teacher they remember best had the ability to bring the material to them or communicate the ideas on their level, or that the teacher aspired them to see things from a point of view that they had never considered before. Not to borrow too much from religious imagery, but the experiences of the most profound and lasting impact are often described as “eye opening” or “challenging one’s world view.” There is an almost evangelical quality to a course or instructor who can do that.

One of my first instructors to bring such good things to my life was Kevin McCann. An Irishman in the most stereotypical ways, but even more, a teacher of poetry who made you feel like you knew who Seamus Heaney was up close and personal. When it came to writing, my memories include feeling both freed and at war simultaneously. I was a newbie to fundamentalism in the late 1970s and was exploring issues of my faith, and had chosen to write a research paper on the very topic for my Senior Seminar. It was a half year devoted to researching and writing a 10 page paper on any topic. While I had a particular agenda in mind for my paper- to save people’s souls- Mr. McCann carefully engaged me to move my thinking toward a more objective stance. The paper was certainly not perfect (grammatically, I was only barely readable), it demonstrated a student who had gone from one place intellectually to quite another. I can still remember my graduation day, introducing him to my mother. He said with a wink in his eye, “this is the smartest of all of them…” He was comparing me to four other siblings he’d known in his career. It was a compliment that would change how I saw myself.

The only other memorable teacher was a guy named Fitzgibbons. He was my drawing teacher. Mechanical drawing. He was an elvish looking little guy with a bushy brown beard. ‘Fitz’ was easy going and encouraged creativity from his drawing students, even while demanding that line weights be correct and that papers stay free from smudges and erasures. From my young days, I had mistakenly believed my uncle in Georgia was an architect because his house there looked like Mike Brady’s. Much to my surprise, I discovered that he was a professor of political science. Nonetheless, with this myth in place, I wanted to become an architect, and so I took Fitz’ Drawing I and went on to Architectural Drafting and Design the year after. Somewhere along the line, we all decided I was not going to be an architect, but I can still remember designing my house with a water ski slip its basement instead of a garage. I can still remember competing against other groups to create solar thermal units to heat water in the fields behind the shop.

By and large, the rest of my high school career was a blur. I remember getting a passing grade on my Trig Regents; I remember my physics teacher cooking hot dogs on a filament wire. I remember Avogadro’s number- 6.02 x 10 to the 23rd… I remember a great deal of time learning how to use the ‘Readers Guide to Periodical Indexes’. These beauties were the be all and end all to research. It was a very complicated system that took years to master. All totally useless today. I remember getting our super cool computers to draw a smiley face on a printer using xs and os.

When I teach these days, I hear kids saying the same things I said: why do we have to learn this stuff? I have to be honest, and say ‘because they said so’. Most of what you learn, I tell them, is completely pointless and due to be outmoded within five years. You are here to learn how to learn- not to learn anything of real value. Or, better, you are here to learn what you might want to learn something more about, and what you might want to avoid learning more about.

My time with the Irishman and the Scot taught me those two lessons. I learned from the Irishman that writing, reading, and the liberal arts were my strong suit. I learned from the Scot that I was far too careless to be a draftsman or an engineer. The other thing I learned from both men was how to learn. Both teachers engaged me by bringing their course material into my life. I was able to explore my faith in one and my water skiing fantasies in the other. My assumption is that these two also shared this ability to inspire other students.

Here’s the basic phrase I want to hear from a kid who finishes a course with me: “I’m not sure I know much more than I did before, but I sure did think a lot.” I want students to walk away from a course understanding that the field we’ve studied is so wide and so interconnected to so many other fields, and to their daily lives, that one cannot help engaging the subject moment to moment and never feeling like you’ve come to a conclusion- these are lofty and high minded goals indeed. Very difficult to quantify. Very difficult to create grade level benchmark assessments for. Quite a step from analyzing data response graphs.

