10 Points for the Overwhelmed Student

March 8, 2015June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal ~ 2 Comments

I hear you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed. I can help – if you’ll let me.

(*cue opening theme and credits*)

One. You have GOT to BREATHE.

Long and deep, in through the nose… out through the mouth – good. A few more times…

No, don’t just read on – this stuff doesn’t work if you don’t do it. DO THE BREATHING, then listen to me.

Two. You’re not stupid.

I don’t know if you’re a genius or not, but genius isn’t necessary here. I assure you, if you were stupid, your teacher would be nicer to you. He or she would have called you aside long ago and had a conversation something like this:

“Hey, um… Angela. Look, I have some bad news. You’re too stupid for this class. It’s OK – it’s not your fault, Probably some combination of genetics and upbringing. BUT, we’re gonna need to get you into a slow kids class, OK?”

If that didn’t happen, you’re good.

Three. You’re not alone.

Sure, there are a number of your peers for whom school is much easier than it is for you. That’s OK – everyone’s different. Most of the folks around you, though, are just putting up a good front – many just as panicked as you.

I know because I’ve had this same conversation often enough to make a blog post out of it. No offense, but I wouldn’t do this for just you. Too much work.

Four. Shut yourself up.

I suppose you could take this literally, as in “find a quiet place” – which is also good advice. But here I mean inner-dialogue-wise.

Remember the old cartoons with the AngelYou and the DevilYou on opposite shoulders? Contrary to what you might think, DevilYou isn’t primarily focused on trying to get you to rob banks or do crack. Those aren’t legitimate temptations for you – you’re a ‘good kid’, remember?

It IS, however, willing to maintain a constant stream of deprecation and frustration, running in the background of everything you think, feel, say, or do. Details vary with personal insecurities, but whether it’s despair, rage, detached cynicism, or debauchery, it usually begins with tearing off little strips of you and pretending that’s the cost of being ‘honest’ with yourself.

That’s a lie, by the way.

You can’t kill it or completely mute it – it’s you, after all – but you can recognize it and turn it down. Assign AngelYou to keep it in check. Quietly if possible, but out loud if necessary. Seriously – talk to yourself, realistically but positively. It’s good for you.

Five. Get a planner or agenda of some sort.

Mundane, right?

They work, but you have to use them. Starting TODAY, every hour, jot down what you did in class and what’s assigned and when it’s due. I know you think you’ll remember, but we’re having this conversation, so obviously…

Set your phone alarm to remind you at least twice each day – once around the time you get home from school and once several hours before you go to bed – to look at your planner. Read through it even if you don’t stop and do everything right then.

Anything that doesn’t get done gets copied onto the next day, and so on, until you do it. Continue this system even when you don’t think you need to – new habits take time.

Six. Choose a few things that won’t take long, do them, and cross them off.

If you do something that needs doing but wasn’t on the list, write it down, then cross it off. The reason this is so important is – look, just trust me on this. Short version – track record of success. Helps.

This next one is huge. Are you still with me?

Seven. When you’re doing a thing, do that thing.

If you decide to read an assigned book for twenty minutes, set aside that voice panicking about chemistry homework. While you’re doing your math, stop getting on your phone to collaborate on that English project. Pick something, and do it. No second-guessing.

One task at a time. That’s the most you can do, ever.

It’s easy to run from worry to worry until you end up exhausted and frustrated without actually getting much done. One of the greatest hindrances to completing anything is worrying about all the other stuff you suddenly fear you should be doing instead.

That’s a trap and a lie. Shut it off and pick something – right or wrong. Do it exclusively.

Eight. When you’re working, work.

When you’re reading, read.

When you’re thinking, think.

Put the phone far, far away. Whatever amazing things unfold in the 20 minutes you’re finishing your calculus, they’ll be there waiting for you when you take a break.

When you’re taking a break, take a break. Set a time limit and don’t keep finding reasons to go past it, but don’t keep worrying about what you’re not getting done.

And move around a little – it’s good for you emotionally and mentally as much as physically.

Nine. Start the big hard stuff early.

Even if you do something else first, do the bad thing next. Leave time to be confused, ask questions, or start wrong.

