We Fight Authority (and we win...and lose)

I wrote a couple of years ago about "authority" as it relates to education (here), but the idea has been nagging at me ever since.

Now I see this, over at Joanne Jacobs' edublog. Very interesting take on what's fueling the achievement gap in education. And you can believe it or dismiss it, depending on your political point of view (since we live in an age where political point of view determines the truth value of any statement, data be damned). But I think it's pretty indisputable that parental authority, and especially male parental authority, is in crisis.

Here's one example, from just last week. Look at what they say about our sitcoms and family movies and TV commercials. Men are doofuses. Men are dolts. Most are bald; most are fat; all are clueless. The younger versions--pre-baldness and pre-fat, are just overgrown children. And the women? The women are patient, kind, understanding, and generally long-suffering. What they have to suffer is us.

The flip side of the picture, of course, in our harsher, less pleasant entertainments, is that men are greedy, violent, unscrupulous, and cruel.

If you're looking for the adult male role models of yesterday, you won't find them. There is no Atticus Finch in our movies. There is no Father Knows Best on television. And, as the students in the Jacobs article protested, in far too many families there are no men at all.

All right, you say, that's fine. They were all lies anyway. There were no Atticus Finches. There were only Don Drapers. Sure, they dressed better back then. Men wore ties, even to go out to a baseball game. But they were the same dolts, doofuses, and overgrown children they are now, deep down inside. We just didn't show them that way in our entertainments.

And yes, we've all had to grow up, and realize that our gods have feet of clay. But does that mean that, as children, we should have no gods? That the process of growing ujp and becoming independent--the process of leaving the Garden and entering the World--should be gotten rid of entirely? No more garden--at all--for anyone? Is it really healthy to bombard our children with images of their parents--of all the adults in their community--being hopeless morons? Is it really healthy to teach children that they are smarter than everyone else? I know they think that already--that's part of being a child. But have we really decided that growth--all growth--is an illusion? That there's nowhere to go but down? Really?

Every movement that brought us to this place was right and righteous, and just and justified, even if they gave us some unintended consequences. Feminism's drive to balance the scales between the genders was right and was needed. And it did quite a lot of good. But I don't think it's brought us to the place we want to be. In too many couples, men and women compete for the traditional "man" role, neither of them wanting to be stuck with the nurturing, home-making role. Is that the healthiest way to raise children, I wonder--with both parents saying, "no, you do it"?

Outside of the home, the anti-authoritarian impulses of the sixties were more than justified, after Vietnam and Watergate. But where have they left us? We still have people placed in positions of authority over us--but we trust and respect none of them. We tear them down as quickly as we can, but secretly beg for someone with true authority to take their place. We mock our fathers and dream of some ultimate Daddy who will finally set things right. Robbed of the growth from dependence to independence, we grow up out in the cold from day one, dreaming of some theoretical warmth we've never felt. Isn't that a recipe for fascism? Truly free, independent people need to grow up feeling competent, capable, self-controlled, and well-informed. Do we get that by raising kids to believe that they can trust and rely on no one--not even as children?

And our own, personal sense of authority and command over our lives? We have none. We suspect all of our impulses and desires, both indulging them and hating them. We take on positions of authority at work or at home, and undercut and second-guess ourselves constantly. Raised to believe that all authority is suspect, we have no firm center. We are un-grounded. We do not stand upon the earth--we waver. We shuffle. We qualify every statement. We are weak.

Bugs Bunny used to be the animated character that symbolized America at its best--the way we wanted to see ourselves: witty, resourceful, optimistic, cocky, capable, unflappable. He epitomized the "can do" spirit that we thought we had--that we hoped we had. It was the spirit that looked on a problem and said "let's fix that."

What cartoon character do we see in the mirror now? Homer Simpson.

Personal authority shouldn't have to be a mirage. And it shouldn't have to be based on violence or the threat of violence; it should be based on wisdom--on understanding--even on empathy. There's nothing wrong with empathy--we naturally invest our trust in people who we feel understand the challenges and problems that others face, and sympathize. But that empathy is not a weak, watery sentimentalism. It doesn't wring its hands or bite its lip. It is grounded. It comes from a place of strength. And it is pointed--always--towards action. It says, "let's fix that," not "what a pity."

Let's fix that.

Shana Tovah, Baby

I have accepted an invitation from my local congregation to serve on its board. I have accepted the invitation, because I'm a sucker. But it's a terrible idea, on a number of fronts.