Speaking of interconnectivity and the idea that we cannot come to conclusions, I have been reading Stanley Fish lately, and Fish is very concerned about the idea of cultural studies, fearing that his discipline (literary criticism) will be corrupted by other disciplines. He seems to favor keeping his p's and q's all in a row so that each discipline can maintain a sense of order and structure and procedure. This is because he has abandoned theory, in theory if not in practice. His book, The Problem with Principle, is a pragmatic attempt (through theory) to repair damage he and others have done to the discipline by allowing the taint of relativism in the door. His solution is to leave behind any claims to universal principles like freedom and reason. His only sacred cow left is the word "truth." He still claims to aim for this, but as a practicer of rhetoric, his only stable goal is truth. This was the battle Plato waged with the Sophists of his day, and it still goes on. These are the kinds of conversations that have and will go on forever, and they are the kinds of conversations I want students to be aware of. So let's get to Plato.

Plato and Aristotle

Two other teachers I need to bring up (since they are in my title) are Plato and Aristotle. Plato was Aristotle’s teacher. Socrates was Plato’s mentor and Aristotle went on to tutor Alexander the Great. Much of what I say about these two is gleaned from my memory or my impression of these two and I use them as two magnetic poles, each attracting a certain type of approach into their vastly different spheres. At times, I may mis-represent them or one could find passages to refute issues I raise about them. For my purposes, they are convenient poster children for two significantly different approaches to the philosophy of education. Other paradigms might be more effective, other “isms” might work better, but by and large, I see these two as offering teachers two ways to approach the nature of instruction and learning. As you will see, one might easily use Skinner vs. Rogers (if one were to use ed psych paradigms), or some other pair of thinkers as well as my choices. Be that as it may, I am not alone in arguing that throughout the history of philosophy after Plato, one is either a Platonist or an Aristotelean. I am the former.


Plato’s notion of learning is tied up with his teacher and his character, Socrates. In Socrates’ classroom, there was no large screen computer display, no smart board, no desks, and no tests for that matter. When Plato constructed his own academy years later, the sign to its entrance read “let none enter here not well schooled in geometry.” There was no one ‘on one aide’ there, and no one was given extended time. To be fair, everyone was given extended time because you came or went as you pleased.

The mode of instruction was dialectic. That’s it: talk. How were students evaluated? Talk. How did students learn? Talk. Through a process of give and take, Socrates “educed” from his students what they seemed to already know. The Greek word ‘educe’ means to draw forth, and it gives us our starting point about how one might approach the role of a teacher. One becomes, not the giver of data, but the helper who shows one how to find the well of knowledge. Socrates is later described as the great midwife for others’ ideas. One of my students was frankly grossed out about this image until I explained the etymology of the word “concept” and its relation to “conceive” and how our language has built into it this rich metaphor of ideas and babies being beautiful correlates. Hamlet wisely reminds Polonius, “Conception is a blessing, sir.. look to’t”

Of course, my students are often quite flustered by Plato’s silly notion of innate ideas, of the soul as an indestructible thing that comes back again and again, each time remembering what it may have known from the past. Such superstitious ideas are so passé in our modern (and Aristotelian) era. In his defense, I point out that there is much we still have to learn about the brain and about genetic imprinting and evolutionary biology. There may indeed be much more to our baby brains than the simple blank slates that empiricists like Locke have imagined for us.

Still, it is difficult to create a curriculum in this day and age with such mystical underpinnings. To argue that each of our students comes to us with all they really need to know buried deep in some cavern of their mind is tantamount to psychoses. But to argue its polar opposite is equally absurd. To argue that the mind is simply a repository for images and “facts” and “skills” that need to be “covered” or, better, installed on our hard drives, is equally loony. The mind is not a hard drive or a black board or a map or any thing else. It is something we still do not understand very

When I consider the minds of my students, I see them as characters on a journey. I step into the road and begin to ask them questions, or better yet, sit off on the side of the road with some refreshment in the shade, and when they stop by, I engage them in conversation. “Ever seen the movie, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind?” I might ask, and before long… well…we’re cooking.

