Arwen (Acoustic) - Sam Gray (mp3)
Humdrum - Pallers (mp3)
My first series on XtraNormal went to the heart of the issue: the absurdities of groupthink in a school environment. While inspired directly by my experiences at my own job, by the people who surround me every day, it wasn't so much intended as a slam on them as it was on the way educators and administrators are in general.
However, when I showed off my creations to friends and spouse, the resounding response I got was: "You'd best not let these get out. It would be bad for you, professionally speaking." Well, I can ignore one voice, but ignoring five or six is a different story.
So I went back to the drawing board. Rather than creating characters who were mash-ups of several people I knew from work* talking in a school environment, I added one extra degree of separation. Rather than seeing the absurdities of school through the administrators and teachers, I decided to reveal it through the parents. And, just in case it still hit too close to home, I made the parents superheroes.
Yes, this has sorta already been done by The Incredibles, but not like this.
The group is named The Paragon after a supergroup a friend and I invented in the '80s. So far, my characters are Horn Dog, Bowie, and Muffy. Horn Dog is the father to Horn Puppy, the freshman high school student at a local private school. Bowie is the single bachelor with a British accent and a mullet (translate: you just know he gets laid). And Muffy is the S&M ripoff who has ascended to the elected role of group leader.
Enough talk. Here's Episode 1.
Horn Puppy and Crew Cuts
Showing posts with label school. Show all posts
Showing posts with label school. Show all posts
Monday, September 26, 2011
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
One Rule to Rule Them All
Everybody Wants to Rule the World - Ted Leo & the Pharmacists (mp3)
Jesus had two rules. Wabash College has just one. They one-upped Jesus! Here is their rule:
Every year, my school adds and subtracts pages of rules. Mostly adds. Same story at schools across the country.
It’s like the entire history of the Torah, where 10 simple commandments became three books of the Torah that rival the worst portions of The Bartimaeus Trilogy, has been ignored. ("But Pa, it's not fair! You only had to memorize 10 commandments, and I have to memorize 406 pages!" "Shut up and eat your manna.")
Seriously, Christians circa 2011 can’t even remember 10 f**king commandments, much less whether some dude’s ox needs to be gored if it attempts to hump your goat on your side of the fence if your wife or daughter witnesses it. Nor do we know where to look in the Torah to find out.
Two schools, four rules.
Neither Wabash nor my daughter’s school spends hours and days in meetings attempting to clarify or tweak the rules they have laid out. Neither school has lengthy meetings with parents and/or students where the administrators must begrudgingly acknowledge that the rule against inappropriate sexual conduct did not explicitly state that one student could not grope a female student by the buttocks, so therefore the student cannot be punished for doing what was not expressly forbidden in the rules from doing. (For the record, it stated “breasts and genital areas.”)
To be fair, neither school has a military component, and many of the schools obsessed with lengthy rulebooks do, or at least did at one point in time. And anyone with military experience knows that the handbook on how to properly prepare and eat toast is at least 16 pages long.
Did you ever see A Few Good Men? Remember that scene where Lt. Caffey grabs the Army field manual and asks Noah Wyle if anywhere in there it says how to go to the mess hall for meals, and Wyle says “Nossir.” And Caffey throws him the Gitmo field manual and asks the same question, and Wyle says, “Nossir.” Remember that?
Well, I gay-ron-tee you that, when the movie came out, Army brass dudes looked at one another and said, “Is it really not in there? F**k!! We need to add that to next year’s edition!” And next year, there was a 14-page breakdown on how to get to a mess hall for three squares a day. Complete with bullet points that looked something like this:
I’m not convinced that the One Rule or Three Rule model is a perfect fit for our school or any school, but doesn’t it more effectively get to the heart of what education is supposed to, ultimately, be about: getting students to think for themselves?
To annoy Bob, I’ll whip out my own bastardized version of Occam’s Razor again: All things being equal, the simplest explanation is most likely the right one. Which is to say, if both approaches to rules are a guaranteed pain in the ass for administrators and students, then isn’t too few rules better than too many?
Jesus had two rules. Wabash College has just one. They one-upped Jesus! Here is their rule:"The student is expected to conduct himself at all times, both on and off the campus, as a gentleman and a responsible citizen."My daughters’ school has three rules:
I will respect myself and others.Wabash has had its “Gentleman’s Rule” for almost 60 years. My daughters’ school has had the same three rules since it opened its doors in 1991. Meanwhile, the school where I work has a 62-page handbook of rules. At least one school I know has a handbook that approaches 80 pages.
I will take responsibility for my actions.
I will treat others the way I want to be treated.
Every year, my school adds and subtracts pages of rules. Mostly adds. Same story at schools across the country.It’s like the entire history of the Torah, where 10 simple commandments became three books of the Torah that rival the worst portions of The Bartimaeus Trilogy, has been ignored. ("But Pa, it's not fair! You only had to memorize 10 commandments, and I have to memorize 406 pages!" "Shut up and eat your manna.")
Seriously, Christians circa 2011 can’t even remember 10 f**king commandments, much less whether some dude’s ox needs to be gored if it attempts to hump your goat on your side of the fence if your wife or daughter witnesses it. Nor do we know where to look in the Torah to find out.
Two schools, four rules.
Neither Wabash nor my daughter’s school spends hours and days in meetings attempting to clarify or tweak the rules they have laid out. Neither school has lengthy meetings with parents and/or students where the administrators must begrudgingly acknowledge that the rule against inappropriate sexual conduct did not explicitly state that one student could not grope a female student by the buttocks, so therefore the student cannot be punished for doing what was not expressly forbidden in the rules from doing. (For the record, it stated “breasts and genital areas.”)
To be fair, neither school has a military component, and many of the schools obsessed with lengthy rulebooks do, or at least did at one point in time. And anyone with military experience knows that the handbook on how to properly prepare and eat toast is at least 16 pages long.
Did you ever see A Few Good Men? Remember that scene where Lt. Caffey grabs the Army field manual and asks Noah Wyle if anywhere in there it says how to go to the mess hall for meals, and Wyle says “Nossir.” And Caffey throws him the Gitmo field manual and asks the same question, and Wyle says, “Nossir.” Remember that?Well, I gay-ron-tee you that, when the movie came out, Army brass dudes looked at one another and said, “Is it really not in there? F**k!! We need to add that to next year’s edition!” And next year, there was a 14-page breakdown on how to get to a mess hall for three squares a day. Complete with bullet points that looked something like this:
- Breakfast
- Between 4:30 a.m. - 6:30 a.m.
- Meat Lover preferences
- Dairy allergies
- For those with religious dietary restrictions
- Vegetarian preferences
- Pure vegan
- Traditional vegetarian
- Just no moo cows or cluck clucks or oink oinks, please
- No exceptions version
- "Bacon is too good and must be granted exception" version
- Between 6:30 a.m. - 8 a.m.
I’m not convinced that the One Rule or Three Rule model is a perfect fit for our school or any school, but doesn’t it more effectively get to the heart of what education is supposed to, ultimately, be about: getting students to think for themselves?To annoy Bob, I’ll whip out my own bastardized version of Occam’s Razor again: All things being equal, the simplest explanation is most likely the right one. Which is to say, if both approaches to rules are a guaranteed pain in the ass for administrators and students, then isn’t too few rules better than too many?
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Bipolar Work Disorder
Bring Down - Midlake (mp3)
Suppose - Buffalo Tom (mp3)
May is the cruelest month.
The long year of routines, assignments, obligations, ideals, hopes, goals and opportunities is pulling into the garage. The joys of new and successful experiments have begun to fade. Attempts at getting others excited about new ideas run into deaf ears and tired eyes. Some things didn’t get done. Some things didn’t get done well. Friends are retiring or leaving for other schools or different locations.
Everyone is desperate for an ending, even as many of us will continue to return to our school every day over the summer, even as the work of preparing for another school year must go on.
At the beginning of the school year, I find myself reeling in a panicky sense of vertigo. Work feels like one of those games where someone stands in a glass-walled booth while money flies all around them, and the stress and excitement comes from just trying to snag and grab onto as many of the possibilities and ideas as you can. In the fall, the dollar bills are flying all over the place, but by May, it seems like there’s just a few bills in the air, and you just can’t seem to get your hands on any of them.
In the fall, amidst trying new things and breaking new ground, all the standard parts of previous years come and go, and dozens of unexpected fires and challenges emerge. Fall becomes about time management, about prioritizing, about keeping your head in the chaos.
May, for me, is about next year. What can I do to improve? What changes can I make in our routines to increase efficiency? What new concepts or angles must I pursue, and what can I afford to let go of?
The problem is, getting momentum on this kind of thinking, for me, requires cooperation, conversation, discussion. I’m in a position that relies largely on the buy-in of other people. And, in May, few people give a shit about next year. They care about four beautiful letters -- J-U-N-E -- and call out to her like they were in a Calgon commercial. "June, take me away!"
Mostly I’m very zen about these things. I sympathize with the frustrated voices, the tired eyes, the listless posture and slumped shoulders, the comments about how ready everyone is to get the frick outta Dodge and enjoy a nice summer break. I get it, and I understand it. And not all of it is negative and tired. Some of the looking forward to summer is positive and eager and excited, and even though my job remains basically the same all summer, to be utterly spent in May just happens in this biz.
Yet in a flash, my peace and calm can turn to anger, or deep sadness. I get angry that better-compensated coworkers are checked out. Or sad that other schools are busy making big ambitious announcements while we’re just staring at those big letters: J-U-N-E.
Then I get happy again, because a coworker is retiring, and all these people stand up and say great things about him, and his life is such a testament to what we’re trying to do here, and his words bring tears to my eyes, and I’m so very proud of what I do for a living and where I do it, because we are a legitimately impressive community.
Then I get angry again, because the goober five chairs away from me doesn’t know how to silence his phone in a faculty meeting, and it erupts twice during the retiree’s emotional speech. And his techno-ineptitude serves as a reminder of just how many people around me have no friggin’ clue about technology, nor do they seem to feel the slightest bit of discomfort about their ignorance.
In fact, they sometimes act angry that the world refused to freeze in place and instead expects them to keep learning shit. Just because your passion is history or physics and a student’s is Call of Duty or YouTube doesn’t make you any different than they are if you can’t open up and learn stuff you find boring. Some teachers are to technology what dumb jocks are to chemistry: This is stupid. This has nothing to do with me. This is for nerds.
Educators, of all people, should enter their workplace every day expecting that they’re gonna have to keep learning shit. You know, “lifelong learners” and all that? It ain't just a tag-line. It's fer real, yo.
Frustration becomes sadness because we’re losing some amazing veteran teachers to retirement. And, even if they were a little too embittered at times, they were still dazzling and amazing teachers, and their gifts in the classroom will not be easily replaced.
And then I get tired, because switching from one emotion to another so quickly and unexpectedly and constantly is exhausting. Not to mention it’s friggin’ hot outside, and I hate the heat.
It’s a cruel month. So then I, too, think it: J-U-N-E...
Suppose - Buffalo Tom (mp3)
May is the cruelest month.The long year of routines, assignments, obligations, ideals, hopes, goals and opportunities is pulling into the garage. The joys of new and successful experiments have begun to fade. Attempts at getting others excited about new ideas run into deaf ears and tired eyes. Some things didn’t get done. Some things didn’t get done well. Friends are retiring or leaving for other schools or different locations.
Everyone is desperate for an ending, even as many of us will continue to return to our school every day over the summer, even as the work of preparing for another school year must go on.
At the beginning of the school year, I find myself reeling in a panicky sense of vertigo. Work feels like one of those games where someone stands in a glass-walled booth while money flies all around them, and the stress and excitement comes from just trying to snag and grab onto as many of the possibilities and ideas as you can. In the fall, the dollar bills are flying all over the place, but by May, it seems like there’s just a few bills in the air, and you just can’t seem to get your hands on any of them.
In the fall, amidst trying new things and breaking new ground, all the standard parts of previous years come and go, and dozens of unexpected fires and challenges emerge. Fall becomes about time management, about prioritizing, about keeping your head in the chaos.
May, for me, is about next year. What can I do to improve? What changes can I make in our routines to increase efficiency? What new concepts or angles must I pursue, and what can I afford to let go of?