Human nature is to put off the stuff we don’t fully understand and to avoid thinking about that which we most dread. Suddenly it’s midnight and everything is due and you’re so totally screwed and it all breaks down.

Again.

What’s wrong with you? WHY ARE YOU SO STUPID?

That’s DevilYou, by the way. Didn’t you assign AngelYou to reign her in?

Ten. Do the parts you can do.

Do everything you can do, even if you’re not sure of all of it. Then ask for help with what you can’t.

Read the directions – for real, this time. Call a friend. Actually read the material, take the notes, watch the videos, or try the activities. You’d be surprised how often a student thinks they’re confused when really they just haven’t done the work yet.

I mean, ideally there’s a reason we assign it. If you knew how to do it already, we’d just be wasting your time. It’s supposed to be hard.

When you’ve done the parts you can, THEN email or visit with your teacher.

Conclusion: It’s OK that it’s hard sometimes. Other times, it’s not nearly as hard as you make it. Try to separate your emotions from your thoughts from your abilities, and don’t get so derailed by what you WISH your teachers said or did differently. They didn’t, and they probably won’t, so work with what you’ve got.

I promise you, you can do this. If I can understand it, ANYBODY can.

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5 Bad Assumptions Behind ‘Education Reform’

March 6, 2015June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal ~ 1 Comment

Education reform efforts have been facing quite the backlash recently. You may suspect that teachers as a body are resistant to change, and perhaps afraid of a little accountability. You may wonder why they resent rhetoric promoting ‘higher expectations’.

You’re not entirely wrong. Few of us, teachers or no, like change or higher demands on our time and energy – especially when they come from people who have no idea what we do or what they’re talking about.

I’d like to respectfully suggest, however, that we make note of some of the assumptions behind most education reform talk. If the assumptions are accurate, then we can debate the best course forward.

If, however, the majority of ‘reform’ rhetoric is based on mistaken assumptions or intentionally propagated inaccuracies (what we in the education business sometimes call ‘lies’, or in the Latin, bovis stercus), then those assumptions and assertions must first be corrected. Otherwise, anything built upon them is destined to fail – and perhaps do great harm along the way.

Assumption #1: Teachers just aren’t trying very hard.

The only way VAM and TLE and other teacher evaluation measurements make any sense or improve anything is if they spur teachers to do a better job. If teachers are capable of doing something better, and aren’t doing it now, the only reasonable inference is that they don’t care enough to improve otherwise.

If we believe that, let’s say so. A little evidence to support such an idea wouldn’t hurt, either. It’s probably not true in most cases, so that part might be tricky.

Assumption #2: Teachers aren’t very good at anything, including teaching.

You remember the old line – “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.” It’s been updated recently – those who can’t do, can’t teach, either.

If the solution is ‘raising the bar’ for those entering the classroom, then the problem must be that those choosing education aren’t smart enough to do what they’re hired to do. If that’s true, it’s worth asking what would be useful in drawing ‘smarter’ people into the field – or how to better educate those already willing.

But in the same way it’s tricky to devise a universal method to accurately assess a diverse body of students, it’s nearly impossible to delineate a specific knowledge base and set of skills you wish to demand of adults working with a heterogeneous mass of kids through a long series of unpredictable circumstances.

So… good luck with that.

Assumption #3: There’s a surplus of highly qualified, brilliant, dedicated people just dying to get into the classroom if the bad, tenured and unionized teachers would just get out of the way.

No one wants this job.

Buy a few drinks for an administrator of your choice and start asking them for funny ‘teacher interview’ stories. You don’t like the people they’ve hired? You should see the lot they’ve turned away, even when it means unfilled positions.

I’m curious… what’s preventing YOU from applying for the gig?

Yeah, that’s what I thought.

Districts can’t keep warm bodies in place, let alone top notch, hungry-to-martyr-themselves educators. It’s a real wet blanket on the ‘higher standards’ rhetoric when you can’t fill the positions already open.

Assumption #4: Every kid should be able to master a certain level of math, history, reading, writing, science, government, financial literacy, computer skills, current events, and a wide variety of both life and academic skills, and demonstrate those things on some kinda big test.

