Performing a Triple-Bypass on the Heart of the Heart of the Country

[For this entry, I’ve borrowed a preview technique used by The Believer: using key phrases and odd juxtaposition in order to pique your interest from beginning to end. Enjoy.]

Thoreau – Matthew Arnold – Bill Hicks – Will Smith – Stop Snitchin’ – Rap Capitalism –Martin Luther King, Jr. – The Friday Trilogy

I was fumbling over analogies while grading some quizzes the other day. We’d been reading, or trying to read, Thoreau’s “Resistance to Civil Government” the entire week. I had used a basic question about the reading as an opportunity to earn bonus points on this quiz. Suddenly, something urged me to fan through the stack of quizzes, paying close attention to the bonus question. I found that only one student had responded to the bonus. His response was, “Who is Thoreau?” All the while, said analogies were rolling around my head like the steel marbles in those two-tiered maze games and finally one of them fell through the hole: Teachers are missionaries…

…at least, teachers at rural schools. We travel from the city, a place not far from the town where it’s hard to believe many people have never left. We speak a language close to standard written English, or, at least, variations of English that would be acceptable to the Merriam-Webster committee. We think highly of education and its trappings, from vocabulary and critical thinking to acceptable behavior in social situations. We bring different values, norms and ethics. In every sense, we are outsiders.

* * *

A long time ago, Mathew Arnold, a British cultural critic, wrote that capital-C Culture is something to be perfected. Here is the thesis from his book Culture and Anarchy:

“The whole scope of the essay is to recommend culture as the great help out of our present difficulties; culture being a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world, and, through this knowledge, turning a stream of fresh and free thought upon our stock notions and habits, which we now follow staunchly but mechanically, vainly imagining that there is a virtue in following them staunchly which makes up for the mischief of following them mechanically.”

The interesting thing about Arnold is he believed that Culture, “the best which has been thought and said,” was for everyone, the saving grace keeping us off the brink of anarchy. I think the proposal is modest, however, there is the extremely difficult question of who decides what is best. Certainly it is best to read, write and speak in a common language in order to communicate. One would assume, speeding in the calm AC drone of their midsized sedan down an endless country road, that reading is the most basic and important tool a person can have. But no. This assumption is contested by the rural population. The tension some of us feel in this type of classroom is a clash of cultures. Rather than thinking, “I should learn how to read.” Many rural students do not see the use. When they see you kicked back with a book, they are thinking, to quote Bill Hicks, “Whatchoo readin’ for?”

* * *

Who sows the seeds of stupidity? The parents, of course. To use Will Smith’s lyric in a different context: “parents just don’t understand” (what they’re doing to their kids). It’s hard to blame a kid for hating to read when he grows up in a household with no books and parents whose English would make Don King cringe. What is left to learn on but the television?

We educated folks remember TV shows like Reading Rainbow, Sesame Street and 321 Contact, the joys of public broadcasting, but TV alone is not enough to reinforce the importance of reading, especially when these educational shows have to compete with Jerry Springer and MTV Spring Break. It doesn’t help that the kid controls the remote.

So what happens when these kids reach high school? Their perceptions are shaped by their idiot parents and bad television. What happens is something like Stop Snitchin’. What is that, you ask? It is an ethic likely to shake the foundations of our coddled, middle-class sensibilities. Stop Snitchin’ is the opposite of The Golden Rule. It’s a creed that dictates you don’t snitch, squeal on, rat out, or expose a crime if you know who did it.

Where did Stop Snitchin’ come from? Well, the streets, of course… but how do rural kids whose streets are not even paved come to hear about Stop Snitchin’? You know the answer: television. So not only is it an ethic, it’s a multi-million dollar marketing idea, materialized on the shirts, caps and belt buckles of students urban and rural alike.

Like most things kids say, or people who make money off what kids say, Stop Snitchin’ makes no sense. When my students bring it up, I hit them with a hypothetical: “I’m your neighbor. I’m sitting on my stoop getting high as Jah himself. I see someone breaking into your house. I know the guy. He’s an old friend who’s hard on his luck and addicted to crack. I know he’s just looking for some extra cash. He’s mah dawg, cuh, knowwhati’msayin’? I feel for this nigga. So when you come home the next day wondering who beat up your sister, and more importantly who stole your iPod, I ain’t tellin’ you shit. Belieeeeeeeeve that!”

Many students see the point and accept or dismiss it. With others, it’s like talking to a brick wall. My ideas upset their worldview, which is complicated by the fact that they’re all basically poseurs. That is the most amusing aspect of working at a rural school: many students aspire to be city. Ironically, to them, city is comprised of the caricatures the TV people come up with to simplify life so as to not hurt our sensitive brains.

