Getting some love from Stephen Colbert

Stephen Colbert has been doing a great job in the past few weeks promoting donorschoose.org, a site that allows people to donate directly to help fund programs in Pennsylvania public schools. Because of his efforts, the site raised more that $100,000 in just a few weeks. That alone puts him on my "what a great guy" list, but tonight he went over the top. He plugged the site once again during his build up to his own trip to Philly for the upcoming primary, and this time he mentioned a couple of the programs seeking funding. The first one took me by surprise because it was from my own district. Yes, he did joke concerning a request from Titusville Middle School's band program. Here's the bit:

 

 

Thanks, Stephen!

Taking Issue With A.E. Housman

Today my seniors read “To An Athlete Dying Young” by A. E. Housman. Housman, for those who need a BritLit refresher, was a Victorian era homosexual whose spurned feelings of love during his youth lead him to write some great, horribly depressing poetry about unrequited love and decay brought on by age. “…Athlete…” is perhaps his most famous work.
It’s about a star runner who has died at an early age and the poet’s thoughts on how the runner was fortunate in that he has escaped the ravages of age not only on his physical being, but also on his athletic accomplishments. I was always a bit twitchy about how to approach this one in class.
I really thought it sends the wrong message, but it was difficult to argue with it. After all, we have celebrities like Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, Kurt Cobain, John Belushi, and now Heath Ledger who will always be remembered in their prime. Meanwhile, we have folks like Ozzie Osbourne, (shudder) Michael Jackson, and Muhammad Ali who it could be argued have had their legends degraded simply be living past their expiration dates.
Again, I knew in my heart that this message is plain wrong, but I really didn’t know how to counter it. Sadly, several years ago I realized exactly why it was wrong. I had a student that I knew for several years. He was one of my first students when I started teaching at my present school. I had him in seventh grade, then when I shifted to ninth two years later, I had him again, and I finally had him during his senior year. He was a great kid who could not only be counted on to say something humorous when appropriate, but also to add a salient observation about what we were studying when it was time to really crack the book. One day in April he was absent.
I didn’t think too much about it because “senioritis” hits a lot of twelfth graders in the last two months of the year, and he missed infrequently. Classes went on as usual, but at the end of the day the principal came over the speakers asking all teachers to report to the library after the last bell for a short meeting. This is never a good thing. Getting that message is akin to getting a phone call at 3 AM. No one’s ever calling to tell you good news. Though I was prepared for something bad, I wasn’t ready for what it was. This bright young man had committed suicide earlier in the day.
Though it always affects me when a student I have or have had in the past dies (and it has happened far, far too often), this hit me harder than most because of how long I knew him and how much respect I had for his potential. To make matters worse, when I got home and had to get ready for the next day’s lesson, I realized what I had on the agenda.
“To An Athlete Dying Young.”
I didn’t know what to do. I wondered if it would be appropriate; would the students think this was validating their classmate’s actions? Would I be condoning suicide as a viable option? Hell, I wondered if I could even get through it without breaking down myself. I probably tossed in bed until 4 AM debating myself over what to do. By morning I came to my conclusion.
I taught the poem, but I took a different approach than in previous years. We read it as usual, though the class was more somber than previous years’. We listed the celebs and sports stars who will always be remembered in their glory years, and we listed those that probably wish they could be. And when our friend’s name came up and the question was asked, I was ready.
I asked my class exactly what they felt Housman’s reason was for thinking the athlete was “lucky” to die young. They all agreed that it was because he would be remembered for his fame. Then I asked if fame is the most important thing in a person’s life. Where does family and friendship come in? I said that yes, I would always remember that student, our friend, as a virile eighteen year old. I’ll always remember him for the accomplishments he had in school and on the field that were still green and new when he made that tragic mistake. He was locked in amber with the laurel still upon his head, just like Housman said. But what’s missing is that now I will never have the joy of seeing him return in later years with a paunch, perhaps a receding hairline, glasses…and a wife and child beaming with love from behind him.
Houseman’s poem assumes that we live for the renown we can gather, that glory is the only thing that makes life worth living. I now argue that those things are great, but they’re mile markers, not the destination. An early death robs a person of all the other things in life that at the very least are just as important as athletic, youthful achievements. So I guess that while I appreciate what A.E. Housman said, I have to say I disagree with him vehemently on it. That’s the beauty of some works of literature; we can learn as much about life and ourselves by deciding the author had it wrong as when he has it right.

