Lessons in India

Ah, the long awaited trip to Mother India. So much anticipation, so much excitement.  It is not going as planned and this has become an exercise in patience an acceptance. My husband and I are blogging about it here.

The Alternative to the Consumerist Christmas

     A few years ago, I proposed a consumerist Christmas alternative to my mother and husband: instead of buying gifts for each other, we would make gifts for each other. I knew that if I could get the two of them in on the idea, it would be an easy sell to the larger family, and even friends. The idea, however, was dead on arrival and nothing I said could change their minds in the least. My mother informed me that this would take all the fun out of Christmas. This pronouncement confused me initially until I put it in the context of my mother's shopping habit. She goes trawling through discount stores for any item that in any way reminds her of a loved one. She immediately buys these items and puts them in the closet until Christmas or a birthday arrives. By the time I had made the homemade Christmas suggestion, she would have had half a closet full of little items she was excited to give to us. I didn't want to ruin her Christmas, so I backed off. My husband's objection was much more difficult for me to swallow. He claimed that he didn't know how to make anything. I told him he could write something for me. Hell, he has a PhD in English. He can write something. He just kept saying no. It's hard to argue with "no." So that idea for getting away from consumerist Christmas was dead on arrival. Mind you, he was all for the idea of a non-consumerist Christmas--he just didn't like the idea of having to make something.

     But now, I have a new and improved suggestion for getting the stuff out of Christmas: symbolic donations. Rather than searching for a good price on something somehow appropriate for each family member and good friend, we would find a cause that had some connection to something we love about each loved one and make a donation in that person's name. The donation should be small--an agreed-upon amount among all participating. Times are tough, I say $10 per person is fine but since such gifts are tax-deductible, we could probably all afford a good deal more--even in this economy. Here's how it would work: I would do some online research to choose the cause and the recipient organization, and then make the donation in the person's name, asking that an announcement be sent to the person in whose name I'm giving. I then write out a Christmas card to the loved one explaining why I chose that organization to make a donation in his/her name. This card is the thing that should be opened on Christmas morning. Imagine, instead of unwrapping things and stuff, opening pretty little cards with an explanation of why you inspired a donation. It would be meaningful, possibly funny, certainly memorable--I think.

     I proposed this donation idea to my mother and husband a few weeks ago. It was received fairly well. My mother stopped frowning at one point. However, she has since gone on to talk about what she's buying for whom. The husband, however, was game. I think most of my family and his would be too. So, on this Black Friday, let me give the gift of an alternative view of Christmas morning:

For my husband: a donation to The Asha Trust in Uttar Pradesh
The card would say: "Dear Brian, I will always remember your telling me about the talk you had with your mother before she died. You had wanted to make sure she knew how important she was in your life and you instinctively focused on your memories of her teaching you to read. You let her know how precious that memory was to you. I've chosen your Christmas donation in honor of that last visit to see your mother and the love she passed on to you. This year, I've made a donation in your name to The Asha Trust in Uttar Pradesh. This organization teaches children to read and offers them asha (Hindi for "hope"). The Asha Trust is part of a reputable nonprofit and it describes itself like this: 'The project educates the children of socially and economically backward communities (primarily landless laborers or farmers on leased land) in a village near Babhnauli who (1) cannot afford education expenses and (2) do not even realise the importance of education. Currently, most children in the community either never attend school or leave schools by the ages of 10 to 12 to contribute to family income. The project attempts to achieve its goals by running a school that primarily provides basic literacy (Hindi, Math, Verbal, English); with plans to provide basic vocational training in the future.' This year, you are the sponsor for [name inserted]. This year, [name] will learn to read and write because of you. मेरी क्रिसमस, मेरे प्यार!"


For my mother: a donation to the Wildcare Foundation in Oklahoma
The card would say: "Dear Mom, I thought it would make you happy this Christmas to know that a donation has been made in your name to an organization that rescues wild animals in this state, rehabilitates them, and returns them to the wild. Your love for the birds and squirrels has inspired the choice of this organization. This year, you will help prevent the needless suffering and death of 14,000 song birds and 600 squirrels--and dozens of other wild creatures. They also rescue, rehabilitate, and release wild cats, foxes, etc. Your donation entitles you to attend an open house at the facility and the release of a creature being returned to the wild. All the little wild creatures are saying, 'Thanks, Pat!' I hope that makes Christmas a little brighter for you."


For my brother: a donation to Shared Housing of New Orleans
The card would say: "Dear Rick, This year, I've made a donation in your name to an organization that helps elderly and disabled New Orleanians stay in their homes. I remember how heart-broken you were when Katrina destroyed the city we love so much. You said you were glad Mama and Papa weren't alive to see it. THe donatation in your name will help some people remain in the neighborhoods they love. One of the things I thought you would particularly like about this non-profit is that they help people of New Orleans forge relationships of support and trust like we remember Mama and Papa had in their beloved neighborhood. Merry Christmas. I love you, Little Bro!"


For my sister-in-law: a donation to The Mr. Holland's Opus Foundation
The card would say: "Dear Lisa, This year, I've made a donation in your name to an organization that helps save underfunded music programs by providing instruments for students who could not afford them otherwise. I see this as an investment in putting a few more people like yourself in the world because when these kids catch the joy of music, they will pass it down to their children like you have done. Thank you for creating a home filled with joy and love. The world needs more people like you. Merry Christmas!"

It takes a bit of time to research these organizations but I was able to pull these four would-be gifts together in a single day. One more day for the nieces and nephews, another for Brian's family, and I will have spent no more money than usual but will have made very personal gifts. Inviting all these people to gift us in this same way isn't hard to ask since it need cost no more in time and money and is tax-deductible too. I've gone back and forth on the question of the children in the family. Does a 10-year-old want this kind of gift? Probably not--but is that a reason not to give a donation in their name for Christmas? Yeah, they'd be happier opening a toy--at first--but I can easily image the sweet and sensitive children of our siblings getting into this. And isn't it a great education in the meaning of Christmas?

