Everything Counts

Originally published on the Achieve3000.com blog.

How do you prepare for an important challenge you’re about to face? Whether it’s running in a race, acting in a play, or taking a test, preparation usually involves honing your skills and then applying them in practice simulations. If you’re going to run in a 10K race, you might pace out the course to become familiar with the hills, turns, and potential bottlenecks. If you’re acting in a play, you rehearse the lines and stage movements with the other actors until your actions become second nature. Test-taking and reading practice are no different. You learn basic math and reading skills, and then you apply those skills in testing situations, so you can be ready for the “Big Show.”

The question is: can practice that is not laser-focused on the task-at-hand still be valuable?

In test-world, teachers sometimes think students should only practice their skills in the context of test-like scenarios in order to prepare for the final Test. Many educators fear that exposing students to other forms of assessment would confuse and distract them, or otherwise weaken their aim. But outside of test-world, nobody seems to talk that way.

Are you a runner? Well, then, you should certainly get to know the course before the big day, but any running you do will be worthwhile – whether it’s directly on the course or not. In fact, there are many benefits to practicing on a variety of terrains of varying difficulty, because you never know what might happen on race day. What if, for some reason, the police had to block off part of the racecourse and re-route people? This might make the actual course on race day hillier, or curvier, or just different. The same applies to studying, math and reading practice. If your training is too narrow, your ability to apply your skills and knowledge in the real world of change and unpredictability may be constrained.

Similarly, if you’re acting in a play, you should rehearse your lines and your movements as much as possible. You should have everything memorized. BUT…what if someone drops a line, or two, or twelve? What if a piece of scenery falls down and blocks the exit you’re supposed to use? Anything can happen.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, who led the Allied forces during and after the D-Day invasion (and should therefore know a thing or two about logistics), once said, “I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” Why? Because facts-on-the-ground can change, and therefore surely will change. Successful soldiers must be ready for anything. Successful racers must be ready for anything. To create a culture for successful students, we too must prepare them for anything.

Grant Wiggins used to say that every standardized test was a transfer task. He claimed that chasing after a test and thinking you could get your hands around it with any certainty was a fool’s errand. There was simply no way to teach every fact and figure required by the state standards, and no guarantee that a fact you chose to cover would definitely be included on the test. The blueprints were simply too broad, and the previous years’ tests, if they were available at all (and in many states, they weren’t) provided no guarantee of what might be asked this year. Teaching fact X to prepare for test question X was hopeless. You might hit that bullseye, but you might also miss the target.

That is why Wiggins talked about tests as transfer tasks. The goal, as he saw it, was to train and hone your skills like an athlete—both narrowly and broadly; in focused drills and in madcap scrimmages. As he said:

When I was a soccer coach, I learned the hard way about my players’ ability to transfer skills from practice to a game and the need to better assess for it. The practice drills did not seem to transfer into fluid, flexible, and fluent game performance. It often appeared, in fact, as if all the work in practice were for naught, as players either wandered around purposelessly or reacted only to the most obvious immediate needs.

The epiphany came during a game, from the mouth of a player. In my increasing frustration, I started yelling, "Give and go! Three on two! Use it, use it--all the drills we worked on!" At that point, the player stopped dribbling in the middle of the field and yelled back, "I can't see it now! The other team won't line up like the drill for me!"

Seen in this light, everything that makes use of core reading and writing skills counts. Reading graphic novels counts. Reading the sports page of your local newspaper counts toward your reading practice. Debating the merits of South Park vs. Family Guy counts. Writing witty YouTube recommendations to see if the algorithm is narrowing or broadening your interests counts. None of these things will manifest themselves directly on any state test, or likely on any classroom test, but they all help students practice their skills in reading comprehension and critical thinking.

Helping your parents find the best “snacks for the cost” while grocery shopping counts toward your math practice. Arguing with your friends about which NBA star’s shot record is better counts as debate and critical thinking practice. Learning that when taking a position on something like climate change in an argument, it’s incumbent on you to bring some evidence to the table—those things count, too. All these situations that build your critical thinking, your computational thinking, or your creative thinking count. And yes, so does practice in the context of the Big Test, to the extent you can predict its shape and structure. It definitely counts. It’s just not the only thing that counts.