The problem is, getting momentum on this kind of thinking, for me, requires cooperation, conversation, discussion. I’m in a position that relies largely on the buy-in of other people. And, in May, few people give a shit about next year. They care about four beautiful letters -- J-U-N-E -- and call out to her like they were in a Calgon commercial. "June, take me away!"Mostly I’m very zen about these things. I sympathize with the frustrated voices, the tired eyes, the listless posture and slumped shoulders, the comments about how ready everyone is to get the frick outta Dodge and enjoy a nice summer break. I get it, and I understand it. And not all of it is negative and tired. Some of the looking forward to summer is positive and eager and excited, and even though my job remains basically the same all summer, to be utterly spent in May just happens in this biz.
Yet in a flash, my peace and calm can turn to anger, or deep sadness. I get angry that better-compensated coworkers are checked out. Or sad that other schools are busy making big ambitious announcements while we’re just staring at those big letters: J-U-N-E.
Then I get happy again, because a coworker is retiring, and all these people stand up and say great things about him, and his life is such a testament to what we’re trying to do here, and his words bring tears to my eyes, and I’m so very proud of what I do for a living and where I do it, because we are a legitimately impressive community.
In fact, they sometimes act angry that the world refused to freeze in place and instead expects them to keep learning shit. Just because your passion is history or physics and a student’s is Call of Duty or YouTube doesn’t make you any different than they are if you can’t open up and learn stuff you find boring. Some teachers are to technology what dumb jocks are to chemistry: This is stupid. This has nothing to do with me. This is for nerds.
Educators, of all people, should enter their workplace every day expecting that they’re gonna have to keep learning shit. You know, “lifelong learners” and all that? It ain't just a tag-line. It's fer real, yo.
And then I get tired, because switching from one emotion to another so quickly and unexpectedly and constantly is exhausting. Not to mention it’s friggin’ hot outside, and I hate the heat.
It’s a cruel month. So then I, too, think it: J-U-N-E...
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Open Letter to the Times Free Press Managing Editor
Lesson Learned - Brendan Benson (mp3)
J. Todd Foster
Managing Editor
Chattanooga Times Free Press
Chattanooga, TN
September 16, 2010
Dear Mr. Foster,
Welcome back to Chattanooga. Sorry I have to introduce myself under such negative circumstances.
The purpose of this email is to express my frustration with yesterday's story on National Merit Semifinalists. The story mentions 31 students who rank in the top 1 percent of the country -- the whole country! -- on a highly-respected test. These are the NBA lottery picks of the high school academic world. Yet they don't get their names in the paper. They hardly merit much space at all, really.
Almost every school in this city benefits greatly from an entire section dedicated to sports, and I do not mean to be ungrateful for the recognition you give students for accomplishments in that area. However, were a Martian to land in Chattanooga and read your newspaper (I figure if they have spaceships they can probably figure out English), they would have a very difficult time learning what exactly students do in school other than play sports. You occasionally run stories on community service or, once in a while, something like mock trial, but when it comes to the academic experience, and particularly when it comes to the academic "all-stars" of our city, those stories are the proverbial needles in a very large haystack.
If the city of Chattanooga wonders why so many of its best and brightest leave and don't return, it might be wise to start with the very clear indication that the paper offers: we simply don't, as a community, value them. If they can throw, hit, catch, dribble, or chip, they might earn our recognition and adulation. But if they're just smart? If they study hard and prepare for college exceptionally well? That's just not newsworthy to us.
Every varsity sport in this city ends its season with a series of features dominating the back page of your sports section. Full color. Lots of names and pictures. You even do two. One for the citywide kids and another for the kids in the perimeter counties. Every middle school sports team that wins anything gets a picture on the inside pages.
But if you score in the top 1 percent IN THE NATION on what might be one of the most important tests for anyone with ambitions for college? You don't even merit getting your name in the paper.
Sir, if you don't find something disturbing and misguided in this editorial decision, then I suggest you plug up your ears with some golf balls and put a helmet on backwards and just start running into a wall. Geeks don't have to deal with concussion disorders or repeated rehab stints on knees or dislocated joints. They might risk frying their brains, but I'm pretty sure that particular injury rate is minuscule at best. Apparently that makes them less newsworthy.
Perhaps you say, "We give people what they want to read, and our readers don't want to read about nerds. They want to read about sports." If that's your excuse, I recommend that you announce just that in some editorials. Take a stand. Be proud of your decision. In fact, you could start having reporters talk in schools to encourage kids to play more sports and get their stinkin' noses out of books, because what kind of pathetic nerd would study and learn when there's a hoop to aim for, a net to hit over? Stand up and be counted as Anti-Nerd. Most of the Tea Party would vote for you.
You know what would be nicer, though? If anyone with any real influence would get a grip on what's actually important about school and start finding ways to celebrate it. It might take a little bit of extra work. Actual reporting and such. But I bet you could find some smart kids out there and celebrate them in interesting ways.
What is undeniable about school is this: nothing guarantees a better chance of almost anything we define as "success" than a highly-motivated and hard-working STUDENT. Robert J. Samuelson says so and that dude's never wrong! Parents and teachers are powerful influences, but at the heart of academic success is a motivated kid. This isn't rocket science. Yet your paper does almost nothing to address this problem; it merely exacerbates it.
You are the media equivalent of Coke machines and candy bars in a school hallway. Worse, I think you know it but would hate to risk losing a revenue stream.
If I am unfairly crapping on the athlete, you can take the blame for that as well. Your newspaper assists in promoting that inequality, in promoting the superiority and greater value of an athlete over that of mere booksmarts. And when I say "you," I don't mean you, Mr. Foster. I don't even mean The Times Free Press. I mean 95% of newspapers in this entire pathetic country. You're all doing one disservice after another, and it makes it damn hard to mourn you as your ship sinks into the icy waters of financial ruin, because you could've damn well avoided all these icebergs if only you'd been paying attention.
Mr. Foster, you're new to your position as Managing Editor. You don't have to accept this status quo. You can change things. You can address this problem. You probably won't. But I'll hold out a sliver of hope.
Or, in sports terminology, the geeks will need a Hail Mary. Are you Doug Flutie? Or are you Ryan Leaf?
Hope you like our blog! Best to you and yours! Hugs and Kisses!
Billy
J. Todd Foster
Managing Editor
Chattanooga Times Free Press
Chattanooga, TN
September 16, 2010
Dear Mr. Foster,
Welcome back to Chattanooga. Sorry I have to introduce myself under such negative circumstances.
Almost every school in this city benefits greatly from an entire section dedicated to sports, and I do not mean to be ungrateful for the recognition you give students for accomplishments in that area. However, were a Martian to land in Chattanooga and read your newspaper (I figure if they have spaceships they can probably figure out English), they would have a very difficult time learning what exactly students do in school other than play sports. You occasionally run stories on community service or, once in a while, something like mock trial, but when it comes to the academic experience, and particularly when it comes to the academic "all-stars" of our city, those stories are the proverbial needles in a very large haystack.
If the city of Chattanooga wonders why so many of its best and brightest leave and don't return, it might be wise to start with the very clear indication that the paper offers: we simply don't, as a community, value them. If they can throw, hit, catch, dribble, or chip, they might earn our recognition and adulation. But if they're just smart? If they study hard and prepare for college exceptionally well? That's just not newsworthy to us.
Every varsity sport in this city ends its season with a series of features dominating the back page of your sports section. Full color. Lots of names and pictures. You even do two. One for the citywide kids and another for the kids in the perimeter counties. Every middle school sports team that wins anything gets a picture on the inside pages.
But if you score in the top 1 percent IN THE NATION on what might be one of the most important tests for anyone with ambitions for college? You don't even merit getting your name in the paper.
Sir, if you don't find something disturbing and misguided in this editorial decision, then I suggest you plug up your ears with some golf balls and put a helmet on backwards and just start running into a wall. Geeks don't have to deal with concussion disorders or repeated rehab stints on knees or dislocated joints. They might risk frying their brains, but I'm pretty sure that particular injury rate is minuscule at best. Apparently that makes them less newsworthy.
Perhaps you say, "We give people what they want to read, and our readers don't want to read about nerds. They want to read about sports." If that's your excuse, I recommend that you announce just that in some editorials. Take a stand. Be proud of your decision. In fact, you could start having reporters talk in schools to encourage kids to play more sports and get their stinkin' noses out of books, because what kind of pathetic nerd would study and learn when there's a hoop to aim for, a net to hit over? Stand up and be counted as Anti-Nerd. Most of the Tea Party would vote for you.
You know what would be nicer, though? If anyone with any real influence would get a grip on what's actually important about school and start finding ways to celebrate it. It might take a little bit of extra work. Actual reporting and such. But I bet you could find some smart kids out there and celebrate them in interesting ways.
You are the media equivalent of Coke machines and candy bars in a school hallway. Worse, I think you know it but would hate to risk losing a revenue stream.
If I am unfairly crapping on the athlete, you can take the blame for that as well. Your newspaper assists in promoting that inequality, in promoting the superiority and greater value of an athlete over that of mere booksmarts. And when I say "you," I don't mean you, Mr. Foster. I don't even mean The Times Free Press. I mean 95% of newspapers in this entire pathetic country. You're all doing one disservice after another, and it makes it damn hard to mourn you as your ship sinks into the icy waters of financial ruin, because you could've damn well avoided all these icebergs if only you'd been paying attention.
Mr. Foster, you're new to your position as Managing Editor. You don't have to accept this status quo. You can change things. You can address this problem. You probably won't. But I'll hold out a sliver of hope.
Or, in sports terminology, the geeks will need a Hail Mary. Are you Doug Flutie? Or are you Ryan Leaf?
Hope you like our blog! Best to you and yours! Hugs and Kisses!
Billy
Monday, September 6, 2010
Birthing a Blog
This Woman's Work - Kate Bush (mp3)
Where Do the Children Go? - Hooters (with Patty Smyth) (mp3)
I just gave birth to a second blog.
My job and I had been talking about having a blog together for a couple of years now, ever since a consultant suggested it might make us a better place. We discussed the idea together, but our parents thought we were too young and weren't quite sure enough how to raise a blog in the kind of nurturing and confident way that blogs need to grow up and be big blogs.
A few years later, as the economy sank into the tank and budgets got tighter than the sphincter of a BP vice president walking through the Ninth Ward, the idea of birthing a blog -- no cost! lots of fun stats to track! -- suddenly appealed more to the parents. In tough economic times, everyone loves a new baby. Especially one that doesn't cost much to feed. "If it can live off your two boobs," they told me, "then it's a great idea!"
So working hard with an in-house fertilization expert, I implanted my egg in a WordPress womb and began a summer-long gestation period. As the time passed, and as more teachers agreed to help raise this blog in a nurturing and supportive environment, my hopes grew. I began to envision this blog actually growing up, maybe even going to college and getting a degree.
You see, Bottom of the Glass is more like a crack baby. Bob and I were tipsy and bored and, on something of a lark, wondered if we could actually raise a blog together. We weren't in a committed relationship, but we knew we had a lot of the same hopes and goals for a blog, and we also shared a similar level of minimal ambitions. The desire to write was the crack. We just wanted a place that might push us to write a little more frequently. And we'd post some music to draw in a few strangers. And we'd guilt a lot of our friends into reading it and commenting. But we were in bed together because of that love of writing. And I can't speak for my blog baby-daddy, but the goal of forcing me to write more could not have been more successfully met. BOTG is the perfect hippie lovechild.
BOTG had little chance of failure in our eyes. As parents, we would have been satisfied with an elementary school dropout. So long as our little blog didn't hurt anyone and stayed out of jail, we'd love it and support it. And BOTG, much like most children, has lived down to our low expectations. It hasn't been optioned into a book deal or garnered its parents any magazine writing gigs, but then, we never really begged for such things. We love it (almost) unconditionally.
The blog I've birthed with my job is under greater pressure. Its grandparents expect this little newborn to improve search engine results, to attract more students to the school, to increase our school's imprint on the world. They half expect the blog to grow up and become President. Except I'm not quite sure yet how interested these grandparents are in spoiling this infant. I'm pretty sure they're the kind of grandparents who are far more interested in receiving than in giving. As a protective and exhausted single dad, that makes me very nervous.
