No dark sarcasm in the classroom

17 12 2009

‘I love grading! It is the best!’

‘Grading has nothing to do with learning.’

‘Ay? No! Of course it does. It is the best way!’

‘Paugh. We do it because we can’t think of anything better.’

‘Because there is nothing better! This is what intellectuals have done since the beginning—the best, the smartest.’

‘Socrates?’

‘Okay, no, so it was different then. But Karl Marx, Adam Smith—they all had to study! They all had to take exams.’

‘So. So did we. What does that prove?’

‘No, you are wrong. It is the most just and fair way to determine how much the students have learned.’

‘What does justice have to do with learning? Justice has nothing to do with learning!’

‘And you, the philosopher. You should love grading. Write a blog on how much you love grading.’

‘Hah, no.’

‘Grading is the best, I tell you.’

‘You only love grading because you can inflict pain and assert authority.’

‘True. . . .’ (Jtte. laughs)


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Be like Johnnie too good, well don’t you know he never shirks

16 12 2009

Hate grading. Hate hate hate grading.

It’s not just the labor of it—tho’ it is also the labor of it—so much as the pointlessness of the process.

Identify this, define that, explain how this fits with that. . . oh my god, I’m falling asleep already. But don’t worry, I’ll rouse myself with coffee or beer (what the hell) and read every fucking word written before scribbling a number which just might bear some relationship to the worth of that collection of words.

Dot i’s, cross t’s, jump hoops, student and teacher alike. You get a grade, I get a paycheck.

So why bother with grading at all? Well, there’s that matter of the student needing a grade and my desire for that paycheck.

Practicalities, in other words.

Please don’t think that, if I had my druthers, I’d abandon all work requirements for the students. If you are not a prodigy or genius and you want to learn, you have to work. (And if you are a prodigy or genius and you want to be good, you have to work.)

The problem is that the work required for learning is only approximated by the work required for grading, and often, not even that.

I shape and cut and alter the course requirements, but, in the end, what I grade only partially captures what they learn, and, for that matter, what they haven’t learned.

A big part of the problem, perhaps even the main problem, is that most students don’t much care about learning. They care about grades, yes, performance, at times, but learning? Mm, no.

How do I know this? Besides the dearth of students who visit me during office hours to discuss the material, or who approach me wanting help puzzling through a problem I posed, or who show any energy at all in class or in the written work? Besides the slack look on their faces when I ask them the most basic questions about the material? Besides the utter lack of interest in finding their own way into the material?

Simple: because every once in a while, one of them does learn something, and he or she is overwhelmed—because they don’t expect to learn.

Understand? They don’t expect to learn, so when it does happen—when an insight or a question percolates up and into their consciousness—they are visibly giddy or discombobulated or even scared. I never knew. . . .Is this real. . .  ? How could this be. . . ?

I’m not exaggerating. I’ve had students stand in front of me with their mouths opening and closing  and their eyes wide and darting as they attempt to corral this feeling into words. They are agape in the presence of knowledge.

I let them work their ways through it, tell them they have something real, and that they should do whatever they can to make sense, that I will help them to make sense.

It doesn’t always work. You can see them back down, or let it go, or watch as they’re distracted by other matters.

But even then, with those who seem to have tossed their insights aside, you can see an angle to their thoughts, and you know it’s still in there, somewhere.

There’s no way to capture that, that abashed curiosity, in a grade. On the margins, maybe, but in the main? No.

This is why I hate grading. This is why I love teaching.


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On the road again

14 12 2009

The Road: The movie.

Eh.

Yes, our misanthropic cohort couldn’t wait until Christmas for the end of the world, so we trekked to a theatre Friday night and watched the man and the boy dodge cannibals and falling trees.

*Oh, have I mentioned there will be spoilers? Because there will be spoilers.*

There was no real change-up in the ending, although director John Hillcoat did end it a bit short, with the boy meeting the family, and his assent to travel with them.

Ct. was ticked at this. It’s a fucking Hallmark card!

I said, Ct., have you ever actually read a Hallmark card? Because while the movie ended on a less grim note than the book, it was still pretty fucking grim.

But I see her point: in uniting the boy with the family, you’re left with the sense of some possibility. In the book, however, there is none. There is only what is lost:

Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed mystery.

I know of at least one person who thought the ending of the book was hopeful. Hopeful? I asked. How on earth could it be hopeful when everything is gone and not coming back?

The boy meets the family, she said. And the fish.

The fish are gone. Gone: could not be put back. Not be made right again.

Anyway, back to the movie. I think the problem is that the only folks likely to see the movie are those who’ve read—and liked—the book, so we’re all watching the movie with the trajectory of the book in mind.

And, frankly, not much happens. The movie is juiced up a bit with color-ful flashbacks (intrusive in the gray movie tones in the way they’re not in the book: the color and light really do overwhelm onscreen), but, really, it’s a road movie with only a vague destination and in which the main purpose is merely to remain alive.