Now I will see what the family and friends have to say about this blog post. Will this version of a non-consumerist Christmas take off?

UPDATE: The husband and Mom have read this and Brian's happy with the idea. My mother giggled through the part about her. Not sure what that means yet. I'll give her some time. She did like the organization I picked for her.

My Visit to Occupy Cork (Ireland)

     When I visited the Occupy Cork (Ireland) camp on the evening of October 20, it was only the sixth day of its existence. Though it is the second-largest city in the Irish Republic, Cork has a population of only around 200,000 people--meaning, it is roughly the size of Des Moines, Iowa. Yet Cork has long been known as the rebel city in Ireland and so it's not surprising to see it making its own, independent appearance on the Occupy scene fairly early on. I've been reading about the Occupy Wall Street camp since the beginning but have not visited it. Like most Americans, I don't have the means to make impromptu trips to New York City so I used a long-planned visit to Ireland as my chance to see the Occupy movement close up. I saw the camp in Dublin the week before I was in Cork. I was delighted but didn't make my way inside for a visit. When I saw the fresh camp in Cork, it felt more inviting--possibly because it was within walking distance of my hotel, possibly because it was so small. 

     I made my way to the camp shortly before the 6PM General Assembly meeting. (I knew there was a 6:00 General Assembly meeting because I'd seen it posted on their agenda sign as I passed by in a tour bus.) I have here a few short video clips I took while there. I wanted to capture the atmosphere but felt very strange holding a camera on these people who I knew would soon be, if they were not already, under the scrutiny of police and private security. So, I didn't record group discussions. Here is a minute or two of the opening of the General Assembly. The meeting begins with protocol instructions so everyone present can participate appropriately. My camera started after instructions were already underway:

     By the way, the young men wearing the yellow safety vests are essentially the security volunteers though what they have written above a smiley face on the back of the vest is "Helpful Steward."

     Again, because I didn't want to be creepy,  I didn't scrutinize the camp with my camera. But for the benefit of those who will not be going there to see, I will give a brief description. (For those who may visit, here's the camp's location on a map Of Cork City.) From the street, one first sees the table and signs set up for giving information to the public. Behind this, one can see an open space between  a narrow section of the River Lee and a two-lane city center street. The modern buildings around it are a few stories high and it was easy to image that the area had usually been the place for the office workers in the area to take a quick smoke; stone benches, a few small trees, mostly paved with a few patches of grass. By night, it is well-lit by tall street lamps. The dozen or so small pup tents pitched on the ground were huddled closely together to afford an open area in front of the stand-up green tarp shelter that served as the kitchen (where all are welcome to eat for free). The space that this managed to open was a perhaps 15' x 10' area. It was in this space that the general assembly took place. For those who have been there, I need only say it was October in southwest Ireland. For those who must use their imaginations: it was chilly and rainy in the noncommittal way harbor towns can be--you'd seem foolish using an umbrella, but you know for sure that you'll be quite damp when you get home. 

     I had heard about the General Assembly in Wall Street. I'd been fascinated by their "human mic" as a creative response to having their megaphones banned. I didn't know, however, what happened at such meetings. Knowing that these Cork Occupiers were just newly organized, I surmised that the discussions would be interesting. It turned out that though they had probably fewer than 100 people there, they had the use of a megaphone. Here's the young man (whose name I came to learn is Saint John) setting up the discussion:

     And so everyone counted off from 1 to 5 and sat down in five separate groups to read the draft of the Occupy Cork statement of purpose. When the count-off came around to me, I demurred. I didn't feel right about assuming I was a regular member of this assembly. I wasn't Irish, let alone a resident of Cork. In addition, it felt like many of these young people were college students and my professional habit of not interrupting students when they are discussing things well among themselves kicked in. Instead, after the counting off was over, I asked the woman next to me if I could follow her to her subgroup. Once our group was seated together, one member read aloud the first draft of the Occupy Cork statement of purpose (see and hear this in the video below). My next post will concern the interesting debates that developed in the discussion. Here's a chance for you to guess what points in this statement would lead to disagreements. Take a look/listen:

"Undead Authors" paper from SWPCA conference 2010

Undead Authors: Anne Rice, J. K. Rowling, 

and Stephenie Meyer Battle

Roland Barthes on the Internet

            The appearance of the undead (whether figured as zombies or vampires) in a story always determines its genre as fantasy. All fantasy is not tales of the undead, but tales of the undead are always fantasy.  This is a commonplace, but recent activity on the part of some of fantasy literature’s most popular figures add a new, chilling layer to the relationship between the undead and fantasy. In spite of Roland Barthes’ 1964 assertion that the author is dead, Anne Rice, JK Rowling, and Stephanie Meyer refuse to stay in the coffin. They drag their decaying flesh around the internet doing what vampires and zombies do: consuming the living to perpetuate the illusion of life. It is certainly nothing new that authors reject the pronouncement of their death, but the internet has created a space in which the author can do the dark magic that renders them a creature of fantasy: they can keep their rotting bodies moving and acting by draining life from the living. In doing so, the fantasy monster does not change the fact that she is dead, she only sustains a terrifying illusion.

            What Roland Barthes said of the mid-twentieth-century literary criticism can be said of the internet:

The author still reigns in histories of literature, biographies of writers, interviews,

magazines, as in the very consciousness of men of letters anxious to unite their

person and their work through diaries and memoirs. The image of literature to be

found in ordinary culture is tyrannically centered on the author, his person, his life,

his tastes, his passions….