Learning is cumulative and commutative and strange. Seeds you plant in one place sometimes grow into plants in an entirely different place. It’s a sometimes-blind investment, a leap of faith. When students have to perform in some kind of challenge, including a Big Test, they’re going to need to creatively apply their skills and knowledge, at least to some extent. Something will be strange and new and unpredictable. Something will not be “lining up nicely” for them. That’s where knowledge transfer comes into play. That’s where creativity becomes essential—because what is creativity, really, other than the putting together of existing things in new and unexpected ways? The more different kinds of LEGO pieces we have in the boxes of our brains, and the more practice we have in using them to build different things, the better we’ll be able to build when the need arises.

So, should I have my students read fiction if they are only going to be assessed on non-fiction? Yes—not only because fiction is a good in itself, but also because a crucial way to understand something is to contrast it with its opposite. What can an essay do that a story cannot? What can a poem do that neither can accomplish? Read about a single topic across multiple forms and genres, and you’ll come to understand the super-power of each genre a little better.

Should I give my students math problems with graphs and images if the Big Test only uses words and numbers? Yes—if only to learn how my students think. If my classroom test on fractions only uses numbers, and students get the questions wrong, I might think they don’t understand the concept. If I give them a variety of questions, using numerals, words, and images, and find that they score higher when a question includes an image, there’s something else going on.

Teachers and students are not archers trying to fire arrows at a single target, losing crucial points if they miss the bullseye. That is not how any of this works. There are hundreds of targets, each with its own bullseye. Every arrow fired is worth the effort. Every arrow fired increases our strength and accuracy. It all adds up.

Life is a transfer task. Everything counts.

Reaching for the Heights

The trailer for the movie, In the Heights, was released this week. Many people have been viewing it, sharing it, tweeting about it, and generally going bananas over it, miserable that they’ll have to wait until summer to see the movie. I remember having the same feeling when the soundtrack to Hamilton came out. In both cases, it didn’t take more than a single song to get people’s hearts racing. There is something in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s music that conveys the pure, exuberant joy of living in this country and belonging deeply to it. It’s not that he writes boppy dance tunes that make us mindlessly happy; it’s that he writes straight from—and to—our American hearts.

Because of where he grew up and when he grew up, and who is family was, and where he went to school, his music draws from Hip Hop and Rock and Broadway and Salsa and god-knows-what-other sources. He can do this, not because he is a scholar, but because he grew up the nexus of American musical and cultural streams. He took in everything, and he transformed it into something we had both never heard before and, at the same time, knew to be ours.

What other immigrant artists does he remind me of? George Gershwin and Aaron Copland, who did exactly the same thing in their own time, pulling in Jazz and Blues and Gospel and Classical and Folk and Music Hall and Klezmer, and creating music that had never existed before, but said “America” to much of the country during their lifetimes and ever after.

The purpose of the “melting pot” was not to boil everything down into an unappealing, gray mush, but to create a sizzling, spicy, amazing mélange—a thing both new and old—made up of many cultures and flavors and sounds, but all fitting together into something strong, compelling, powerful, and new—composed of its raw materials but transcending any of its component parts. That was, and is, our country at its best. When we meet everyone, and listen to everyone, and share each other’s stories, and taste each other’s foods, we end up creating new things that draw from the best of everyone and become something that belongs to all of us, and could only have been created by us. We create new things, and we become new things.

Do we have issues of cultural appropriation to deal with? Yes, we do. But there is a difference between stealing someone’s voice to use as your own, for your own benefit, and raising your voice alongside someone else’s and learning their songs. Cultural diffusion is not the same thing as cultural appropriation, and to blur the two and insist that It Must Stop is not only wrongheaded; it’s impossible. There is no such thing as cultural purity, any more than there is such a thing as racial purity. We are mutts, all of us, and however we define ourselves, that thing is the result of hundreds, if not thousands, of years of bumping up against, learning from, and borrowing from other people. I could argue all day that mutts are hardier and more valuable than purebreds, but in the end, it’s a ridiculous argument to have to make; among humans, there are no purebreds. The entire idea is nonsense.