In the first place, I have no time. None. I have scrupulously ignored every email and entreaty and request from the board and other members, ever since signing on. With my work schedule, and travel schedule, and gradual school work, and house- and child-keeping, it's just not something that's high on my priority list. It should be. I accepted the responsibility. But it's my Bridge Too Far.

Also, I'm already over my limit of dysfunctional organizations (limit = 1, and that's the company I work for).

Also...well, I hate to say it, but I have very ambivalent feelings about the whole Temple thing. I always have. My religious life always moved back and forth along a continuum between Attraction and Repulsion, my whole life.

When I was twelve, deep in the bowels of Bar Mitzvah training, moving slowly along the track and preparing myself for eventual expulsion out into the world, I told my father that the temple we belonged to was a Bar Mitzvah mill, and that I wanted out. It was the mid-1970s, and the traditional position of the Reform Jewish family towards its congregation was that it was a place where one slowed down to about 20 miles per hour in order to eject the kid for Sunday School, before zooming off to do more interesting things. And, of course, it was that place you went for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, in order to keep the guilt at bay. But that was about it. So when I told my father that our temple was a god-awful place that processed kids more than educating them, it wasn't like he was going to know whether I was telling the truth or not. So he hauled me down to the place to confront the rabbi (which is more than most fathers would have done, back in the day), and said, "The kid says this place is nothing more than a Bar Mtizvah mill." To which the rabbi replied, with a traditional, rabbinic shrug, "He's right."

And that was the end of that.

I started taking private lessons with one of my father's students, who was Orthodox, and going to Saturday morning services with him at a tiny, store-front schul a few miles from my home (for which the rabbi gave me special dispensation to ride my bicycle). This was a revelation to me. The congregation was no more than a dozen families. I understood, for the first time, the role of community in the shabbat service. I understood why the Bar Mitzvah was important--they needed people to do things. And I understood the role of study--because every weekend, we didn't just listen to a Torah portion and then a sermon--we studied the Torah portion and then argued about it. Argued! Fiercely, sometimes. Long before college or grad school, I learned what a seminar was. And I understood why our religion placed such an emphasis on study, and on analysis, and on argument--because you were expected to hold your own, to speak up--to say your piece--to help the group work through a thorny and complex story. THIS is why they trained you to read the Torah and give a speech about it, for your Bar Mitzvah.

I loved it.

But, of course, I wasn't Orthodox, and my family wasn't particularly interested, and I had not one to talk to about it, or do ti with, and...well...it was a long bike ride, and winter did eventually arrive. And I was 13.

And that was the end of that.

When I got to college, I did not join Hillel. I did not find a congregation. I did not even go to temple for the high holy days. Well, I went once. I sat in the back row and felt terribly out of place and wrong. I no longer remembered any Hebrew. The whole service felt like something I was supposed to know, but didn't know, so I felt out of place and foolish. I didn't stay long, and I didn't return.

But I felt bad about not observing anything. I mean, I went home to do Passover with my parents. I exchanged presents at Chanukah. But what about the high holy days? What about Yom Kippur? The whole idea of atoning for your rotten deeds and committing to do better--that was important stuff. And yet, going to temple did nothing to help me feel those things or think about those things.

Eventually, I started going out of town for Yom Kippur, to some national park or other Awe-Inspiring Location. I went alone and spent the day in silence--hiking for a while and coming to rest at some beautiful spot, where I could sit and think and...pray. I would say the shema, which was the only prayer I remembered, and then I would talk through the year that had passed--what had gone well, and what had gone badly. I apologized--to myself and Whoever was out there--and I promised to do better. And then I hiked down to whatever passed for civilization and had a big dinner.

Even now, years later, having belonged to congregations in Brooklyn and Tucson, raising children in them and sending them off to Sunday School (even teaching in the Sunday School for a couple of years in Brooklyn), I often feel as though I am missing out on the Real Deal when I sit through services and mouth the litanies. Yes, I am part of a community now. Yes, I am saying the words that my ancestors said, and participating in the rituals of my people. And often it's nice.

But it's never more than nice. It's never awe-inspiring. It's never difficult. I never really take the time to find some silence and really think about the choices and actions I've taken in the past year...and atone for the ones that have fallen short of my hopes for myself. Even when they give you time for silent reflection in temple, it's only about 30 seconds. And I have two fidgety boys to keep an eye on.

But those boys adore the rabbi and the cantor, and feel connected and at home in the congregation--and that's a hell of a lot more than I ever had, growing up. So...good for them.