I would assert that the internet maintains an image of literature “tyrannically centered on the author” and Barthes’ “histories, biographies, interviews, magazines, diaries and memoires” only has a few new additions: blogs, author’s official sites, fansites, and amazon.com. These new venues are unique in all history in that they permit readers to be writers in a space where the author is also just another writer. Barthes asserts that “writing is the destruction of every voice, of every point of origin. Writing is that neutral, composite, oblique space where our subject slips away, the negative where all identity is lost, starting with the very identity of the body writing.
” Online, we are all equally disembodied. The text upon which the author hangs her status (e.g. her novels) is a writing that can live in our blogs or fansites as an object without subjectivity. Barthes adds,
”No doubt it has always been that way.” But it has never been so obvious that the author is only a writer. And it is significant that this realization occurs when we are in a space where we, ourselves, are able to literally participate in the objectification of the author.  Of course, it is only when the nature of the undead thing is revealed to the living that they take up a fight against the repulsive thing.  There are no tales of the undead without human protagonists combating the zombies, vampires, or Frankenstein’s monster.  So, though the internet is a space in which the illusion of the author as a living creature is possible, it is also a field of battle. A close look at this battle reveals how the worldwide web has made Barthes’ conclusions about the relationships among authors, texts, and readers visible; and how that visibility has led to what is very like the final confrontation at the end of Dracula, Dawn of the Dead, or Frankenstein: a scene of carnage that is frankly unpleasant to witness.

            Let us consider our three most visible undead authors in chronological order. First is Anne Rice who has had a fascinating journey of her own from penning novels under two different pseudonyms to disguise herself to attaching her self to what Barthes calls the Author-God in the most overt way possible: asserting that her return to Catholicism is behind her new mission to write what one clever online commentator has called “Jesus fanfiction” (http://www.tor.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=blog&id=19988). Rice has a sharp instinct for what the undead must do. She has made an ugly scramble to eat the brains of the living in her passionate fight against fanfiction that uses her characters. Online fanfic writers have not only been served cease and desist orders, according to a document found in several online fanfiction sites:

The attacks consisted of, amongst other things, e-mailed threats regarding not only

the writing of fanfiction but any writing that any fanfic author attempted to engage

in (regardless of who owned the copyright), attacks on businesses that the fanfic

authors owned and weeks of harassing personal letters sent to fanfic author's e-mail

addresses and guestbooks. Personal information about fanfic authors was also dug

up by Anne Rice employees and used as part of the harassment.

(http://www.angelfire.com/rant/croatoan)

Fanfiction is a remarkably living thing. It is created by writers who, by definition are readers and interpreters of fiction, exactly the force Barthes argues can only live after the death of the author.  Rice has published on her website her absolute dictum on fanfiction:  “I do not allow fan fiction. The characters are copyrighted. It upsets me terribly to even think about fan fiction with my characters. I advise my readers to write your own original stories with your own characters. It is absolutely essential that you respect my wishes.” Consequently, Rice enjoys a fanfiction-free undead life on the internet. However, writers of fanfiction are only the most obviously living creatures on the internet. Even the online venues where their books are sold taunt the undead with the voices of their readers.  The wild vitriol of Rice’s attacks against her readers who post on the internet is perhaps only explicable by seeing it as a fight for her (undead) life. Her September 6, 2004 rant on amazon.com’s “reader’s reviews” for her poorly received book Blood Canticle is otherwise mystifying. In it she makes the following attack on those who wrote less than positive reviews on the site:

For me, novel writing is a virtuoso performance. It is not a collaborative art….Every word is in perfect place. The short chapter in which Lestat describes his love for Rowan Mayfair was for me a totally realized poem. There are other such scenes in this book. You don't get all this? Fine. Getting really close to the subject matter is the achievement of only great art. Now, if it doesn't appeal to you, fine. You don't enjoy it? Read somebody else. But your stupid arrogant assumptions about me and what I am doing are slander. And you have used this site as if it were a public urinal to publish falsehood and lies. … be assured of the utter contempt I feel for you…

It is telling that Rice counters the authority of her readers with her presumed privileged relationship with the characters. She does not assert her legal rights to the characters. Rather, she asserts her personal relationship with them, particularly the narrator, traditionally the double of the author:

…the character who tells the tale is my Lestat. I was with him more closely than I have ever been in this novel; his voice was as powerful for me as I've ever heard it. I experienced break through after break through as I walked with him, moved with him, saw through his eyes. What I ask of Lestat, Lestat unfailingly gives.

Because the Author-God has created and found it good, the very act of interpretation is now closed. As Barthes explains:

To give a text an Author is to impose a limit on that text, to furnish it with a final signified, to close the writing. Such a conception suits criticism very well, the latter then allotting itself the important task of discovering the Author…beneath the work: when the Author has been found, the text is ‘explained.’

Anne Rice is more than aware of this. And the internet writers whose brains she wishes to consume seem to understand it too.

            Our next undead author is also fond of using the I-am-one-with-my-characters argument for silencing other voices. But JK Rowling has wisely decided not to become the zombie who beats down the door and eats the brains of the living from their crushed skulls. That kind of unpopularity isn’t her style. She would rather tap on the victims’ bedroom window and seduce the living into baring their necks. Rowling likes to fill in the blank spaces of her own novels after the fact by posting the new information on her website. Most famously, she announced, several days after the release of the last Harry Potter novel, that her unique relationship with the characters qualifies her to out Dumbledore. There’s no textual evidence for it, but we are to accept that Dumbledore is gay because she says so. Mind you, Dumbledore had been gay in thousands of fanfiction stories for years, but Rowling believes it will somehow matter that she says this. Though she has not sought the blood of fanfiction writers as Rice has, Rowing nevertheless strives to disprove Barthes’ pronouncement of her death. The most public display of this was her participation in a lawsuit brought by her publishers against Steve Vander Ark who had compiled the online Harry Potter lexicon. Mr. Vander Ark had the misfortune to be subjected to all of Ms. Rowlings’ various kill strategies.

