Quip

The Freshman's Alphabet Waltz

You, in a world of expanding diameter
Here's some advice in dactylic tetrameter
A is abandon, so leave your old fears behind
B is beginnings refresh and renew your mind
C is call home so your parents can sleep at night
D is discern and steer clear of what isn't right
E is expect the adjustment to challenge you
F is forgive minor cruelties that others do
G is go places and see things you never saw
H is your honor, a trustworthy inner law
I is "I think," so please think before saying it
J is use judgment, so pause and reflect a bit
K is seek knowledge that drives away mystery
L is let go of mistakes that are history
M is make sure that you sleep enough not to die
N is to never deceive yourself with a lie
O is occasional treats to anticipate
P is have patience for others to imitate
Q is for quiet time just between God and thee
R is your roommate; remember the line for P
S is stay here on the weekend and grow some roots
T is to tame your tongue; don't be a smartyboots
U is umbrellas are useless in Oregon
Soon as you put yours away it'll pour again
V is brief victories, followed by war again
W is weekends; don't play till your work is done
X is exhibit good manners to everyone
Y is your conscience; don't do what it won't allow
Z is for zero regrets twenty years from now

Quadrature

More and more I get the disturbing feeling that what I teach in the classroom has a lot in common with multivitamins, and not in a good way. I gave up on multivitamins about a year ago: I'd read accounts for and against them to get a sense of how the evidence stacked up, and it finally swayed me to the view that they do little besides give Americans the most expensive pee on earth. In fact, a lot of things we do when our health is squarely in the center of our attention have little effect; health, whether good or bad, is accumulated via very long waves of habit and behavior, some of which stretch back before our birth. Much of what we're up against, health-wise, is written in our genes.

That's actually not what got me to thinking this morning, but the analogy is striking. What stirred me up was yet another mention of prior knowledge as a pivotal factor in reading effectiveness. Put plainly, guiding a student to becoming a good reader has less to do with technique, SQ3R, instruction, drills, or anything along those lines than it has to do with simply knowing a good deal about a lot of things. People will find passages more difficult to read if they don't have a foundation of knowledge about the subject, and this degree of difficulty dwarfs verbal skill and instruction as a predictor of reading comprehension.

Me being in the communication racket and all, I immediately see parallels in my field. One interpersonal communication theory, Uncertainty Reduction, says that we communicate for the purpose of reducing uncertainty and beefing up the baseline from which we interpret, explain and predict others' behavior. For the most part it tracks the effect prior knowledge has on reading effectiveness, but with reference to conversation and other forms of relational communication.

That idea has a couple of huge implications for teaching. I work my hiney off trying to beef up people's communication competence, trying to put them through their paces at communication behaviors and skills that will help them reach out to others more effectively and appropriately, but the truth is that all this concern with technique is a tiny splinter in the huge beam that is situational or contextual knowledge. I'm not giving back my paycheck or anything, but it is a bit humbling.

The other implication was taken up by E. D. Hirsch in a book I was reading this morning. He makes the argument that in the early years of primary school, we need to teach students a much more uniform foundation of core knowledge to help them achieve cultural literacy. And he begins by acknowledging that this runs into trouble with people who are committed to making public education diverse and multicultural. According to him, diversity in the delivery of cultural artifacts is like teaching thirty different students in your English class thirty different versions of the alphabet: laudable in the abstract, but an invitation to chaos when it comes to the simplest learning skills that they'll need later on.

His argument has some appeal, but I'm not convinced. It reminds me of a couple of things I take up in my classes, one of which is the controversy over African-American vernacular English, more commonly known as Ebonics. The way I explain it to my students is that if you've got in your classroom a bunch of kids whose co-cultural heritage gives them a shared way of speaking, then you have no hope of teaching them a different way to speak if your approach is to say "Your way is lazy and wrong, and must be replaced by intelligent, right speaking." Instead, what teachers should do is invite students to become bilingual. AAVE is an internally consistent dialect, but there's another dialect, Standard Spoken English, that ranges between useful and indispensible in workplace situations, so it's worthwhile to learn it as a marketable skill, same as bookkeeping, to have available for use, rather than to change the worth of anyone's identity. And I think that distinction is important to maintain when we get to thinking about context and background knowledge. Hirsch's argument about the democratizing effect of a cultural core does homogenize and artificially normalize too many ideas held by the dominant group in a way that is false to fact, but if we keep our focus squarely on the usefulness of shared knowledge, as set apart from the correctness of that knowledge, the dangers that come with that homogenization might recede a bit.

The other thing it makes me think of is the never-ending tension between objective and interpretive perspectives on communication. I've written about this elsewhere, and my students have heard me talk the idea to death: some elements of communication can be measured empirically, while others can only be reported as experience, which some hearers say they share to varying degrees of fidelity, but which can't be captured and bottled. No one understands communication if they devote all their attention to one or the other of those two perspectives. Reasoning from that, I think it's probably true that we've neglected the importance of context and background knowledge, but to go so far as to say they're all that matters runs along the same lines as saying the measurable elements of communication tell us everything we need to know about how it works, which is downright silly. So these are wobbly ideas that are trying to find a balance: in some ways, this tracks the theory-practice dialectic that's coming up over and over again in my work with intraprofessional controversies, because background knowledge is what we accrue inductively through practice, while technique is quite similar to theory: a recipe for behaving, as compared to a recipe for knowing.

And as with most things communication-related, it's a bit of a mess. But as with most such things, it's also fascinating and fun to work through, and the more years I do it, the more I enjoy it.

Quintessence

One thing surgeons and serial killers have in common is that people who are squeamish about the sight of blood are that much less likely to become either one. Similarly, one thing police officers have in common with humanity's biggest bungholes is that both tend to be comfortable asserting authority. If you're not the kind of person who can do that, you might have other faults, but there's a glass ceiling separating you from the pinnacle of obnoxiousness. It also limits your career potential in law enforcement.

At this point, it would be easy for you to get the wrong impression. This is not an anti-police officer piece. Quite the opposite actually; as I write this, I'm caught up in a burst of impatience at how deeply and powerfully the anti-police officer feelings run in this town.

Eugene is a town of aging hippies. By and large, hippies don't warm up to people in uniforms who tell them what they may and may not do. Plus, some hippies, although not quite all, gravitate toward recreational activities that are very illegal. Eugene is also a town with a critical mass of citizens that identify themselves politically as left-wing. For that reason, they're very skeptical of appeals to law and order, and believe police activity usually is orchestrated, and almost entirely behind the scenes, to benefit those who have spent many generations in the wealthy and powerful class, and intend to stay there and to keep out anyone who looks, thinks, or lives differently. And Eugene is a college town. The traditional college-age population is finely situated to be anti-police for the same reason that so many of them go through a rough patch with their parents: they feel ready for complete autonomy, but chafe under the last bits of parental authority, and the friction between those two states builds and builds until something gives.

The output of the above factors, and probably a few others I haven't considered, is a seemingly endless flood of anti-police invective. Lots and lots of people here in this town hate the police. All police. And that goes hurtling past silly, far into the realm of the outright asinine.

Not all police officers are bullies. Not all police officers have a dysfunctional need to give orders, intimidate, demonstrate their power; far from all of them do. But too many of my neighbors and associates put on a convincing imitation of two year olds who fear and hate being vaccinated: they've got a keen memory of a few incidents that involved pain, and they therefore refuse to grapple with the reality that one moment of unpleasantness is probably a small price to pay for protection against a slow death, quite likely dragged through racking, lingering, hellish torment. Two year olds are shortsighted because they're two years old. But at some point, the two year old worldview has to give way, one hopes, to adulthood.