Why?

Also, they can’t. At least not all of them can. Turns out kids aren’t as similar as you might wish.

I’m bewildered why adults who maintain such passion about various subject areas or testing standards won’t take the same tests we want our kids to master. If that knowledge and those skills are so essential, you should do great! If they’re not – and if you’re doing just fine without being able to score whatever arbitrary number has been chosen this year – why should 16-year olds have to die in that ditch?

Do you know the answer, without looking anything up?

If not, you have no value as a person, student, or employee. Period. Let’s try another.

How’d you do?

Keep in mind that if you can’t answer these off the top of your head, you’ll never be successful at anything ever, and neither will they.

Should I even ask?

There’s nothing wrong with any of these subjects or questions, but every time you hear yourself or someone else wonder why kids can’t be expected to know “the basics” or “anything important,” remember how you did with these and the extent to which that answer has shaped the rest of YOUR life.

And if you got them all, congratulations – you’ve mastered 10th grade.

Assumption #5: Schools fail because of problems within the school – bad teachers, bad leadership, bad kids, etc.

The obsolete structure and mindset of the public school system is a disaster. There are certainly problematic students in the mix, but most behavior and other problems stem from trying to fit 21st century teenagers with a wide variety of interests, backgrounds, and skill sets, into a 19th century factory model designed for entirely different priorities in very different times.

We can’t break all of them – some of them survive, unfortunately for our state rankings.

We can’t vary the curriculum significantly – state law. We can’t afford meaningful, hands-on learning of the sort you keep reading we should be doing, nor can we spare ‘core curriculum’ time to do anything interesting that kids might actually want to explore (and on which we could then build essential universals, like reading and writing and mathematical reasoning) – state law and legislative purse strings.

We can’t show great flexibility with time trapped in desks, whether in quantity or times of day students must be detained – state law. We can’t toss the A-F grading system or the 100% scale which reduces everything a child learns or does in a semester to a single digit, nor can we commit to something more meaningful and descriptive than traditional GPA – higher ed and parents demand those numbers.

We can’t pull out kids with similar needs or challenges to receive customized help or guidance in separate classes or specialized schools – state law. Nor are we given the resources to do it properly within our current structures – legislative pursestrings.

We can’t hold kids with the most potential to real academic standards or expectations of personal responsibility – angry parents, strange cultural ideals about the need to have 102% in everything and never struggle or fail, and administrators who are under a lot of pressure to show that every single child in the district is Top 10%.

I don’t offer any of this up as an excuse, or even a complaint. I do offer them as rebuttal to the most common complaints – and worse, the most common ‘solutions’ – I hear regarding public education.

There are MANY problems with the current system, the current standards, current resources, current restrictions – maybe even some of the current teachers and current leaders. But until we can address the whole picture accurately and honestly, no degree of rhetorical chicanery will do much more than kick the corpse of our ideals and rifle its pockets for change.

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Can We Talk? (Weird Kids Edition)

February 26, 2015June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

Hey, you! Out there! My conservative friends – can we talk for a moment?

You lefties go save a whale or something for a minute, will you? No one can speak openly when you’re around, waiting to be offended by something, and I need to cover a few things with the grown-ups. Don’t you have some drugs to legalize or Christians to mock?

Are they gone?

OK, good.

Look, you and I both know things have gotten ridiculous lately. The inmates are running the asylum, and we can’t even say anything about it because the only protected speech these days is nutty liberal speech – am I right?

“Oh poor little Enrique, don’t give him any zeroes! He’s missing an eardrum and has to sell matchsticks to feed his family!” Like hell he does – his smartphone is nicer than mine and he every bit of American History he knows is from Assassin’s Creed III.

“You need to understand their learning styles! We need an anti-bullying assembly! Don’t count anyone late or expect them to wear their ID’s because what if their lives aren’t perfect? You might hurt their feelings!”

I know. I get it. It’s maddening. We pander to every little touchy-feely trend that sweeps through, then wring our hands and wonder why our kids don’t have ‘grit’.

