As my son and I walked through the snow to school the other day, we discussed where he was in his reading of Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird which had been assigned in his English class. The more we talked about the book, the greater the mixture of emotions I felt as I moved among excitement, pride, nostalgia, and joy. What was it about this book that evoked this amalgam of feelings in me? More generally, why is it that we experience this same mixture of emotions when we watch our children encountering certain books for the first time?
In the case of To Kill A Mockingbird, was it the book itself or Gregory Peck forever etched in our minds as Atticus Finch? As embarrassed as I am to admit, I had not read this classic until I was in my 30’s, so it was not some warm recollection of myself at his age. Maybe part of the reason that I was heartened he was reading this book was that it would allow us to discuss the blatant racism and the struggle for civil rights I saw growing up in Kentucky in the 1960’s. Or possibly, it was that as a parent, I could both empathize with and admire Atticus as he attempts to be a good father and teach Scout some of the painful lessons of injustice. Maybe it was the memory of sadness I experienced when I put the book down after finishing it.
Perhaps, it’s the power of literature to evoke all of these emotions in us that compels us to read certain books. (Obviously, other forms of art can have a similar impact on us as we can all attest when our children discover music or movies that we enjoyed when we were their age.) It is one thing to read and love a book on one’s own: there’s a borderline illicit pleasure we experience as we become absorbed in the plot and fall for the characters in any great book, whether it be Odysseus in The Odyssey or Okonkwo in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. We have these people to ourselves, and we are in uncharted territory, unsure what will happen next. However, as much as we love that experience, it is magnified when we witness our students and our children have that same thrill for the first time and we watch them open new doors. This feeling is partially vicarious, but it is also the warmth of watching our loved ones being happy and growing up. There is a Yiddish word, kvell, that means to rejoice or exult, and maybe this is what we feel when we watch them cheer for Frodo in The Lord of the Rings Trilogy or cry for Francis Nolan in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.
While there be many debates over what constitutes a classic, and these arguments are interesting and healthy, maybe one of the best definitions is that the book must be good enough to induce us to feel joy when we watch those of another generation open the cover and turn the first page. We may also feel a touch of envy and even some sorrow that we will never again read To Kill A Mockingbird for the first time, and that’s all right too.
Monday, January 24, 2011
Monday, January 3, 2011
Lessons for Seniors
As I prepare for my upcoming spring semester class, I remember that teaching seniors can be a tricky thing. Although stories of “senioritis” are common and sometimes disturbing, we can also view this unique time in the life of a teenager as our final moments with them. It’s the last time that we can impart to them the “stuff” we want them to know, or we can try to make sure that they have the requisite skills to be successful at the next level. But we do so at the risk of our own frustration as we realize that they’re not really with us one hundred percent. Their focus is bifurcated between the world they’re living in currently and the one they’re going to inhabit in eight months. So, what do we really want to teach them in the last months we have with them?
I thought about this recently while reading an excellent new biography of Abraham Lincoln and listening to a fascinating podcast on the Persian Sufi poet Rumi. Eric Foner’s The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and Slavery in America tells the story of our sixteenth President’s grappling with “the peculiar institution” and the revising of his views on slavery over the course of his life. From his childhood in Kentucky and Indiana to his famous debates with Senator Stephen Douglas to his announcing the Emancipation Proclamation until his death, Lincoln’s view towards slavery evolved with the events occurring in the country. While many leaders held steadfast to opinions that failed to move with the times, Lincoln was able to reflect and acknowledge the need for change when presented with a new set of facts.
As Foner says at the end of his book,. “Lincoln did not enter the White House expecting to preside over the destruction of slavery. A powerful combination of events, as we have seen, propelled him down the road to emancipation and then to a reconsideration of the place blacks would occupy in a post-slavery America. Of course, the unprecedented crisis in which, as one member of Congress put it, ‘the events of an entire century transpire in a year,’ made change the order of the day. Yet, as the presidency of his successor demonstrated, not all men placed in a similar situation possessed the capacity for growth, the essence of Lincoln’s greatness. ‘I think we have reason to thank God for Abraham Lincoln,’ the abolitionist Lydia Maria Child wrote one week before his death. ‘With all his deficiencies, it must be admitted that he has grown continuously; and considering how slavery had weakened and perverted the moral sense of the whole country, it was great good luck to have the people elect a man who was willing to grow.’” (336)
Perhaps one of the greatest gifts we can give our students as they have one foot out the door is encouraging their innate desire to learn and to grow. We can show them that no matter one’s age, we are always developing and changing, and this is what it means to be human. We can show them that a hunger to learn is not something artificial that we ask of high school students; on the contrary, it is an integral component of being a whole human being. We are all works in progress. Lincoln was not the Lincoln we’ve come to know when he was a young attorney or when he was elected President. It was in his capacity to grow that he became one of our greatest elected officials; maybe this should be the accomplishment of his that we celebrate and attempt to emulate.