But as we retreat from each other in fear and suspicion, we try to draw new/old lines around “our people” to define them in opposition to “those people,” and insist that everyone inside the magic circle is our family, our tribe. Retrograde nationalists, who didn’t used to be able to speak honestly in the public sphere, now feel safe in proclaiming that long before the United States was a constitutional republic, it was a LAND meant for a certain group of PEOPLE—and those people were of English and German or Dutch descent, full stop. Others may come, at the pleasure of the original settlers, but the land does not really belong to them. People say this, openly, in 2019. Even people not of the original “settler stock” say this. In no founding documents anywhere—at the federal level or the state level, or even in colonial charters, to the best of my knowledge—is peoplehood or citizenship or belonging defined by or limited to country of immediate origin. But they say these things, openly, in 2019. Irish and Italian and Greek and Russian and Polish and Korean and Chinese and Mexican and Dominican and Indonesian and Indian and African Americans (and on, and on, and on), beware: you are guests in this land, even if your family has been here for 100+ years.

Is it any wonder that members of minority groups respond to this kind of talk by drawing magic circles around their people and playing what the political right calls “identity politics?” The right loves to rail about identity politics destroying the fabric of America by focusing on small-group distinctions instead of large-group definitions, but they forget that this is reaction, not action. If African Americans take to the streets, chanting “Black Lives Matter,” instead of “All Lives Matter,” it’s because they’ve been told, relentlessly and violently and for generations, that they cannot consider themselves part of the “all.” All the marching, all the protests, all the activism, just to learn that large swaths of White America will never accept you as equal, regular, "normal" parts of the country. And when African Americans finally take White America at its word, we start posting nastily on Twitter about how THEY are refusing to act like part of US, and THAT is what is destroying our nation. What chutzpah…to use an expression from yet another minority group that’s being warned, after generations of relative peace and stability, that they don’t really belong here, and had better behave themselves. 

Take note of what these ethno-nationalists are saying: it does not matter what you believe, how you act, how you vote, or what creeds or principles you adhere to. If you belong to the wrong GROUP, you are not really an American...and you never will be. Alexander Hamilton's story is not and cannot be Lin-Manuel Miranda's, and to claim spiritual ownership of it is an affront to them. Barack Obama's presidency is an asterisk to them--a blip--and the current president's efforts to undo every accomplishment of that administration has nothing to do with political policy--it's about ethnic cleansing. Whether he says that or believes it, large numbers of his followers do, and it is explicitly why they follow him. That is what so-called conservatism has turned into. There are things they want to conserve, all right--we just need to be very mindful of what those things are.

And if we put up with it? Shame on us. If we participate in it in our own way, responding to other people's tribal retreats by circling our own wagons in smaller and smaller magic circles of "us," then shame on us even more.

Because...where will it lead? Will we have to change the Great Seal on our dollar bills?  Give up those the old, Latin phrases that no one bothers to teach anymore? Novus ordo seclorum? A new order of the ages? No. Sorry. The new world is just the old world, transplanted. We've chosen to resurrect all the old, comfortable hatreds. E pluribus unun? Out of many, one? No. Sorry. We've chosen to remain many. E Pluribus Pluribus. Get off my lawn.

And how will we redesign the Great Seal itself?  The fierce eagle, with thirteen arrows grasped—together—in a single talon, fighting a common fight, doesn’t feel right anymore. Neither does the giant pyramid, drawing Americans from all corners of the globe into a single point, with the all-seeing eye up top. Maybe instead of the pyramid, we can have a wall. A single, giant, slab—no dimension, no shading, no shape. Just a slab. And on the other side of the seal, perhaps, a giant middle finger extended—from everyone, to everyone, with the inspiring, Latin phrase: futue te ipsi.

No thank you. Not for me.

Listen, I like being a New Yorker. I like being a Jew. I like being all the distinct, different things that I am. But I also love being part of the crazy tapestry or bubbling melting pot or [insert your own metaphor here] that is America. This is my country. And I should be able to sing about it AND about my family, or my block. I am large; I contain multitudes. Yeah--I claim him as mine, too. 