Some of the blog's uncles and aunts seem more excited about my baby blog than my parents. My parents want the blog to just hurry the f*#k up and become an adult; these other relatives don't mind cooing and coddling the infant. I've already had several relatives pitch in and write something. And a decent number of students -- its cousins, I reckon -- will even pitch in over the coming weeks. Lots of support, at least in the early going.
And I love my new baby. I'm an optimistic parent. I can see all these potential avenues to the future, and many of those possibilities are quite exciting. If it falls shy, its failure will be the sins of its father. Youth, or ignorance, or a failure to put this mewling thing in the right places at the right times.
Babies are about the promise of tomorrow. They're about investing energy, losing sleep, and lots and lots of breastfeeding. My nipples are sore as hell, and I worry if my baby can make it in this cold cruel world, but my heart is swollen with a strange and invigorating pride, and I feel like we can find a better place in the world together.
Ain't that what parenthood is all about?
Where Do the Children Go? - Hooters (with Patty Smyth) (mp3)
My job and I had been talking about having a blog together for a couple of years now, ever since a consultant suggested it might make us a better place. We discussed the idea together, but our parents thought we were too young and weren't quite sure enough how to raise a blog in the kind of nurturing and confident way that blogs need to grow up and be big blogs.
A few years later, as the economy sank into the tank and budgets got tighter than the sphincter of a BP vice president walking through the Ninth Ward, the idea of birthing a blog -- no cost! lots of fun stats to track! -- suddenly appealed more to the parents. In tough economic times, everyone loves a new baby. Especially one that doesn't cost much to feed. "If it can live off your two boobs," they told me, "then it's a great idea!"
So working hard with an in-house fertilization expert, I implanted my egg in a WordPress womb and began a summer-long gestation period. As the time passed, and as more teachers agreed to help raise this blog in a nurturing and supportive environment, my hopes grew. I began to envision this blog actually growing up, maybe even going to college and getting a degree.
The blog I've birthed with my job is under greater pressure. Its grandparents expect this little newborn to improve search engine results, to attract more students to the school, to increase our school's imprint on the world. They half expect the blog to grow up and become President. Except I'm not quite sure yet how interested these grandparents are in spoiling this infant. I'm pretty sure they're the kind of grandparents who are far more interested in receiving than in giving. As a protective and exhausted single dad, that makes me very nervous.
And I love my new baby. I'm an optimistic parent. I can see all these potential avenues to the future, and many of those possibilities are quite exciting. If it falls shy, its failure will be the sins of its father. Youth, or ignorance, or a failure to put this mewling thing in the right places at the right times.
Babies are about the promise of tomorrow. They're about investing energy, losing sleep, and lots and lots of breastfeeding. My nipples are sore as hell, and I worry if my baby can make it in this cold cruel world, but my heart is swollen with a strange and invigorating pride, and I feel like we can find a better place in the world together.
Ain't that what parenthood is all about?
Monday, June 28, 2010
Weak Parent Sauce and the System That Slurps It Down
Like Whoa - Aly & AJ (mp3)
Who Will Comfort Me - Melody Gardot (mp3)
Please read the following very carefully:
The New York Times article goes on to explain and explore the very delicate legal challenge facing (public) schools when it comes to cyberbullying, and it's a very good read. But I can't get past these first eight sentences, because they ultimately explain exactly why we're in this pickle to begin with.
Many parents, myself included, will literally go to the mat for our children during an intense sporting event. When we see them wronged, we get angry. When we see an act of intentional viciousness -- even if it's not directed at our child -- we will get vociferous, and sometimes arguments or worse will ensue.
But when we see that some young punk has been sending our daughter sexually-explicit and unwelcome text messages? We go crying to... well, I'd say "Mommy & Daddy," but we're s'posed to be Mommy and Daddy!
Even more pathetic is the excuse listed above. The father in question doesn't want to upset his coaching relationship with this other dad. The guy probably coaches a mean offensive line, or maybe he hits grounders like a mofo. Anyway, clearly the relationship on the athletic surface is far too important to risk by informing this other guy that his son is sending X-rated Buffalo Bill "it rubs the lotion on its skin" shit via cell phone to sixth-grade girls.
That these parents are pathetic, weak and utterly focused on the wrong things doesn't make the problem for schools easier. We can acknowledge the idiotic parenting strategies that explain away almost every problem we see in children, but none of that seems to let schools, teachers, or administrators off the hook for trying to solve these problems. Educators, whether we like it or not, spend more time with kids than most parents. Far too often, educators know kids better than parents. Many times, kids feel closer to and are more likely to heed the words of a teacher. None of this is right; none of it should be OK with us; but, as they say, it is what it is.
Every year, some dozen or so parents call our middle school administrators to complain about their own children's hair. "Please make my son get a haircut," these parents will say.
"But... you're his parent..." our Middle School head will say.
"Yes, but he might listen to you. If he knows he'll get in trouble at school, he might be willing to do it."
I'm not making this shit up. We have parents who have, apparently, castrated themselves without even knowing it. Parenta castrata.
How sad must it be, as a child, to grow up in a house where parents are so weak and pointless as to be incapable of serving as authority figures? How can kids learn about adult responsibilities, about the dangers and rewards of power, if they can't even witness the adults in their own homes wrestle with that responsibility. But today's parents aren't wrestling with the challenge. They're fish, flopping around on the mat, just waiting to be pinned so they can go sit back on the bench and keep drinking and playing golf.
As parents wimpily scurry farther away from being... well, parents, teachers and school administrators find themselves having to play detective, mediator and lawyer, all for bargain-basement pay.
Oh, and add one more role: armchair psychologist.
Not only are they under the gun to investigate thorny legal and disciplinary issues they can't even be sure they're allowed to investigate, they now find themselves deciding whether kids should have best friends.
Yes, there is now a debate amongst psychologists and educators whether it's healthy for kids to have best friends.
Far better, it seems, to have numerous shallow and marginally-meaningful relationships. You know, because the history of literature is rampant with kids who had best friends and were absolutely miserable.
Meanwhile, as schools get bogged down with having to play all these different roles, they are, far too often, failing to serve in their primary and original role: F#*KING TEACHING KIDS, LIKE, SCHOOL S*#T. It's not remotely fair for us to ask that of them, is it? When they're so busy doing so many other things that weren't ever supposed to be in the job description in the first place?
Teachers. Parents. Neither seem capable of focusing on the most important part of the jobs their titles imply.
The biggest difference: Teachers don't have much choice.
Who Will Comfort Me - Melody Gardot (mp3)
The girl’s parents, wild with outrage and fear, showed the principal the text messages: a dozen shocking, sexually explicit threats, sent to their daughter the previous Saturday night from the cellphone of a 12-year-old boy. Both children were sixth graders at Benjamin Franklin Middle School in Ridgewood, N.J.
Punish him, insisted the parents.
“I said, ‘This occurred out of school, on a weekend,’ ” recalled the principal, Tony Orsini. “We can’t discipline him.”
Had they contacted the boy’s family, he asked.
Too awkward, they replied. The fathers coach sports together.
Punish him, insisted the parents.
“I said, ‘This occurred out of school, on a weekend,’ ” recalled the principal, Tony Orsini. “We can’t discipline him.”
Had they contacted the boy’s family, he asked.
Too awkward, they replied. The fathers coach sports together.
The New York Times article goes on to explain and explore the very delicate legal challenge facing (public) schools when it comes to cyberbullying, and it's a very good read. But I can't get past these first eight sentences, because they ultimately explain exactly why we're in this pickle to begin with.
But when we see that some young punk has been sending our daughter sexually-explicit and unwelcome text messages? We go crying to... well, I'd say "Mommy & Daddy," but we're s'posed to be Mommy and Daddy!
Even more pathetic is the excuse listed above. The father in question doesn't want to upset his coaching relationship with this other dad. The guy probably coaches a mean offensive line, or maybe he hits grounders like a mofo. Anyway, clearly the relationship on the athletic surface is far too important to risk by informing this other guy that his son is sending X-rated Buffalo Bill "it rubs the lotion on its skin" shit via cell phone to sixth-grade girls.
That these parents are pathetic, weak and utterly focused on the wrong things doesn't make the problem for schools easier. We can acknowledge the idiotic parenting strategies that explain away almost every problem we see in children, but none of that seems to let schools, teachers, or administrators off the hook for trying to solve these problems. Educators, whether we like it or not, spend more time with kids than most parents. Far too often, educators know kids better than parents. Many times, kids feel closer to and are more likely to heed the words of a teacher. None of this is right; none of it should be OK with us; but, as they say, it is what it is.
Every year, some dozen or so parents call our middle school administrators to complain about their own children's hair. "Please make my son get a haircut," these parents will say."But... you're his parent..." our Middle School head will say.
"Yes, but he might listen to you. If he knows he'll get in trouble at school, he might be willing to do it."
I'm not making this shit up. We have parents who have, apparently, castrated themselves without even knowing it. Parenta castrata.
How sad must it be, as a child, to grow up in a house where parents are so weak and pointless as to be incapable of serving as authority figures? How can kids learn about adult responsibilities, about the dangers and rewards of power, if they can't even witness the adults in their own homes wrestle with that responsibility. But today's parents aren't wrestling with the challenge. They're fish, flopping around on the mat, just waiting to be pinned so they can go sit back on the bench and keep drinking and playing golf.
As parents wimpily scurry farther away from being... well, parents, teachers and school administrators find themselves having to play detective, mediator and lawyer, all for bargain-basement pay.
Oh, and add one more role: armchair psychologist.
Not only are they under the gun to investigate thorny legal and disciplinary issues they can't even be sure they're allowed to investigate, they now find themselves deciding whether kids should have best friends.
Yes, there is now a debate amongst psychologists and educators whether it's healthy for kids to have best friends.
Meanwhile, as schools get bogged down with having to play all these different roles, they are, far too often, failing to serve in their primary and original role: F#*KING TEACHING KIDS, LIKE, SCHOOL S*#T. It's not remotely fair for us to ask that of them, is it? When they're so busy doing so many other things that weren't ever supposed to be in the job description in the first place?
Teachers. Parents. Neither seem capable of focusing on the most important part of the jobs their titles imply.
The biggest difference: Teachers don't have much choice.
Monday, May 31, 2010
Ah, Grasshopper
Another Country - Tift Merritt (mp3)
Tell Me True - Sarah Jarosz (mp3)
Dorm duty.
Every night of the week, in every dorm, an adult is responsible for shepherding the little lambs from dinnertime to bedtime. Most advisors live in the dorm. A few, like me, don't. For nine years, I've spent one night each week walking dormitory halls, sitting at a hallway desk for 4-5 hours, striking up the occasional random conversation with adolescent males.
Friday night was the second-to-last night of dormitory obligation. Tonight will be my last. Fitting that my tenure concluded with an encounter that reminded me how full the teenage years are of awkward, uncertain, personality-altering conflicts and experiences.
One of the boys in my dorm -- let's call him Billy -- is a solid student and fairly unassuming guy. Bookish, but not homely or too introverted. In the last month or so, he has become increasingly dismissive of dorm life rules, and his personality in our interactions has shifted in a negative way. Little things here and there, which all speak to a passive-aggressive attitude towards authority.
My last two nights of duty, his behavior has reflected the typical red flags of drug use. Dilated pupils. Locked doors at random times (their doors are supposed to remain unlocked unless they're gone). Goofy or spacey or plain ol' odd responses to standard conversation. So, late on Friday night, I pulled him into a vacant room and offered my theory that he might be making, what we like to call on our campus, "bad decisions."
I hit the barn but missed the target.
Billy has a girlfriend. His first ever. They've been dating almost five weeks. Which, for Billy, is four weeks and six days longer than any other gal-pal he's ever had. The hope of this relationship, of escaping his bubble of dorm life and homework and XBox, rinse and repeat, inspired him to stop taking two very important drugs. He's all but ceased taking both his anti-depressant prescription as well as the meds he takes for ADD.