Scratch that: It doesn’t really fit the conventions of a road movie, precisely because there is no real destination and the flight of the father and son cannot really be characterized as a ‘meaningful’ journey. They’re on the run (or walk, as it were), staying alive just to keep staying alive.

Yeah, there’s that talk about carrying the fire, and some Christian imagery and words (in both movie and book), but the man stays alive to protect the boy, and the boy stays alive because he’s a boy.

The road is a trope for the road itself, a question of why live, at all?

Well, that’s another post, I guess, and one for which I’ll have to haul out my Camus.

Back to the movie: Because so little happens, but what does happen matters so much, you end up scrutinizing the screen so that this even or that can be checked off. Hillcoat cuts one notable event and substitutes another (pointless) scene in its place, but the rest pretty much unfolds as in the book:

  • Shoot the cannibal? Check.
  • Share meal with old man? Check.
  • Stupidly enters basement? Check. (And not nearly as awful a scene in the movie as it was in the book.)
  • Starve? Check.
  • Find underground cache? Check.

Et cetera.

What would it have been like to have seen the movie without knowing what would happen? Without turning your face sideways as the man enters the basement? Without knowing about the ship and arrow and the family and endless gray?

What would it be like to watch it not knowing how bad things are, and how bad things will remain?

The problem of foreknowledge is always an issue with book-readers who watch book-movies, but because The Road is so much about the stillness and the terror and not much else, the problem is exacerbated. With a book busier in plot, character, and backdrop, there are more pieces to juggle and interpret, more for the viewer to see and miss and absorb.

It’s not that The Road isn’t complex, but it is in many ways ‘merely’ a contemplation of the endless, horrifying, present.

That could work as a movie, but not, I think, if you’ve read the book first.

Especially not this book.


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Friday poem: in Just-

11 12 2009

e.e. cummings is a great poet for kids.

Not because he’s simple—he’s not—but because he’s gleeful and serious in a way that kids understand is not a contradiction. He breaks rules not for the sake of the rules, but for the sake of the poem. He liberates the words, not into chaos, but that they may be formed into something which makes its own, perfect, sense.

And he sounds wonderful. You want to sing his poems, or laugh, or cry, or whisper, in the telling. I’m not a fan of most spoken-poems: the speakers too often sound like Speakers, intoning and pausing meaningfully and making sure that all who hear are in the presence of Art, or they err too far in the other direction, as so many spoken-word poets do, jamming and hamming and, again, drawing all too much attention to the spoker.

No, read a poem for the poem. Read the poem to hear the poem, not yourself reading the poem. Yes, pay attention to the line and stanza breaks, but, remember, this is its own language: This is poetry.

So, one of my first, and still favorite, cummings poems (w/a tip o’ the lid to Poets’ Corner)

in Just-

in Just-
spring       when the world is mud-
luscious the little lame baloonman

whistles       far       and wee

and eddyandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it’s
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer
old baloonman whistles
far       and       wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it’s
spring
and
the
goat-footed

baloonMan       whistles
far
and
wee


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Sneaky petes

11 12 2009

I love caper flicks.

It’s where the little guy gets over, sneakiness wins over force, and wits—sometimes matched, sometimes overmatched—trump all.

There’s a definitional issue, here (of course): Do caper flicks have to be light? How much heaviness can creep in? Is there such a thing as a heavy caper flick?

I tend toward the lightness (or fleetness) aspect of capers, with just enough heaviness to anchor the thrill of the exploits.

Have you watched Hopscotch? It’s an old film (available thru Netflix streaming), about a CIA man about to be shackled to a desk who decides instead to get out; the trouble begins when he’s prompted (by his KGB counterpart, natch) to write his memoirs—about his spy work. It stars Walter Matthau and Glenda Jackson (both delicious), with the perfect Ned Beatty in the role of the Nixonian spy chief, and beautiful and young Sam Waterston as Matthau’s protege and would-be captor.

Complete fluff. Oh, that it’s about the dirty deeds of the CIA and the desire of both the CIA and the KGB to stop him from revealing those deeds serves mainly to underline the glee with which Matthau consistently baits the poobahs, and watches as they respond exactly as predicted. There’s a bit of a bump at the end, but it ends as all caper flicks must, with a win.

This, by the way, was a problem with Duplicity, with Clive Owen & Julia Roberts. I should have enjoyed it more than I did, since it’s basically a double-/triple-/quadruple-cross about consumer-products business secrets. An opening sequence with Paul Giamatti and Tom Wilkinson trying to beat each other up as their horrified associates look on sets the appropriately absurdist tone.

Unfortunately, the film doesn’t maintain that tone, and darkens inappropriately. It’s about consumer products, for chrisssakes! And the ending does not satisfy.