Even given occasions when a police officer behaves badly, it's just absurd to conclude that that police officer, let alone all police officers, carries that as a deeply engraved personality trait. Police work is grueling, and the bad days are unimaginable. A police officer who's gruff during a traffic stop may still be shaking from their own brush with mortality, while grieving the recent loss to violent death of a good friend, or even several good friends. I know how much of my civility I misplace after a day when students have talked back to me, or even just been sluggish in class, so I don't feel as though I'm in any position to hold them to a standard that's ridiculously higher when their working conditions are ridiculously more stressful.

And yes, obviously there are bad police officers. There are also bad plumbers, bus drivers, house painters, pastors, and weasel shavers. But not nearly as many people are willing to condemn those entire professions based on nothing but a few experiences, backed up with images on TV and the trash talk of immature friends. (Well, maybe pastors, but not the rest.)

The funny thing I'm left wondering is whether this marks the beginning of a swing back to where I started my adult life. I came out of high school far more conservative, politically, than ninety-nine out of a hundred people you'll ever meet. But the lifeblood of my education, from secondary to higher to postgraduate, was in debate, and I was slingshotted to the extreme opposite just by the painful experience of listening to arguments made badly. I went to Baylor, which was a pretty inbred nest of conservative thought, and it was like what I imagine musicians must suffer, having to listen to their favorite music being played sloppily and off-key for year after agonizing year. It soured me on what I'd originally believed. I've since maintained that I'm not really pro-Republican or pro-Democrat, not really pro-liberal or pro-conservative, but rather that I'm anti-bad argument. Throughout most of the Rush Limbaugh era, the boldest and most shameless blast of really embarrassingly bad arguments has come from the right, and that has kept me pinned against the opposite wing of politics. But it looks as though living in Eugene is starting to change that.

To an extent, I'll admit, I think this points to how much growing up I still have to do. The truth is that most of the musicians I know actually seem very patient with bad singers and performers. They apparently have the wisdom and kindness to rejoice at others' enjoyment, and to tame their own prissiness and pedantry enough to look past failures of execution to the overflowing heart that motivated the music. If I were a better person, I would be equally pleased to see the passionate engagement and boldness that drives people to enter into substantive conversation and at least attempt to stake out a defensible position. But that might be one of the marks that years in academia has left on me: hearing badly-made arguments still repels me. It doesn't say good things about my allegiance to the truth, but it's a consistent pattern.

Have to wait and see where it sends me next, now that I'm here.

Qualifying

Today, I got my first look at my course evaluations for the Spring 2010 term. My Interpersonal evals looked good, the Public Speaking ones were extremely positive, and the evals from Listening Behavior tore the roof off the house. It seems that in the opinion of the students, each of those classes went very, very well. The one outlier was Communication Theory.

I've been thinking a lot about that class. It's only the second time I've taught it, and the first time it's been its own class, as opposed to a special problems. Back in January, I announced that there would be two tests in the class, both at the very, very end: one would be an objective test over all the theories we'd covered, and the other would be an essay test, for which I'd give them the essay questions beforehand. In fact, I posted the essay questions before the first class meeting, so they had fifteen weeks to craft their answers. I also posted a study guide for the objective test around the third or fourth week, and stopped talking about it.

Late in April, about a week before the objective test, I mentioned it. More than half the class looked very surprised. "We have a test next week?" Not only had I told them at the start and provided a study guide, but the test itself was on the syllabus calendar. In bold. Bright red. But it was a complete surprise to them. More than half the class failed the test, and on the course evaluations I just read, they pointed to the arrangement of the class, and that test in particular, as the reason they didn't think the class was well taught.

What this makes me think is that I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't.

I'm also the lead instructor for First Year Seminar, so we did focus groups and other such activities to find out how we could make that class a more useful, positive experience for incoming freshman. What was the one message everyone agreed upon? What did they hammer into our heads? "Don't talk down to us or treat us like children. We're adults, and you should show us the same respect you show each other." But what happens when I don't nag them every week to study for their comprehensive final, like mom nagging them to clean their room? Well, that means I don't understand their needs as learners.

Their other repeated complaint, on the SSI and in feedback to our marketing firm, is that classes at NCU lack rigor. In this sense as well, my Theory students wound up unhappy receiving exactly what they'd asked for.

What they seem to think will happen in the workplace after they graduate is that their bosses will assign them only short tasks that fit within the attention span they choose to bring to bear, and whenever they do any longer-term work, their managers will manage their time for them. I don't think it works that way, but I suppose one of us is right, and if they are, things will work out. And if I was right, they won't be able to say no one tried to teach them differently.

Understand that I don't, by any stretch, think the class went perfectly. I learned a lot of lessons about how to tackle that class, and I think it'll look quite different the next time I run it. And I do continue to turn over in my mind what they say, because it is dangerous to rush to judgment and assume my own perspective on the class is all that matters. What they wrote, and what I learned, have a year and a half to percolate through my mind before I have to gear up to do this again.

But dangit, this is a class for majors! When I teach the general interest classes that draw people from every major on campus, I'm at peace with the reality that only some of what I talk about will strike a chord with them, and they'll pursue it and connect it with their own experiences and values, and retain that much. All the rest will go pouring out their other ear and be forgotten. But when it comes to Communication majors taking their survey of Communication Theories class, this is their toolbox. These are the ideas that make up the backbone of the field of study. It is not acceptable to me that they "play school," that they go through the motions, that they cram for a test and forget what was on it as soon as they get to their second post-test beer. Not acceptable. If we talked about Coordinated Management of Meaning in January, then it's downright important that they still grasp CMM in May, and in August, and May of the following year, and on and on. If they disagree, too danged bad: time for me to be a granite wall in their path, and they can either change their ways, or else wipe out on my stubbornness.

And I can also say that this experience provides some measure of reassurance on a worry I nursed through most of last year: it's a bad sign when you're too popular with your students. I don't want them to like me too much right now; instead, I want the twenty-years-from-now version of them to look back and like how much they grew under my instruction. Their work ethic and responsibility is not a fraction of what it will be, and if I fit their expectations right now, then I'm lowballing terribly. With this class, I got a glimmer of hope that they encountered the level of expectation that will stretch them into their best selves.

Quasi

In most activities people pursue with any appreciable intensity, there is a kernel of value embedded in an outer layer of utter absurdity.

I'll start backing up my assertion with the example of sports. I think any sport that picks up a serious measure of longevity has at its core an essence that is enjoyable and worthwhile. I think athletes who play those sports make great memories for themselves, form powerful bonds with teammates and rival competitors, and learn valuable lessons about discipline, teamwork, patience, humility, and the list goes on. But beyond that core lurk the toxins of popularity and money, and as soon as the sport picks up a sizable audience, whether regional, nationwide, or even global, the latent profit creates a bubble of false, distorted value that utterly skews the priorities of those who play it and those who follow it.