"The ADD stuff... it really does help me focus and stay on an even keel and avoid distractions, but it makes me feel like a fucking --"
I tilted my head. "Oh. Sorry."
"Thanks. Go on." I'm no prude, but I don't particularly think we're preparing them for life if they feel comfortable hurling naughty words willy-nilly in the presence of adults.
"Adderall makes me feel like a robot. Does that make sense?" (He asked that a lot over the course of our 45-minute conversation.) "I know I need it for my grades, but it feels like it's killing the rest of me. I get this girlfriend, and I wonder if the grades are even worth it anymore."
"You feel more social without the meds?"
"When I take them... I feel removed. Like I'm watching everyone on TV."
What happens often, when adults dive into an intense conversation with a teenager, is that you get more than you had expected, and in entirely unexpected ways. I confronted him expecting a conversation about his own drug use; I was getting a flashback into my own awkward miserable adolescent soul. Except thank God I never had to deal with all those damn meds.
Billy said the girlfriend was negatively affecting all his other relationships. His parents, with whom he often talked several times a week, felt him growing distant. His friends were annoyed with his goo-goo eyed attitude. His teachers were frustrated with his lost focus on school. I was annoyed with his personality change.
"All because of a girl," he said. "Does that make sense?"
Christ almighty, I wish it didn't. "Unfortunately, yes," I said.
His reply: "Well it doesn't make sense to me."
Billy went on to explain that his step-brother was 30 and barely getting by because he'd spent his adolescent life experimenting with drugs. Watching this older brother screw up and witnessing the havoc it wreaked on his life helped Billy know that drugs weren't a particularly wise option. [The irony: he's expected to take two "acceptable" mood-altering medications daily.] Because that so closely mirrored my own reasons for staying away from "bad decisions" in high school, I instantly believed his sincerity. (Sometimes we determine others' honesty by nothing more than how much their statements reflect our own reality... which is rarely the best way to judge it. But I digress.)
Then he offered up the Big Kicker: his new girlfriend was a serious pothead who frequently dabbled in other drugs. LSD. Cocaine. Significant amounts of alcohol.
She just turned 17.
"I know she's bad for me. I know this can't last."
I didn't say anything.
"So... why can't I give her up?" Billy asked, fighting back tears. He managed, the entire time, to be always on the verge of breaking down without ever actually losing composure. It was quite moving. "It's so stupid. I feel so stupid."
It sounds absurd because adolescence is absurd. The cruelest part of learning is the lessons from which no adults can save you, no textbook can prepare you, no test prep can adjust you, no ADD medication can fix you.
Billy spent most of his adolescent years trying desperately to catch a girlfriend. Finally, at long last, he caught one, and instantly everyone is telling him to throw her back and keep fishing. But how long will he have to go fishing to catch another one? A month? Five years? Never? And who's to say the next one he catches won't be equally fucked up? There's plenty of fish in the sea, sure, but that's hardly comforting if you suck at fishing for them.
Billy waited and waited to have someone whose hand he could hold, someone to kiss, someone to sit across from him at a downtown restaurant or with whom to dance at a school dance. He was patient most of the time. Occasionally he probably resigned himself to having no shot. But then... then he found one! And he's supposed to give her up immediately because she's bad for him? Yeah right.
Ironic that all of his problems surround the gaining of a girlfriend, yet acquiring one makes him feel more isolated than ever. His life, previously routine and robotic and boring, has been electrified by this blessed chance at a coveted relationship, and his Frankenstein-esque cadaver has come alive and finally fits into the social puzzle... yet it's all wrong. And there's no clear path towards a happy ending. All roads lead to (temporary) downfall.
As if being 16 and 17 wasn't miserable and frustrating enough, but to throw in the drugs and the alcohol... I dunno. Maybe there's some reward in numbing your adolescent brain from all of it. Diving into a psychadelic distraction from the angst and loneliness until you can emerge older and more capable of handling it. But I don't buy it. Attempting to dodge the misery by postponing it seems to only give the hydra more heads and make them more venomous.
It feels like small concession that he shared all of this with me. Maybe just getting it all out to an adult helps. Maybe.
But being miserable and unsure and (maybe) in love and lonely and desperate to experience a better, cooler life beyond textbooks and classrooms... not all the talk in the world with an adult is going to change or numb those desires.
As adults on the periphery of their lives, the absolute best we can hope to be is a temporary balm.
Maybe that's enough.
Tell Me True - Sarah Jarosz (mp3)
Dorm duty.Every night of the week, in every dorm, an adult is responsible for shepherding the little lambs from dinnertime to bedtime. Most advisors live in the dorm. A few, like me, don't. For nine years, I've spent one night each week walking dormitory halls, sitting at a hallway desk for 4-5 hours, striking up the occasional random conversation with adolescent males.
Friday night was the second-to-last night of dormitory obligation. Tonight will be my last. Fitting that my tenure concluded with an encounter that reminded me how full the teenage years are of awkward, uncertain, personality-altering conflicts and experiences.
One of the boys in my dorm -- let's call him Billy -- is a solid student and fairly unassuming guy. Bookish, but not homely or too introverted. In the last month or so, he has become increasingly dismissive of dorm life rules, and his personality in our interactions has shifted in a negative way. Little things here and there, which all speak to a passive-aggressive attitude towards authority.
My last two nights of duty, his behavior has reflected the typical red flags of drug use. Dilated pupils. Locked doors at random times (their doors are supposed to remain unlocked unless they're gone). Goofy or spacey or plain ol' odd responses to standard conversation. So, late on Friday night, I pulled him into a vacant room and offered my theory that he might be making, what we like to call on our campus, "bad decisions."
I hit the barn but missed the target.
Billy has a girlfriend. His first ever. They've been dating almost five weeks. Which, for Billy, is four weeks and six days longer than any other gal-pal he's ever had. The hope of this relationship, of escaping his bubble of dorm life and homework and XBox, rinse and repeat, inspired him to stop taking two very important drugs. He's all but ceased taking both his anti-depressant prescription as well as the meds he takes for ADD."The ADD stuff... it really does help me focus and stay on an even keel and avoid distractions, but it makes me feel like a fucking --"
I tilted my head. "Oh. Sorry."
"Thanks. Go on." I'm no prude, but I don't particularly think we're preparing them for life if they feel comfortable hurling naughty words willy-nilly in the presence of adults.
"Adderall makes me feel like a robot. Does that make sense?" (He asked that a lot over the course of our 45-minute conversation.) "I know I need it for my grades, but it feels like it's killing the rest of me. I get this girlfriend, and I wonder if the grades are even worth it anymore."
"You feel more social without the meds?"
"When I take them... I feel removed. Like I'm watching everyone on TV."
What happens often, when adults dive into an intense conversation with a teenager, is that you get more than you had expected, and in entirely unexpected ways. I confronted him expecting a conversation about his own drug use; I was getting a flashback into my own awkward miserable adolescent soul. Except thank God I never had to deal with all those damn meds.
Billy said the girlfriend was negatively affecting all his other relationships. His parents, with whom he often talked several times a week, felt him growing distant. His friends were annoyed with his goo-goo eyed attitude. His teachers were frustrated with his lost focus on school. I was annoyed with his personality change.
"All because of a girl," he said. "Does that make sense?"
Christ almighty, I wish it didn't. "Unfortunately, yes," I said.His reply: "Well it doesn't make sense to me."
Billy went on to explain that his step-brother was 30 and barely getting by because he'd spent his adolescent life experimenting with drugs. Watching this older brother screw up and witnessing the havoc it wreaked on his life helped Billy know that drugs weren't a particularly wise option. [The irony: he's expected to take two "acceptable" mood-altering medications daily.] Because that so closely mirrored my own reasons for staying away from "bad decisions" in high school, I instantly believed his sincerity. (Sometimes we determine others' honesty by nothing more than how much their statements reflect our own reality... which is rarely the best way to judge it. But I digress.)
Then he offered up the Big Kicker: his new girlfriend was a serious pothead who frequently dabbled in other drugs. LSD. Cocaine. Significant amounts of alcohol.
She just turned 17.
"I know she's bad for me. I know this can't last."
I didn't say anything.
"So... why can't I give her up?" Billy asked, fighting back tears. He managed, the entire time, to be always on the verge of breaking down without ever actually losing composure. It was quite moving. "It's so stupid. I feel so stupid."
It sounds absurd because adolescence is absurd. The cruelest part of learning is the lessons from which no adults can save you, no textbook can prepare you, no test prep can adjust you, no ADD medication can fix you.
Billy spent most of his adolescent years trying desperately to catch a girlfriend. Finally, at long last, he caught one, and instantly everyone is telling him to throw her back and keep fishing. But how long will he have to go fishing to catch another one? A month? Five years? Never? And who's to say the next one he catches won't be equally fucked up? There's plenty of fish in the sea, sure, but that's hardly comforting if you suck at fishing for them.
Billy waited and waited to have someone whose hand he could hold, someone to kiss, someone to sit across from him at a downtown restaurant or with whom to dance at a school dance. He was patient most of the time. Occasionally he probably resigned himself to having no shot. But then... then he found one! And he's supposed to give her up immediately because she's bad for him? Yeah right.Ironic that all of his problems surround the gaining of a girlfriend, yet acquiring one makes him feel more isolated than ever. His life, previously routine and robotic and boring, has been electrified by this blessed chance at a coveted relationship, and his Frankenstein-esque cadaver has come alive and finally fits into the social puzzle... yet it's all wrong. And there's no clear path towards a happy ending. All roads lead to (temporary) downfall.
As if being 16 and 17 wasn't miserable and frustrating enough, but to throw in the drugs and the alcohol... I dunno. Maybe there's some reward in numbing your adolescent brain from all of it. Diving into a psychadelic distraction from the angst and loneliness until you can emerge older and more capable of handling it. But I don't buy it. Attempting to dodge the misery by postponing it seems to only give the hydra more heads and make them more venomous.
It feels like small concession that he shared all of this with me. Maybe just getting it all out to an adult helps. Maybe.
But being miserable and unsure and (maybe) in love and lonely and desperate to experience a better, cooler life beyond textbooks and classrooms... not all the talk in the world with an adult is going to change or numb those desires.
As adults on the periphery of their lives, the absolute best we can hope to be is a temporary balm.
Maybe that's enough.
Monday, April 5, 2010
The Art of the Stab
Gold Guns Girls - Metric (mp3)
Wink - Blue Mountain (mp3)
The April 1 NYTimes op-ed piece entitled "The Myth of Mean Girls" was published on the perfect day, because the authors are fools. They use the story of Phoebe Prince's suicide after she was barraged with threats as a time to talk about how girls aren't violent.
The op-ed writers work themselves into a lather rattling off statistics about how non-violent girls are, never once paying attention to the fact that the statistics they use -- assault, robbery, murder, other physically violent crimes -- had fuck-all to do with the kind of things that led to the girl's suicide. It's like using the story of an earthquake in Calexico, California, to talk about the failures of Obama's healthcare bill.
Phoebe Prince wasn't punched or stabbed or shot. She wasn't dangled off a building or dragged around behind a horse. She was emotionally beaten to death.
Boys use knives. Girls use mental daggers. Boys sweep the leg. Girls shred the synapses.
A handful of my female coworkers have teenage or college-aged daughters, and every single one of those girls said, without hesitation or uncertainty, that the middle school years were the cruelest and most uncomfortable years of their lives. These girls attended the all-girls school in town, and they all said the misery began to abate in the ninth grade and was more or less gone by the end of the sophomore year.
In coed schools, the misery stretches out a little longer, as the hallway locker battle of loves and crushes constantly swirls around them. I remember watching Heathers with some of my mom's students, and two of the girls kept laughing and saying, "Did the writer go to Red Bank?" and "Oh GOD I know that girl!!"
Part of this is about maturity. Girls tend to have greater control of their impulses. They take fewer risks. They throw fewer punches. They struggle less with ADHD.
But part of this goes back beyond Macbeth and Delilah. Why should women go around hitting and kicking things when they can get some doofus moron beefcake who's easily led around by his elephant trunk to do all that violent shit for them?
You never saw Don Corleone shoot anyone. Why should he when he has dozens of people eager and willing to do the wetwork for him? Same with girls. They stick with the mental cruelty. It's tougher to prosecute, and the scars last longer.