No real education occurs without a student being the one in the driver’s seat. Well, at least they have to be in the front of the car for Pete’s sake. Much of a typical student’s career is as passenger or observer, not as participant, and rarely as driver. While I may select the material to read in class and I’m the guy who takes attendance and turns in the grades, the last thing I want to do is come prepared with a learning objective. I want to pose some questions perhaps, but better yet, can I set things up so that the kids have the questions? And then, when I have no answers, they can work on some? Sounds like a pretty shaky plan that wouldn’t pass muster with the state ed department. But it works. It really can. It really can work.

So back to Plato. The real paradox of Plato is that as you read his dialogues, there’s this consistent image of an avuncular and lovable fat man sitting around making fun of the stuffed shirts of his day, pulling slave boys from their chores to teach them math, or quietly accepting his own inevitable execution with the firm peace of an ascetic monk. The paradox is that Plato is not Socrates. In fact, the Socrates we read about is Plato’s Socrates, not the real thing. The fellow who asks leading questions in Plato’s dialogues, and draws his fellow dialecticians into impossible contradictions, is highly ironic and not fully honest. See note below Plato does not begin with a proclamation and go on to prove it using his data. He begins with Socrates asking a question, and his pupils often answer as audience and Socrates bends the discussion around using various metaphors and analogies. His favorite game is to ask not for a virtue or a single definition of love, but for the over reaching common idea linking each individual exemplar. In his classes, facts are not to be memorized for standardized testing. Instead, the goal is what we today call moving from concrete operational to higher order thinking.

Notes
1] Education derives from the verb educe, which means "to draw forth from within." The original teaching method of Socrates of drawing from within has been largely displaced by professorial deference to received scholarly authority. Students are taught how to take exams but not how to think, write or find their own path. I took this from a blog.
2] The mind is the seat of perception of the things we see, hear, and feel. It is through the mind that we see the beauties of the earth and sky, or music, of art, in fact, of everything. That silent shuttle of thought working in and out through cell and nerve weaves into one harmonious whole the myriad moods of mind, and we call it life. Charles Fillmore Source: The Revealing Word
3] This notion of “working” is pretty loaded, and I will address this issue in more depth later. Suffice it to say that my definition of “works” here is equivalent to “I feel kids are getting pretty jazzed.” Or something equally kooky sounding.
4] Jasper Neel indicts Plato for his rhetorical treachery in Plato, Derrida, and Writing

On Placing a Service Dog

Can I help you?

The biggest obstacle any service dog raiser has is answering the constant question: "How do you give him up when you're done?" The answer to this varies with the raiser, but my answer had always been, "well, when you see him work with a client and see what a difference he makes in her life, and you know he is doing great things for someone, you feel great." This has been my standard reply as I raised my second dog.

My first dog (that I raised), Brennan, is now working joyfully for someone in Albany. I have heard that he has a nick name around the office he goes to daily, and that he is essentially the 'BMOC.' These kinds of placements can make all the difference for puppy raisers.

My second dog, Inde, left for Dobb's Ferry two days ago to be placed through an organization that uses at risk teens to raise dogs for war veterans. I'll most likely never see him again. I won't know who will get him, and I won't see him work with a client. I now need to construct the best narrative I can to deal with this loss for myself and for my family. When people ask me if I am going to take on another dog, I have to say no. It's not this last placement that led me to this decision. It's more about the fact that I've been raising these dogs for 5 years now, and I simply need a break.

However, to be frank, this placement is not what I had in mind when I signed up to raise Inde. I had hoped to meet the client, see him work with him or her, tell about his idiosyncracies, and explain that he loves to catch Frisbees in the back yard. That we like to call him Gary (from the song...) and some other nick names that are just too ridiculous to repeat. That he rolls on his back to tell you he likes you. That he loves to do agility courses, especially tunnels and a frames. That he will run full speed down a hallway for a set of keys and bring them back to you, wagging his tail, ready to do it again...

