is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
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Apparently I am RED (and black and white all over).
It was a dark and dreary day�. It is so overcast and ugly here in Brooklyn today that, in my bed, gauging by the quality of light, I was sure it was five a.m. Then I looked at my clock and saw that it was 9:45. Since I had gone to bed at 11, I figured it was time to wake up.
Not a glorious beginning, but at least I got to sleep in. Things have been busy here lately.
My thoughts upon waking had to do with the idiosyncratic tour of the United States I�ve conducted over the past five years, teaching at four very different institutions of higher learning. It has taught me a lot about a many things, and though many of the lessons haven�t been fun to learn, I appreciate where they got me. (However I challenge the idea that any direct causation is involved in getting me from one �lesson� to the next.)
Today�s main thought: the United States is an aristocracy. Now, I know all the reports tend to say that it is a democracy, built on ideals of equality and run by the people for the people. But man, what a crock that is. Sure, U.S. democracy has always been mixed with a powerful myth of meritocracy, too, the idea that anyone who is talented and/or works hard enough will succeed. (So this is a meritocracy-myth where merit is supposed to come from ability plus effort, since ability on its own and effort on its own are each fairly meaningless in a capitalist system. If you have ability but are lazy, or if you work really hard but are untalented, or if you work hard on something society doesn�t value, then you won�t get anywhere, so the story goes.) Anyway, the tendency to think that people can �pull themselves up by their bootstraps� no matter what starting point in life they are assigned by fate is the U.S. myth of meritocracy. It sometimes shocks me how much even my current students, many of whom were assigned close to zero as a starting point by fate, believe that people who succeed �deserve� that success because they worked hard for it, end of story.
I believe that people can deserve punishment, and I believe people can deserve success. But what I�m not sure about is whether in the contemporary system of capitalism in the U.S., we can be certain that success is earned. In order to deserve something you have to have earned it through your voluntary effort. But it seems like much of the time success in this society comes from having started a few steps up the ladder from others. In other words, it comes from luck rather than ability or effort. Or, ability and effort play a role but the deciding factor is something no one had the power to choose�fate, luck, chance: where you ended being born and how your parents helped you or didn�t help you, and so on.
It gets even more complicated when you think about what success is. What if the thing you struggle and work for is something that society doesn�t much value? Philosophy, say. Or you want to be an abstract painter. Or a high school teacher. Or a classical pianist. No matter how hard you work, you are going to end up broke, unless some strange luck lands on you. Talent matters, sure. But success relies on you doing something that people around you are ready to praise and support and pay for. You have a better chance at millions if you train to be involved with the stock market or the NBA or the popular entertainment industry. In a free democracy we�re all equals and should be allowed to pursue whatever we like. Add capitalism and it gets more complicated. Pursue whatever you like, but be aware that your choices aren�t totally free. If you need to make money, there are some choices you just can�t make. And so it�s odd that we view them as choices.
Most U.S. college students, of the type who end up in classes I teach, no matter where I teach, are aware that they live in a rampantly unjust society. But it�s interesting to me how difficult it is for me to get my current students, who are on the receiving end of so much inequality, to think critically about economic distribution, or race, or class and poverty. They know that the justice system is unfair, and most of them are in college because they aim to change that (and that is truly inspiring, for me). But when I challenge the rampant individualism of U.S society, and ask whether it isn�t part of the justice problem, I get questions like �is that a socialist idea?� And so I tell them that welfare and universal healthcare are socialist ideas, adding that U.S. students are na�ve about socialism and democracy, and I tell them a little story about the worth of their labor.
At least in higher education, the U.S. is an aristocracy. The children of rich people show up in more prestigious colleges where they will be given lots of advice and guidance and, often, one-on-one attention, after which they will receive degrees that are �worth more� on the job market than are other degrees of equal rank from �lower� institutions. The children of rich and middle class people are vastly better prepared for college not only in terms of what they have already learned, but in what they expect college to be like. They have study skills, and took college prep courses. Most of them have parents who went to college or who value education. Most of them don�t have to work full-time while supporting a family and also attending college full-time. If the children of rich people don�t succeed, it�s usually because they lack ability or effort.
But my current students? Most of them do have full-time jobs, families to support. Many come from communities that may not value college education. Many come from failed high schools where they may have barely learned basic grammar. Sometimes they lack the most basic habits of study, such that they need to be taught that they must do their reading and think critically about ideas in order to succeed (i.e., showing up and listening to me is not enough). I mean, really: what makes someone capable of succeeding at school? It�s not just intelligence. It�s training in what it means to be a student. And many of my students have never been offered that training. I can offer some help in this regard. But it is a problem that extends beyond the reach of the power of my fixing-arm. If the children of poor and lower-middle class people fail, we cannot say that it correlates necessarily with any lack of ability or effort.
And yet I cannot give a good grade to someone with good ideas who cannot write a grammatically correct sentence, or who doesn�t do some portion of the required course work due to very real conflicting demands on her time.
Luckily my college does have a writing center and counseling services and the like. But the attention and help students can get at my college is not like what they could get at a small, expensive liberal arts college. My college doesn�t have basic college advising to help students choose a path of courses to follow. I remember being involved in all kinds of discussions at small liberal arts colleges, worrying about students who fall through the cracks. It happens. But the cracks are much smaller, and the students who fall through them are for the most part offered a softer landing place.
Some days I feel really good to have landed where I did, to contribute to a leveling of the aristocracy. Other days I just want to get a job where I get paid more for less teaching. But the politics of the academic workload is a whole other story that may get told another day. If you look at who I�m teaching and what I just wrote, you�ll get an idea of where I�ve landed, salary-wise. Just look at the way education works in the U.S., and then ask yourself whether we value education. And why don�t we? Because it doesn�t make money. Is that a socialist idea?
10:53 a.m. - March 19, 2008
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