* * *

Sadly, these perceptions contribute to their ideas about life goals. Maybe I’m forgetting my childhood naiveté to a certain extent. Regardless, it is better to learn the statistical improbability of making it into the NFL or NBA before assuming it will be your primary income. Better to successfully spell “entrepreneur” before wanting to become one. But sports and rap are the main influences on the children I teach. They will trust Fiddy Cent before they trust me, because I have not been shot… in other words, I am not familiar with their ghetto lifestyle.

The irony, which can seem endless with these kids, is that their ghetto lifestyle is based on a mode of production (capitalism) that doesn’t care about the culture they’ve internalized and adopted as their own. They are too young to remember the brief moment in the 90s when “intellectual” or “thoughtful” hip-hop was cool. The popular style now, which in turn means the style yielding rappers/role models the big bucks, is gangsta rap. But what happens when, like all fads, gangsta rap goes out of style, and will no longer make giant corporations tons of money? Well, Fiddy Cent will be the new MC Hammer, and rather than see him on TV surrounded by bling and bitches, he’ll be schilling for Geico or Taco Bell. And those poor, dedicated gangsta rappers in their home studios will realize they’ve been abandoned by a system that doesn’t care about art. That being shot 9 times was not street credibility, but marketing. That they spent a lot of hard-earned money at a shitty job on Flex’s Lugz, Jay-Z’s vodka and Fiddy’s clothing line.

If you’ll indulge a pretentious analogy: T.S. Eliot didn’t have to be middle-aged to write brilliantly about a midlife crisis in “The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock.” The poem has substance without the image of Eliot, the credibility is in the art itself. But with Rap Capitalism, image comes first and it is ultimately an illusion playing on these young minds in order extract the little money they have.

These students are putting their hopes in a crapshoot. The mentality of making it big is similar to the mentality of the Florida Lottery (your gambling well spent on education, by the way, but no other funding): Get lucky, get rich, leave the poor behind in the same state. In terms of art, Rap Capitalism discourages folk culture, a regional realism like that of some Dirty South rappers who rap about what life is like not because it makes them rich, but because they’re making art tied to a specific time, place and situation. But my students, especially the ones obsessed with rap, are confronted with the troubles of adolescence: they don’t know what to think, they are not interested in learning about the world, and thus they keep their skewed, TV realities, and may never truly discover a way to creatively express who they are.

* * *

If you have not inferred that a central part of this rural culture is “blackness,” then let it be known. Not all students at this school are black. In fact, I’m ignoring a whole other segment of rural culture, that of the cross and the Klan. But I’m basing this analysis on my students. And one evening, while analyzing my approach, feeling quite a bit like a missionary, I thought: What better way to make Thoreau relevant than to follow it up with Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”

Surely MLK has contributed to “the best which has been thought and said.” In fact, there’s a whole canon of literature my students can familiarize themselves with in order to ground themselves in some sort of positive identity and tradition: WEB Dubois, James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, so many authors and thinkers I’m only skimming the surface.


But their attention span is short, their knowledge incomplete, perhaps intentionally, in order to reduce intellectual discomfort. I was amazed at how little they knew about the civil rights movement. Rosa Parks: yes, but what’s a boycott? What’s a sit-in? What is non-violent direct action? Many of them understood eventually, but many also ignored the intensive lessons we had on the “Letter.”

The final lesson, for many, was not turn the other cheek. They continued to speak like Black Nationalists, quoting Malcolm X, but, just as they forgot about the second-tape downfall of Scarface, they, too, forgot that Malcolm X went to Mecca and came back changed, sounding more like Dr. King than Marcus Garvey. Rather than study, they prefer to run around the halls yelling Jenna 6, which is a case we discussed one day, and not knowing what they hell they mean by it. If you asked them about “Going to Meet the Man,” they would not recall a short story, but instead a trip to the precinct to post bail for cousin Ray-Ray.

* * *

But hey, there’s hope.
Or not.
Maybe so.
No, probably not.
That’s a lie, there’s hope.
Very little.
But some.

