On Education

I am currently engaged in the ordeal of acquiring a teaching credential.
It's a strange sort of thing, doing this program. There's so much nonsense mixed with so much valuable information that it's hard to know which is which.

To quote Areopagitica (because, hey, why not?): "Good and evil we know in the field of this world grow up together almost inseparably; and the knowledge of good is so involved and interwoven with the knowledge of evil, and in so many cunning resemblances hardly to be discerned, that those confused seeds which were imposed upon Psyche as an incessant labour to cull out and sort asunder, were not more intermixed. It was from out the rind of one apple tasted that the knowledge of good and evil, as two twins cleaving together, leaped forth into the world. And perhaps this is that doom which Adam fell into of knowing good and evil, that is to say of knowing good by evil."

And of knowing sense by nonsense.

In any case, I'll press on, do my work, turn in my assignments, and with any luck, I'll get my credential and secure a job for myself. Life is funny. I never in a million years would have thought that I would have wound up a teacher. Stranger things have happened, but always to other people.

If the credentialing process is anything to go by, teaching is a strange, strange profession. Education is a religion of sorts in this country. We dispense knowledge in the faith that education will raise the quality of life for all who receive it. It's our sacred cow in budgetary matters (think about how angry people get when they thing someone is cutting money from education), our chosen instrument of social reform, and simultaneously both the greatest resource of and the greatest threat to the continuation of our democracy: a well-educated populace is necessary for a functional democracy; a well-educated populace is clear-sighted enough to rise up in Revolution against an oppressive and corrupt government. But well-educated by whose standards? In public education? The government's. Catch 22. But I'll press on. No matter how much it creeps me out to think that the government is educating its own populace, no matter how horrifying the potential for abuse is in that arrangement, I'll press on.

Even idealists need to eat.

So here's to you, my future students, whoever you are. May you become the kind of educated people our country needs. May you be able to think rationally and (though the word is overused almost to the point of nonmeaning) critically about the world around you. May you mount up with the wings of eagles and help to create the sort of world you would want to live in. You won't have an easy time of it, I'm afraid. The idolatrous hopes of the United States of America rest in you, the student population. It is you who will be worshiped as soldiers, the idols of our hearts, condemned and stripped of your rights as criminals, condescended to as the middle class, ignored as the poor, embraced as the rich and the unexpectedly successful, lied to, manipulated, and ultimately may well be destroyed by a society in which the mass is still simple and the seers are no longer attended to. As C.S. Lewis wrote, "On or back we must go; to stay here is death." It is you who will decide this. Again, it will not be easy. But only very rarely are things which are worth doing things which are easy to do. The work of the transformation of our world for the better lies before us all.

Let's get to it.

On the Romance of Language

I watched a video today called "Silent Children, New Language," and it was interesting. It dealt with the emergence of a new sign language among deaf children in Nicaragua, and there are some very specific things that I found particularly notable and worth examining in the short space allowed here.

The first statement made in the film which I should like to examine is this one: "These children have created a language out of nothing." I wish to further inform this statement with another one from the film: "The ideal linguistic experiment to see whether we have an inborn capacity for language would be to take five children and put them on an island and have them live together in isolation." Now, much is made of the fact that these Nicaraguan children are totally isolated, that they have 'created a language out of nothing,' but this is not entirely the case. These children are not without raw material for their language, nor is it created in total isolation. These children are not alone on an island, but acting and living as best they can within the context of the Nicaraguan culture. We must be careful about the kinds of things we claim as fact supported by evidence. Broad, sweeping, blanket statements are dangerous tools. If we are not careful, we shall find that, in our zeal to find support for our theories, we have editorialized the evidence into a shape which its geometry will not support.