If you think I'm knocking the female gender, I beg you to reread, because that's certainly not the case. But women aren't all sweet li'l innocent angels. The blood they draw in fights are drawn out of the soul, not the skin. Black eyes and broken arms make for good pictures in a trial. You can't take a picture of a bleeding psyche. It's almost impossible to catch mental cruelty on a hallway camera.
So back to that op-ed piece. They're right. Boys are more physically dangerous, and it's not even close. If anything, the physical violence gap is growing. But don't go letting those facts lead you to believing girls are harmless.
Ask any teenage girl. They'll set you straight.
Metric's 2009 album Fantasies is just about the most addictive thing around and just won't leave my repeat list three months after I bought it. Blue Mountain played a cool set when they came to Chattanooga.
Wink - Blue Mountain (mp3)
The op-ed writers work themselves into a lather rattling off statistics about how non-violent girls are, never once paying attention to the fact that the statistics they use -- assault, robbery, murder, other physically violent crimes -- had fuck-all to do with the kind of things that led to the girl's suicide. It's like using the story of an earthquake in Calexico, California, to talk about the failures of Obama's healthcare bill.
Phoebe Prince wasn't punched or stabbed or shot. She wasn't dangled off a building or dragged around behind a horse. She was emotionally beaten to death.
Boys use knives. Girls use mental daggers. Boys sweep the leg. Girls shred the synapses.
A handful of my female coworkers have teenage or college-aged daughters, and every single one of those girls said, without hesitation or uncertainty, that the middle school years were the cruelest and most uncomfortable years of their lives. These girls attended the all-girls school in town, and they all said the misery began to abate in the ninth grade and was more or less gone by the end of the sophomore year.
Part of this is about maturity. Girls tend to have greater control of their impulses. They take fewer risks. They throw fewer punches. They struggle less with ADHD.
But part of this goes back beyond Macbeth and Delilah. Why should women go around hitting and kicking things when they can get some doofus moron beefcake who's easily led around by his elephant trunk to do all that violent shit for them?
If you think I'm knocking the female gender, I beg you to reread, because that's certainly not the case. But women aren't all sweet li'l innocent angels. The blood they draw in fights are drawn out of the soul, not the skin. Black eyes and broken arms make for good pictures in a trial. You can't take a picture of a bleeding psyche. It's almost impossible to catch mental cruelty on a hallway camera.
So back to that op-ed piece. They're right. Boys are more physically dangerous, and it's not even close. If anything, the physical violence gap is growing. But don't go letting those facts lead you to believing girls are harmless.
Ask any teenage girl. They'll set you straight.
Metric's 2009 album Fantasies is just about the most addictive thing around and just won't leave my repeat list three months after I bought it. Blue Mountain played a cool set when they came to Chattanooga.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Maybe She's Born With It... Maybe It's Maybelline!
Born Secular - Jenny Lewis + the Watson Twins (mp3)
When Your Mind's Made Up - Glen Hansard + Marketa Irglova (mp3)
At a school I know, the following occurred.
Two administrators stood backstage as the school recognized the top 25% of the graduating GPAs. These nerds were being inducted into a Phi Beta Kappa/Cum Laude kind of organization, a group that does nothing, that exists solely to recognize good GPAs. Sadly, it's the one way some of these kids get recognized for what they do well and what they contribute to the school culture. Kind of like earning a letter just for sitting the bench and keeping stats for varsity baseball.
One administrator, arguably the second most-influential person at this particular school, leaned over to my friend and said, "I don't applaud for something a kid's born with."
Then, as the nerds were walking off the stage with their pieces of paper, acknowledging their good grades, this administrator said the following to them: "Congratulations on your genes, ladies and gentlemen!"
This story was relayed to me because, obviously, I was one of those nerds in high school who made Cum Laude and was never even good enough to sit the bench for an athletic team.
Apparently, how much work and time and effort I put into becoming academically successful was irrelevant, because I was born with my intelligence. Apparently, neither Shaquille O'Neal nor Adrian Peterson were born with athletic gifts or, as they say, "natural talent."
Any nerd would be understandably haunted by this story. The jock administrator just gave our entire geeky way of life a philosophical wedgie (or if you prefer, a swirlie), proclaiming that good grades don't deserve recognition like good tackles or good dunks or good golf shots. And this man, this fan of "genetic" intelligence, is the man who hires teachers and shapes the culture of the school where he works in vast ways.
Then I read the following excerpt from a NYT Book Blog about DRiVE by Daniel H. Pink:
Reading this didn't cool my anger, but it's given me a way to diagnose his myopia, to see intelligence the way this administrator sees it. To this guy, intelligence is demonstrated, not developed.
You'll have to forgive the snootery here, but this was clearly a guy who attended a shitty high school, the kind of guy whose workload in high school consisted of work that could be done on a school bus or while Mom was getting dinner ready. I know this because intelligence never felt remotely inherited for me. I worked my ass off for it. I obsessed for it. I fought like hell and competed with gritted or grinding teeth to push my way into the top 20% of my graduating class even though I'd been told in seventh grade that I'd done so poorly on the entrance exam that I was one of the last two boys admitted to the school.
I'm not asking for you to be impressed; I'm only asking that you don't tell me I was innately born with it. My ability to see through brick walls? My prehensile tail? My 14" penis? Yes, I was born with all those. But my intelligence? No, motherf*#ker, I P90X'd the hell out of my feeble brains as a lad, and I just can't think of many things more personally insulting to me than to suggest otherwise.
My oldest daughter is friends with a brilliant Indian girl at her school. Twice now Avery has said to me, "She's so smart. Everything's easy for her," and both times I stopped everything to lovingly correct her. Her Indian friend is smart because her parents expect her to master academics like Southern parents expect their kids to master a sport. She trains. She works. She reads. For every hour that my studious and modestly intellectually curious daughter puts into her school work, her Indian friend puts in two, three, four hours. It doesn't come easy. Nothing comes easy. Allowing Avery to say or believe it does insults the Indian girl and insults my daughter.
If someone believed intelligence cannot be nurtured, cared for, built up, why would that person work in education?
I'm just grateful it didn't happen to me, at my school.
Whew.
When Your Mind's Made Up - Glen Hansard + Marketa Irglova (mp3)
At a school I know, the following occurred.
Two administrators stood backstage as the school recognized the top 25% of the graduating GPAs. These nerds were being inducted into a Phi Beta Kappa/Cum Laude kind of organization, a group that does nothing, that exists solely to recognize good GPAs. Sadly, it's the one way some of these kids get recognized for what they do well and what they contribute to the school culture. Kind of like earning a letter just for sitting the bench and keeping stats for varsity baseball.One administrator, arguably the second most-influential person at this particular school, leaned over to my friend and said, "I don't applaud for something a kid's born with."
Then, as the nerds were walking off the stage with their pieces of paper, acknowledging their good grades, this administrator said the following to them: "Congratulations on your genes, ladies and gentlemen!"
This story was relayed to me because, obviously, I was one of those nerds in high school who made Cum Laude and was never even good enough to sit the bench for an athletic team.Apparently, how much work and time and effort I put into becoming academically successful was irrelevant, because I was born with my intelligence. Apparently, neither Shaquille O'Neal nor Adrian Peterson were born with athletic gifts or, as they say, "natural talent."
Any nerd would be understandably haunted by this story. The jock administrator just gave our entire geeky way of life a philosophical wedgie (or if you prefer, a swirlie), proclaiming that good grades don't deserve recognition like good tackles or good dunks or good golf shots. And this man, this fan of "genetic" intelligence, is the man who hires teachers and shapes the culture of the school where he works in vast ways.
Then I read the following excerpt from a NYT Book Blog about DRiVE by Daniel H. Pink:
For example, in the chapter titled “Mastery,” Pink presents the research conducted by Carol Dweck, a professor of psychology at Stanford. One of her theories is that there are (once again) two kinds of people when it comes to intelligence. There are those with an “entity theory” of human intelligence, viewing it as “a finite supply that we cannot increase.” Then there are those who subscribe to an “incremental theory,” believing that intelligence is something you continuously build and shape over time. Pink breaks it down nicely: “In one view, intelligence is something you demonstrate; in the other, it’s something you develop.” It’s a useful frame. Is life a stage on which you constantly must perform, or prove, your intelligence to others? Or is it a library, where you gain knowledge and skills from what surrounds you. How you answer such questions, Pink argues, determines how you will react to setbacks, and how serious you are at mastering a set of skills. It might also influence how you react to books like “Drive.” Do you consider the arguments dispassionately, looking for ideas you can use? Or do you bristle at the suggestion that you need to make some changes? (I've been bristling. Now I feel bad about that bristling, and so am bristling about that.)
Reading this didn't cool my anger, but it's given me a way to diagnose his myopia, to see intelligence the way this administrator sees it. To this guy, intelligence is demonstrated, not developed.
You'll have to forgive the snootery here, but this was clearly a guy who attended a shitty high school, the kind of guy whose workload in high school consisted of work that could be done on a school bus or while Mom was getting dinner ready. I know this because intelligence never felt remotely inherited for me. I worked my ass off for it. I obsessed for it. I fought like hell and competed with gritted or grinding teeth to push my way into the top 20% of my graduating class even though I'd been told in seventh grade that I'd done so poorly on the entrance exam that I was one of the last two boys admitted to the school.I'm not asking for you to be impressed; I'm only asking that you don't tell me I was innately born with it. My ability to see through brick walls? My prehensile tail? My 14" penis? Yes, I was born with all those. But my intelligence? No, motherf*#ker, I P90X'd the hell out of my feeble brains as a lad, and I just can't think of many things more personally insulting to me than to suggest otherwise.
My oldest daughter is friends with a brilliant Indian girl at her school. Twice now Avery has said to me, "She's so smart. Everything's easy for her," and both times I stopped everything to lovingly correct her. Her Indian friend is smart because her parents expect her to master academics like Southern parents expect their kids to master a sport. She trains. She works. She reads. For every hour that my studious and modestly intellectually curious daughter puts into her school work, her Indian friend puts in two, three, four hours. It doesn't come easy. Nothing comes easy. Allowing Avery to say or believe it does insults the Indian girl and insults my daughter.If someone believed intelligence cannot be nurtured, cared for, built up, why would that person work in education?
I'm just grateful it didn't happen to me, at my school.
Whew.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
End In 10?
On and On We Whisper - The Alternate Routes (mp3)
We Came to Dance - The Gaslight Anthem (mp3)
As of this week, according to the New York Times, eight states are now experimenting with the concept of letting certain kids move from 10th grade straight to college.
My first reaction was one of disgusted amusement. Seemed like a pretty stupid concept, really. I'd read the NYT Sunday Magazine article about ending the senior year in high school, and it was clearly written by a guy who no more knew high school than I know about George Clooney and movies about frequent flyers. Much like Christopher Hitchens (read: smarmiest smuggest most annoying sonovabitch to opine this side of Ann Coulter), Walter Kirn's argument made you want to disagree with him -- even if some of his points might be accidentally valid -- simply because he seems so out of touch with the reality of many many students.
But then I sat there and thought about it. Why the hell don't we, at the end of 10th grade, start giving students some choices, especially if they've earned them... and limiting the choices for those whose performance to that point has sucked?
However, instead of focusing on letting the gifted and ambitious kids get out early, why don't we focus on limiting the options of those who actually bog down the system and didn't want to be in school in the first place?
You could make three tracks, which is not unlike systems in many European countries. All three tracks would require that a student be able to pass some kind of low bar exit exam after 10th grade. If they fail, they stay in school somewhere until they can pass it. Kind of like lawyers stuck in limbo until they can pass the bar.
TRACK ONE: GET A JOB
The least motivated and least academically inclined can choose to walk out the door, no questions asked, after 10th grade. If they can't pass the 10th grade test by the time they turn 17 (or 18), then they're released anyway. One of the biggest problems with our educational system is that, for far too many kids who are old enough to drive and be tried as adults, we force them to be where they don't want to be. Many public schools have become literal zoos, full of too many caged and wild animals who only want to be out in their more natural habitat. School never should have become a free babysitting service, but that's what it is. If a 16 or 17-year-old doesn't want to be in school, let them leave.