I will never get this chance to say these things, and while Inde will most likely lead a fine life and be a terrific help to a very deserving person, I'll never see it with my own eyes.

This is what you need to know when you become a puppy raiser. It can be like it was with Brennan, or it can be like it was with Inde. You don't raise the dog for yourself; you raise him to help someone, and you have to accept that when you start. If you can't accept that, don't get involved.

I have this nagging desire to write some corny phrase about... if you see Inde... tell him... I knew it would sound maudlin. It's time to construct that positive narrative....

A revision of the Problem with Elbow

The problem with Peter Elbow's Epistemology

Just some quick thoughts here. Peter Elbow challenges the intellectual community to attack his notion that "good thinking" should be constituted by both doubting and believing and not just doubting. He points out that James Berlin accused him of being a Platonist who believes that knowledge is private... It seems to me that either Elbow misunderstood him, or Berlin is confused about what it means to be a Platonist.

Plato saw knowledge as innate, but not private. True knowledge did not come from inside one's self, but rather from seeing the higher realities in the world of forms. While self knowledge was part of the path to truth (the unexamined life is not worth living…), the social component was the key, in that one must participate in the dialectic process. If that process is solipsistic, the process fails. This is why Plato condemns writing. Writing is, at least in its creation, a solo flight. It may later be subject to the social meat grinder, but in its purest form it denies any voice but the writer’s. Thus, if the only attack we can make on Elbow’s epistemology is the one Berlin launched, we are in trouble!Back to Elbow... his challenge engages the very same doubt system he wants to challenge in order to test his ideas. If we were to agree with his epistemology and engage him on his own terms, we must not say what is wrong with his ideas, but to say what is more right with another epistemology. To be fair, he is not replacing doubting with believing; nevertheless, we can only "attack" his epistemology by believing him, and simultaneously posing yet another more attractive notion. What that new notion or epistemology would be now becomes our problem and not his.

So the problem (Elbow asked for "someone [who] would try using it [the doubting game] on my argument to see what we can learn) that we are to solve is: to find the error in his epistemology. His epistemology is that knowledge is available either through doubt or through belief. The easiest attack I can suggest is to divide and conquer. First I can take on doubt as a methodology.Epistemology based on doubt goes back to Descartes and Plato. For Plato, the Socratic method exposed all faulty systems to continual definition, rendering these systems and or statements derived from those systems either empty or contradictory. Of course, Plato never allows his own writing to be exposed to the same refining fire, at least not in his own text. As Jasper Neel points out in Plato, Derrida, and Writing, Plato steals writing from the rest of us and hogs it for himself...

Neel asks, “but why is Plato so reluctant to speak himself? Why does he always pretend not to be there? What is he hiding? And above all, why is he so careful as a writer to write what “looks” like speech?” Neel’s answer is “because behind it the man holding the pen is not concerned with the witty banter of two dead men but rather with the project of defining what counts as thinking…” Later, Neel says, “Plato, master writer that he is, has manipulated us without our realizing it…that is the evil of Phaedrus: its delightful surface turns those who look for the man with the pen into mean spirited cavilers. But there was a man with a pen…”(12).

The man with the pen proposed an epistemology based on innate knowledge tested through the use of reason and dialectic. When we examine Plato’s example of dialectic, it is no dialectic at all. It is a man with a pen. The interlocutors are fictive. Only Plato’s voice survives. Thus, Plato’s “soul writing” perhaps returns to Berlin’s critique- a voice in the desert claiming authority over writing.

This charade of Plato’s is the case in most uses of the doubting game that Elbow speaks of. For Descartes, his attempt at epistemological certainty (cogito ergo sum) fails despite his rigorous methodological skepticism. Like Plato, Descartes retreats into the individual perceptions of clear and distinct ideas which are supported by other clear and distinct ideas.

