Not Exactly Sophie's Choice

Today I compiled a list of book series to try to entice reluctant high school readers into reading over the summer months.  Research suggests that lower income students can lose up to 3 months of learning over the summer, while middle and high income students make a month's worth of gains.  End result: after 3 years, lower income students are a year behind--and it actually has nothing to do with the quality of instruction they receive at school or how quickly they learn.  Compelling, no?

So anyway, here I was trying to think of titles that a kid who might not be that interested in reading should read, and the same source as referenced above suggests that series are especially powerful in enticing kids to read.  So naturally, one of the biggest series draws for teenage girls is . . .Twilight.  Now to those who are fans of Twilight, I would say, I am not judging you.  I eat too much chocolate, watch So You Think You Can Dance, avoid running on the flimsiest of pretexts, routinely Facebook stalk, and have an unhealthy relationship with Sporcle (caution: If you have a proclivity for trivia-game-addiction, do not click.  Repeat, do not click!).  My point being that I have quite a collection of my own shallow and potentially even damaging habits --so do your thing.  But promoting Twilight for young students, some of whom have seriously disturbing ideals of romance and gender roles already, is something else entirely.  At the same time, I have already seen a few girls who were unexcited about reading get hooked on books by way of Twilight.  Nothing I could offer them would appeal to them, books with strong heroines and compelling stories, non-fiction, historical fiction, series I actually like, like Chronicles of Narnia or Harry Potter.

The dilemma, then, is which interest wins?  The need to instill values and promote strength of character and independence?  Or the desire to pique interest in books, with hopes of creating a life-long habit and changing students' long-term educational trajectory?  I think we like to believe sometimes that you don't have to choose. That if I were diligent enough, I would look until I found the perfect Twilight-esque book, a paragon of ethical virtue, at the perfect reading level, with characters and a story line so compelling that no teen could turn away, or barring that, write one myself in my free time.  But practically speaking, I have to choose.  And this time, perhaps because I'm doing this in my role as a teacher, I choose books.  Er.  Sorry?

In the Immortal Words of Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson is ubiquitous on Facebook.  It's remarkable how germane his 18th and early 19th century ideas are to contemporary American politics.  For example, according to an acquaintance's Facebook page, Jefferson said, "A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take away everything you have."  It seems the implications are clear--Jefferson, our beloved sage, a god of political discourse, even two hundred plus years in the past, could foresee the dangers of allowing a more progressive view of government services to exist.

Except, unfortunately (or fortunately, if you disagree with both the quote and the intended application), Jefferson never said that.  Here are some clues: 1.  If a 200+ year old quote seems perfectly pertinent to a 21st century political debate, perhaps it was either taken out of context, or never actually said.  2.  18th century language is not renowned for its pithiness, and this quote is undeniably simple and pithy--frankly, the style of political discourse most similar to contemporary American politics.  Here's a real Jefferson quotation for comparison:

"Societies exist under three forms sufficiently distinguishable. 1. Without government, as among our Indians. 2. Under governments wherein the will of every one has a just influence, as is the case in England in a slight degree, and in our states in a great one. 3. Under governments of force: as is the case in all other monarchies and in most of the other republics. To have an idea of the curse of existence under these last, they must be seen. It is a government of wolves over sheep. It is a problem, not clear in my mind, that the 1st. condition is not the best. But I believe it to be inconsistent with any great degree of population. The second state has a great deal of good in it. The mass of mankind under that enjoys a precious degree of liberty and happiness. It has it's evils too: the principal of which is the turbulence to which it is subject. But weigh this against the oppressions of monarchy, and it becomes nothing. Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem. Even this evil is productive of good. It prevents the degeneracy of government, and nourishes a general attention to the public affairs. I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical." - Jefferson to James Madison, January 30, 1787

Not pithy; in fact, kind of long and by today's standards, full of subordinating clauses (and the odd Latin phrase) that a modern reader might find cumbersome.  In other words, difficult to use to grab attention in a world of twitter-length attention spans .  

And yet falsely attributed Jefferson quotations persist.  They seem to pop up every month or so, and I constantly have to restrain myself from being the obnoxious know-it-all who points it out (although I am always gratified when another know-it-all does it for me).  The problem is so large that the Monticello website maintains a page dedicated to spurious quotations.  You can see a Monticello librarian discussing it here.