The next statement I should like to examine is more a matter of philosophy than strict linguistics, but is interesting nonetheless. It is a quote of Judy Kegl, and given in reference to her attempt to discover what exactly the signs she was studying meant. "The signs have to come from somewhere." On one level, this is an obvious statement. Everything that is not self-existent must find its source in something else. The same is true of a new language. Considered on another level, however, this is a fantastic statement of faith, and gives us real insight into Doctor Kegl's philosophy of language, and where she stands on the 'inborn language' VS 'social construct language' debate.

Another interesting quote follows along the same lines: "It is not surprising," we are told, by many experts and repeatedly, "to learn that we have an instinctual ability to create language." Furthermore, "It is no more fantastic than the ability of foetal cells to divide and grow from a single cell into a human being." If there were ever in all the history of the world a greater lie about language, I have not heard it. "It is not surprising?" What strange, deluded creature could make such a statement? It is surprising. More accurately, it is fantastic, just as the ability of foetal cells to divide and grow from a single cell into a human being is fantastic. Language is a Romance, and all linguists are Romantics, for only Romantics mistake the sublime for the everyday. It is said that the Hatter is mad because he must measure the human head. So too is the linguist, for he must measure what is meant by such statements.

A Thousand Plateaus (Capitalism and Schizophrenia)

I'm still trying to digest the readings that we had from this book. As near as I can tell, the author's argument is a total rejection of the medieval concept of natural order, and encourages us to think of the whole world as a rhizome. He goes on at length about why rhizome-thought is good and 'binary logic' is bad. Multiplicity good, duality bad. Subject/object bad. In rejecting all dualities, he falls into duality, with his multiplicity on the one side, and singularity/duality on the other.

His point seems to be that 'the system' has multiple points of entry and exit. He would probably object to calling it 'the system,' saying that this demonstrates binary-logical thinking. He encourages us to consider all the possible factors involved. That the wasp and the orchid are not closed systems, but interrelated. He makes a few good points. The world is more complicated than 1 and 0, and things seem to exist in relationship with each other and not in isolation.

The problem with his model as I see it is that generalizations, singularities and dualities are absolutely necessary. If we are to take into account every possible factor every single time we talk about anything, exploring every inch of the rhizome-structure both above and beneath the ground at every point of access, we shall never say anything at all; we shall rather contemplate and admire the Rhizome. He encourages contemplation and admiration, but renders criticism all but impossible. Certainly it is helpful to get a larger picture of the processes and secret chambers hidden underground that connect things in unexpected ways, but at some point you have to stop contemplating and take action.

We need to organize our data. Doing so makes it intelligible. The ability to choose this and not that is freedom itself. If I am not free to choose this and not that, but must take all of it without discriminating between useful information and peripheral information, I am not sure that it is possible to do anything with that information. In that state, it is, not does.

Huge Research Project

So I'm taking a class at Sonoma State on research and literary criticism. As a part of this class, I am required to come up with a topic for, a proposal for, an outline for, and then to write a twenty page research paper with a minimum of sixteen sources. The paper must be in MLA format, and Wikipedia cannot be used as a source. I thought that last restriction was a masterful touch.

What am I going to do for my research project?

I am going to chart the economy of Hell.

Yeah. That's a doozy. Even so, this is my aim. Hell is called eternal separation from God. Eternal in this context is not so much a measure of duration as it is a statement of the kind and quality of separation. In the same way, Consumer society appears dead set on producing an eternal separation from the natural world. For the purposes of this argument, nature may well stand where God stood, for when we are finally lost to the one, we shall be lost to the other as well. When everything around us, the mountains, the hills, the forests, the streams, the oceans, the earth in all its mystery, the animals, and finally even ourselves and each other are no more than material for production and consumption, then shall be written above the gates of our cities, "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here." Then shall we echo the sentiments of Milton's Satan, looking down over the wreck of our world, finding it good, and murmuring, "Myself am Hell."

If it seems impertinent that a writer with a background in poetry and literature should take on such a project, I can only make this reply: we fight with what weapons we have. This is my task, and with any luck, I shall do it well.