Okay, so doubt doesn’t lead to certainty. Can belief?

Is it possible to find a rule of conduct outside the realm of religion?

Camus’ essay (The Rebel- 1956) is really a reaction to Dostoyevsky’s claim that if God is dead, then all things are permissible. Camus cannot accept nihilism like this. He rejects Sade’s cruelty and the waste of life that his age committed. Still, he cannot return to the safety of the sacred, to the state of belief in God for the sake of having a justification for action. Rather, the existentialist in him posits the individual as his own justification for all actions. And yet this doesn’t satisfy him either. By 1956, Camus sees that he cannot leave the individual on his own. In his forward to the essay, Sir Robert Read says, “if we decide to live, it must be because we have decided that a human society has some positive value” (vii).

The rebel, he asserts, aspires to “give a definite answer to the question implicit in the blood and strife of this century”(4). He cannot be satisfied with the idea that “evil and virtue are mere chance or caprice”(5). He condemns Hitler and others by saying that such a position of absurd nihilism makes the universe a place where “there is no pro or con: the murderer is neither right nor wrong. We are free to stoke the crematory fires or to devote ourselves to the care of lepers”( 5). In a sense he rejects Nietzsche’s amorality, but then praises Nietzsche for his recognition of the necessity for having values, even if one destroys all others. Such thinkers’ “greatness is measured by the extent to which they have rejected the complacencies of absurdism in order to accept its exigencies….. to escape complacency, absurdist reasoning then discovers renunciation…” (9). He concludes his introduction by saying that the rebel’s drive is to transform, demanding to know “whether murder is legitimate” (10). His evidence for consideration is the existence of rebels. He suggests that in looking at rebellion, “we may discover in its achievements the rule of action that the absurd has not been able to give us…and finally, hope for a new creation” (11). His ultimate goal is to “discover the principle of reasonable culpability”(11).

The rebel says no, affirming a borderline, a limit. A saying of ‘no more’ is equivalent to saying that there exists a higher truth or value beyond the individual. He argues that when a rebel rebels it involves “we” and not “I”. He rejects the condition of slavery, demanding to be treated as an equal. He says to himself that it is “better to die on one’s feet than to live on one’s knees (15). He is willing to “sacrifice himself for the sake of a common good” (15). He risks everything for the sake of his natural community, and therefore it is not an egoistic act. Thus, human solidarity is metaphysical!

Camus rejects the sacred (knowing that religion too can create human solidarity), but he claims that “we live in an unsacrosanct moment in history” (21). This, he says, is our historic reality, and “unless we choose to ignore reality, we must find our values in it” (21). After looking at countless examples of revolution and rebellion, Camus limits rebellion to rebellion that is “moderate” meaning that it cannot justify murder and mayhem. Such actions deny the value of other humans. This, he argues, is illogical. Paradoxically, he moves from individualism to a form of communism (with a small c…). He says, “at this limit, the “we are” paradoxically defines a new form of individualism… I have need of others who have need of me and of each other” (297). This collective action requires discipline without it, Camus says, we are “a stranger”(297). Such discipline is a constant Sisyphusian struggle. Reminding ourselves that others are part of our struggle, we must see that there “does exist for man… a way of acting and of thinking which is possible on the level of moderation to which he belongs” (303).

His final answer, “at this meridian of thought”, is that “we shall choose Ithaca” (306). My first reading of this was simply that, like Odysseus, we must not choose war. Instead of leaving Ithaca, we should stay with our families and not fight a pointless war. However, I am indebted to Kit Collins for her insightful moment of epiphany, reminding me that Odysseus chooses Ithaca at another key moment in the story. He chooses not to be a god with Calypso. He prefers to “learn to live and die” in his “faithful land.” Along with Marx, Lenin, and the martyrs of 1905, we must all learn to accept the “thin yield” of our own fields, accepting from the others “that he is not God”(306).