This is the conversation I sometimes have with myself when thinking about the future of my students. It’s not their lack of interest in education—many kids hate school. It’s more their attitude that they are owed something, that the have the right to be disrespectful, that they are above certain rules. We city teachers think of this as intentional defiance. We see it as a bunch of asshole kids and we become cynical. We forget we’re dealing with kids, desperate kids. Kids who have grown up in a culture radically different from our own. Kids who can see the immensity of the world in the values we bring, the cruelty, the pressures, the horrifying responsibility of reality, and they are scared. They are too far behind. They think there is no hope of catching up. That’s why it’s important for teachers to have hope for them. We have to show them that there’s beauty in the world, too. That it is not cool to have to wear a bullet proof vest (over their clothes, no less). If we can’t get through to them, they will be doomed to the infinite jest of sitting on their stoops on Friday, Next Friday, The Friday After Next, The Following Friday, Every Friday, sitting there watching their the neighbor’s house get robbed.

Wait a minute... who's the fascist here?

If you accept the premise that a school is a microcosm of a nation, then you would not hesitate to subject the former to similar analysis. While I often feel that the nation, as it is represented by elected officials, seems a lot like a high school (image trumping substance, irresponsible spending, impending debt, raging hormones in the form of wars) the focus here will be on the reverse: how is a high school like a nation? More specifically: my high school.

I’ve given it some thought. I’ve traveled. I’ve read intensely. And now, I give you: the fourteen identifying characteristics of fascism.

1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism.
2. Disdain for the importance of human rights.
3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause.
4. The supremacy of the military/avid militarism.
5. Rampant sexism.
6. A controlled mass media.
7. Obsession with national security.
8. Religion and ruling elite tied together.
9. Power of corporations protected.
10. Power of labor suppressed or eliminated.
11. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts.
12. Obsession with crime and punishment.
13. Rampant cronyism and corruption.
14. Fraudulent elections.

The analogy here is not one hundred percent spot on. It often shifts between students-as administrators-of-a-repressive-state-apparatus and students-as-masses, in other words, victims of the state. However, one remembers from history that the desperate will take whatever power they can, and that modicum of power often reflects, however petty, the behavior and means of the state. It is with this in mind that I suggest the students lean more toward masses. This leaves the administration and teachers to the role of the state, which is not an apt comparison. Granted, young people in a school have little say in how things are run, however, if anything, the repressive nature of power that is reflected in the behavior of the student masses spawns more from the paranoid delusions of adolescence than any teacher or administrator. Teachers, if we fit anywhere into this analogy, are more like society’s repressed intellectuals, our books burned as in Nazi Germany, our body’s beaten as in Mao’s China.

Finally, a nod to Laurence Britt for the 14 points below, elaborations quoted prior to my interpretation.

1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism.

“From the prominent displays of flags and bunting to the ubiquitous lapel pins, the fervor to show patriotic nationalism, both on the part of the regime itself and of citizens caught up in its frenzy, was always obvious. Catchy slogans, pride in the military, and demands for unity were common themes in expressing this nationalism. It was usually coupled with a suspicion of things foreign that often bordered on xenophobia.”

I’ve yet to participate in the fervor that is school spirit, but it exists in every school in the form of colors. Every school has a set, and my school suggests we sport not only the colors, but the name and logo of our institution as much as possible. Just the other day I was asked to buy a pin, a blinking contraption featuring the school’s mascot. Everywhere you look there are the colors. And not one hallway is without some sort of motto inspiring pride in the nation-school. The military is paralleled in this analogy by the football and other sports teams. Rallies before every home game (despite my school’s lack of adequate facilities, causing ceremony to look more like a farce than Triumph of the Will) ensure loyalty and conformity, mass admiration of the school’s muscle. As for a suspicion of foreigners, observe the way new students are treated, immediately harassed, questioned, tested to the point of either conformity or outcast.

2. Disdain for the importance of human rights.

“The regimes themselves viewed human rights as of little value and a hindrance to realizing the objectives of the ruling elite. Through clever use of propaganda, the population was brought to accept these human rights abuses by marginalizing, even demonizing, those being targeted. When abuse was egregious, the tactic was to use secrecy, denial, and disinformation.”

My students have no respect for personal space. Ass-slapping, face-slapping, wrestling, punching, fighting and groping take place constantly in the halls. Governments throughout history have used euphemisms for torture. At my school, there is a particular group of students who like to taunt and beat up girls. When caught, they immediately exclaim, “That’s my sister!” as if that makes it any more appropriate. It has occurred to me, after seeing the same situation play out among different students, that “sister” is code for “victim.” As for disinformation, gossip is a fact of every school. Gossip smacks of Stalin and McCarthy’s paranoia and the oral culture surrounding them. In schools, gossip is a means of intimidation powerful enough to cause students to transfer schools.

3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause.