            On May 15, 2004, Rowling launched her own website, a clever device designed to seduce and hypnotize her prey.  On it, fans are kept busy trying to solve puzzles she scatters throughout the site, enacting a pantomime of their status as her followers. She gloats over their mesmerized bodies by posting “facts” about her characters that are not in the books. The life-draining happens on the page where she links to all approved fansites and bestows awards to her favorites. One wonders if when Rowling gave her fansite award to the Harry Potter Lexicon on June 28, 2004, Mr. Vander Ark felt the sharp incisors on his throat. (HPL) Rowling effused upon the occasion, “This is such a great site that I have been known to sneak into an internet café while out writing and check a fact rather than go into a bookshop and buy a copy of Harry Potter (which is embarrassing). A website for the dangerously obsessive; my natural home.” (HPL) This ability to use her website as a carrot with which to control her fans was brilliant but it lasted only three years. Three years after singing Vander Ark’s praises, Rowling testified in court that his lexicon was “sloppy,” “lazy,” and “atrocious.” In court, Rowling asserted that Vander Ark’s work was of quality so poor it shouldn’t be allowed to see print. When it became clear that this made a great interview quote but not a legitimate legal argument, she brought out her other powerful kill strategy: charity. Vander Ark’s Harry Potter Lexicon had to die so that the author’s encyclopedia could live.  How Rowling’s as yet unwritten encyclopedia would be harmed by Vander Ark’s went unexplained as she went on to assert that proceeds from her encyclopedia would be donated to charity. Clearly, Rowling understands her status as an undead author better than Rice. Rowling makes no dictums, expresses no distain. Instead, she plays for sympathy, letting the press know that her motives are purely philanthropic.  But Rowling also told the press that the Vander Ark case has distressed her so deeply that it was inducing writer’s block. She warned that the turmoil had “decimated the demands of my creative work for the last month. You lose the threads, you worry if you’ll ever be able to pick them up again. I really don't want to cry, because I'm British.” This threat that challenges to her authority could lead her to withhold he writing from us became the stick to her website’s carrot. Rowling fights back with whatever is at hand. Sometimes vampires do.
           

But the threat to withhold writing from the living was a tactic Stephanie Meyer found useful too. Like Rowling, Meyer found having her own website useful for  maintaining the illusion that the author is not dead. On the internet, the space of living words, Meyer could seduce her fans away from places where they are writers into this site where only she speaks. Meyer had occasion to make her own dire threats on that site when, in the summer of 2008, while working on a much-anticipated Twilight sequel, copies of her manuscript (which Meyer had given to an acquaintance) went virile on the internet. No doubt, Meyer was sincere when she posted “I think it is important for everybody to understand that what happened was a huge violation of my rights as an author, not to mention me as a human being.” (http://www.stepheniemeyer.com/ August 28, 2008) At first too trusting of the living, Meyer has been wounded and she seeks redress from those who give her life, her readers. But feeding on them does not serve her purposes. What Meyer wants is not nurishment but justice and that may involve a bit of brutality to get her creator’s attention. Frankenstein’s monster hunted Victor’s loved ones. Meyer hunts her own characters, the beloveds of all her readers:

So where does this leave Midnight Sun? My first feeling was that there was no way to continue. Writing isn't like math; in math, two plus two always equals four no matter what your mood is like. With writing, the way you feel changes everything. If I tried to write Midnight Sun now, in my current frame of mind, James would probably win and all the Cullens would die, which wouldn't dovetail too well with the original story. In any case, I feel too sad about what has happened to continue working on Midnight Sun, and so it is on hold indefinitely…. I am now focusing on spending more time with my family and working on some other writing projects.

In refusing to allow us to be readers anymore, we are deprived of our claim to life. That’s a grim kind of justice but a monster takes what she can get. Essentially, this strategy amounts to the frantic scene at the end of the horror story where the monster threatens to kill any innocent bystander in the vicinity, set fire to the building, sink the ship, or kill all of Victor Frankenstein’s family if not allowed to imitate the living.

            Of course, the most interesting tales of the undead make us feel a nagging sympathy for the undead. But the fact remains that they are unnatural things, almost certainly without souls. And they do harm to the living. In the end, we must take up our pitchforks against the monster, our wooden stakes against the vampire, or whatever head-removing device we have at hand against the zombie in order to do what Barthes calls “the necessity to substitute language itself for the person who until then had been supposed to be its owner.” The life is in the language, not the author. The author ceased to be when the words fell on the page. It’s not pleasant to watch the undead writhing in a re-death agony, but it’s necessary so that the reader can live. And the reader lives no where more visibly than online where we can acknowledge with Barthes that “We know now that a text is not a line of words releasing a single ‘theological’ meaning (the ‘message’ of the Author-God) but a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash. The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture.” Asserting that authors are just writers like anyone else and that they are, in the end, not original originators of originality but rather “eternal copyists, at once sublime and comic … whose profound ridiculousness indicates precisely the truth of writing, the writer can only imitate a gesture that is always anterior, never original. His only power is to mix writings, to counter the ones with the others, in such a way as never to rest on any one of them.”

The internet is the space in which we can all see that the undead thing can be combated and that its elimination may well be possible. A new day dawns at the end of the tale of the undead.  The living can reclaim their world, a world that perhaps did not appreciate the beauty of the living until it was threatened by the undead. As Barthes says at the end of his essay, “Classic criticism has never paid any attention to the reader; for it, the writer is the only person in literature. We are now beginning to let ourselves be fooled no longer … we know that to give writing its future, it is necessary to overthrow the myth: the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.”

7 Things That Reveal a Good Writing Teacher

Compiling this list was a challenge from a reader of my previous post. Let me preface this by saying that there are many different ways of being a good teacher--this is not meant to be an exhaustive list. It is also possible to be a bad teacher and still do these things. For example, no classroom behavior will be sucessful if students can tell the teacher looks down on them. Students have a sixth sense about sincerity and if the teacher doesn't care, neither will they. In the end, teachers have more control over the quality of writing their students do than they often realize. If your writing teacher does these things, there's a fairly good chance you'll have an educational experience.