We already have to accommodate an unprecedented number of newly discovered “learning disabilities,” and NOW we’re supposed to start validating their weird emotional issues as well.

OK, so everyone’s gay now. Fine – live it up. We’ve got girls who are pregnant, boys who think they’re “really” girls, and a few wrecking ball personalities who insist they’re trans-bi-something or other.

And you’re doing your best to pretend this is all beautiful and normal, but you don’t get it – and you’re damn sure not going to learn new pronouns for them!

Most of the time we roll with it, but one more demand for a special locker room, and… WTF?

Please know that I hear you. I understand this feeling, this… sense of insanity at the way these ‘laws’ and ‘parents’ and ‘advocates’ join forces for the sole purpose of BLAMING YOU AND ME – the only two ‘normal’ people in the equation! We’re the ones with jobs and matching socks and everything – and somehow WE’RE the problem?!

But I’d like for you to set that aside for a moment, if you can. Please – just for a few minutes. I’m not negating it, but it’s in the way of something.

Forget whatever moral or emotional issues we have with the outliers or the system that seems to encourage them. Ignore the various weirdos who’ve made things so unpleasant as they fling their issues at you and no one will rein them in because OMG lawsuit.

Silence for just a bit your inherent skepticism about just how innate or genetic or legitimate any variety of lifestyles, identities, or issues might be. In fact, feel free to assume that they’re all poor choices and family dysfunction – every last one – from dyslexia to pony play, it’s all just f****** up and unnatural.

But listen to me.

They’re your kids.

They’re your students.

They are trusted to your care to educate and inspire as you are able.

Yeah, I know – but they are.

Even those not in your class fall under your extended ‘teacher-as-candle-lighter’ job description – including the ones who give you those looks, and who you don’t think much of in return.

The broken ones. The slutty ones. The stupid ones. The annoying ones.

They’re our kids.

They’re supposed to be clueless, you know – that’s why we make them come to school. If they had their act together they could stay home and do this online.

Some of them are hurting so badly they can’t function – not because their lives are any harder than yours or anyone else’s (although some of them are), but because they’re a mess.

Some of them actually have those horror stories we always endure at the faculty meetings to make us feel bad about ever expecting anyone to do anything. Some of them don’t, but they don’t know that they don’t – they feel like they do.

Some of them have it more together than you do. Seriously – it’s weird.

You’re old – you’ve probably survived your share of actual stress, actual challenges, actual hurts. You know the difference between crippling reality and justkindadontwannathinkaboutit. They often don’t.

To them, it’s all the same – delusional though it sounds, many of them believe and feel deeply that they’re overwhelmed, underloved, misunderstood or maligned, abused or marginalized. That kind of stuff is all SO relative that it’s usually impossible to know when you’re looking at a survivor some black hole of personal trauma or the teenage equivalent of a two-year old who doesn’t get a cookie and thinks their world is over.

But that’s a distinction without a difference for them experientially, emotionally.

Teenagers are weird, and vulnerable, and subject to change. Add in a little misfittage due to sexuality, race, personal quirks, size, or whatever, and you have quite the fragile critter in your hands.

Some of them you couldn’t impact if you used a sledgehammer, I get that – but you impact more of them more strongly than you probably signed up for. Sorry. With power comes culpability and all that. James 3, baby.

I’m not asking you to put up with bad behavior – sometimes a little structure and tough love is the best thing for them (not always, but sometimes). I’m not asking you to excuse poor work or lower your classroom expectations against your better judgment.

I’m suggesting we keep in mind that we’re the adults, and the teachers. We are sometimes – at the risk of being melodramatic – the last, best hope for a little acceptance, stability, or kindness in their lives.

Yeah, they have a circle of friends – but you really think anyone sharing their Island of Misfit Toys is a good replacement for a relatively stable adult willing to accept and push them a bit? Besides, you have a professional and moral obligation not to be part of the problem, however subtle you think your looks and tone might be.

They’re not, I assure you.

Considering how little responsibility some of them seem to show, you’d be horrified by how many things they strongly feel are their fault – stuff they couldn’t fix, couldn’t stop, couldn’t explain. It’s crippling.