Does Camus’ plan from 1956 work today? One must ask if we are in a similar history. His answer seems to include people from all walks of history, from Odysseus to Marx, and so I would assume that his answer does work, and that our history is not so different from his. Is it possible to find a rule of conduct? Yes. Is it absolute? No. It is the product of a constant struggle to remember that we are not Gods, and therefore, we need each other and therefore must act within moderation, respecting all other humans who have likewise chosen Ithaca.

So the problem (Elbow asked for "someone [who] would try using it [the doubting game] on my argument to see what we can learn) that we are to solve is to find the error in his epistemology. His epistemology is that knowledge is available either through doubt or through belief. The easiest attack is to divide and conquer.

Epistemology based on doubt goes back to Descartes and Plato. For Plato, the socratic method exposed all faulty systems to continual definition, rendering most of these systems and statements either empty or contradictory. Of course, Plato's writing was never exposed to the same fire. As Jasper Neel points out in Plato, Derrida, and Writing, Plato steals writing from the rest of us and hogs it for himself... more later

The problem with Peter Elbow's Epistemology

Just some quick thoughts here. Peter Elbow challenges the intellectual community to attack his notion that "good thinking" should be constituted by both doubting and believing and not just doubting. He points out that James Berlin accused him of being a Platonist who believes that knowledge is private... Seems to me that either Elbow misunderstood him, or Berlin is confused about what it means to be a Platonist. Plato generally saw knowledge as innate but not private. True knowledge did not come from inside one's self, but rather from seeing the higher realities in the world of forms. While self knowledge was part of the path to truth (the unexamined life is not worth living), the social component was key in that one must participate in the dialectic process. If that process is solopsistic, the process fails.

Back to Elbow... his challenge engages the doubt system to test his ideas. If we were to agree with his epistemology and engage him, we must not say what is wrong with his ideas, but to say what is more right with another. Since he has opened up the process from a restriction to doubting only, replacing it with doubting and believing, we can only "attack" his idea by believing him, and yet simultaneously posing yet another more attractive notion. What that new notion or epistemology would be... Hmmm

Prophet of Justice

We shall choose Ithaca, the faithful land, frugal and audacious thought, lucid action, the generosity of the man who understands. In the light, the earth, the earth remains our first and last love. Our brothers are breathing under the same sky; justice is a living thing. Now is born that strange joy which helps one live and die, and which we shall never again renounce to a later time. On the sorrowing earth it is the unresting thorn, the bitter food, the harsh wind off the sea, the ancient dawn forever renewed.
With this joy, through long struggle, we shall remake the soul of our time, and a Europe which will exclude nothing. Not even that phantom Nietzsche who, for twelve years after his downfall, was continually invoked by the West as the ruined image of its loftiest knowledge and its nihilism; nor the prophet of justice without mercy who rests, by mistake, in the unbelievers' plot at Highgate Cemetery; nor the deified mummy of the man of action in his glass coffin; nor any part of what the intelligence and energy of Europe have ceaselessly furnished to the pride of a contemptible period. All may indeed live again, side by side with the martyrs of 1905, but on condition that they shall understand how they correct one another, and that a limit, under the sun, shall curb them all. Each tells the other that he is not God; this is the end of romanticism.
At this moment, when each of us must fit an arrow to his bow and enter the lists anew, to reconquer, within history and in spite of it, that which he owns already, the thin yield of his fields, the brief love of this earth, at this moment when at last a man is born, it is time to forsake our age and its adolescent rages. The bow bends; the wood complains. At the moment of supreme tension, there will leap into flight an unswerving arrow, a shaft that is inflexible and free.

Questions: Who is the deified mummy (man of action) in his glass coffin?
Who is the prophet of justice without mercy?
Who are the martyrs of 1905?
What is the arrow he wanted to shoot, and toward what target?

I'll take any offers...