“The most significant common thread among these regimes was the use of scapegoating as a means to divert the people’s attention from other problems, to shift blame for failures, and to channel frustration in controlled directions. The methods of choice—relentless propaganda and disinformation—were usually effective. Often the regimes would incite ‘spontaneous’ acts against the target scapegoats, usually communists, socialists, liberals, Jews, ethnic and racial minorities, traditional national enemies, members of other religions, secularists, homosexuals, and ‘terrorists.’ Active opponents of these regimes were inevitably labeled as terrorists and dealt with accordingly.”

If there is one thing my students excel at it is making excuses, however illogical. Teachers, as well as administrators, are often used by students as scapegoats for a student’s own misbehavior. I’ve found that something as simple as writing a student’s name on the board for talking over a lecture, which has very little consequence at that moment, always escalates into illogical and absurd tirades on why the teacher is petty, why the teacher can’t just teach. And students love to gang up on a teacher who punishes one of their own.

4. The supremacy of the military/avid militarism.

“Ruling elites always identified closely with the military and the industrial infrastructure that supported it. A disproportionate share of national resources was allocated to the military, even when domestic needs were acute. The military was seen as an expression of nationalism, and was used whenever possible to assert national goals, intimidate other nations, and increase the power and prestige of the ruling elite.”

Again, athletics operates as the military strong arm of the school, usually hording most of the school’s funds to put toward expensive uniforms, jackets, and other status symbols not afforded to non-athletes, thus building the complex combination of admiration and resentment necessary for athletes to hold the positions of “power” that they do.

5. Rampant sexism.

“Beyond the simple fact that the political elite and the national culture were male-dominated, these regimes inevitably viewed women as second-class citizens. They were adamantly anti-abortion and also homophobic. These attitudes were usually codified in Draconian laws that enjoyed strong support by the orthodox religion of the country, thus lending the regime cover for its abuses.”

Especially in a rural school, male students hold pre-suffrage beliefs about the abilities of their female counterparts. Sexist jokes are as prevalent as those racist and homophobic. Further, I have to constantly ask certain students to refrain from using the word “fag.” The very word once appeared in a “declaration of independence” assignment, in which a group of students created, among others, a “no fags” law. Females at the school are more progressive, which possibly explains the seemingly disproportioned amount of lesbians, paradoxically accepted with greater ease than male homosexuals.

6. A controlled mass media.

“Under some of the regimes, the mass media were under strict direct control and could be relied upon never to stray from the party line. Other regimes exercised more subtle power to ensure media orthodoxy. Methods included the control of licensing and access to resources, economic pressure, appeals to patriotism, and implied threats. The leaders of the mass media were often politically compatible with the power elite. The result was usually success in keeping the general public unaware of the regimes’ excesses.”

While students’ brains are hardly developed enough to decode the opinions and propaganda generated by mass media, their petty debates over what is “cool” certainly mirror the current media climate. For example, logic is not their primary concern. More important to their rhetorical style are ad hominid attacks, glittering generalizations and circular reasoning. And over what? A pair of shoes or rapper about as ephemeral as their attention span. They are the future O’Reillys, proto-Hannitys.

7. Obsession with national security.

“Inevitably, a national security apparatus was under direct control of the ruling elite. It was usually an instrument of oppression, operating in secret and beyond any constraints. Its actions were justified under the rubric of protecting ‘national security,’ and questioning its activities was portrayed as unpatriotic or even treasonous.”

I got nothin’.

8. Religion and ruling elite tied together.

“Unlike communist regimes, the fascist and protofascist regimes were never proclaimed as godless by their opponents. In fact, most of the regimes attached themselves to the predominant religion of the country and chose to portray themselves as militant defenders of that religion. The fact that the ruling elite’s behavior was incompatible with the precepts of the religion was generally swept under the rug. Propaganda kept up the illusion that the ruling elites were defenders of the faith and opponents of the “godless.” A perception was manufactured that opposing the power elite was tantamount to an attack on religion.”

Students constantly refer to their moral superiority when justifying their fascist actions. For such atrocious behavior, many of my students are extremely religious, or at least convey the attitude. A totally forgiving God combined with an adolescent mindset, which imagines a life of sin followed by a last-minute penance, is a perfect match. Much of the religiosity, I believe, is a front anyhow. God is commodified, a gaudy piece of gold swung around the neck as yet another status symbol. In other words, God is hip at the moment.

9. Power of corporations protected.

“Although the personal life of ordinary citizens was under strict control, the ability of large corporations to operate in relative freedom was not compromised. The ruling elite saw the corporate structure as a way to not only ensure military production (in developed states), but also as an additional means of social control. Members of the economic elite were often pampered by the political elite to ensure a continued mutuality of interests, especially in the repression of ‘have-not’ citizens.