7 Things That Reveal a Good Writing Teacher

1. Class time is spent talking about how to improve a piece of writing rather than finding errors. The idea that bad writing has errors and good writing doesn't is reductionist. In writing, there are seldom "right" and "wrong" choices. Rather, each choice a writer makes has an effect. The writer must develop the ability to judge the effects of different options. Group discussions of writers' options are the best way to develop such judgement.


2. Technical errors are explained to students--but only when they surface in a piece of writing. If students learned grammar, punctuation, etc. from lectures, worksheets, and red marks, everyone would show up in college making no mistakes. If these methods didn't work on you in grade school, there's little chance they will suddenly become effective in college. What every student needs to know is what mistakes s/he tends to make and how to check for those specific patterns of error.


3. Students have control over what they write about. It's impossible to do your best writing if you have no connection to what you're writing about. Sure, in the "real world," we often must write on topics because someone else demands it of us but why make the writing classroom more difficult than it already is? Good teachers prepare students for success by giving them opportunities to do their best work. It's not necessarily desirable that students be able to write about absolutely anything they choose, but they should be given choices.


4. Multiple drafts are expected. It doesn't really matter how many drafts a writer does, only that s/he works through a piece multiple times with different purposes. Again, the goal is not to simply produce a final product that is error-free and "good enough." The goal of a good writing teacher is to provide students with the experience of controlling the experience of the reader. Even drafts that have nothing "wrong" with them can be developed into richer pieces. (This is also the best way--possibly the only way--to discourage plagiarism.)


5. The teacher's feedback on a returned draft is relevant to the next draft/revision. A good teacher's comments are primarily about the writer's ideas, motives, and choices for revision. Students want to know what did and didn't work in the draft so they can make better decisions in the future. That's all teacher comments need to address.


6. Students are always directed to imagine the response of the reader. The reason for writing is reading. The writer who forgets this is doomed. A good teacher will insist that students practice putting themselves in the place of the reader. This is all that is needed to deal with students' problematic content and tone.


7. Whatever grading method is used, it does not penalize risk-taking. If students believe delivering an error-free and properly formatted product is what insures an A, they will never do their best work. The grading system should consider each student's decision-making within the context of their progression of drafts.

7 Things That Reveal a Bad Writing Teacher

The recent press release by Newt Gingrich (or his press secretary, hard to tell really) has made me eager to share what I know about teaching writing. Someone with a college education wrote that press release--the possibility that it was a professional writer, someone who went to college in order to be trained to write, chills me to the bone. No one is obliged to be a brilliant writer--the very attempt to be a "brilliant writer" is deeply misguided--but everyone with an education is obliged to avoid being a painfully bad writer. Absolutely obliged. Now, my Ph.D. in Composition/Rhetoric/Literacy hasn't conferred on me any real wisdom but what it has given me is the narrow, specific knowledge of how to teach writing. Perhaps more importantly, it has taught me how not to teach writing. So, for what it's worth, here's the absolute truth about it.

7 Things That Reveal a Bad Writing Teacher

1. You are given "worksheets" of any kind. This includes computer software of any kind. Though it is possible that worksheets for the invention process could be helpful in generating ideas and creative thinking, such worksheets would be presented as strictly optional and in a spirit of levity. The day you, as a student, are given a worksheet that is meant to "teach" you something or to "exercise" a "skill," drop the class and get as much of your money back as you can. Writing can't be taught like that--it's probable that nothing really can be. The idea that writing can be distilled into "skills" is, in itself, a dead give-away that what you have at the head of the class is a trained grade-school teacher and not a university-level professional.


2. Your work is returned to you with line-by-line corrections. This is the mark of a teacher with a need to demonstrate his/her technical knowledge at the expense of students' learning. Any teacher who wastes his/her own time doing such a labor-intensive thing when it's absolutely certain not to help the student learn, is either psychologically messed up or completely uninformed. Either way, run.


3. First drafts are returned with technical errors marked. See the explanation for #2--it's exactly the same. The teacher who does this is in the wrong profession. S/he should have become a copy editor, not a writing teacher. As such, I promise you, this teacher only loves the students who don't need help. (If you are a student who believes s/he doesn't need help anyway, you're probably unteachable. I'm trowing that little nugget in here as a lagniappe. You're welcome.)


4. You are required to write only a first draft and a final draft. This is probably a sign that your teacher has too many students to teach properly. This is not the teacher's fault but it is a sign that you don't want this class--probably this school. A teacher who doesn't require you to play with multiple ways of working a piece is either over-worked or uninformed--there is not a third possibility. Get out of that class if at all possible. Your time and money would be better spent reading well-written books--an activity which is, by the way, the only thing all good writers have in common.


5. You are encouraged to use a thesaurus. Good writing is not done this way. Using a thesaurus is a great way to make your writing sound contrived and is an invitation to the worst thing that can happen to a writer: being unintentionally funny. However, a good writer makes ample use of a dictionary to be sure his/her natural vocabulary is truly under the writer's control. If your writing teacher doesn't know this, something is very wrong.


6. Class time is spent generalizing about writing. The only conversation that will actually help you learn about writing is one that is about an actual piece of writing. The only generalization that can be made about all writing is that all good writing is an appropriate response to a specific context. Without a complete understanding of the context and the expectations appropriate to that situation, a piece of writing can't be properly judged. So, if the teacher brings you a reading and wants you to discuss the subject matter of that reading rather than the choices available to its writer, your time is being wasted. This teacher wants to teach literature or social science, or whatever the content of the readings happens to be. Go find someone who wants to teach writing.


7. Student writing is never shared with the rest of the class. Because of the points I just made in # 6, discussing the writing done by the students in the class is the most efficient use of class time. It has multiple benefits to both student and teacher. The teacher who does not make the students' writing the topic of discussion is probably guilty of #2 and #3 as well. Again, this is someone with a psychological need to be an authority, not a teacher. This person is getting his/her payoff by standing at the front of the room, not by seeing you progress. This is a person who should have gone into acting or who has no training as a writing teacher--bad for you either way.