Ocean’s 11 satisfies. A fine ensemble piece, laced with a bit of melancholy (which you know will lift by the end), and with a ludicrous premise with equally ludicrous stakes. The best scene? When Matt Damon racially insults the late, great Bernie Mac in a performance which just possible echoes one of the best scenes in SNL history: when Chevy Chase (I think) psychologically interviews Richard Pryor, using increasingly racially-charged word-association.

No, no one can compete with Richard Pryor, but still: even an echo is great.

Ocean’s 12 was okay (my favorite scene in that? When Matt Damon’s mom, the fabulous Cherry Jones, springs the crew from the police). Haven’t seen Ocean’s 13.

The Thomas Crown Affair with Pierce Brosnan, Denis Leary, and, crap, whatshername, was fine—the scene near the end, with all the men in bowler caps, was terrific—but I’m not a huge fan of the (younger) Brosnan. And I haven’t seen the original, with Steve McQueen, so I don’t know how it compares.

The movie which really cemented my love for capers, however, was Sneakers (great score by Brandon Marsalis, by the way). It features Robert Redford, Mary McConnell, Sidney Poitier, David Straithairn, River Phoenix, with Ben Kingsley and James Earl Jones appearing near the end; the set up is  that of a second-rate security firm, headed by Redford, hired to retrieve a global decryption device. This bit of hardware, in other words, would allow one to penetrate every electronics system in the world—no secrets.

It’s a bit darker than some other caper films—at least one guy is murdered—but the ensemble is a delight, with the frictions and affections between them applying much of the fizz. Great scene? Straithairn’s character, who is blind, drives a truck off-road and down a hill to save the day. He is appropriately terrified and exhilarated.

Would Inside Man count as a caper flick? I think not, as the crime-film aspects overshadows all, but the caperesque aspects of the film are precisely what make it so delightful.

The various Bourne movies are definitely not capers: too dark, too violent, too little humor. Still, the catch-me-if-you-can aspect. . .

. . .Catch Me If You Can. Forgot about that one, probably because I haven’t seen it. A caper, right?

See, I’m stuck because while I love this genre, I can’t think of that many films which fit. The Sting—of course. There has to be more.

There has to be ‘something more’. . . !


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Never enough

9 12 2009

Be beautiful.

Be smart (but not too. . .).

Be supportive.

Be thin.

Be a wife. Be a girlfriend. Be a mother.

Be everything.

But not enough. It won’t be enough, not for him.

Let it be stipulated that not every man cheats. Let it be stipulated that women cheat. Let it be stipulated that monogamy is not for everyone.

Let it be further stipulated that athletes and politicians and corporate moguls and celebrities are not like the rest of us.

Nonetheless.

I look at these everything-women and their caddish men and think Women are fucked.

Told constantly by magazine writers and self-help authors and media representations and advertisements and sexperts that if women would only lose the weight and change the hair and brighten the smile and maybe engage in a little bo-nip-tuck-tox (and, of course, shave/wax/defoliate one’s nether and whatever other  regions) you too could earn yourself The Man of Your Dreams™, we are confronted with the scenario in which said Man simply decides that one is nowhere near enough.

I know: media representations are bullshit, and my rational feminist brain tells me that relationships are complex and compatibility runs far deeper than the skin.

Nonetheless.

This plain and single woman cannot rid herself of the enduring thought that if only she’d lose five pounds and/or get in better shape and get her teeth and eyes fixed then maybe, just maybe, she could be worth dating.

Irrational, yes. Pathetic, yes. A handy way to avoid addressing the real reasons I don’t date—yes, absolutely, yes.

Nonetheless.

The thought remains.

As does the apparent evidence that whatever fixes one enacts won’t ever be enough.

Fucked, all around.


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Nothing comes from nothing

6 12 2009

‘No! You cannot argue with me! The problem is entirely theological.’

‘Well, philosophical, at least. Existential in any case.’

‘Theological. The deepest question of human beings! We are at the point of crisis. We are!’

‘It’s always there. Always. What’s new?’

‘We cannot continue to live like this. No! We cannot!’

Jtte, my orthodox-Marxist-and-orthodox-Catholic colleague, and friend, is at the frayed ends of her orthodoxy.

She is, in other words, less orthodox than she insists.

I don’t know what prompted this crisis, for her, or, to put it less personally, what prompted this recognition of crisis in the world. We keep trying to make lunch or dinner dates, but our schedules block us from anything more than a quick argument between classes.

And it would help to know, because I don’t know what to make of what appears—appears—to be a profound alienation and an acute need to clamber beneath that alienation, to something real.

I don’t want to push this interpretation too hard, not least because I really don’t know what the hell is going on with her. (And, as a conversation with another friend last week reminded me, ’tis best not to insert meaning into the unsaid.)