Oddly enough, virtually the same thing is true, straight down the line, for academic research. Any academic field that attracts a critical mass of researchers, plus consumers of the research, is definitely on to something. No matter how many hasty, lazy thinkers want to say we're nearing the end of science, and we know everything that needs to be known, we still discover every day new cracks and crevices of reality and human experience (not the same thing at all) that bear examining. But the way academic research works at universities, those crevices become veins of valuable ore to be mined for profit, until almost overnight the scholars are producing obscure, silly, contrived research projects that have vanishingly small power to change anyone's life for the better. I trained in the doctoral program of a Research I university, and my professors all assumed I'd go to a huge state school, crank out five or six journal articles each year, teach at most a single class, and effectively work in a think tank, surrounded by grad students who were my research disciples.

Didn't quite turn out that way.

You see, one of the few pursuits that I don't think is a core of value surrounded by a cocoon of absurdity is teaching. Teaching, from inside to out, is pure value. It's definitely the case that learning can range from worthwhile to absurd, and the unbalanced relationship ultra-orthodox Judaism has with Talmud study merely for study's sake has lately underscored that for me. But teaching, as far as I'm concerned, as far as my reasoning can take me, is worthwhile all the way through.

And notice what do I do for a living? I dabble in research on the side, and I even serve the athletic program at my college. But the kernel of what I do is teaching. Teaching makes everything else run; teaching is what defines me. It's my top priority. It's easily the most worthwhile, least counterfeit, enterprise I pursue, and I believe it's the most world-changing outlet for my energies that God provides.

I take great comfort in that. I think it's probably my best protection against burnout.

Quondam

Yesterday I had a moment of sledgehammer empathy.

To begin with, I was a very mediocre debater. I had to work incredibly hard to rack up what little competitive success I did finally wind up with. And since I was on one of the very best college debate squads in the nation, that meant I was reminded on a daily basis how far below most of my teammates I was in talent and skill. In part, this was healthy, because all my life I'd been one of the smarter kids, and things had come to me easily, so this showed me how small a pond I'd swum in, and gave me more realistic measures of how I stacked up against the rest of the world. It also lit a fire under me to work harder, which revolutionized my daily routine: since I'd been very young, I'd gotten by despite underperforming. Now there was something I craved, and all the effort I could possibly devote to it resulted only in inching progress. In many ways, that matured me, and made what I do today possible.

Those were the nice parts, but there were dark and painful parts as well. I remember how it felt not to measure up. I remember being a junior, and then a senior, and still not making the elimination rounds at the major tournaments, or winning big debates against good teams. I remember what a ripping, tearing sensation it was to grapple with the reality that my best simply wasn't good enough, that this was something that just wasn't in me. I could put everything else in my life aside and do nothing but debate, but I would never be anything but mediocre. I remember fantasies and daydreams that on particular occasions shriveled up and died, as I figured out that they were out of my reach no matter how hard I tried.

So where does the empathy come in?

Yesterday I had a student visit my office who'd done badly in one of my classes. The student is on academic probation, and is now facing academic dismissal from the school. In the past, I've been pretty clinical about this: college is not for everyone, and if someone's combined maturity level and intellectual chops don't, after repeated chances, produce the calibre of work required, then it's appropriate and even healthy to remove them, to steer them onto another path. But too often I pull back, brace myself for the tears and obvious grief, go robotically into my soft, gentle voice and relaxed eyes, and simply try to wait them out. Too often I judge them, condemn them, sit still and attentively while they speak their piece, and wonder in my head how much longer it will take.

Even if what I do is necessary and proper, and I do believe it is, the detachment from real pain and real grief is not acceptable. I have been guilty of it, and I repent of it. It's not enough just to put on a display of sympathy. It's not enough to show "appropriate empathic concern." If I'm not willing to endure the hurt, to call to my mind exactly what scars that hurt left on me, then I don't have enough motivation, enough passion, to tackle the teaching enterprise and give my all to helping them find a way to grow into and through the challenge of college. I do have to keep firmly before me the reality that the pain grew me, that the pain was necessary, but if I fall into the trap of becoming too blithe, too flippant, too much of a spectator and not enough of a participant, then I can't be the teacher I want to be.

And yes, effectively what I'm writing here is "Bring on the burnout." This is a recipe for shortening my teaching career. But no one ever said I should return what God gave me unmarked and undamaged. If I don't guard myself enough, then I can't be available to students in years to come, but if I make the converse error of guarding myself too much, then I become complicit in cruelty, and as far as I'm concerned, the proper direction to err is obvious.

Quantum

There's something downright Heisenbergian about the question of whether any of us were wanted, or planned, by our parents.

I use that term advisedly because in my case, I both was and wasn't. I know absolutely for sure that I was conceived accidentally, as a result of a failure of birth control. I also know absolutely for sure that my parents wanted me very badly, that they put a lot of planning and thought and patient waiting into the enterprise of bringing me into their household.

I know these things because I'm adopted. My mother has related enough details about the biologicals and their situation that I know my conception was an unwanted surprise. But I also know my parents were fully invested in the project of raising me from moment one.

For most people, the question is cloaked in mystery. It's not an easy topic to take up with one's parents. Amusingly enough, I do know about my pastor, because his father, the pastor emeritus, shared with us the answer to the question in the middle of a sermon. No, they hadn't planned on him. But for the rest, I'm not sure how it could be dropped smoothly into conversation, without kicking up a fair amount of discomfort. And I'm not sure how completely it would be possible to believe a positive answer. It's not possible to accidentally adopt a child, but the only evidence that a borne child was planned and wanted is self-reporting, which is necessarily shaky.

I find nicely ticklish the fact that most people do not know the answer to this question, and at the same time that I do know the answer, and that it's really two answers, and that they're opposites.

I like that. It's just sort of the way the world is.

Awful

Connie Wilmarth
Tried to kill Darth
Vader with her cotton twill scarf
Whistling Liszt
Torqued her wrist
Tragically, he died unkissed

Awkwards

So today in my Interpersonal Communication class, we were doing assertiveness exercises. For that purpose, I had to make up unreasonable requests. Students read aloud the unreasonable requests, and then took turns responding assertively -- stating their position, acknowledging others' feelings, using dominant nonverbals, saying "No" clearly, etc.

Anyway, I had fun making up the unreasonable requests. Here they are:

1. Hey, can I have fifty dollars?
2. Hey, can I have a big hug and kiss?
3. Hey, I need someplace to crash tonight, but I’m not sure what time it’ll be. Would you just leave your front door unlocked so I can come in whenever?
4. I know you’ve got a huge final tomorrow morning, but my friend is only in town tonight and we want to play some deafeningly loud music all night. That’s okay with you, isn’t it?
5. So I get all these hilarious jokes in my email about politics and race and sex and things, but then I feel left out because I have no one to forward them to. Mind if I start sending them all to you?
6. My kid is selling candy bars for a band trip, but no one’s buying and this is the last day. Could you buy five hundred dollars’ worth?
7. Could you type up my senior capstone for me? And parts of it aren’t really written yet, so could you write those?
8. Hey, I’m going to an unlicensed bungee jumping place and it’s going to be a blast. Come with me!
9. Wow, I forgot my toothbrush. Could I borrow yours?
10. You’ll do me a big favor and babysit my nineteen Ritalin-addicted children tonight, right?
11. I really need to test my eighteen-wheeler’s brakes. Would you go lie down on the driveway?
12. I’m training my pit bull, Susan, to protect the house. Would you put on this jumpsuit made of beef and let her chase you?
13. So my grandma gave me this rifle for my birthday and I need to break in the scope. Would you put this apple on your head?
14. Wow, I’m wearing brand new underwear today, and it’s really itchy and uncomfortable. Could we swap?
15. I’m feeling a little judged right now. Would you please renounce Christ and embrace Satan for me?