Royal Wedding

So, what's the truth of the royal wedding? One truth is that I am easily entertained by it. The allure of a beautiful clothing display makes me excited to get up at 4:00am and watch every minute. I was seventeen when I did this for the Charles & Diana wedding. That event still colored my taste seventeen years later when I had my own wedding. Even with an intentionally spare wedding and reception, I could not resist yards of cream-colored silk. I bought the dress for $90, so I surely have nothing to feel guilty for and yet.... I'm here blogging about truth and it's amazing how difficult it is to go there sometimes. The truth, I know is Gandhi's maxim, "Live simply so that others may simply live." And yet, in order to enjoy a royal wedding, I have to put that truth aside. I think the allure of this event is something worth examining. Doing so will, however, be a buzz kill.

I find I do not like being the buzz-kill in the room. Last week, while breakfasting with friends who are fellow academics, I accidentally launched a sullen round of mea culpas after I explained my paper's topic. My "Lies Our T-Shirts Tell Us: The Current Rhetorical Crisis in American Clothing" led everyone to feel the need to justify or apologise for the probable sweat-shop origins of what they were wearing. I found myself wishing I had a less ethics-driven thesis--and that's really troubling. But I should cut myself some slack on this. My discomfort at the breakfast table was the result of having made other people (who I really want to like me) uncomfortable. It's easier to write about things that make people uncomfortable than to talk to them face-to-face on such subjects. I just need to get used to being a buzz-kill and relax about popularity.


But in writing this post about the truth of the royal wedding allure, I will be killing my own buzz because I feel it. I feel the fashion-pig in me lusting for the spectacle. I feel the seven-year-old girl in me surging to the surface to see the pretty princess. And, although it's lots of fun, I think I'd rather see it rightly, truthfully. So, here I go off to slay one of the fiercest dragons my culture has created for me: the allure of the pretty princess. I will be told that this is not a dragon at all, that I do not need to deprive myself of the pleasure. This, I think is not true. Just two days ago, I (like all other Catholics at Easter mass) restated my baptismal vows. My favorite of these has always been "Do you reject the glamor of evil...?" because that's the problem with evil: it's glamorous. It is. It really is. And it is interesting to note that "glamor" is only a variant of "grammar." Grammar and glamor were used to refer to the casting of spells with words. (See the relationship between "spell" as a verb and as a noun.) So, let me examine the glamor and grammar of this royal wedding thing in an attempt to counter the spell it casts over us--particularly, we women.

First, I wonder if I'd be writing about this in terms of princesses, dragons, and spells if I were going to see it in person rather than on television. I think it would be easier for me to see the truth in person. Looking at all of these people with my own eyes would help me see them as people and not characters in a costume drama. I will be watching in the pre-dawn darkness of rural Oklahoma as they move around in the broad daylight of a huge city thousands of miles away. It will feel for all the world like watching a movie, not a real event. The camera that will direct my view will not take in the miscellany of the scene that my eyes would. If viewing it in person, I would be able to glance away from the elaborate ceremonial clothing and haute couture and take in the appearance of the spectators. 

I would be able to watch ordinary Brits watching the spectacle. I would see that it is a show for the consumption of far less privileged people, and I would be able to think about those people, and that would lead me to more truthful thinking. The only images of the people I will see Friday morning will be huge anonymous crowds. Any individuals the camera happens to focus on will be cheering and waving. The impression will be that a great mass of people are cheering and waving all the while. Crowds aren't like that when you're in them. Everyone isn't doing one thing. There are various levels of attention and mood when you're inside a crowd. I won't see the truth of the crowd which is always much less about the event itself when you're inside of it. Inside the crowd, it's more about the people you came with, what's on hand to eat or drink, petty annoyances of not being able to see or hear. For the people there, it won't be a smooth unbroken event that moves through the city. It will be a long while of waiting during which time a thousand real-life issues will be engaged. Then there will be the sound of a distant roar that will quickly grow to a deafening boom. There's not enough time to adjust to the sudden volume before the object of interest appears and disappears in a flash. The sound dies away and everyone is left to decide whether to stay or go. That experience keeps you well grounded in the reality of your relationship to the event and its players--no way to confuse yourself as to how important those people are to your life. 


Following the events of the day via television will be full of confusing illusions. The minutia of the day's unseen events will be narrated to me: what time Kate woke up, where she spent the night, who is with her as she dresses. The reporters' repeated exclamations of what an exciting day it is will be a waste of their time. All they have to do is feed me the frivolous details as if they mattered and I'll be hooked. I will have a sense of some insider knowledge. I will repeat these pointless tidbits of information to family members as the get up and find breakfast. Once the procession starts, I will be able to imagine, again, that I am inside this event. I see it all, every part, just like Kate--though maybe better because I know exactly how many crystals are sewn into the hemline of her dress and she probably doesn't. The crowd will become another character in the story instead of the place where I am. I will be able to imagine that I'm in a privileged position in comparison to them. I will be able to imagine that I am not one of  them. I will have absorbed so many pieces of trivia about Kate that I will imagine some connection to her--many women will. It will be disorienting.

The truth of the event is that a young woman who is about to have an exceptionally trying marriage is the pretty centerpiece for a monarchy that desperately needs propping up. The economy is bad everywhere and we're all going to watch millions of dollars thrown into a PR effort. And it's a dodgy effort at that. I'm disturbed by the way the public is being set up for a new Diana. And right there--the point at which Kate becomes Diana in the popular imagination--is a troubling allusion as much as an illusion. I have been watching the re-televising of the Charles & Diana wedding. It's painful to look at now. At the time, Diana was a few years older than me, but when I watch my television screen, she is a twenty-year-old and I'm 46. She looks so very young and is obviously in love with her new husband who we now know was not so much in love with her. I'm seeing a bit of the truth of that wedding 30 years ago just with the assistance of time having passed. The repeated image of Kate in the sapphire blue dress wearing Diana's engagement ring feels like an omen. Somehow she seems to imagine she will have a happy future as a royal in spite of all the inauspicious signs. One piece of trivia that I've already collected is that Kate met the queen for the first time only recently, after having been engaged to William for months. That's just not a good thing. I can well imagine what the House of Winsor thinks of this daughter of merchants, granddaughter of miners. She will not be welcome by many. And any extent to which she reminds the people at the palace of Diana will not be good for her popularity there. This is not discussed on the television just as it was not discussed that Diana and Charles had only dated for six months when engaged. There are problems with these people and when outsiders join in, they are usually treated badly. 