TRACK TWO: LEARN A TRADE
For those who pass the 10th grade test but have no real ambitions for a comprehensive college education, let them go to a community college. A 2- or 3-year degree to learn a variety of trades that don't really need an expansive liberal arts education or the other broader subject exposure (um, they weren't really paying attention to "Modern European History" anyway) can pursue any number of decently-paid career paths, many more lucrative than my own.
TRACK THREE: PREPARE FOR COLLEGE
The remaining students -- key word: students, as in, they want to learn -- would remain for their final two years of high school, where they would prepare for the rigors of a more traditional (although perhaps, in this brave new world, more challenging) college education. Suddenly high school would be a smaller community filled mostly with teens who wanted to be there, who wanted to learn. Having the choice would empower them to appreciate their situation. Teachers would no longer have to burn out dealing with the behavior cases and instead could burn out dealing with the grade grubbers.
In my new world, the long-standing budgetary problems in public schools would overnight be eradicated, probably for close to a decade. And let's be honest, the kind of money the public system really needs to enact serious reform will never come. The only way to get extra money is to reduce some substantial portion of what high schools are trying to accomplish. It would result in a decrease in the teacher workforce, sure, but community colleges would suddenly be expanding and hiring, which seems a decent trade-off.
Smaller class sizes in the final two grades. A greater interest level and buy-in level with the remaining kids. A legitimate choice for those who are smart enough or motivated enough, but care more about getting into the workforce than they do sleeping two more years of their lives in high school learning "stupid meaningless shit like physics." A more focused body of students naturally makes for a more inspired faculty. I see this every day.*
And finally, for the kids on the bottom of the pile, a wake-up call. While I'm first to acknowledge that many kids at the bottom are dealt a crap hand that isn't their fault, and while I acknowledge that they deserve attention and more than a fighting chance, the harsh reality of the world is that no one can rise up from apathy without a conviction that it must be done. Virtually no one gets out without very much deciding to do so. If that choice was suddenly made more apparent to them, more might work harder to move up and onward. And the ones that don't... well, they can always struggle in the real world for a while and then enter Track Two or Track Three a few years late if their motivation or maturity changes.
Kids today stay immature and irresponsible for the same reason male dogs lick their balls: because they can. Three generations ago, responsibility fell on young shoulders at an earlier age, to work the fields or help gain family income. Those generations seem to have done pretty well, all things considered. Maybe it's time we start expecting teens to grow up before they're 20 rather than before they're 30.
Community colleges would face a new challenge, with people from 16-40 all piled into a campus, which could make for some awkward legal issues, but nothing more awkward than the predatory adults who have already found their way into education or ministry, where they can abuse their position. Scores of other problems would undoubtedly arise, such as the chaos of unemployed 16-year-olds out on the streets. But again, are we talking about improving schools or offering free babysitting? My impression was the former, but perhaps I'm naive.
* -- I often find myself amused by teachers at my school:
We Came to Dance - The Gaslight Anthem (mp3)
As of this week, according to the New York Times, eight states are now experimenting with the concept of letting certain kids move from 10th grade straight to college.My first reaction was one of disgusted amusement. Seemed like a pretty stupid concept, really. I'd read the NYT Sunday Magazine article about ending the senior year in high school, and it was clearly written by a guy who no more knew high school than I know about George Clooney and movies about frequent flyers. Much like Christopher Hitchens (read: smarmiest smuggest most annoying sonovabitch to opine this side of Ann Coulter), Walter Kirn's argument made you want to disagree with him -- even if some of his points might be accidentally valid -- simply because he seems so out of touch with the reality of many many students.
But then I sat there and thought about it. Why the hell don't we, at the end of 10th grade, start giving students some choices, especially if they've earned them... and limiting the choices for those whose performance to that point has sucked?However, instead of focusing on letting the gifted and ambitious kids get out early, why don't we focus on limiting the options of those who actually bog down the system and didn't want to be in school in the first place?
You could make three tracks, which is not unlike systems in many European countries. All three tracks would require that a student be able to pass some kind of low bar exit exam after 10th grade. If they fail, they stay in school somewhere until they can pass it. Kind of like lawyers stuck in limbo until they can pass the bar.
TRACK ONE: GET A JOB
The least motivated and least academically inclined can choose to walk out the door, no questions asked, after 10th grade. If they can't pass the 10th grade test by the time they turn 17 (or 18), then they're released anyway. One of the biggest problems with our educational system is that, for far too many kids who are old enough to drive and be tried as adults, we force them to be where they don't want to be. Many public schools have become literal zoos, full of too many caged and wild animals who only want to be out in their more natural habitat. School never should have become a free babysitting service, but that's what it is. If a 16 or 17-year-old doesn't want to be in school, let them leave.
TRACK TWO: LEARN A TRADE
For those who pass the 10th grade test but have no real ambitions for a comprehensive college education, let them go to a community college. A 2- or 3-year degree to learn a variety of trades that don't really need an expansive liberal arts education or the other broader subject exposure (um, they weren't really paying attention to "Modern European History" anyway) can pursue any number of decently-paid career paths, many more lucrative than my own.
TRACK THREE: PREPARE FOR COLLEGEThe remaining students -- key word: students, as in, they want to learn -- would remain for their final two years of high school, where they would prepare for the rigors of a more traditional (although perhaps, in this brave new world, more challenging) college education. Suddenly high school would be a smaller community filled mostly with teens who wanted to be there, who wanted to learn. Having the choice would empower them to appreciate their situation. Teachers would no longer have to burn out dealing with the behavior cases and instead could burn out dealing with the grade grubbers.
In my new world, the long-standing budgetary problems in public schools would overnight be eradicated, probably for close to a decade. And let's be honest, the kind of money the public system really needs to enact serious reform will never come. The only way to get extra money is to reduce some substantial portion of what high schools are trying to accomplish. It would result in a decrease in the teacher workforce, sure, but community colleges would suddenly be expanding and hiring, which seems a decent trade-off.
Smaller class sizes in the final two grades. A greater interest level and buy-in level with the remaining kids. A legitimate choice for those who are smart enough or motivated enough, but care more about getting into the workforce than they do sleeping two more years of their lives in high school learning "stupid meaningless shit like physics." A more focused body of students naturally makes for a more inspired faculty. I see this every day.*
And finally, for the kids on the bottom of the pile, a wake-up call. While I'm first to acknowledge that many kids at the bottom are dealt a crap hand that isn't their fault, and while I acknowledge that they deserve attention and more than a fighting chance, the harsh reality of the world is that no one can rise up from apathy without a conviction that it must be done. Virtually no one gets out without very much deciding to do so. If that choice was suddenly made more apparent to them, more might work harder to move up and onward. And the ones that don't... well, they can always struggle in the real world for a while and then enter Track Two or Track Three a few years late if their motivation or maturity changes.
Kids today stay immature and irresponsible for the same reason male dogs lick their balls: because they can. Three generations ago, responsibility fell on young shoulders at an earlier age, to work the fields or help gain family income. Those generations seem to have done pretty well, all things considered. Maybe it's time we start expecting teens to grow up before they're 20 rather than before they're 30.Community colleges would face a new challenge, with people from 16-40 all piled into a campus, which could make for some awkward legal issues, but nothing more awkward than the predatory adults who have already found their way into education or ministry, where they can abuse their position. Scores of other problems would undoubtedly arise, such as the chaos of unemployed 16-year-olds out on the streets. But again, are we talking about improving schools or offering free babysitting? My impression was the former, but perhaps I'm naive.
* -- I often find myself amused by teachers at my school:
- who complain about the caliber of student they are forced to deal with, as if they're insufferable when they are light years easier to manage than those in more challenging public settings; or
- who get all worked up about neglecting these apathetic and disconnected and destructive-to-the-classroom students while dedicating their lives to an expensive college prep school. Which is slightly akin to a minister in Beverly Hills agonizing over the plight of the poor in Africa.
Monday, November 9, 2009
Boys: A Pseudo-Scientific Observation
Back Breaker - Hit the Lights (mp3)
Highschool Stalker - Hello Saferide (mp3)
The school at which Bob and I work has several hundred boarding students, all male. Every weekend, one faculty member must spend Saturday and Sunday afternoons leisurely walking around the campus. That person must also walk into every dorm and enter every single dorm room on the campus.
Some call this responsibility "Suicide Watch," in honor of the original reasons this policy was first enacted roughly a decade ago. Others call it "Faculty Snoop Patrol," because it can at times be a little creepy and a little awkward, entering the sole private living spaces of boys, most of whom you hardly know. I call it "Prostitute Watch," because it amuses the boys and lightens the mood. Better to imagine scouring the campus looking for Vivian Ward in a compromising position in a boy's twin bed than to be thought of as searching for someone who's hung himself from sheer misery.
I was on Prostitute Watch last weekend, and I found myself studying our little incubator of adolescent males based solely on what I saw while walking through the dorms and across campus two afternoons on a weekend in November.
First, on average, our boarding student body is wealthier, smarter, and whiter than your average bear. We are not without color, nor are we without boys whose parents are middle or lower-middle class. Just wanted to get that out there so you know what kind of boys I'm mostly talking about.
Muhammed Ali: Still the Greatest
This was the observation that began my pseudo-scientific study. The first dorm I entered has maybe 20 rooms. Of those 20 rooms, at least eight had a poster of Muhammed Ali. It wasn't all the same poster, either. Throughout all the dorms, I can think of at least five different posters, maybe six. All but two were variations of him lording over his unconscious prey in the ring (mostly from the Sonny Liston fight, I think).
An African-American who converted to Islam*, whose last significant bout occurred 31 years ago, was easily the most popular icon on dorm room walls of mostly white boys from generally more privileged economic backgrounds. And these boys are fairly conservative both politically and religiously. Am I wrong to find that strange and somehow encouraging? Despite this fear and feeling that issues of race and religious prejudice are festering and refusing to heal, a ton of white boys admire the black man formerly known as Cassius Clay?
Strangely, I can only recall two posters of Michael Jordan, and only two or three of Tiger Woods. Roger Federer and Michael Phelps were much more popular... which is precisely what I would have expected in dorms of mostly well-to-do white boys. But none of those dudes had a thing on Ali.
Video Games Are a Social Activity; Accept It and Move On
Many of my coworkers spent the first years of the 21st Century lamenting the slow death of boys going outside to have fun. More and more boys, they cried, spent hour after hour staring at a television screen in isolation from their peers and the beautiful world around them. These boys were losing social skills and disconnecting with reality.
As someone who spent his Atari 2600 youth crammed into a basement spending hour after hour playing Dungeons & fucking Dragons, I can merely attest to the fact that one need not have modern technology and a TV screen to isolate oneself from the beautiful world and stunt one's own social growth. Fighting a Class Nine Hydra with a paladin named Lucius, his elf thief friend Shadow, and their wise wizard father-figure Ebenezer, does the trick just fine, thank you very much. I daresay that before D+D and before video games there were millions of other ways for boys to be anti-social or nerdy or wrapped up in some odd world. Hell, I'm not sure why sitting in a deer stand for seven hours is all that more admirable than playing Halo.
Most of the boys were out of their rooms on Saturday afternoon, but many were there on Sunday, and most were grouped as couples, threesomes or foursomes watching a movie or playing a video game. Some of the boys played sports games like football, basketball and soccer, while other boys played first-person shooter games like Halo and Call of Duty, and others played those long-range strategy games or shit that's way past my comprehension like World of Warcraft.
My point is, these boys talked. They socialized. Their use of the TV screen and XBox controllers was no different in its purpose than a bowling alley. Boys prefer having an excuse to gather first. The conversations and socializing is vital, but secondary. Boys don't generally meet over coffee. They meet to compete, or to play a game, or to throw a frisbee, or to watch a movie.
Girls, it seems, are completely comfortable with the idea of simply hanging out and talking. One frequent reader meets monthly with her local pals to play "Bunco," which they call "Drunko" because they haven't actually played the game in more than a year. They just use the game as an excuse to sit around and gab, because it makes more sense to their husbands if they explain their activity being centered around a game.