Awards

When I was seven years old and in second grade, the teachers staged an all-grade spelling bee one afternoon. As I recall, it was raining outside, so they had to cancel recess, and this was to give us something that held our attention. But when it was all over, I was the last one left standing. Over thirty years later I remember it clearly, because I was only seven years old and therefore very impressionable. I was still voraciously consuming any data that helped me see where I stood against my peers. The prize was nothing special: one of the teachers bought me a Fudgesicle at lunch, which cost all of thirty-five cents. Well, that, and I got a bit of bragging rights out of it.

Over the past three years, I've been on something of a winning streak. Back in spring of 2007, I won the Teaching Excellence award at Stephen F. Austin State University. A year later, spring 2008, the graduating seniors at Northwest Christian College voted me professor of the year. And last year, I won the President's Award for Teaching Excellence and Campus Leadership. This year, the school nominated me for the Donald H. Ecroyd award, which is given by the National Communication Association. A few folks have asked, "What are you going to do when we run out of awards for you to win?" And all of that has set me off thinking about what these mean.

In the first place, they don't mean what they apparently mean. They do not mean I was one of the best teachers at SFA in 2007, or the most inspiring at NCC in 2008, or the best faculty member at NCU in 2009. They mean, in each case, that a group of people cobbled together a template and found what they perceived was the best match from the available candidates. The SFA award involved a nomination packet, and past winners weren't eligible, and the assembling of the packet itself was an exercise in rhetorical effectiveness. It didn't prove I was better than others at teaching, but that I was better than others at arguing in favor of my teaching abilities, which is an entirely separate matter. As far as "Professor of the Year," I've often pointed out that in the 2007-08 school year, I had only about three seniors in all of my classes, so if the seniors voted me an award, that may have more to do with who they didn't like than who they did. ("Not him! ... Not her! ... Not him!! ... Who's left?") The President's Award, of course, was selected by a committee. Enough said.

I do take them as encouragement, and as far as that goes, they're nice. But when people ask if I'll be disappointed when there are no more awards to win, the answer is of course not. I've been encouraged all I need; it's to the point where I see very plainly who isn't getting encouraged and needs it, and it would genuinely feel better to see some of the encouragement flowing to them than to have to go through the whole awkward cycle of graciously responding to congratulations.

They can also be a bit of external validation. The school's motive in sending me in for the Ecroyd award is to lay hold of a selling point for the school. Of course we brag about how much we value teaching, and what high quality teaching we think goes on here, but most schools do that. A prospective student considering the school is badly in need of tiebreakers, of evidence that sorts out the claim schools make to the quality of their teaching in order of strength. The judgment of outsiders from other schools that the teaching happening on this campus, in the communication program, is in the very top tier in the nation, would be a powerful persuader.

On the subject of symbols that are easily understood, they're also a message that I can pass on to people I left behind in Texas who might be wondering if I'm settling in here. My mother, naturally, got very worried about my third year review, but it was nice to be able to quiet her worries substantially with a very conceited summing-up that I didn't feel in my own heart at all: "Mom, they only give two awards to faculty, and I'm the only faculty member who's won them both, and I won one of them the first time it was given. If I don't pass third year review, it will be very interesting to hear why." That helped her, but was very difficult to say, just because I don't at all feel as though I stand a head higher than my colleagues. I'm in awe of a great many of my colleagues, and on a lot of days I think I hit somewhere in the middle of the faculty or below. It's just that I've got both a knack and a deep academic background for being very visible and very hard to ignore.

What the awards are not, what they never will be, is proof of good teaching. When I gauge how a year went, the awards never cross my mind. Instead, I round up all my memories of student progress, student excitement, and I even watch for some delayed-reaction change. Often students will tell me directly that I'm making a difference, that they feel encouraged or challenged, or that they're using whta I teach and that they see its value. That, as any teacher who has any business in the profession can testify, is the real award. It can't hang on a wall or go on a vita, but it can be treasured in the heart, and it's the one thing that has any hope of making up for the ratio of labor-intensity to pay.

Fore

I've made a point of not linking to other sites or pasting other people's writing here because I wanted this to be all or nearly all my original work. But in the past few days, I've run across two quite powerful uses of historic perspective as argument, and I'm sticking them here in hopes that they fuel more reasoning of this kind. Critical thinking has far more to do with simply refusing to forget, refusing to give in to the manipulations of those who try to force forgetfulness, than it might seem.

Example #1:

"You didn't get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a President.
You didn't get mad when Cheney allowed Energy company officials
to dictate energy policy.
You didn't get mad when a covert CIA operative got outed.
You didn't get mad when the Patriot Act got passed.
You didn't get mad when we illegally invaded a country that posed no threat to us.
You didn't get mad when we spent over 600 billion(and counting) on said illegal war.
You didn't get mad when over 10 billion dollars just disappeared in Iraq.
You didn't get mad when you found out we were torturing people.
You didn't get mad when the government was illegally wiretapping Americans.
You didn't get mad when we didn't catch Bin Laden.
You didn't get mad when you saw the horrible conditions at Walter Reed.
You didn't get mad when we let a major US city, New Orleans, drown.
You didn't get mad when we gave a 900 billion tax break to the rich.
You didn't get mad when the deficit hit the trillion dollar mark.
You finally got mad when the government decided that people in America deserved the right to see a doctor if they are sick. Yes, illegal wars, lies, corruption, torture, stealing your tax dollars to make the rich richer, are all okay with you, but helping other Americans...oh hell no."

Example #2:

Democrats: "We need health care reform"
Republicans: "Liberal fascists! Give us a majority and we'll do it better"
Democrats: "Done, you have majority of both houses"

12 years later, health care is irrefutably worse in every respect for every single person in the United States
Democrats: "We need health care reform"
Republicans: "Liberal fascists! Americans are tired of partisan politics!"
Democrats: "OK, let's compromise"
Republicans: "OK, get rid of half your ideas"
Democrats: "Done"
Republicans: "Too liberal, get rid of half your ideas"
Democrats: "Done"
Republicans: "Too liberal, get rid of half your ideas"
Democrats: "Done"
Republicans: "Too liberal, get rid of half your ideas"
Democrats: "Done"
Republicans: "Too liberal, get rid of half your ideas"
Democrats: "Done. Time to end debate"
Republicans: "Too liberal, we need more debate, we will filibuster to prevent you from voting"
Democrats: "OK, we'll vote--sorry guys, debate is ended. It's time to vote on the bill"
Republicans: "Too liberal, we vote no"
Democrats: "OK, it passed anyway--sorry guys."

One month later

Republicans: "Wait--wait, OK, we have less of a minority now so we can filibuster forever."
Democrats: "Sorry, the bill already passed, we need it to pass the House now"
Republicans: "But we have enough to filibuster"
Democrats: "Sorry, the bill already passed, we need it to pass the House now"
Republicans: "Liberal fascists! You haven't listened to our ideas! You've shut us out of this whole process!"
Democrats: "Sorry, show us your proposal"
Republicans: "Smaller government"
Democrats: "That's not very specific"
Republicans: "OK, here's our detailed proposal--It's our common-sense ideas we spent 12 years not enacting"
Democrats: "OK, we'll add a bunch more of your ideas"
Republicans: "Liberal fascists! You included all these back-room deals"
Democrats: "OK, we'll get rid of the back-room deals"
Republicans: "Liberal fascists! You're using obscure procedural tricks to eliminate the back-room deals!"
Democrats: "No, we're using reconciliation, which both parties have used dozens of times for much larger bills"
Republicans: "Liberal fascists! You're pressuring Congressmen to vote for your bill! Scandal!"
Democrats: "It's called 'whipping', it's been done since 1789"
Republicans: "Liberal fascists! Can't you see the American people don't want this?"
Democrats: "This bill is mildly unpopular (40-50%), doing nothing (your proposal) is extraordinarily unpopular (4-6%)"
Republicans: "We need to start over! We need to start over!"
Democrats: "We should really consider voting--"
Republicans: "Liberal fascists! Start over! Clean slate! Common-sense! America!"