And for their sakes, I care about the place. And for their sakes, I sit on the board.

But I'd much rather be sitting under a tree.

Why Johnny Makes Shit Up

I've seen two instances recently of people trying to read the new Health Care Bill on TV. One was on Comedy Central; the other was on Fox.

And yes, obviously, first one had to get through the jokes about how fat and heavy the bill is. But then they actually tried to read it.

The interesting thing is that on Comedy Central, John Stewart was genuinely trying to make sense of what he was reading (with an unable non-assist from Betsey McCaughey), while on Fox, Greta Van Sustern was simply making fun of the hieroglyphic text.

And the text IS barely decipherable. I've decided that this is the root problem. Yes, we have disingenuous pundits who spin things to cause hysteria. Yes, we have town hall teabaggers who repeat whatever they have heard, but at nine times the volume (and with guns). But at the bottom of the whole shitpile are these twin evils: People don't know how to write, and people don't know how to read.

Friends, it just shouldn't be that hard to read legislation. As complicated and old-fashioned as the Bill of Rights may be, at times, most of it is legible. Any eighth grader ought to be able to make sense of it. And since many people out there in America have nothing beyond an eighth grade reading level, I think it's important--a civic duty, really--to make sure that legislation is written at a level that is readable by them. This is not the middle ages. These are not gnostic, hermeneutic texts to be interpreted by an educated priesthood and explained for the peasantry. Say what you mean. Say it simply enough that everyone can at least understand what you've said. Let us argue about whether or not we agree with it, instead of arguing about what is actually on the page. Watching Jon Stewart spend ten minutes saying, "No, it doesn't say that...but....but...no, it just doesn't say that" is painful. And ultimately a waste of time.

This goes back to middle school and high school. We need to teach people how to read--not Jack and Jill, and not The Great Gatsby (well, yes, the Great Gatsby, but that's another argument), but the things that will actually influence and affect their day to day lives. Who teaches kids how to read a lease? Or a mortgage? Or contrasting editorials on the same topic?

Reading and writing.

Who teaches students how to write business letters? Not the crappy sample letters we were all taught, that don't relate to anything real but format. I mean real letters, of the kind we might have to write, once we leave home. How do you let your landlord know that you are withholding rent until he makes the repairs you've been asking him for? How do you communicate with your elected representatives (without calling them Hitler)? What language do you use to express anger appropriately, reasonably, so that you are not attacked (or dismissed) for being a loony or a hothead, but are heard?

We like to criticize TV pundits, and the 24-hour news cycle, and our fellow barbarians, for the crappy level of political discourse in our country. And they're all to blame. But They are not separate from We. And We, as a country, are not raising our children with the skills they need to participate in a civil society, much less a democracy. We are raising them to have opinions, and to express them loudly and obnoxiously. But we are not raising them to doubt, or to analyze, or to support their opinions with facts, either verbally or in writing. So...we get what we deserve.

Or, as the great Pogo Possum once said, "We have met the enemy, and he is us."

Vile

Why do we insist on being these people?

It's not an accident. It didn't just happen. Anyway, even if it did just happen, we're perpetuating it now, quite deliberately. Apparently, we want this.

Why? Only the very rich have unfettered and unlimited access to health care. The rest of us do face rationing, already, as soon as we eat up whatever allowance our insurance allows us, assuming we have insurance.

I don't want to be these people.

A Face in the Crowd

We watched the Elia Kazan/Budd Schulberg movie, A Face in the Crowd last night. I had seen it once, many years ago. The wife had never seen it. If you have never seen it, you should get your hands on it and see it. Now.

First of all, if you've never seen this movie, you probably don't know that Andy Griffith can do a hell of a lot more than be folksy. In this movie, he's a scenery-chewing, demonic whirlwind.

Second of all, it's just a great movie. Brilliantly written, brilliantly acted all around, brilliantly directed.

But most importantly, and most depressingly, there is almost nothing hideous about our current politics or media that this movie, in 1957, didn't predict. Style over substance? Image over message? The rise of the soundbite? They saw it. The setting of country over city to drive conservative politics? They saw it. The use of country folksiness to mask political demagoguery? They saw it.

In fact, as the movie progressed from merely witty to truly unpleasant, The Wife turned to me and said, "this is nauseating." Because they saw it all--all of it--in television's infancy. Even the use of pop culture and rock music to sell shitty products.

Okay, so it's nauseating. So we should have known better. Don't let that stop you from renting the movie, if you've never seen it. Because it's witty, and biting, and savage, and worth seeing.