Boys Are Best Enjoyed Without a Microscope
For the last several years, I've struggled to enjoy my dorm responsibilities. The job requires that I police the boys somewhat stringently at a time in their night where they are desperate to unwind. Further, teenage boys have and will always seek to push limits, experiment with freedom, and buck authority. These are important and essential things, and when I see the boys at our school as a forest, I find myself feeling very happy and optimistic. They are, on the whole, good kids. Smart kids. Talented kids.
Unfortunately, when forced to get to know a semi-random assortment of them on a deeper level in my dorm job, I must get to know boys I might like less than usual, and I must deal with their inevitable imperfections more than usual. It is, in some sense, having to be a foster parent to a child you don't really like. Worse, it's almost a direct correlation between how unlikable they are and how much of your time they suck away. The squeaky wheels, as they say, get your grease.
It's so easy for boys -- and men, and girls and women -- to carry on this illusion of being an "all-around good person." Our students especially are smart enough and raised in the kinds of environments where they can play the parts they feel expected to play, and they can do so dutifully and with great skill and flair. It is only when they are observed so closely, when almost every waking moment exists under the watchful eyes of adults, that their flaws surge to the forefront, when their every misstep and mistake risks risks being brought to light. It's like asking Eliot Spitzer to be on The Truman Show.
And who really wants to watch that??
Hit the Lights and Hello Saferide are the kind of bands that have no illusion of going multiplatinum. They must do it because they're possessed by evil demons. Consider supporting them.
* -- or the Nation of Islam, if you're into splitting hairs
Highschool Stalker - Hello Saferide (mp3)
Some call this responsibility "Suicide Watch," in honor of the original reasons this policy was first enacted roughly a decade ago. Others call it "Faculty Snoop Patrol," because it can at times be a little creepy and a little awkward, entering the sole private living spaces of boys, most of whom you hardly know. I call it "Prostitute Watch," because it amuses the boys and lightens the mood. Better to imagine scouring the campus looking for Vivian Ward in a compromising position in a boy's twin bed than to be thought of as searching for someone who's hung himself from sheer misery.
I was on Prostitute Watch last weekend, and I found myself studying our little incubator of adolescent males based solely on what I saw while walking through the dorms and across campus two afternoons on a weekend in November.
First, on average, our boarding student body is wealthier, smarter, and whiter than your average bear. We are not without color, nor are we without boys whose parents are middle or lower-middle class. Just wanted to get that out there so you know what kind of boys I'm mostly talking about.
This was the observation that began my pseudo-scientific study. The first dorm I entered has maybe 20 rooms. Of those 20 rooms, at least eight had a poster of Muhammed Ali. It wasn't all the same poster, either. Throughout all the dorms, I can think of at least five different posters, maybe six. All but two were variations of him lording over his unconscious prey in the ring (mostly from the Sonny Liston fight, I think).
An African-American who converted to Islam*, whose last significant bout occurred 31 years ago, was easily the most popular icon on dorm room walls of mostly white boys from generally more privileged economic backgrounds. And these boys are fairly conservative both politically and religiously. Am I wrong to find that strange and somehow encouraging? Despite this fear and feeling that issues of race and religious prejudice are festering and refusing to heal, a ton of white boys admire the black man formerly known as Cassius Clay?
Strangely, I can only recall two posters of Michael Jordan, and only two or three of Tiger Woods. Roger Federer and Michael Phelps were much more popular... which is precisely what I would have expected in dorms of mostly well-to-do white boys. But none of those dudes had a thing on Ali.
Many of my coworkers spent the first years of the 21st Century lamenting the slow death of boys going outside to have fun. More and more boys, they cried, spent hour after hour staring at a television screen in isolation from their peers and the beautiful world around them. These boys were losing social skills and disconnecting with reality.
As someone who spent his Atari 2600 youth crammed into a basement spending hour after hour playing Dungeons & fucking Dragons, I can merely attest to the fact that one need not have modern technology and a TV screen to isolate oneself from the beautiful world and stunt one's own social growth. Fighting a Class Nine Hydra with a paladin named Lucius, his elf thief friend Shadow, and their wise wizard father-figure Ebenezer, does the trick just fine, thank you very much. I daresay that before D+D and before video games there were millions of other ways for boys to be anti-social or nerdy or wrapped up in some odd world. Hell, I'm not sure why sitting in a deer stand for seven hours is all that more admirable than playing Halo.
Most of the boys were out of their rooms on Saturday afternoon, but many were there on Sunday, and most were grouped as couples, threesomes or foursomes watching a movie or playing a video game. Some of the boys played sports games like football, basketball and soccer, while other boys played first-person shooter games like Halo and Call of Duty, and others played those long-range strategy games or shit that's way past my comprehension like World of Warcraft.
My point is, these boys talked. They socialized. Their use of the TV screen and XBox controllers was no different in its purpose than a bowling alley. Boys prefer having an excuse to gather first. The conversations and socializing is vital, but secondary. Boys don't generally meet over coffee. They meet to compete, or to play a game, or to throw a frisbee, or to watch a movie.
Girls, it seems, are completely comfortable with the idea of simply hanging out and talking. One frequent reader meets monthly with her local pals to play "Bunco," which they call "Drunko" because they haven't actually played the game in more than a year. They just use the game as an excuse to sit around and gab, because it makes more sense to their husbands if they explain their activity being centered around a game.
For the last several years, I've struggled to enjoy my dorm responsibilities. The job requires that I police the boys somewhat stringently at a time in their night where they are desperate to unwind. Further, teenage boys have and will always seek to push limits, experiment with freedom, and buck authority. These are important and essential things, and when I see the boys at our school as a forest, I find myself feeling very happy and optimistic. They are, on the whole, good kids. Smart kids. Talented kids.
Unfortunately, when forced to get to know a semi-random assortment of them on a deeper level in my dorm job, I must get to know boys I might like less than usual, and I must deal with their inevitable imperfections more than usual. It is, in some sense, having to be a foster parent to a child you don't really like. Worse, it's almost a direct correlation between how unlikable they are and how much of your time they suck away. The squeaky wheels, as they say, get your grease.
It's so easy for boys -- and men, and girls and women -- to carry on this illusion of being an "all-around good person." Our students especially are smart enough and raised in the kinds of environments where they can play the parts they feel expected to play, and they can do so dutifully and with great skill and flair. It is only when they are observed so closely, when almost every waking moment exists under the watchful eyes of adults, that their flaws surge to the forefront, when their every misstep and mistake risks risks being brought to light. It's like asking Eliot Spitzer to be on The Truman Show.
And who really wants to watch that??
Hit the Lights and Hello Saferide are the kind of bands that have no illusion of going multiplatinum. They must do it because they're possessed by evil demons. Consider supporting them.
* -- or the Nation of Islam, if you're into splitting hairs
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
The Back-To-School Blues
Conor Oberst--"Kodachrome (live) (mp3)
The feelings associated with going back to school never really change. Not even now, in this, my 45th year of schooling. You might believe that when going to school is your job, that the approach to it is different, but I assure you, it really isn't.
The feelings associated with going back to school never really change. Not even now, in this, my 45th year of schooling. You might believe that when going to school is your job, that the approach to it is different, but I assure you, it really isn't. The same feelings of dread are there, as are the same feelings of anticipation. You might think that you would rather do anything in the world more than walk into that first class, that first assembly, that first after school obligation, but you also know that you want to know, in ways that are important to you, what all of those experiences will be like. No, you don't want to know. You have to know. You have to know if you can still connect, if your approach is somehow richer from experience and fresh, if your jokes are still funny, if the students look like they want to be there. Schools are about belonging, which is the source of the great pain they have caused for so many, and you have to know that you still belong. Only then can you try to help others.
Every year, after my first class, I walk into my friend John's office and say, "Well, the old magic is still there." Will it be there this year?
In a way that is unlike any other part of your life, each school year is completely distinct in both its beginning and its eventual ending. While a year structured in any other fashion is almost completely unpredictable, the year built around school immediately makes its potential highs and lows apparent. You know there are events and weeks and seasons that you will simply have to get through, you know that a particular book or school event or special day is something to look forward to. And regardless of what happened good or bad the year before, each year is a fresh start.
Which isn't to suggest that any school year isn't full of its own surprises as well. This year, we will take every student's temperature every day, our budgets have been cut substantially, our dining hall goes "trayless" and gets rid of sugar-based drinks. There's no telling what the impact of these major and minor decisions will be.
But on that first day, whatever you were doing the day before has no bearing on that first day. That was summer, this is school. That was family, this is schedules and classes. That was undisciplined, this is completely structured. That was what you didn't get finished, this is a completely different set of obligations. That was your priority, now this is. When you're young and putting in your years of schooling, it may not dawn on you what a strange, ordered life school is, but when you work it as a career, you know that your life runs according to rhythms that no one outside the profession can understand.
How do you explain to people not in education that at the end of the year, when they think you are excited to have the year wind down, you also feel a deep sense of loss for the students you have spent the year with who are now gone and whom you will never know in the same way again?
A day or so ago, when my daughter came into the house with bags of school supplies, I felt that same twinge of nervous anxiety that I have always felt. The smells, the classrooms, the memories of my own schooling all came back. As she unpacked her high-tech binders and gravitational writing implements, I thought of my own from back then--the notebooks with fresh, crisp pages and nothing written in them, the pack of pencils unsharpened, the crayons unbroken, the plastic ruler still shiny--the products of a society in a high gear of advancement still in their state of perfection. No longer able to arm myself against time with such things, I look forward instead to picking up a stack of as-yet-unread books and the possibilities that may wait inside.
Which isn't to suggest that any school year isn't full of its own surprises as well. This year, we will take every student's temperature every day, our budgets have been cut substantially, our dining hall goes "trayless" and gets rid of sugar-based drinks. There's no telling what the impact of these major and minor decisions will be.But on that first day, whatever you were doing the day before has no bearing on that first day. That was summer, this is school. That was family, this is schedules and classes. That was undisciplined, this is completely structured. That was what you didn't get finished, this is a completely different set of obligations. That was your priority, now this is. When you're young and putting in your years of schooling, it may not dawn on you what a strange, ordered life school is, but when you work it as a career, you know that your life runs according to rhythms that no one outside the profession can understand.
How do you explain to people not in education that at the end of the year, when they think you are excited to have the year wind down, you also feel a deep sense of loss for the students you have spent the year with who are now gone and whom you will never know in the same way again?
A day or so ago, when my daughter came into the house with bags of school supplies, I felt that same twinge of nervous anxiety that I have always felt. The smells, the classrooms, the memories of my own schooling all came back. As she unpacked her high-tech binders and gravitational writing implements, I thought of my own from back then--the notebooks with fresh, crisp pages and nothing written in them, the pack of pencils unsharpened, the crayons unbroken, the plastic ruler still shiny--the products of a society in a high gear of advancement still in their state of perfection. No longer able to arm myself against time with such things, I look forward instead to picking up a stack of as-yet-unread books and the possibilities that may wait inside.Ultimately, going back to school isn't really a case of the blues. It isn't about feeling low, sorry as we are to see the summer end. Like the end of school, it is its own mixture of sadness and loss, of eagerness and excitement, of nostalgia and dreams. And until the distinct moment when we walk into that first class, the year could become anything, absolutely anything.
Conor Oberst's cover of "Kodachrome" is available at hypem.com.
Conor Oberst's cover of "Kodachrome" is available at hypem.com.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Living In Oz: The Album (Part 1)
or "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Springfield"
Gloria - Laura Brannigan (mp3)
Always Something There to Remind Me - Naked Eyes (mp3)
In the spring of 1983, I was in the fifth grade.
My teacher was an intimidating black woman named Mamie. She pronounced "R" as "arr-uh." She adored me, which on occasion created some awkward playground moments where I was forced to defend myself against those Mrs. Hamler didn't like. Her preferred punishment for misbehavior was making students hand-copy dictionary words from Webster's, character for character. The standard punishment was 50, but I remember three occasions when she assigned 300. Everyone giggled when she assigned someone to "start with the arr-uhs."