Pulling Kipling out from under the rug

Rudyard Kipling was always one of my dad's favorite authors. I remember him quoting "Gunga Din" and "Charge of the Light Brigade" from memory when I was growing up, and I knew the plot of Kim long before I ever read it. There was a time when he was considered one the premiere authors of the Victorian age. Yet when you page through the literature books we use today, he's barely a blip.

Where Gerard Hopkins gets an individual entry and four or five poems, Kipling is relegated to a bio page he shares with three second stringers, and we only get one poem, "Recessional." While I realize that much of what he wrote is an uncomfortable reminder of the era of brazen empire building during the reign of Victoria, I also believe that Kipling's work gives us meaning that is extremely relevant today.

I doubt there is a high school literature book published in the U.S. that contains "White Man's Burden," but I find that work eerily prophetic. Kipling wrote the poem as a way of giving the United States some advice when he saw that we were dipping a toe into the pool of military expansionism. He saw what Britain had gone through and wanted us to be fully aware of what we were in for if we followed in their footsteps. Which we did. Boy, did we ever. Whether he was for our involvement or was warning us not to engage in empire building is beside the point. Take his name off the poem, remove the date and show the poem to anyone in the country and I'd bet you'd find that most would guess that the poem was written within the last seven years. Screw Nostradamus, Kipling is the true prophet of 911.

I just find it sad that so many academics who preach that to ignore history's lessons is to repeat their mistakes are so willing to hide one of history's potentially great teachers simply because they're embarrassed of the period in which he lived.

Mandated Testing

Today our district completes the mandated testing required by the state in order to satisfy the NCLB. It takes three hours a day for three days, so I haven't seen my ninth graders in class since Monday. In addition, my district has the students take diagnostic reading tests three times during the year to gauge students ability to pass these tests. So that's over a week of school lost to this mandate.
This of course doesn't include all the teaching to the test that is done to keep a building out of "school improvement," the state coming in and usurping local authority and dictating what the curriculum will be. Amazing, isn't it--the administration that preaches less government regulation comes up with more and more ways to yank authority away for the local population, and that states that kids' education is lacking (after all, our President had to ask us "is our children learning"), puts in effect a system that makes us drop everything educational for days at a time.

Tennyson's Ulysses still resonates with me

I've never had a problem telling my classes when we hit a poem or work that I'm not particularly enamored to, mainly because I want them to know I'm serious when we begin something that is one of my favorites. This unit, we're doing a number of works that I'm very fond of, but none more so that Alfred, Lord Tennyson's "Ulysses." Ulysses, of course, is the Roman name of the Greek hero and protagonist of Homer's epic poem The Odyssey. It tells the tale of the king of Ithaca's ten year voyage home, and though he never stops trying to reach his kingdom and family, he enjoys the many adventures he has along the way. Tennyson's poem is continuation of that story that picks up several years after his return. Ulysses tires of the mundane and tedious duties of tending to his homeland and yearns for a return to the adventurous life he once knew.

"How dull it is to pause, to make an end,

To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!"

Thus, he turns his kingdom over to his son Telemachus and begins a dramatic plea to his old crew mates (those who didn't sail with him on his last voyage, apparently) to join him on one last glorious adventure. I've loved this poem for decades. I inherited most of my grandmother's books when she died, and one of those books was an old collection of Tennyson's works that smelled of attics and memories. I enjoyed Tennyson's poetry as far back as seventh grade because of his affection for classic heroic subjects like King Arthur and Odysseus, and I've always been a sucker for heroic fiction.