All too often, students leave high school burnt out and not having the fire in the belly to learn more. We need to challenge them to be open to and excited about the possibilities of growth and development. They need to know that as far along as they are, they are only beginning the process of becoming who they will be, and they need to be ready for what may come their way.
Professor Fatemeh Keshavarz from Washington University-St. Louis explains a similar concept when she discusses some of the lessons we can learn from the poetry of the Muhammad Jalal al-Din al-Balkhi al-Rumi in her interview with Christa Tippett on the American Public Media show Being. “On one level, you have to get on the road. You have to get started. You know, just like the earth that you know, have to plow the earth, you have to get moving. On another level, time and again, he reminds us that the destination is the journey itself. So there isn't a point where you say, 'OK, I'm here, I've reached, I'm done, I'm perfect. I don't need to do anything anymore.' In the incompleteness of that, the need to move forward is inherent in that incompleteness, in the process of going forward, that you make yourself better and better and you, in a way, never reach. So the separation is the powerful force that keeps you going. If you ever felt that, 'I have arrived, I've reached, this is it,' then you wouldn't go any further.”
If our seniors graduate excited about their next steps, confident in their ability to handle the world they are about to inhabit, and both humble and enthusiastic about the earth they will plow, then we can feel good about the work we have done with them.
I thought about this recently while reading an excellent new biography of Abraham Lincoln and listening to a fascinating podcast on the Persian Sufi poet Rumi. Eric Foner’s The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and Slavery in America tells the story of our sixteenth President’s grappling with “the peculiar institution” and the revising of his views on slavery over the course of his life. From his childhood in Kentucky and Indiana to his famous debates with Senator Stephen Douglas to his announcing the Emancipation Proclamation until his death, Lincoln’s view towards slavery evolved with the events occurring in the country. While many leaders held steadfast to opinions that failed to move with the times, Lincoln was able to reflect and acknowledge the need for change when presented with a new set of facts.
As Foner says at the end of his book,. “Lincoln did not enter the White House expecting to preside over the destruction of slavery. A powerful combination of events, as we have seen, propelled him down the road to emancipation and then to a reconsideration of the place blacks would occupy in a post-slavery America. Of course, the unprecedented crisis in which, as one member of Congress put it, ‘the events of an entire century transpire in a year,’ made change the order of the day. Yet, as the presidency of his successor demonstrated, not all men placed in a similar situation possessed the capacity for growth, the essence of Lincoln’s greatness. ‘I think we have reason to thank God for Abraham Lincoln,’ the abolitionist Lydia Maria Child wrote one week before his death. ‘With all his deficiencies, it must be admitted that he has grown continuously; and considering how slavery had weakened and perverted the moral sense of the whole country, it was great good luck to have the people elect a man who was willing to grow.’” (336)
Perhaps one of the greatest gifts we can give our students as they have one foot out the door is encouraging their innate desire to learn and to grow. We can show them that no matter one’s age, we are always developing and changing, and this is what it means to be human. We can show them that a hunger to learn is not something artificial that we ask of high school students; on the contrary, it is an integral component of being a whole human being. We are all works in progress. Lincoln was not the Lincoln we’ve come to know when he was a young attorney or when he was elected President. It was in his capacity to grow that he became one of our greatest elected officials; maybe this should be the accomplishment of his that we celebrate and attempt to emulate.
All too often, students leave high school burnt out and not having the fire in the belly to learn more. We need to challenge them to be open to and excited about the possibilities of growth and development. They need to know that as far along as they are, they are only beginning the process of becoming who they will be, and they need to be ready for what may come their way.
Professor Fatemeh Keshavarz from Washington University-St. Louis explains a similar concept when she discusses some of the lessons we can learn from the poetry of the Muhammad Jalal al-Din al-Balkhi al-Rumi in her interview with Christa Tippett on the American Public Media show Being. “On one level, you have to get on the road. You have to get started. You know, just like the earth that you know, have to plow the earth, you have to get moving. On another level, time and again, he reminds us that the destination is the journey itself. So there isn't a point where you say, 'OK, I'm here, I've reached, I'm done, I'm perfect. I don't need to do anything anymore.' In the incompleteness of that, the need to move forward is inherent in that incompleteness, in the process of going forward, that you make yourself better and better and you, in a way, never reach. So the separation is the powerful force that keeps you going. If you ever felt that, 'I have arrived, I've reached, this is it,' then you wouldn't go any further.”
If our seniors graduate excited about their next steps, confident in their ability to handle the world they are about to inhabit, and both humble and enthusiastic about the earth they will plow, then we can feel good about the work we have done with them.
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