You have no idea how important your acceptance might be to them. It doesn’t automatically validate everything about them you don’t like. ‘Loved without justification’ – this sounds familiar in your paradigm, yes?

You don’t have to use trendy phrases or special handshakes. You probably don’t need to sample their awful musical tastes or pry into their personal cacophony. But don’t be the one who tries to smile but sighs inside and kinda wishes they’d go away.

They’re not stupid.

Consider being a reasonable, normal, loving person in whatever style you are for the other kids – the ones you ‘get’. You won’t go to hell for it, I promise.

The ‘normal’ kids need some better examples of how to deal with those unlike them, and the weirdos could use a teacher – a symbol, however maligned, of the ‘system’ and the ‘norm’ – who insists not that they be someone else, but that they be the best ‘them’ they can be, whatever they decide that is.

You lefties can come back in, now. What? Oh, nothing – just, um… blaming Obama for stuff. Nothing you’d want to hear.

Coffee?

A Little Knowledge, Part Three – Liar, Liar, Pants On Fire

February 24, 2015June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal ~ 1 Comment

“My client wasn’t even IN the bar the evening of the murder, and if he WAS there, he doesn’t even OWN a gun! If he DOES own a gun, he didn’t have it with him that evening, and if he DID have it with him, it wasn’t loaded – he’s not CRAZY! Even if it WERE loaded, he didn’t use it – why would he? He didn’t even KNOW the victim. If he DID know the victim, he liked him, and if he didn’t like him, he at least didn’t kill him. But if he DID kill him, it was self-defense. And if it wasn’t self-defense, he still had a very good reason. Otherwise, he’s crazy and can’t be held accountable. Come on, he was carrying around a loaded gun – who DOES that?!
I’ve told you that one way or the other he’s innocent – why do you doubt me? That’s so hurtful!”

It is difficult for those of you with the slightest shred of decency to appreciate how the law and politics work. They do not operate according to anything most of us consider reasonable, moral, or even explicable. In the past they didn’t have to (and in some systems today they still don’t). Those affected had little expectation of being fully informed and no real control of the outcome.

In modern America, politics still doesn’t have to make sense, but for different reasons. Most of us are too busy to try to keep up and sort it all out, or too quick to follow anyone confirming what we wish confirmed or feigning outrage over whatever we find outrageous. Or maybe we’re just too stupid and easily distracted.

Not criticizing here – just keeping an open mind about possible explanations.

It’s amazing to me how easily we roll our eyes or exclamate our declamations over things done in the past – successfully, for centuries – and yet find it inconceivable the same things may be happening today, because… well, that’s CRAZY!

What, exactly, is it you think has changed about either mankind or the nature of power? Please – I’ll wait.

…

Hello?

The South attempted to secede and lost. The war destroyed lives and property on both sides, but the South had the worst of it by far. Reconstruction began, things got weird again.

And then the South began writing the history of the war and the events which led to it. The war they’d lost. The one fought over a variety of issues, but in which slavery and its continuation were central and essential as defined by the South in the very documents they issued to justify their cause.

Only suddenly the war hadn’t been about slavery at all. In fact, the South was collectively rather wounded at the suggestion! Slavery?! You think – you think this was about SLAVERY?

No less an authority than Jefferson Davis began cranking out volumes on the REAL story of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy. Others picked up the theme, and before long their United Daughters (still active today) were tea and cookie-ing this theme across the land.

Historians still argue about the war (they’re allowed to do that still, outside of Oklahoma and Texas) – that’s fine, it’s what they’re supposed to do.

What’s less tolerable is the fervent hurt and chagrin evidenced by the South’s defenders at the very suggestion that secession had ANYTHING to do with slavery. It’s not that they wish to lay out a reasoned argument, you understand – it’s that they’ve reshaped history and historiography solely through repetition and strong emotion.

“To suggest secession was about SUH-LAVERY, well it it it’s it’s just… *sniff* DISHONEST!”

The rest of the nation has cooperated, by the way – we don’t like acknowledging our role in making chattel of humans with souls any more than they do. Better to focus on tariffs and elections and economies and cultures – all persuasive alternatives, since all were involved.