I am also admittedly puzzled by her insistence upon crisis. What, now, is different? There is nothing new in capitalism, nothing new in technology, no paradigm-shifting breakthroughs in science, no visitations from outer space nor even, to follow up a recent discussion, the barest hint of asteroids or global nuclear exchange or some new pandemic.

Yeah, things are falling apart, but things are always falling apart.

And yes, we are in the midst of an anthropic fucking-over of our climate, but one to which our scavenger species will adapt. Life may be worse in a hundred years, but it will continue.

So why the crisis?

Jtte, at least, is optimistic: She thinks we will become more human, more of whom we’re supposed to be, that life will get better (whatever that means).

Do we need a crisis for that? ‘Existential crisis’ is one of those tropes around which to build a novel or film or some form of art. It’s what happens when we get everything we want or nothing we want or everything we thought we wanted, or when we lose everything, or when what matters becomes jumbled with what does not—it’s what happens when we live, and think or feel our lives.

Crap. None of this is what I wanted to say. It’s not right, it doesn’t fit. None of these words. . . huh. Nothing.

My friend Jtte is sounding an alarm and I don’t know why.


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Friday poem IV

4 12 2009

What lyric this week?

A poem for war?

Or perhaps a poem for my aching head, dunned twice with migraine.

Or for the half-awakening in which Chelsea dipped into that triangle between arm and body and air and purred me back to sleep, even as I cried, again, at her absence.

Sifting through the cut-outs, I could find nothing. And then I came across this poem by Kelly Cherry, who taught a poetry seminar I took at UW-Madison.

Cherry was a bit ornery, a bit odd, and a hell of a teacher. She had definite ideas about poetry—no misspellings and odd capitalizations, and you goddamned better well know the difference between lie and lay—but she didn’t seek to stamp herself into all of our styles.

Her approach was, instead, Make your work, better.

I have kept that with me for over twenty years, and try, and more often fail, to live up to that in my own teaching.

This poem was originally published in the Atlantic in two columns. I’ve inserted a stanza break between the two columns, but it’s possible that this was meant to be  a one stanza poem.

Regardless, it’s lovely: a grace note to us all.

Grace

You know of course that you haven’t earned it.
For if you had, it would not be what it is:
Beauty of the candle after you’ve burned it,
The dark bird rising like smoke, always from ashes,
Remembrance of heat and light, describing itself
Invisibly upon the air of the mind,
That takes the life lived in a fury of self-
Love and remakes it into something that shined

So brightly that it might have been a star;
Instead of a candle you were burning at both ends.
And now the night grows black, wherever you are,
Except for the golden shimmer than descends
To the earth through miles of lonely outer space
And lights up your misspent live, with saving grace.


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I am an idiot

3 12 2009

Not the first time I’ve said this, nor will it be the last, but, yes, today, I am an idiot.

I finally got around to hooking up the external monitor. Power cord, HDMI, connect, monitor on, computer on: BINGO!

Then these various display options flicked onscreen. Hmm. What to do with these?

Dunno. Nothing—for now.

Then another set of options, regarding the two screens. The external monitor mirrored all that was happening on the laptop. But wait, was there something about creating options for what appears on the different screen? Do I want to see what that’s about?

Sure, why not?

Wrong answer. The correct answer should have been: No. No, I do not.

Curiosity killed the external monitor.

It went black, and nothing I did could fix this. Click here and there and here and there. Nothing.

System restore.

Fail.

System restore again.

Fail again.

System restore again.

No difference.

Windows is no help. The Acer manual is no help. Check online. These folks want payment, these folks haven’t a clue.

Ah, found a site.

Try this, and then this.

Okay.

Works! It works!

Kinda.

A few more buttons. . . et voila! It’s back to where it was in the beginning.

Excellent. Now, let me just shift my laptop. . .

Oh, fuck. Black screen.

I spent 3 hours fucking with this thing, and now it appears that the problem is with the HDMI cable.

I am an idiot.

*Update*

Okay, got the screen back. Looks like a combo of tetchy cable and resetting the thingamajig in the whatchamacallit.

I am now only touching my glass of wine and the mouse.

I know: I’m still an idiot.


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There must be some way out of this

2 12 2009

And yes, I listened to the speech.

Can’t say I was impressed, but I didn’t think I would be.

Obama—all of us—have inherited a shitstorm in Afghanistan, and there’s no good damned way out of it.

Stay, and people die. Leave, and people die.

It didn’t have to be this way, but now, it is.

Is the President’s decision to pour it on the worst, or simply the least-worse, option?

I don’t know. I think nothing good will come of this, but, again, good evaporated some years back. Maybe this is the best that can be done to fend off the bad.

Sorry, this analysis lacks actual analysis. Sorry, I have only dread and bitterness.

At least he set a deadline.


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