Use your brain. And never forget that one of the chief functions of your brain is to house your memory!

FYS

Last summer, I was appointed lead instructor of First Year Seminar. FYS is a class for incoming first-year students; any of you from SFA would recognize it as SFA 101. We made a few changes last fall, and we saw bits of progress in how well the class does what it's supposed to, but we're making more radical changes for the fall 2010 term. I'm posting them here in hopes of getting comments and suggestions from anyone who reads these notes. In no particular order:

• We've already changed it from a once-a-week class that runs all fifteen weeks to a twice-a-week class, Tuesday-Thursday, that runs only eight weeks. The plan is that we'll cover college survival on one of those days, say Tuesday, and then on Thursday the class will mutually tackle a book, movie, or other text. Tentatively, I plan to have my class watch Gattaca and then carry out a series of in-depth discussions on it. One of my colleagues plans to spend the eight weeks talking about comic strips and editorial cartoons, and having students bring different ones for discussion each Thursday.
• One complaint we've had hammered into us is that we've been guilty of talking down to the incoming first-years and conveying the impression that we don't think they're ready to be adults. So, instead of devoting entire class meetings to things like study skills, doing laundry, getting enough sleep, etc., what I tentatively want to do is track down concrete ideas like spaced repetition and resources like Anki, give a five minute PSA for such things in class, and then leave the burden on the students to do something about them.
• The Tuesday class needs to become a lot less about generic college survival, and a lot more about knowledge specific to Northwest Christian University. We've talked about making a list of four or five topics on which new students need information, and then letting the students in the class add another two or three, subject to our approval. We would then make those topics available for sign-up, and students would do a group project consisting of interviewing members of the campus community, video-recording their answers, and editing the highlights into a short primer on the subject. Examples: campus safety, campus traditions, etc. For each topic, we would get to name one person as an "expert" whose advice had to be included (For campus safety, Jocelyn Hubbs? For campus traditions, Carla Aydelott?) but beyond that, students would get to do it themselves.
• One topic that we might handle with that model, or that we might turn into a class topic, is how to find one's way around Eugene, which is an extremely confusing town to the newly arrived. We tend to have a fair number of Eugene natives in any particular section, but we could turn that to an advantage by enlisting them to come ready to help explain the town's layout, and to talk about at least one out-of-the-way place in Eugene that it's worthwhile to know how to find.
• Similarly, we've talked about having the advisor for each academic major talk on camera for no more than a minute and a half about that academic field, and then have them choose one of their outstanding majors to talk for another minute and a half about what it's like to take those classes, study that material, etc. That would make up most of our comprehensive coverage of the majors on campus. We'd still do the majors fair, but for that we'd run an informal contest among the faculty for the most creative way of getting and keeping students' attention.
• We plan to move class out of the classroom as often as possible. Last fall, my section took one class meeting and went for a walk around the neighborhood, including our campus and the neighboring University of Oregon campus, and they said they got a lot out of it and enjoyed it immensely.
• One change we implemented last fall, which I'm very happy about, is that each section is taught by a three-person team: a faculty member, a staff member, and an outstanding undergraduate student. One idea I have for this fall is to set aside one day when the faculty and staff instructor won't come, and label it "What students know that faculty and staff are better off not knowing." The student instructor could decide what to cover, what to explain, and also could take any questions from the first-years that they're not comfortable asking if a faculty or staff member is in the room.
• One assignment we've discussed is to send each first-year out to visit something within walking distance of campus, and then write (or record) a review highlighting the details that might be easily overlooked, both good and bad. This could include restaurants, shops, etc. but could also include entirely free attractions like Alton Baker Park or the first Friday at Jordan Schnitzer Museum.

Right now, the word we get from the students who take the class isn't positive. They complain about having to take it and tell one another it's a waste of time. Now, a little of this negative feeling, I admit, I disregard: I think of it as something similar to complaining about cafeteria food, or how strict one's parents are, both of which people routinely exaggerate because doing otherwise is uncool. But I do think we could do better than we're doing, and I am anxious to get any feedback anyone's willing to offer. If you have ideas for other improvements, or topics that ought to be addressed, please do comment and say so.

Last, if you want to continue to be part of this discussion after I yank the plug on my Facebook for the final month of school, you can find this post on my blog, along with most of the rest of my Facebook notes. I only write on the blog sporadically, but it does stay up and updated even when I'm not on Facebook. And I'll probably solicit feedback again just as soon as I'm back on in May, so as ideas occur to you, do please nail them down so you can set me up in a few weeks.

Foreigners

As with most matters that aren't blazingly obvious, there are good arguments for and against the Health Care bill that is now law. I've lived more than three quarters of my life in Texas, so I have a long list of friends who are very politically conservative, and I've known in my life intelligent conservatives who could marshal evidence and reasoning in a most impressive fashion to sell their side of a controversy.

I will note, in revving up to make my point, that one of my favorite advisees has a fascination with the national debt, and has accurately pegged its root cause as the runaway growth of non-discretionary spending, much of which comes in the form of entitlements. In that sense, the fact that the Health Care bill widens access to Medicaid is a fairly compelling argument against it, and one I take seriously. It's not a simple "Oh mercy, it spends a lot of money" argument, because none of the people who make that argument show any interest at all in restraining spending on their own priorities. It's an argument that an identifiable root cause of a major systemic threat is made more robust by this bill. It's a good argument, and I wish I'd heard more about it in the run-up to the bill's passage.

I didn't. Instead, I heard a lot of garbage.

Example #1 of garbage: the bill is unconstitutional. This is, to put it charitably, asinine. Congress has the power to levy taxes and charge the IRS with collecting them, and that's exactly how the mandate in this bill will work. The Republican attorneys general who are challenging the bill are pouring their states' taxpayer dollars down a rathole. I'm sure they'll make a lot of voters happy by doing so, since it'll create the illusion that their side is at least attempting to strike a blow against tyranny, but those resources will go absolutely nowhere: they won't educate or make safer a single human being, and they will not change the law.

Example #2 of garbage: the bill will result in the diversion of people's money to fund abortions over their objections. No it won't. Every possible safeguard has been written in to wall off money from abortion unless people knowingly spend their funds for such coverage. The Catholic Health Association and more than fifty thousand nuns are satisfied with those protections. The drumbeat of complaints about abortion funding reminds me of a story one of my students told a few weeks back about an acquaintance who had attempted suicide dozens of times, because she thought it was the only way she could get her parents' attention. Ending abortion is no longer a serious agenda item for the Republican Party; when's the last time you heard any new developments on the Human Life Amendment first proposed during the Reagan Administration? Instead, it's a fire alarm they pull whenever they want to bring things to a halt.

But the most rank example of argumentative garbage is this one: "In passing the bill, Obama, Pelosi and Reid ignored the will of the American people."