The best deceptions are mostly true, after all – or true but for omissions. That’s how laws are made and history written – so be it.

Why does it matter if the South wishes to save a little face? What’s so wrong with simply focusing on the good parts in our collective history? I mean, the naysayers won their little war and got their way, didn’t they?

Can we at least keep the damn flag without everyone having a hurt-feelings-fit every time?

My favorite hockey team captain after a tough loss and horrible officiating: “There were some tough calls, but the real problem is that we didn’t take care of business in our own end. We let too many pucks get past us and didn’t take advantage of our opportunities.”

I hated the poor play, and the poor officiating even more – but my decisive and lingering memory is how much I love the class of my team.

Also, he’s pretty.

More importantly, the team is able to go into practice the next day aware of the things they CAN control, and which led to problems. By acknowledging what they did wrong, instead of merely casting blame, they can improve – or at least that’s the goal.

You may remember the contrast between how Kanye and Beyonce handled this situation:

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The lingering perception is that Kanye is a nut, Beyoncé is a class act, and that apparently Taylor Swift is a country artist (as she mentioned in the full version of her pre-interrupted speech). Reality may differ, but what we remember is what shapes events going forward.

It matters what happened and how it’s remembered because we can’t learn from mistakes we don’t think we made. Left uncriticized, Kanye is just a fighter for justice and Swift a bewildered blonde. Without her subsequent efforts to make things right, Beyoncé could just as easily seem a sore loser, despite winning bigger better things that same night.

If the war was about slavery, and slavery is evil, and the South lost, then the reasonable thing to do is to start trying to repair some of the damage done by slavery. If the war was about a race-based chattel system, then we have some serious introspection to do about ourselves as a people and the extent to which we’ve failed to live up to our own ideals.

Of course, if the real issues were states’ rights-ish, that’s not as bad. Federalism is about balance, after all, and if perhaps the South got out of balance, that’s clearly rectified now. If anything, the central government is much stronger than originally intended as a result!

We can spend some time trying to Reconstruct the South and push for some reforms, but at some point we’re going to need to get back to being a country again. We’ve made our point – let’s let them rebuild and trust whatever gradual progress can be made in terms of race and society.

If the war was about slavery, then both Lincoln and John Brown were right – we’ve paid for our national sin with national bloodshed. Time for a new birth of freedom.

If the war was about different understandings of the Constitution, then might makes right and we won by decimating our enemies by any means necessary. Next time the meaning of our founding documents may swing back a bit the other direction.

If the war was about slavery, then Black America may well need time and support to recover from a sort of collective PTSD. There would be imbalances to correct and scars which may never be quite healed. If we’re willing to go to war with ourselves to keep an entire race of people in degradation and servitude, what must we confess and how might we repent to set a better future course?

If 620,000 men died over tariffs or electoral procedures, then our nation is charted by whichever political and popular mechanizations produce the desired result. If the war was about anything other than slavery, maybe Black people need to just get over it and be less, you know… ‘Black’ about everything.

If our ideals are as flawless and their realizations as consistent throughout our history as current legislation insists, then inequity and suffering are primarily a result of personal or cultural failures. If America is ‘exceptional’ in the way they demand we acknowledge, whatever failures have occurred within it are individual and not national. Potential solutions or cures must, logically, come from the same.

We can’t repent of sins we can’t confess, or repair that we are unable to see as broken. This applies across any number of historical and national issues. If we build our actions and beliefs on a foundation of national amazing-ness, the ramifications are much, much larger than which textbooks we adapt or which tests we take to graduate. Conversely, if we believe the human heart – even the American heart – is desperately wicked, and deceitful above all things… who can know it? Well, that leads to humility and grace as we push forward, aware of what we are capable, for good or ill.

I’ll close with a little Bible talkin’, since that seems to be such a motivator for those pushing a better whitewashing for our lil’uns. Whatever we may disagree on, I wholeheartedly concur that we’ve lost much in our upbringing if we feel the need to run from the wisdom found in small red print:

“And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others:
Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.
And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.
I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.”
(Luke 18:9-14, KJV)

If there’s an argument to be had, let’s have it. But let’s base it on our best understanding of the truth and the wisest possible course consistent with our proclaimed ideals – not on what best covers our collective behinds and casts the remaining blame on those least able to carry the burden.