One of our most beloved recess pastimes was Mad Libs. The entire goal of Mad Libs, by the spring of 1983, was to fill out the entire sheet using only cuss words. Fifth grade was when I truly began to learn just how versatile the word "fuck" and its derivatives could be. Ironically, even by completely destroying the innocuous spirit of the activity, the activity still honed my understanding of the parts of speech. So it wasn't all a fucking (adjective) loss.
The other favorite recess activity was Tetherball. Tetherball never had a chance at being an actual competitve sport; therefore, I was pretty good at it. In fact, if I wasn't the best Tetherball player in the school, I was in the running in spite of not being particularly tall. (And anyone who's played Tetherball can attest to the supreme value of height in that game.)
The ecstasy of Tetherball was that, in the most intense match-ups, a cool-under-fire attitude didn't really help. Some of the best Tetherball players were absolute spazzes. Like me. Once your opponent got the right angle on you, and that ball started sailing over your head and wrapping tighter around the pole, you could hope to perfectly time your jump to save your game, or you could flail and spaz and hope that your panicky desperation somehow stopped the momentum. It felt about like the odds of Luke Skywalker firing those torpedoes into that little toilet hole on the outside of the Death Star. But if you could make that one key jump, sometimes the entire tide of the game shifted.
Tom was my best friend at school. Although I would never have admitted it, Tom was my Platonic ideal of the Fifth-Grade Man. He was always smartly dressed and in touch with proper fashion, and his blonde hair was always expertly feathered back and perfectly split down the middle of his skull, but not, y'know, in a greasy icky way. In 1983, a certain demographic of mostly-heterosexual boys could use tons of hairspray and get away with it. That he was smart and confident with girls and had gone into the skating rink corner and swapped bubble gum with one of the hottest girls in our class elevated him to my superior in all ways.
I think he got away with wearing nice clothes and dress shoes to school because he also happened to be quite the athlete, and he could hold his own in a scrape. This was not true of me, so I was both a preppy and a pussy.
At that point in technological history, I got my music the hard way. I would sit and do homework or play within reach of our stereo for hours on end, listening to KZ 106, the local Top 40 station at the time, and a blank cassette would be sitting on Pause-Record. Anytime I heard the beginning of a song I liked, I would rush desperately over and un-pause, thus earning a copy of that glorious song. Unfortunately The Jammer didn't know how to STFU and would usually talk talk talk riiiight up to the first words of the song, and then the bastard would usually cut the song off before it was really over, but the imperfect science of the entire deal tended to make it all the more challenging to try and get the absolute best versions of the most beloved songs.
Mixtapes at that point in my life were based on the whim of luck and timing. I had no power over the ordering of the songs. I was a slave to The Jammer. Sometimes Laura Brannigan's "Gloria" and Naked Eyes' "Always Something There to Remind Me" had to go back-to-back regardless of how well they meshed sonically or thematically.
Between fifth and sixth grades, I "went" with four different girls. For reasons that don't quite make sense to me, I can't keep the chronological order of these "girlfriends" quite right, and I can't place them very accurately on a timeline. I don't even know how long I "went" with each of them. Two weeks? Three months? No idea.
Why did we call it that? Where were we going? Nowhere! We couldn't hardly even "go together" to the damn swingset, much less go anywhere else. (Sorry. A brief Seinfeldian moment. It has now passed.)
But I remember very specifically who I was "going with" in the spring of 1983. Her name was Amy Wall.
To Be Continued...
Gloria - Laura Brannigan (mp3)
Always Something There to Remind Me - Naked Eyes (mp3)
My teacher was an intimidating black woman named Mamie. She pronounced "R" as "arr-uh." She adored me, which on occasion created some awkward playground moments where I was forced to defend myself against those Mrs. Hamler didn't like. Her preferred punishment for misbehavior was making students hand-copy dictionary words from Webster's, character for character. The standard punishment was 50, but I remember three occasions when she assigned 300. Everyone giggled when she assigned someone to "start with the arr-uhs."
One of our most beloved recess pastimes was Mad Libs. The entire goal of Mad Libs, by the spring of 1983, was to fill out the entire sheet using only cuss words. Fifth grade was when I truly began to learn just how versatile the word "fuck" and its derivatives could be. Ironically, even by completely destroying the innocuous spirit of the activity, the activity still honed my understanding of the parts of speech. So it wasn't all a fucking (adjective) loss.
The other favorite recess activity was Tetherball. Tetherball never had a chance at being an actual competitve sport; therefore, I was pretty good at it. In fact, if I wasn't the best Tetherball player in the school, I was in the running in spite of not being particularly tall. (And anyone who's played Tetherball can attest to the supreme value of height in that game.)
Tom was my best friend at school. Although I would never have admitted it, Tom was my Platonic ideal of the Fifth-Grade Man. He was always smartly dressed and in touch with proper fashion, and his blonde hair was always expertly feathered back and perfectly split down the middle of his skull, but not, y'know, in a greasy icky way. In 1983, a certain demographic of mostly-heterosexual boys could use tons of hairspray and get away with it. That he was smart and confident with girls and had gone into the skating rink corner and swapped bubble gum with one of the hottest girls in our class elevated him to my superior in all ways.
At that point in technological history, I got my music the hard way. I would sit and do homework or play within reach of our stereo for hours on end, listening to KZ 106, the local Top 40 station at the time, and a blank cassette would be sitting on Pause-Record. Anytime I heard the beginning of a song I liked, I would rush desperately over and un-pause, thus earning a copy of that glorious song. Unfortunately The Jammer didn't know how to STFU and would usually talk talk talk riiiight up to the first words of the song, and then the bastard would usually cut the song off before it was really over, but the imperfect science of the entire deal tended to make it all the more challenging to try and get the absolute best versions of the most beloved songs.
Mixtapes at that point in my life were based on the whim of luck and timing. I had no power over the ordering of the songs. I was a slave to The Jammer. Sometimes Laura Brannigan's "Gloria" and Naked Eyes' "Always Something There to Remind Me" had to go back-to-back regardless of how well they meshed sonically or thematically.
Between fifth and sixth grades, I "went" with four different girls. For reasons that don't quite make sense to me, I can't keep the chronological order of these "girlfriends" quite right, and I can't place them very accurately on a timeline. I don't even know how long I "went" with each of them. Two weeks? Three months? No idea.
Why did we call it that? Where were we going? Nowhere! We couldn't hardly even "go together" to the damn swingset, much less go anywhere else. (Sorry. A brief Seinfeldian moment. It has now passed.)
But I remember very specifically who I was "going with" in the spring of 1983. Her name was Amy Wall.
To Be Continued...
Monday, January 5, 2009
School, War and Politics
Scandalous Scholastics - Gym Class Heroes (mp3)
As everyone and their cousin now knows, the Obamas' daughters begin their educational journey this week at Sidwell Friends, the same independent school where Chelsea Clinton once roamed the halls. Amazingly, his choice to avoid D.C.'s public schools, understood as one of the worst civilized educational environments in our solar system, has received cries of frustration and accusations of hypocrisy from wackos on both sides of the extreme.
As someone who feels incredibly well-versed on many of the big issues involving education both public and independent (or, if you must, "private"), accusing Obama of hypocrisy for not sending his children into the educational equivalent of the Anbar Province is... well, it's stupid. To conclude, because he sends his daughters to an independent school, that Obama doesn't care about improving our country's public schools is sophistic and insulting. (NOTE: Thank you, Cal Thomas, for always making it easy for a liberal to find a moron arguing the other side.)
The easy and dangerous hypocritical comparison is between education and war. Lefties like myself find it nauseating that our country's biggest war-mongers -- "neo-hawks," "doofuses," whatever descriptor works for you -- always conveniently managed to avoid military service. And they rarely seem willing to let their children serve in a military capacity. They won't put their money where their mouth is, unless they're in a hotel room or an airport bathroom stall. (Yes, that was a cheap blow, but it was fun... and that's what SHE (or he) said!)
But here's the difference, and it's a pretty damn big one. It's entirely reasonable to support the view that our system of public education is vastly fucked up and in serious need of reform while also sending your children to an independent school. Why on God's green earth would a reasonable person knowingly place their children into an awful educational environment? Why not work your ass off to help improve that system so that, one day, maybe your children's children don't have to pay wild sums of cash to get a decent education?
Paying tuition for Sidwell Friends isn't going to make Barack anti-public schools. If anything, getting that bill will help fuel his belief that it sure would be nice if he could help Michelle Rhee out and get that public system in tip-top shape.
War, on the other hand, is a little stickier. Because if you ask almost any conservative, ain't nothing wrong with our military. We're hardly allowed to criticize our military, and then only if you can say the words "I support our troops" and can prove it by way of CIA background check. So when Dubya or Cheney or Wolfowitz and all of their children avoid actual military service like Anthrax, it's not because they believe the military is in need of massive reform. Nope. They just don't wanna die. Or lose a limb. (And, with the state of our Veterans Administration, who can blame them for that?)
For the school and war issue to be on par, one would have to express grave concerns about how well our soldiers are trained, which, to my knowledge, is not in question for most people. Most reasonable minds believe U.S. military training is fine if not stellar. Most reasonable minds merely question the fact that our poorest citizens make up the lion's share of our fighting forces.
We are sending our military personnel into harm's way believing that they are as reasonably prepared for what comes next as can be arranged. But we are not sending children into our schools reasonably prepared for what happens in those buildings. The school is supposed to be their training ground, but instead, all too often, it's their hot zone, and their training is found wanting.
If you think the Ford Pinto is in need of serious reform, and you support that reform, it doesn't mean you should be obligated to purchase and drive Ford Pintos. You can still drive your Lexus or VW (yay Chattanooga!) and enthusiastically support Pinto Reform. I'm sure Obama will screw up plenty while in office, but putting his girls in Sidwell Friends ain't a mistake, and it ain't hypocritical.
"Scandalous Scholastics" is from the album As Cruel As School Children and can be purchased at iTunes or on Amazon.com's mp3 download site. Soldier picture taken from the following web site: www.defendamerica.mil. Please notify if the picture violates copyright, and I will remove it.
As someone who feels incredibly well-versed on many of the big issues involving education both public and independent (or, if you must, "private"), accusing Obama of hypocrisy for not sending his children into the educational equivalent of the Anbar Province is... well, it's stupid. To conclude, because he sends his daughters to an independent school, that Obama doesn't care about improving our country's public schools is sophistic and insulting. (NOTE: Thank you, Cal Thomas, for always making it easy for a liberal to find a moron arguing the other side.)
The easy and dangerous hypocritical comparison is between education and war. Lefties like myself find it nauseating that our country's biggest war-mongers -- "neo-hawks," "doofuses," whatever descriptor works for you -- always conveniently managed to avoid military service. And they rarely seem willing to let their children serve in a military capacity. They won't put their money where their mouth is, unless they're in a hotel room or an airport bathroom stall. (Yes, that was a cheap blow, but it was fun... and that's what SHE (or he) said!)
Paying tuition for Sidwell Friends isn't going to make Barack anti-public schools. If anything, getting that bill will help fuel his belief that it sure would be nice if he could help Michelle Rhee out and get that public system in tip-top shape.
For the school and war issue to be on par, one would have to express grave concerns about how well our soldiers are trained, which, to my knowledge, is not in question for most people. Most reasonable minds believe U.S. military training is fine if not stellar. Most reasonable minds merely question the fact that our poorest citizens make up the lion's share of our fighting forces.
We are sending our military personnel into harm's way believing that they are as reasonably prepared for what comes next as can be arranged. But we are not sending children into our schools reasonably prepared for what happens in those buildings. The school is supposed to be their training ground, but instead, all too often, it's their hot zone, and their training is found wanting.
If you think the Ford Pinto is in need of serious reform, and you support that reform, it doesn't mean you should be obligated to purchase and drive Ford Pintos. You can still drive your Lexus or VW (yay Chattanooga!) and enthusiastically support Pinto Reform. I'm sure Obama will screw up plenty while in office, but putting his girls in Sidwell Friends ain't a mistake, and it ain't hypocritical.
"Scandalous Scholastics" is from the album As Cruel As School Children and can be purchased at iTunes or on Amazon.com's mp3 download site. Soldier picture taken from the following web site: www.defendamerica.mil. Please notify if the picture violates copyright, and I will remove it.
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