No they didn't.

I'm in favor of it. I'm an American.

I'll go further: the opponents of it are not as American as I am. I am a real American, and those who spearheaded opposition to it are anti-American.

To belong in this country, to be fully invested in what this country is about, you have to be willing to accept as legitimate the outcome of elections and votes even when you don't agree with them. If you only believe in democracy as long as your side wins, then you don't believe in it at all. And when you start responding to setbacks by encouraging threats and violence, then you're no different from the fifth rate tyrants in little kleptocracies scattered around the world and through the corridors of history.

One of the irreducible difficulties with democratic rule is the presence of a residue of people who are not interested in listening to reason, who are driven by fear and hatred and have absolutely zero-point-zero capacity to be persuaded by evidence or explanation. I make them sound pretty scary, but as Christ said of the poor, they'll always be with us. In fact, I think it's very important to accept them and take care of them, and to be keenly aware that they're still our neighbors and brothers and sisters. They're ours. Just because they're entirely demented doesn't make them unlovable, even though showing love to them certainly is not an uncomplicated pursuit.

But for God's sake, you surely don't want to put them in charge!

More and more, I see hatred and fear and irrationality being cultivated and choreographed for political gain, and that's turning a latent destructive force inside the system into a vein of power to try to run the system. It can't possibly work, and it will scorch the earth. But what chills me is the apparent satisfaction of those engineering the efforts with exactly that outcome: if they can't get the result they want, then let the earth be scorched. Either they will operate the levers of power, or they'll play Samson in the temple.

There are a few creeping signs that sane, wise, intelligent conservatives are waking up to how far their loudest voices have slipped in that direction, and efforts may be underway to rehabilitate American conservatism, to wean it off rage and enmity and restore it to engagement. It's certainly something I pray will happen. I would dearly love, as I've written in this blog a dozen times, to lose an argument with a conservative because they were just too good and made too much sense. It's happened before. But what I can't have any more of is making my argument to a brick wall, to the angry, implacable face of someone who has rejected me as an enemy because I disagree.

People who do that are not Americans. America is not about that. And I will not let them lay claim to it. It's not theirs; it's ours. And we won't let go of it. The sacrifices of our brave ancestors that they frequently lay claim to are not theirs to invoke: Americans have not died on battlefields, or been shot down in city streets, to protect the rights of the enraged to shut down deliberation and impose their will. They died to protect an experiment in bringing opposed political factions together in dialogue to decide together. That's worth defending at a price so high that it might astonish the ones who are spoiling for a fight.

They'd best beware.

Fun

Today, for whatever reason, I got to thinking up jump-rope rhymes.

Brian Kaelin
Parasailin’
Stole a smooch from Sarah Palin
Secret Service
Got all nervous
Started to holler “Saints preserve us!”

Kirsten Madsen
Yells “Egads!” ’n
Welcomes all the high school grads in
Fish week hoe down
Never slow down
Challenge her to a samba showdown

Steven Goetz’ll
Beat Steve Poetzl
In a race to eat a pretzel
Shove and push
Land on your tush
Pass out just like President Bush

Beacon Soccer
Off my rocker
I love you just like a stalker
Chew and chomp
Cheer and stomp
Name my kid Marcel Duchamp

In our chapel
There’s no lap pool
We baptize with Diet Snapple
Justifies
Old self dies
Just too bad it draws the flies

Doyle Srader
Ex-debater
Back when our mascot was “Crusader”
Spoke the truth
Chipped a tooth
Brought back the ghost of John Wilkes Booth

I must alert you
Here comes Virtue
Show some respect or they might hurt you
Sing real purty
Fight real dirty
Then eat a cupcake for dessert-y

Michael Bollen-
Baugh went strollin'
Met the PoPos out patrollin'
Fueled their ire
Opened fire
Now he sings in Heaven's choir

We've got a poetry contest coming up. I'm giving serious thought to entering these. What do you think of "Jumprope Variations" for a title?

Fobbing

So last fall, I had a student show up in class and attempt to hand me work that was a week past due. She identified what it was loudly enough for the class to hear, and I said "That was due a week ago," which they all knew, since they'd all turned it in. At the end of the term, three students put on my course evaluation the complaint that I had publicly embarrassed someone in front of the class. My mind flashed back to that day, and I thought I didn't embarrass her; she embarrassed herself!

Now, I know the discreet way of handling such encounters: just tell the student "Hold on to that for now and let's talk after class." Usually I do that automatically. But this occasion was so very absurd that I had a hard time feeling much regret at not being my usual, careful self. It was the student's own words and volume that drew everyone's attention to her attempt to turn work in a week late. They all knew my policy was not to accept late work. What privacy did she have left after she got through attempting, publicly, to do something a roomful of people knew wasn't going to succeed? If she'd jumped out the window and tried to fly, would I have "embarrassed her publicly" if I'd said "Oh dear, she seems to have hit the ground?"

Paul Watzlawick, a Stanford professor of psychiatry, wrote a book in 1967, Pragmatics of Human Communication, in which he talked about how the parties to a communicative encounter punctuate the exchange differently. Each one perceives a different moment, act or utterance as the starting point, and then views what follows as set in motion by that precipitating event. When I teach it, I always recite this quip by Ogden Nash, paraphrased slightly: "He drinks because she nags, he thinks. She thinks she nags because he drinks. And neither will admit what's true, that he's a drunk and she's a shrew." Neither side sees themselves as the provocateur, but only as a helpless respondent.

I do know that I have to tread very cautiously when dealing with students, that I have to think carefully about every word, every facial expression, and the timing of all of it. I know that things which seem to me entirely innocent or forgettable can stir up all kinds of headache. But I also know that a particular type of student thrives in a very dysfunctional, rotten way in a climate of gentleness and discretion: the one who's learned to play the system. I've made it a practice to be blunt and abrupt in many situations just because I'm positive that a lot of students need exactly that: no leeway, no ambiguity, just a very sharp boundary.

Sometimes students bear an external locus of control, putting all the responsibility for their classroom experience on everyone except themselves, because they lack the help they need, or they're still overcoming past nightmares from teachers who have no business being in the profession. But some, I'm convinced, deliberately exercise that external locus, positively refusing to take ownership of how they feel, because that choice generates leverage against their professors, a way to take charge of the situation. As a strategy for changing the subject and moving the pressure off themselves, it can be very effective in the short term if the professor isn't ornery enough to put up some resistance to it.

So I do think this particular student did do more to embarrass herself than I did to cause her embarrassment. And I think at least two of her classmates offered misplaced sympathy, which made matters worse. It grieves me that she probably managed to insulate herself from the entire setback, to arrive at a decision that she did nothing wrong, that I just didn't do a good enough job of teaching her. That's tragic. Setbacks in classes can actually be good things if students take the feedback that what they're doing isn't getting the results they want, but when they satisfy themselves that the problem lies elsewhere, outside their control, that's when they set themselves up for repeated failure. If they can do it once, they pave the way to do it again and again, in all subsequent iterations of the lapse, and the older they grow in the pattern, the more stubbornly lodged it becomes, and the more sophisticated their rationalizations. I must admit, I'm not very optimistic about this one.

Watzlawick would say that all of the above is just my own punctuation of the encounter, but there comes a point where I push the squooshy academic "All knowledge is situated" stuff aside and say, she brought it on herself.