Yet it wasn't until college that I truly appreciated it, and for that I have to explain the time frame. I was going for my teaching certification at Edinboro University back in 1990. This was just shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall and near worldwide collapse of Communism.

To those for whom the Berlin Wall is merely the stuff of text books and retrospective segments on Channel One, I will say that these were exciting times. The world was divided between East and West for as long as I'd been alive, and nothing represented that delineation more than that dour set piece of masonry, machine gun posts, and barbed wire. Seeing it topple and be smashed by thousands of frantic Germans seemed like a vindication of everything I'd ever read on the virtues of Freedom and Democracy. The only bastions of the communist menace left it seemed were Cuba (big whoop) and China...and China seemed like it was next.

I remember watching the events in Tienanmen Square unfold over the course of a few days. It seems odd now to think about it without also feeling the sense of horror and loss that accompanies the knowledge of how it inevitably turned out. I remember how exciting it was to see the hundreds, then thousands of young men and women gathering to request, then demand a measure of democracy in their country.

I didn't have any reason to think they wouldn't succeed; after all, communism had been shown not to work, and the abbreviation "U.S.S.R." was already being measured for a coffin, and plot for it was being dug to lay it to rest in the potters' fields of new social studies books. Nothing seemed more impressive to me at the time than the way the protesters (almost instantaneously it seemed) erected their own version of the Statue of Liberty. It was one of the most interesting times I could imagine being alive.

I had forgotten, however, that "may you live in interesting times" is considered a Chinese curse.

Dictatorships are notoriously fond of remaining in power, and the old, morally bankrupt men running China were no exception. They sent the People's Army in to quell the protests by any means necessary. The dread we felt watching the tanks rolling down the street towards the students was tense enough, but it was amped up to an unbelievable degree when we first saw the now iconic image of the lone student facing down those tanks while armed only with a book bag.

We don't know this guy's name or face. I'm still not sure we're 100 percent positive it was even a guy, but his actions in front of those tanks that day redefined the way I look at heroism. In the United States it would be risky proposition as well, but here we have oversight, we have the media scrutinizing everything the military does, and we have redress for grievances. In China none of that can be counted on to make a tank commander pause to consider the consequences when he finds 120-pounds-soaking-wet agitator yelling at him from in front of his fifteen ton vehicle.

By rights that kid should have become a big flat slice of street pizza. But he wasn't. After a stand off of more than a half hour, this kid cajoled, coerced and shamed the tanks into turning around.

That student had no way of knowing that he'd succeed that day. In fact, having lived in China and knowing what his government was capable of, I'd dare say he had to know he was likely going to his death.

He did it anyways.

The next day, of course, the tanks came back. They did not stop or turn around, and hundreds, perhaps thousands of protesters were killed or imprisoned, and to this day China remains a hidebound dictatorship.

So what does this have to do with "Ulysses"?

When we read this poem back in Edinboro, the professor had decided to show off some newfangled presentation material for the poem that involved watching various images of heroic acts caught over the years while a Shakespearean actor read a stirring rendition of the poem in voice over. There were many images that we're all familiar with: Martin Luther King giving a speech, the flag planting at Iwo Jima, the rescuers pulling baby Jessica out of a well in Texas. But when the poem got to the end,

"It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. Though much is taken, much abides; and though We are not now that strength which in the old days Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are, One equal-temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will"

The presentation focused on the scene with the tanks. And when it got to

"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

The image froze and zoomed in slowly on the grainy image of the young student, and at that point I got it.

Heroism isn't about doing the right thing knowing you're going to succeed; it's about doing the right thing even when you know you will probably lose. See, Ulysses doesn't plan on coming back from his voyage. He knows he will likely bump into Achilles, the great hero who died in the Trojan War. Doesn't matter--he's going anyways. True heroism is doing what's right for the sake of doing what's right. I probably wouldn't have picked up on that had I not seen a modern day Ulysses holding a book bag on a dangerous street in China back in 1989. Like his Greek counterpart, he realized the gulfs were ready to wash him down, but he faced them anyways because it was the right thing to do.