Education notes, high and low

Two things testifying to the power of culture in warping minds, both high and low.

1. Thomas Gibbon, who does Teach for America, writes of teaching in an inner-city school:

One of my good buddies from the summer training institute quit within the first week. The kids at his school were calling him a faggot and mocking how he dressed and talked. He couldn't teach and felt incredibly uncomfortable in front of his class.

I was similarly mocked for what felt like a very long time as I got to know my place and my role in the school. The first time I told a girl that she couldn't use the word "faggot" in my classroom she responded with: "Why mister - is you a faggot?"

That was a classic moment in my life. I was stunned that a student would say that to a teacher! That girl, who graduated last year, was recently walking the halls of the school with her one-year-old son in her arms; she was feeding him a bottle filled with Coca-Cola.

A couple of years ago, we had an editorial board meeting with candidates for Dallas school board. A black incumbent incensed most of my colleagues when upon being asked about the awful achievement of minority students locally, essentially shrugged and said, "What do you expect us to do?" His point was that teachers can't be miracle workers when so many of these kids come from a dysfunctional culture. I understand why my colleagues felt that this school board member was being a cynic, and why they were angry at him. But I don't think the man was entirely wrong. How much can we really expect public school teachers to accomplish when dealing with kids who walk the halls of high school feeding Coke to their one-year-old babies? When you've got a high school in which students tote their babies to class, you've got problems that defy a pedagogical solution.

2. The other day, I was talking to a younger friend who has a new job teaching literature at a public university. For the record, my pal is an Obama-voting liberal. I asked him how he liked the department.

"Oh, it's all about 'was Shakespeare gay?' That kind of thing," he said.

"That's intellectually corrupt," I said.

"It's boring," he replied.

I thought that was an interesting response, and on reflection, agreed with him. He went on to say that the teaching of literature these days comes down to a group of highly trained specialists talking with each other in an incomprehensible jargon about things that have very little to do with the meaning of literature. He said, "They hired a professor last year to teach 18th-century English literature. He had done his Ph.D. dissertation on hidden homosexual signifiers in Renaissance portraiture. Which is an interesting idea, I guess, but what does it have to do with 18th-century literature?"

(Note: I changed a couple of the details in that last quote, to protect my friend. I assure you that the example he was using was no different in meaning than this example.)

I asked him what he would do one day if his kids decided to study literature in college. What would he recommend to them, knowing what he does about the state of the humanities? He didn't get to answer, because our conversation was interrupted. Still, it's a great question, and I'd be curious to know what humanities professors who read this blog have to say. Incidentally, I later checked the undergraduate tuition cost at my friend's state university. It's roughly $13,000/year, including room and board for residents of his state, and around $23,000/year for non-residents. I think if I were paying that kind of money for my kid to sit in class and ponder what Shakespeare may or may not have done with his pecker, I'd go through the roof.