Fit

To begin with, I really love living in Eugene. Probably close to half my enjoyment of the past three years can be attributed to the climate, the culture, the politics, and the scenery. It's a wonderful place to live. Every time I leave town on a trip, it's not long at all before I wish I was back home. And yesterday afternoon, it hit me very suddenly what might explain that.

I'm adopted, in case you didn't know. My mother (not adopted mother; mother) told me that from the very beginning, when I was still too young to understand what it meant. There was never a painful sudden realization of anything, because she made sure that I was never unaware of it. Still, a few of the details didn't come out until I grew up enough that it occurred to me to ask the right questions. When I was in my early twenties, I finally asked for the first time, "Were my biological parents married?" She paused a long time before answering and said "They were both in graduate school, and they didn't think they could support a child and do that at the same time." And I said, "Come on, answer the question," and she finally admitted, "No, they weren't." For close to twenty years I've known that I'm illegitimate, and it doesn't bother me in the slightest. It means that on the few occasions someone's called me a bastard, I've been able to answer "Yep!"

But yesterday, I put two and two together with two, two, and two, and came to a big realization. I was conceived by two graduate students who weren't married, during the Summer of Love. And not either edge of the Summer of Love, either: the smack dab center of it. If we define summer as June, July and August, which is quite reasonable, then my entry into the world bisected it precisely.

Summer of Love.

Unmarried biological parents.

Who were not only in college, but grad school.

Very, very likely I am the offspring of two hippies.

Now, the only hitch in my theory is that this all happened in Texas. Texas was not exactly a hippie-magnet. Dallas has its Bohemian neighborhoods, but they're a bit put on. It's hard to imagine a VW bus with a gun rack, and a banner reading "War ain't healthy for buckeroos and other living critters," but maybe. At any rate, if I've got that much concentrated hippie in my DNA, then is it any surprise that I've found such a snug spot in Eugene?

What's far more surprising is that I survived thirty years in Texas without getting myself lynched.

Gathering

Above, behind windows
I bear witness to their daily walk
Prisoner’s march with fingerprint gait
Through tingling raindrop seeds, their fists stretching pockets
Eyes downcast
Snubbing the sidewalk to gaze into flames of worry
Which of us
If a student asks for a bucket of water
Will give him a flashlight instead?

The near sidewalk lies directly beneath my window
Invisible until I rise from my chair, which I seldom do
Unless a familiar laugh or raised voice tumbles up
And in the classroom it’s easiest to see the back row
Because I’m a bit farsighted and they’re in my field of vision
But you who are nearest me are invisible
Unless I fold my neck in half and squint

So, on the sidewalk they advance and retreat
But only one out of dozens is bound for my office
In the classroom they come and go
Talking of g______ Loren Crow
But only a handful of you draw near enough to make contact
And then I fumble and hem and haw and flounder
And you are the hardest ones to see
They, who keep their distance
And fit my field of vision
And fit my expectations
And my stereotypes
And my stencils
And my habits,
Are vivid
Detailed
Defined
Sharp
There

My mentors all agreed,
The best teachers keep a healthy separation.
And the fox walked away with his nose in the air, saying
I am sure they are sour.

Paired and in packs, footfalls synchronized
They circulate woes, treasures
Burning through a meager cache of sleep-heaped energy
To peel one layer off the universe
While daylight spills between their gripping fingers
A breeze swirling against an avalanche

I own no square inch of land
Still, the Oregon countryside takes my breath away
I must not touch artwork on a gallery wall
Still, open doors usher me in
I may approach this near, but no nearer
And understand this much, but no more
And offer, but suffer frequent rejection
Still, I witness their daily walk
Through the window
Across Alder
And bathe my heart in a glorious, excruciating joy

Now monkey-walking through bicycle racks to exhume a buried smile
Now swinging keys on a lanyard for the soothing propeller motion
Now shouldering a backpack strap to a more comfortable spot
Now text-walking in front of an oncoming bus
As the Angel of Death moistens her icy white lips
Now halting mid-step, remembering they must be two places at once
Or two people
Now exploding into full sprint to escape the slugs

Each passage drips into my memory
Deposited in a half full cavern of stalagmites
Downy freshmen who grew a lustrous coat
One day finally exiting the MEC, robed and capped
And setting off for other sidewalks

Gesture

The literature on nonverbal communication is stuffed full of research into the link between gestures and speech. And lately I've noticed that my favorite fidgets and my favorite ideas all have to do with finding unstable balance points.

My students must get sick to death of hearing about dialectical tensions, but most of the academic notions that fascinate me the most are some sort of variation on that. Between kindness and cruelty, which is the good one and which one do we want to minimize? Easy: kindness is good, and we should minimize cruelty. But between, say, sleep and being awake, which is the good one and which one do we want to minimize? They're both good, but each one is the negation of the other, so we have to figure out what balance to strike between them. And we can't do it once and for all, because our need for each changes with circumstance. That's a short run through the idea of dialectical tension. It's a big idea in relational communication: relational partners want both time together and separation, both familiarity and spontaneity, both openness and secrecy. And the balance of each has to be continually renegotiated, and it's the renegotiation that is the lifeblood of the relationship. The idea pops up in a number of other places, and every time it does, it tickles my curiosity just perfectly. I often woolgather about it when I'm out walking.

The other thing I do aimlessly is fidget, and it struck me this morning that most of my commonest fidgets are about balance. I balance on one foot and swing the other one around. I balance books on my third finger and spin them, just like a basketball player with a basketball. I twirl pens through my fingers and around my thumb, which works best with pens that balance easily, and might not work at all with poorly balanced ones.

There's no end of aphorisms about the importance of balance, and most of it just makes me impatient. I'm not at all drawn to the abstraction in those sayings. It's the experience of hitting a tricky balance just right that pleases me. It feels like mastering the arrangement that truly makes a difference in the world. Far more than marshaling brute strength, I think that grasping the multiple interacting forces and learning to maintain balance between them, even as they change, is what it takes to be the source of influence more than the target.

Gauging

They did it again, this week. Twice. They notified a room full of people, "I am intimidating."

Generally, it's a pretty dicey undertaking to make bold, public declarations about other people's perceptions of oneself. The risk of being made absurd is unnecessarily high. And I think a lot of the students I teach are treading close to that line. I've noticed it over the past year or two: more and more college students drop into conversation, or an assigned speech, their assertion that "I intimidate the people around me." And I have no idea where it comes from. We're not talking huge, hulking bruisers, or decorated sharpshooters; not a Nobel prize winner among them. They're just ordinary eighteen, nineteen year old college kids, who are convinced that they make other people's knees shake and stomachs turn to ice water.

My first diagnosis was plain old narcissism. These are kids whose parents, all four or five of them, and grandparents, all twenty-three of them, repeated hundreds of times a day how special they were, how talented, how beautiful, how much better than other children. Now, if they find the people around them unresponsive, it can only be because they are so formidable, so wonderful, that they shock everyone into silence. That must be it.

But it's also been showing up on my course evaluations, too: they tell me that I'm intimidating, that they feel afraid to approach me. And if they're intimidated by a pasty, middle-aged academic dressed in Wal-Mart clearance, they're bound to find the world outside pretty daunting. Somewhere along the way, the benchmark has moved: a fairly large segment of the generation currently coming of age is primed to find people intimidating on the weakest of cues.