And well there might be problems with these people. They are a family who live off their breeding (another reason Kate will not be taken seriously by her new family). They take public money to wave, cut ribbons, and have parties. They are professional celebrities paid with tax revenue. That's just wrong. Someone will say that they make money for the country--tourism and souvenirs--but there's no way they bring in as much as they cost. If Britain wants to make money off its heritage, I'd rather see them throw tax money at a revival of the Arts & Crafts movement. So, one sobering truth to hold in my mind while watching is the fact that this is a very expensive waste. The deeper facts of the matter are that the royal money is in land holdings. In essence, the monarch is one of the biggest real estate holders in the world. These land holdings cannot legally be divided or sold and belong to the monarch simply because she inherited them from feudal times. Royalists like to assert that the monarchy more than pays for itself because of the profits from these land holdings get distributed into the national budget in exchange for a comparatively small pension given to certain royals. And that would be a good argument for the monarchy if we can all agree that the distribution of land under the feudal system is just. I'm one of those wild-eyed Gandhians who doesn't see it as good system. It created poverty for the majority. It was the opposite of Gandhi's "Live simply so that others many simply live." So, essentially, I'm saying that a royal family of this kind is a cultural and economic evil. 


I have just typed the words above at the same time that CNN is having an anchorman in angry banter with a kook with a website. So, I'll have to say it: I'm asserting that the royal family is a cultural and economic evil but I do not endorse violence. Now, I wouldn't mind seeing a peaceful demonstration against the royals, but that's not going to be allowed.

Keeping the idea in mind that this is all a display of injustice should help me keep my wits about me while watching. It's a struggle when you've been brought up to worship prettiness. And let me admit that this wedding wouldn't have half the attraction it does if it weren't for the bride's prettiness. She's beautiful and looks beautiful in her beautiful clothes and I like it. There's pleasure in looking at pretty people even if they aren't wearing pretty clothes, but this pretty bride will most certainly be wearing very pretty clothes. Even the not-pretty people at the event will be wearing pretty clothes--excepting the queen, I'm afraid. She seems to prefer wearing a brightly colored kaftan at all times. And the hats will be delightful. I will covet many of the hats. I will look for ways to reconstruct the hats I have so that they mimic some of the really special ones at the wedding. I will be struggling with myself. Of course, there's always the option not to watch at all. I'll have to consider that. But, at this time, I'm thinking that watching it will be a very useful exercise in experimenting with truth. Can I watch through the illusion-inducing lens of a camera and still keep my bearings straight? An interesting experiment.

Losing My Religion

I became a university professor because I wanted, more than anything, to work in a field that did real, concrete good for ordinary working people. I wanted to work with people who were not honor students, not independently wealthy, not privileged in any way. I wanted to show people who thought they weren't good at reading and writing that they could do it. As an undiagnosed dyslexic who got a PhD in Composition/Rhetoric/Literacy, I have tricks and methods that have given me the thin end of the wedge into advanced literacy against all odds. In my graduate studies, I found that the little memory systems I had invented to get myself through the school system were very like ones the ancients used in a world before writing. I discovered theorists who explained logically how and why electronic literacy works differently from print literacy and I saw in this an advantage for people like myself.

Yes, I would use my knowledge of Rhetoric to analyze Literacy problems so I could effectively teach Composition to pretty much anyone. That's work I could spring out of bed every morning to do. It was honorable. It used my particular gifts. It was obviously a calling. Yes, I actually mean a calling from God. Catholic education taught me that I was responsible for using my talents to benefit my community and I felt enormously blessed to have a clear view of how I could do that. I even told friends and family that my time as a graduate student was like being in the seminary for the priesthood (usually to explain why I wasn't playing and partying like I did as an undergraduate). Until last year, my life had purpose and direction. I had passion for my work and was rewarded with tenure at a rural regional university that exactly fit my abilities. But, last September, I resigned from that job. I resigned from my calling. It has been very much like losing my religion. It's a painful shock to my worldview and my identity. I'm still struggling with this.

I had to quit because I was the target of my dean's petty corruption. Of course, deans are often victims of the Peter Principle. Every academic has had at least one. However, the petty corruption that led me to walk away from that particular job made me question the mission of the university--first, this one university, and then the entire enterprise. Of course, I've walked away from bad working conditions before--I imagine anyone with self-esteem has had to do that at least once in a career--but I did not leave my job in order to take another one in academe. When I looked at the reasons for the petty corruption, I found that my profession was not what I had thought. I was not viewed by my employer as an educator. I was employed to be a veil of legitimacy for an industry that needed to compete in the marketplace. The administration did not want me there to empower students. In fact, empowered students were the administration's worst fear. No, my employer wanted a PhD to sign off on grades because that's what accreditation demanded. My tenure was granted because they couldn't legally deny me. Law suits are administrators' only other fear. Petty corruption aside, an entirely new perspective on American academe has occurred to me and I can't shake it off. The profession I chose no longer exists. In its place is a corporate-model machine that will render higher education unrecognizable within ten years. In some places, the transformation will occur much more quickly because of the dreaded funding cliff that loomed even before the financial crisis. Now, that cliff is even steeper as stimulus money is about to run out.