But why should it matter so much who said it anyway?  Why does proving it's not actually Jefferson make me feel smug when a more conservative friend is trying to make a point counter to my more progressive views?  Perhaps because the falsely attributed quote above really says nothing remarkable.  It doesn't make any new or original points or support itself with any kind of compelling evidence.  Its value seems to lie solely in having been said by Thomas Jefferson, and so proving he never said any such thing deflates the entire argument.  Jefferson was an admirable, brilliant man, whose legacy endures to this day.  But why is a 200+ year old quote from him so powerful?  Why does Thomas Jefferson having said it make it any more valid?  What does this say about our need to submit our opinions to an authority figure?  Isn't that somewhat anti-Jeffersonian? Shouldn't we be willing to create our own arguments to fit the times and circumstances, perhaps in staunch opposition to much older notions of what political directions we should be headed?  As the man himself said,

"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism."

Except, of course, he didn't.

Girl Rising

I saw this documentary the other night, and I was very moved by the beauty of the cinematography, the power of the girls' voices, and the artistic way their stories were portrayed.  That's not to say it didn't have its flaws--there were segments of statistical commentary in between stories that became somewhat heavy handed, and the portrayal of women's educational opportunities in Afghanistan seemed overly rosy, at best.  Even so, the overall experience was inspiring and humbling, reminding me to be grateful for how I have always had access to education, to books, to ideas, to travel, to work that is not degrading, but meaningful and lucrative enough for a high standard of living.

The movie was, in my opinion, a nearly perfect expression of why feminism is important movement for creating a better world.  That word--feminism-- is so loaded, so often maligned, and generally treated with great suspicion.  But here's what I think it means: acknowledging that women have value and worth as human beings equal to men, recognizing that this equality is not culturally expressed, and expressing hope that something can be done to give women more opportunities.  That's really it.  There certainly are extreme branches of feminism that clamor for things that can cause great contention and debate, and while it's certainly likely that some of my own views on the matter might be more extreme than everyone is comfortable with, I remain convinced that its essential worldview of the value of women should really be universal.  Acknowledging the value of half the world's population, desiring that their potential might be better achieved--it seems hardly controversial.

Adventures at the National Gallery

What is this photo?  It is performance art, an exploration of the unexpected encounter between the average museum-goer, generally WASP-ish, educated, upper income, and a group of unusual visitors to the National Gallery-- immigrant teenagers, many poor, some with limited literacy, most of whom have never been to a museum before.  The piece highlights the bourgeois discomfort of being confronted with behaviors and norms in conflict with the protocol of a museum visit, and questions established ideas as to who a museum is for and how one ought to interact with art.

So that last paragraph was just me flexing my academic writing BS skills.  (I think this proves that I've generally still got it, even if that reads a bit more awkwardly than I would like--it is, after all, a genre of writing that is by nature clunky and unreadable).  On Friday, three other ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) teachers at my school and I took 100 ESOL students to the National Gallery of Art on a field trip.  It was lovely to see the excitement on their faces as the buses rolled into the district and they saw the Washington Monument and the White House for the first time.  As we walked past security into the National Gallery, the energy level was palpable--students were smiling, pointing to sculptures and paintings, chattering to one another in Spanish, Korean, Chinese, Arabic, Hindi, Farsi.

The conflict between museum protocol and student enthusiasm started almost immediately, with one museum official yelling loudly at the entire group for making too much noise as we stood just past the entrance in an enormous group.  It didn't get better as we got upstairs and started to view paintings: I watched, amused, as students posed to take pictures in front of Renaissance Art, flashing gang signs and making goofy faces while the other museum goers stolidly walked from painting to painting.  One student was chattering enthusiastically in Korean about a painting depicting Christ, using his pencil to point out a detail to a friend only an inch or so from the canvas--and drawing the ire of the guards, who tended to swarm to whatever room most of our students were walking through.  I felt slightly embarrassed and resolved to teach a lesson on museum etiquette before the next trip.  And then I thought--why do they have to conform? Okay, yes, a lesson about NOT appearing to be on the verge on destroying priceless works of art might be a good idea, but why not strike a pose with buddies?  Why is the slow walk, hands behind the back, hushed whispers to a friend, the only way to experience this?  Here are these students, not your average museum attenders at all, clearly enjoying art.  Shouldn't art lovers be gratified to see art's audience expanding?  Or is what we love not really art at all, but the illusion of exclusivity?  I cannot continue to say, "I am the kind of person who goes to museums, who takes time to memorize the dates and  aesthetic distinctions of baroque, rococo  and neoclassical styles, which makes me refined, special, and better" when the masses are all taking part in the same activities.  

So no, this photo was not taken of performance art, but it does genuinely capture my students' interaction with art as they experienced the museum in a way meaningful to them, making it their own.  They're trying to look cool and tough, gangsterish not because of real gangster connections but because of the invincibility and power it implies, powerful things for boys caught up in lives where they've been dragged to a new country without much say.  Just don't tell them that they look more like a boy band.