The students who claim the label for themselves do have in common a tendency to be assertive. They don't apologize, they don't talk around things, they simply say what they mean. As far as I'm concerned, that's a positive and healthy thing, and I've been known to frame my remarks that way as well. But is it really the case that if we aren't radiating uncertainty, if we aren't indirect in all our remarks, that we project an uninviting hardness that repels people? Are we drifting in the direction of our neighbors across the Pacific, sliding culturally into the high-context obliqueness that makes conversation a mix of ceremony and detective work? I don't suppose it's a catastrophe: cultures do change, and if that's what we have in store, then I suppose it'll be interesting to watch it happen. But it does make me curious what forces are driving us that way.

And I think it has a good deal to do with the particular brand of alienation that's taken over this country's culture. It's the same phenomenon that makes the typical American so conflict-averse, so certain that having an argument must mean ending a relationship. My sense is that we've built on top of being over-medicated, and now our everyday conversations are over-choreographed. Probably some of the blame for that falls at the feet of my field, but as with any helpful advances that pare down the messiness and danger in life, it's tricky getting the balance right.

Governmentality

One of my more cynical, but firmly and confidently held, beliefs about politics is that each party quietly keeps alive the issue that is its greatest source of public outrage, because it needs the outrage for fuel, for dollars, for attention. Republicans don't really want to stop abortion. If they had to, they'd quietly supply the funds to keep the abortion clinics in business. If abortion went away, how far would they have to travel to find another hot button that works so reliably? Democrats don't really want good race relations for the exact same reason.

To that list, I have to add two more very convenient outrages in the Republican column: terrorism and budget deficits. I've spent nearly a decade scratching my bald head over the utter irrationality of the Republican position on terrorism, and how it flies in the face of very recent, very powerful historical evidence: the British and the IRA. How did the British treat IRA terrorists? They refused to militarize the conflict, refused to treat arrested IRA members as prisoners of war despite demands from the prisoners that they do so. Instead, they proceeded as though the bombers were common criminals, and the symbolism and imagery were powerful. And where is the IRA now? Where we would like al-Qaeda to be: on the trash-heap of history. So why should we militarize our confrontation with al-Qaeda? What sane person could think it's a solution? What does it do other than let us flex our muscles and congratulate ourselves on what mighty warriors we are? It reminds me of kicking the computer to try to make it work. It's certainly tempting to do so, but anyone who thinks a kick genuinely will make a computer work better is an imbecile. So why do Republicans cling so stubbornly to militarizing the al-Qaeda conflict? Because they don't really want it solved. Why would they? If it goes away, they lose a key leverage point.

Same thing, by the way, goes for deficit spending. Anyone who can still say "tax and spend Democrat" without being washed away by a tidal wave of absurdity is living in Oz. The Bush deficit is the crust, mantle, and outer core of the "Obama debt." Clinton gave us a surplus, Bush poured it down the drain, and Obama is foundering under a wave of rage over how large the debt is. It's insanity, but it's outdated fidelity to the hoary old symbols of American politics: Republicans cut the budget and Democrats bust it. Yes, and once upon a time we thought all Jewish people were nebbishy and incapable of fighting, before the IDF came along and re-defined "tough." But to be Republican right now is to sound the alarm about the deficit, all the while never allowing oneself to be pinned down to what program one would actually cut. Republicans panned Obama's State of the Union for not being adequately serious about budget cuts, but then also complained when he canceled NASA's efforts to return to the moon. Which is it? What do they want cut? Answer: nothing. They want the deficit nice and high. While it's high, they have an easy leverage point.

Please understand: I've written a lot about Republicans in this post, and, in fact, I think what passes for Republican thinking and Republican leadership is, at this precise moment in history, unbelievably toxic to our country's well-being. But that's not at all to say that the Democrats don't have their own convenient problems that they don't, at all costs, want solved. I mentioned race above, and there are others. It's just that Republicans, having decided winning back a majority trumps all other objectives, have theirs very prominently on display at the moment.

That's one of the sad but true qualities of elected officials: you must pretend to grasp the seriousness of a problem and be committed to solving it, as long as anyone is listening. But in your heart, you know how badly you depend on the problem's continued existence. How they straddle that hypocritical chasm without falling in, I couldn't tell you. I'm glad I've got the job I have, and not theirs. It must just suck the soul right out of you.

Gandalf

Last night, the library held its second annual Mystery Party, set up as a big, live action game of Clue. Last year, we had fairly straightforward character names taken from the game, and we were left to our own devices to think up details. This year, they chose "books made into movies" as the theme. Students dressed up as the Wizard of Oz characters; Harry, Ron and Hermione from Harry Potter; Max and the Wild Thing from Where the Wild Things Are; Sam-I-Am from Green Eggs and Ham; Dustfinger from the Inkheart trilogy; and Jadis the White Witch from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. My colleague Loren Crow, our Bible professor, dressed up as Darth Vader, and I was Gandalf.

The murder victim was a screenwriter, Mr. Write. The game began with Steve Silver, the detective, introducing each of us, and we had a minute or two to give an opening rap. He told us in advance that he would ask two questions:

1. Where were you on the night of the murder?
2. What happened?

Last year, I used this blog to compose mine, and I wound up pleased that I'd recorded it here for memory's sake. This year I didn't compose it here, but I'm nevertheless going to set it down so I can look back on it later. It's pretty clearly a step down from last year's, but a few of the bits went over well.

"A wizard is never late. Nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he intended to.

Where were you on the night of the murder?

"On my way to Hogwarts. They've hired me as an adjunct; I teach spelling. But I soon realized that there was a stowaway on my eagle: Gollum had climbed aboard, smuggling explosives in his underpants. We took an emergency detour to the Cracks of Doom to drop him in. Again. After that, my eagle needed refueling, so we cut across to Oregon and I sent him out to fish for salmon, while I swung by this library to check out some rare books. I dig rare books.

What happened?

"Knock knock.

Audience: Who's there?

"J. R. R.

J. R. R. who?

"That's what the screenwriter said! I mean, no Tom Bombadil? Merry and Pippin turned into something out of Dumb and Dumber? Frodo reduced to a whiner with one facial expression? Saruman vanishes from the story right in the middle with absolutely no explanation? I'm telling you, at one point the screenwriter wanted the trees to do a song and dance number to 'Let Me Ent-ertain you!' I decided to kill -- to kill -- to -- (violent fit of coughing)

"Sorry, too many centuries of smoking pipe-weed. I've been trying to kick the hobbit.

"Anyway, I decided to sneak up on him, make blinding light come out of my staff, and give him a good grilling! Unfortunately, I mispronounced one word in the spell, and made fire instead of light. And as for the grilling, weeeell ...

"That's what happens when you don't spell-check."

Likeness

"Speaking generally, we may say that the rhetorical function is the function of adjusting ideas to people and of people to ideas."
-- Donald Bryant, "Rhetoric: Its Scope and Function," Quarterly Journal of Speech, 39, 413.

"God has prepared the whole world for the gospel and the gospel for the whole world."
-- Don Richardson, in Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus, 4, 172.

Loo

It's a grim sign that I have to haul out the cliché hammer again this quickly, but I have no choice. I am mortally sick and tired of hearing about "kitchen table decisions." To every single official and spokesperson belonging to the Obama administration I beg you, for Heaven's sake, knock it off. At the kitchen table, I don't decide; I chew. Chase down a herd of cows and watch them go to town on their cud if you think a flood of brilliant plans comes out of chewing. In all honesty, I make a fair share of my important decisions on the crapper, but don't hold your breath to hear that in an Obama speech anytime soon.