A Little Knowledge, Part Two – Forever Unfit

February 22, 2015June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal ~ 4 Comments

In Part One, I waxed eloquent about secession and the South’s stated reasons for attempting to leave. Among their many complaints – most of which involved perceived threats to slavery – was the North’s tolerance of those who snuck in and taught slaves stuff.

A little knowledge, it turns out, is a dangerous thing.

Frederick Douglass, in his first autobiography (1845), describes his epiphany regarding education:

My new mistress proved to be all she appeared when I first met her at the door,—a woman of the kindest heart and finest feelings. She had never had a slave under her control previously to myself, and prior to her marriage she had been dependent upon her own industry for a living. She… had been in a good degree preserved from the blighting and dehumanizing effects of slavery…

One thing Douglass’s account shares with those of Solomon Northup, Harriet Jacobs, and others, is their insistence that not all slave-owners were naturally cruel and evil people. They avoid neatly dividing people into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ and instead focus on the system, and its effect on those involved – slave or free, black or white.

Rather than letting a few slaveholders off the moral hook, it puts the rest of us on it. When the problem is bad people, we’re safe because we’re not them. When the real problem is something larger, tolerated by us all…

Very soon after I went to live with Mr. and Mrs. Auld, she very kindly commenced to teach me the A, B, C. After I had learned this, she assisted me in learning to spell words of three or four letters…
Mr. Auld found out what was going on, and at once forbade Mrs. Auld to instruct me further, telling her, among other things, that it was unlawful, as well as unsafe, to teach a slave to read. To use his own words, further, he said… “A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master—to do as he is told to do. Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world.”

Mr. Auld was no fool. He knew that control – whether of populations or individuals – begins through the information to which they have access. Whoever controls knowledge controls everything else – especially when it comes to maintaining a system based on privilege and inheritance.

You know, like the one we pretend we don’t have today.

”Now,” said he, “if you teach that nigger (speaking of myself) how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave. He would at once become unmanageable, and of no value to his master. As to himself, it could do him no good, but a great deal of harm. It would make him discontented and unhappy.”

Mr. Auld is at least honest. Rather than claim young Frederick CAN’T learn, the problem is very much that he CAN – and as things stand, that helps no one. Raised expectations are a curse both ways.

These words sank deep into my heart, stirred up sentiments within that lay slumbering, and called into existence an entirely new train of thought…

Isn’t that what the best learning does? Challenge everything, and force you to sort the assured from the assumed?

I now understood what had been to me a most perplexing difficulty—to wit, the white man’s power to enslave the black man… From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom. It was just what I wanted, and I got it at a time when I the least expected it…

If your room under the stairs is all you’ve ever known, you may not be happy, but you can hardly fathom more. Once you’ve gone to a museum or zoo, your horizons are forever altered – there are things out there of which you didn’t know. And Hogwarts… still full of limits, but compared to the room under the stairs…?

There’s nothing wrong with learning to be content with what you have, but that’s a choice we can only make if we have some glimpse of the alternatives. I may wish I were rich, but as I endure Kardashians and Trumps, there are trade-offs I’m not willing to take to get there.

How many Hobbits, Starfighters, Wizards, or Divergents have begun their journeys only upon recognizing the nature of their limitations? Bilbo may wish to retire to the Shire in peace, but true contentment is only possible after gaining the freedom and perspective to make an honest choice.

Until then, you’re just… stuck.

Douglass started tasting something bigger than he’d known, and for the first time found himself able to give form and meaning to his sense of bondage.