Again we find the students-as-masses. Seeing as how my students do not see me as their leader (one has actually said she doesn’t trust me), they instead bow to the factoids and rhetoric of corporate culture. On a small scale, it is true that there are certain cliques of elite students who keep to their own and ignore or abuse those deemed unpopular. The irony, in the end, is situational, because the masters of popularity must still report to their own masters: the monolithic corporate apparatuses that sway their feeble minds into believing a T-shirt or type of soda will make them cool.

10. Power of labor suppressed or eliminated.

“Since organized labor was seen as the one power center that could challenge the political hegemony of the ruling elite and its corporate allies, it was inevitably crushed or made powerless. The poor formed an underclass, viewed with suspicion or outright contempt. Under some regimes, being poor was considered akin to a vice.”

Students-as-masses yet again. Labor is only valued by a few of the students who come from a lineage of farmers. However, that is not to say they haven’t given in to the evils of agribusiness (refer to point 9). As for the students who do not farm, they aspire to be the same corporate images they admire. Sports stars, CEOs, famous rappers, entrepreneurs. Not the overworked, lower-middle-class blue collars they will, at this rate, inevitably become.

11. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts.

“Intellectuals and the inherent freedom of ideas and expression associated with them were anathema to these regimes. Intellectual and academic freedom were considered subversive to national security and the patriotic ideal. Universities were tightly controlled; politically unreliable faculty harassed or eliminated. Unorthodox ideas or expressions of dissent were strongly attacked, silenced, or crushed. To these regimes, art and literature should serve the national interest or they had no right to exist.”

There is some interesting historical work on anti-intellectualism in schools, especially around the time of World War II. You’ll find in these works, similar connection between the nation and the school. Kids are so obviously anti-school… I’ll give you one quote from my first day of classes uttered by multiple students: “I hate to read.”

12. Obsession with crime and punishment.

“Most of these regimes maintained Draconian systems of criminal justice with huge prison populations. The police were often glorified and had almost unchecked power, leading to rampant abuse. ‘Normal’ and political crime were often merged into trumped-up criminal charges and sometimes used against political opponents of the regime. Fear, and hatred, of criminals or ‘traitors’ was often promoted among the population as an excuse for more police power.”

Many of my students, it would seem, are Draconians. They quote Hammurabi without even knowing the name: “eye for an eye.” They have expressed the belief that a thief should have his hand chopped off (same assignment as the “no fags” group, different students). Generally, a good old-fashioned ass whooping passes for justice.

13. Rampant cronyism and corruption.

“Those in business circles and close to the power elite often used their position to enrich themselves. This corruption worked both ways; the power elite would receive financial gifts and property from the economic elite, who in turn would gain the benefit of government favoritism. Members of the power elite were in a position to obtain vast wealth from other sources as well: for example, by stealing national resources. With the national security apparatus under control and the media muzzled, this corruption was largely unconstrained and not well understood by the general population.”

Cheating on quizzes and tests is rampant in my school. I had one student copy directly from another, as if I would not notice that their five paragraph essays were about the exact same thing, in the exact same words, word for word. Another insult to my intelligence is when some kind of report is due, say, a simple book report, and a student assumes that I do not know the difference between their remedial prose and a remotely coherent paragraph with polysyllabic words. You cannot copy and paste something written with correct spelling, grammar and syntax when you yourself are incapable of producing such work. At least change it up to say (edits in italics) “Mark Twain is like this ornery author of enormous stature and like acerbic humor and wit.”

14. Fraudulent elections.

“Elections in the form of plebiscites or public opinion polls were usually bogus. When actual elections with candidates were held, they would usually be perverted by the power elite to get the desired result. Common methods included maintaining control of the election machinery, intimidating and disenfranchising opposition voters, destroying or disallowing legal votes, and, as a last resort, turning to a judiciary beholden to the power elite.”

Although my students will most likely always be on the receiving end of disenfranchisement, this last point should allow us all to breathe a temporary sigh of relief. Because my students, as mean and dumb and likely to be involved with drugs as they are, will never vote. They may, however, be elected president.

TEACHER'S WORK DAY!

Some of you... okay, three of you... have been looking for a new post. The reasons for not updating lately are as follows: planning for class, applying to grad schools (which is like a full-time job and it won't be over until the end of November), not-good-enough ideas, a resulting lack of motivation, as well as general ennui. Also, Florida's brand of winter is seeping into my city. I'm going the fuck outside. Peace!