Federal investigations into the practices of for-profit universities has revealed them to be nothing more than sponges for tax money. But the champions of deregulation are winning and they will change the way the university system works. The pro-corporate legislators will fight for the right of for-profit universities to make money. Academics have all already seen the ground-work being laid for the victory of corporate profits: mountains of new paperwork flooding the desks of every teaching professional. Syllabi now need to have "expected student outcomes" statements. We have found this a strange new task, a seemingly superfluous bit of nonsense. But it's not nonsense. It's a very important framework that must be in place for the dismantling of higher education to proceed. Even the last week's midnight madness budget fight included the issue of for-profit sleaze. The for-profits one that one and they will keep on winning.

For-profit universities are currently needing to demonstrate that the terrible job they do in preparing their students for career success is no worse than that of the traditional universities. Their investors, who are pulling down enormous profits amid shady business practices, have literally bought the standards for higher education. (Mind you, in most of the world, government offices oversee the accreditation of schools. The United States, however, has private accreditation entities.) The reason new "accountability" procedures are being forced on not-for-profit schools has nothing to do with educating students (any educator can tell you that this is, in fact, a great impediment to classroom learning), it's all about preparing not-for-profits to convert themselves into for-profit institutions.

Yes, that's where this is headed. The current economic crisis is being used to bust unions now. Tenure elimination is next, followed by states unloading the expense of their public universities in the name of fiscal responsibility. "After all," they will say, "there are successful profit-making models out there. Let the state schools be accountable for paying for themselves. If DeVry and Phoenix can do it...." The decades ahead will be spent on public debate about whether the universities are properly "accountable" for student learning, thereby leading higher education into the nightmare of standardized testing that primary and secondary education currently endure. Make no mistake, pushing higher education into that nightmare is an actual goal here. Standardized testing is big business--a big, shady business.

And that's the vision of higher education in the USA that I can't shake off. I can't make myself apply for another teaching job. It feels wrong. I've seen the little man behind the curtain. I've taken the red pill instead of the blue one. I've lost my religion. "But," I can hear my former students say, "even if the business is going to Hell, you can still help students, change their lives, make their worlds better places." Well, no, not really. I can make a difference in the lives of anyone I encounter by being truthful. I don't need a classroom to do that. And it compromises my ability to be truthful if I make a living in a profession I suspect may be on its way to becoming a scam. That sounds harsh and I am already receiving some scorn from former colleagues because I'm saying this--but, I really do believe it's true.

Messages from China

A friend's mother was visiting from her home in the Middle East. Our friend told us she liked to shop recreationally--and on the cheap. We all laughed about how his mother sounded just like my mother and I volunteered to take the two Moms to some recreational shopping locals in Muskogee. Of course, one of these was the Hobby Lobby.

Ah, Hobby Lobby (sigh), I could write a thousand analyses of you. Perhaps I will. For now, I thought I'd share with everyone the stuff  I encountered there. One can meditate almost endlessly on these items.

  Here's the first: 

This just worries me. Clearly, someone is meant to find this a sentimental heart-warmer. The possibility that a Christian would find this charming is just disturbing all by itself. Santa and the Christ child? Is this supposed to be happening in Bethlehem at the actual event? Why would Santa exist at that time? This needs interpreting.

Perhaps it is this meant to be an argument for Santa's origin: the birth of Christ spontaneously spawned Santa. Way to mess up a kid's theological understanding!

Another possible interpretation: This is an atheistic argument asserting that these two characters have equal historical validity and perform the same function: to comfort children and childish adults.

Or: The people of China who made this just don't care that the story of Santa and the story of the nativity are generally regarded as distinct from each other, their sharing Christmas time as a trope being more or less irrelevant.

Here's another interesting one:

The people of China made this for us, too. Mind you, it was undoubtably ordered by USA manufacturers who found no problem with weird mind games involved in any attempt to appreciate the aesthetics of these objects. And, after all, as purely decorative items, they are meant to be appreciated aesthetically. But I can't even get to the place where I'm looking at their qualities as art. I can't stop reading them as a message. (I know that's not everybody's problem. I'm a rhetorician. I can't help it. But indulge my thinking here for a minute.) 

I get one clear message from these objects: "Dear American Consumers, we know that many of you wish to celebrate your African roots. We also know that an equal number of you want to demonstrate that your whiteness doesn't get in the way of your love of diversity. Bravo to all of you! Knowing that real African art would be more expensive, we offer you here this just-as-good option made in China. We're sure that your participation in a global economy that has almost completely eliminated US manufacturing and led African exporters to the brink of starvation will go utterly unnoticed by you. So, please enjoy celebrating the beauty and dignity of the African people while not giving a crap about them as historical realities."

But our American manufacturing outsourcers send me rebuttals to my cynical interpretations of their objects d'art. And they don't leave anything to chance. They write it out plainly:

I will assume the William James quote is meant to make me want to buy it so I can demonstrate to all who see it that I am deep. The act of paying money to acquire a piece of resin that asserts I am not a superficial person is meant to be completely forgotten once it is in place in my home or office. 

A slightly less cynical interpretation how I am to perceive the William James hunk of resin: Looking at this makes me want to be less superficial. Therefore, I will buy it and it will act as a permanent reminder to me to be less superficial. I will ignore the fact that my profound love of the sentiment was sparked while walking the aisles of a store asking myself what I might like to buy.

Or, I'm meant to buy it for someone else and thereby demonstrate my appreciation of that person's deep, thoughtful nature. In this case, I'll have to hope I'm mostly wrong about my friend, lest she think, "You bought me a cheap hunk of resin to celebrate my focus on high ideals? Thanks for one more thing to keep track of and take care of."

The item on the bottom of the picture is clearly meant to shut up my cynicism about the aesthetic value of the items around it. But, "God makes all things beautiful in his time." is complete nonsense. And I sure better not get that to give a friend. There's a snarky message in there if I do. Or maybe this is a great gift for a husband to give a wife -- bundled with gift certificates for Botox injections, maybe?

These three are enough for now. Rest assured, I have many more to share.