I was now about twelve years old, and the thought of being a slave for life began to bear heavily upon my heart. Just about this time, I got hold of a book entitled “The Columbian Orator.” Every opportunity I got, I used to read this book. Among much of other interesting matter, I found in it a dialogue between a master and his slave.
The slave was represented as having run away from his master three times. The dialogue represented the conversation which took place between them, when the slave was retaken the third time. In this dialogue, the whole argument in behalf of slavery was brought forward by the master, all of which was disposed of by the slave. The slave was made to say some very smart as well as impressive things in reply to his master—things which had the desired though unexpected effect; for the conversation resulted in the voluntary emancipation of the slave on the part of the master…

Slavery is bad, and running away was illegal. Talking back to one’s master was dangerous and not to be advised – it was unlikely to lead to your emancipation. All this book lacked to be utterly perverse were zombies and a gay shower scene. And yet, Douglass discovered benefit in reading this work of subversive fiction.

Douglass connected with a character who was in some ways like himself – not in wise words or holy determination, but in the ways his life sucked, like being a slave. This fictional character, however, was able to demonstrate at least one possible way to endure or even flourish in the ugly, imperfect situation in which he was mired. He resonated far more than an idealized hero-figure of some sort could have, belching platitudes while fighting off the darkness with patriotic pluck.

Douglass became who he was partly because of a banned book.

The reading of these documents enabled me to utter my thoughts, and to meet the arguments brought forward to sustain slavery; but while they relieved me of one difficulty, they brought on another even more painful than the one of which I was relieved. The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers. I could regard them in no other light than a band of successful robbers, who had left their homes, and gone to Africa, and stolen us from our homes, and in a strange land reduced us to slavery. I loathed them as being the meanest as well as the most wicked of men.

Here’s the number one reason governments and religions and parents and schools ban whatever they ban. It’s nearly impossible to maintain the illusion you’re doing someone a huge favor by keeping them locked under the staircase once they’ve visited Hogwarts – even by proxy. The power to question is the power to overcome.

As I read and contemplated the subject, behold! that very discontentment which Master Hugh had predicted would follow my learning to read had already come, to torment and sting my soul to unutterable anguish. As I writhed under it, I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing. It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy. It opened my eyes to the horrible pit, but to no ladder upon which to get out.
In moments of agony, I envied my fellow-slaves for their stupidity. I have often wished myself a beast. I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own. Anything, no matter what, to get rid of thinking!

Finally, something our elected representatives could support.

Douglass went on to become one of the most powerful speakers and important writers of the 19th century. He also turned out to be a pretty good American, despite his dissent regarding any number of issues.

Turns out you can do that.

Learning is dangerous, but not to the person doing the learning. It can hurt along the way, but you usually end up better off for it.

Learning is dangerous to men whose ideas lack sufficient merit or whose systems lack sufficient substance to maintain their influence over those with other options.

Schoolhouse Rock intoned in the 1970’s that “It’s great to learn – because Knowledge is Power!” A few thousand years before, Jesus of Nazareth had promised his followers that “you will know the truth, and the truth will set your free.” He was speaking most directly of Himself and salvation, but the principle echoes past the specifics.

In a time of strict codes and limited freedom, He offended the churchiest of them with his associations, the liberties he took with the law designed to protect them from damnation, and his words suggesting we might not need the holy arbiters any longer to find our way.

At the risk of getting preachy, the curtain tore long before Martin Luther nailed his complaints to the door.

Perhaps the Scribes and Pharisees had underlying good intentions, being naturally rooted in the ways of Old Testament law. They did grow up under a God who’d kill you for touching his ark, even if it was to prevent it falling to the ground. We’ll cut them some slack.

The Inquisitions and Puritans and Assigners of Scarlet Letters in New Testament times have no such excuse. If their faith is what they claim, it’s a faith based on light and truth and – above all – informed choice. Jesus and Paul may not have had much in common, but there’s no record either ever lied or hid anything they didn’t want the world to see. They didn’t want to capture anyone who didn’t wish to be won.

You don’t make better citizens or better Christians by more effectively blinding them to the things you don’t wish them to know. You can’t strengthen faith by torturing those who violate social norms, or even sin. You can’t narrow the gap between young people and American ideals by doing a better job bullsh*tting them.

It’s wrong, of course, but it also just doesn’t work.

Let’s have a little faith in our spiritual ideals as well as our values as a nation. Let’s offer enough light and live enough of an example that we can risk letting those we love have a little freedom. If they come back – well, you know the rest.

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