Even in the middle of the fractious 1960s and 1970s, I grew up singing songs like this in school:

This is my country! Land of my birth!
This is my country! Grandest on earth!
I pledge thee my allegiance, America, the bold,
For this is my country to have and to hold.

Isn't there room in this vast, open country, to sing songs like that AND songs from our own communities? Can't we all contain multitudes?

In the Heights, I hang my flag up on display
We came to work and to live and we got a lot in common
It reminds me that I came from miles away

In the Heights
I’ve got today!

And today’s all we got, so we cannot stop

Today is all we’ve got...but we’ve got it together. Let’s not throw that away.

The Middle Way

Life is hard and we try to make it easier. Every technological advance we’ve ever made, from the digging stick to the Smartphone, springs from this simple statement. Life is hard and we try to make it easier. So it has always been; so it will always be.

There’s nothing very controversial about that idea, but what’s interesting is the extent to which our desire to make things easier for ourselves may undermine our efforts or make us less happy and successful. There is something in us that doesn’t really like it when things are too easy—and easier may not actually be better for us.

When I was a child, in the 1970s, the country was still in the middle of its love affair with technology and science. Processed food was better than natural food; infant formula was better than breast milk; TV dinners and microwaves were better than cooking from scratch. So much convenience! Life was hard, but technology could make it easier. It was the World of Tomorrow that Disneyland and the World’s Fair promised for much of the 20^th century.

The backlash started while I was still a teenager: maybe all those chemically processed things weren’t actually good for you. The Whole Earth Catalogue, health food stores, and whatever remnant of the hippie movement survived into their 30s brought a focus on authenticity and naturalness into the mainstream. And more recently, we’ve seen a different kind of backlash, against the very idea of ease. Now we want things to be “artisanal,” and we want to be involved in the making, ourselves, if we can. Cooking from scratch is difficult, time consuming, and requires some knowledge and skill, but for some people, eating pre-packaged meals (no matter how organic or healthy) is just…a drag. Suddenly we’re seeing all kinds of meal-kit services popping up to provide just enough ease, while still requiring us to do some of the work. It turns out that we actually like to do the work. We get enjoyment and satisfaction out of it. We appreciate the fruits of our efforts more when there is some effort. Just…not too much. Build your own furniture…with an Allen wrench from Ikea.

We’re seeing the same thing in automobile technology. Google and others are pushing hard for self-driving cars, and someday I’m sure there will be a percentage of people who make use of them. But for a whole lot of people, driving is fun, and the thought of surrendering all control is not a pleasant idea. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a future where most of us make use of a wide range of assistive technologies, while still keeping our hands on the wheel. We’ll end up doing some of the work—enough to get some enjoyment out of the process and feel a little bit in control—while still reaping the benefits of the assistive technologies that can unsnarl traffic jams and keep us from drifting out of our lanes.

What does this have to do with education? A lot! We’ve been searching for all kinds of ways to make learning easier, to increase student engagement and motivation. Schools adopt 1:1 laptop policies to put computers into the hands of every student so that they won’t have to take notes by hand. Schools de-emphasize memorization on the theory that the Internet holds all the factual knowledge students will ever need. Many schools use open-source videos to augment or replace textbook reading. At my son’s high school, the science teachers prepare PowerPoint presentations of their lessons and deliver those slide decks, with their notes, straight to the students. Everyone applauds to see adults making an effort to ease the path for students and not bog them down with old-fashioned schoolwork like memorization, recitation, note-taking, and textbook reading. But what if the drive to increase ease decreases learning? What if learning something actually requires a certain amount of effort?

Research seems to suggest that it does. Authors Peter C. Brown, Henry L., Rodiger III, and Mark A McDaniel provide a wide array of examples of how increasing student effort at learning also increases later retrieval of that learning, in their book, Make it Stick: The Science of Successful Learning. Writing things down by hand seems to have a stronger effect on remembering what you’ve written than typing or dictating the same words. Memorizing and repeating basic factual knowledge helps build a foundation of conceptual understanding that makes all future learning more meaningful and stickier in the mind. Active manipulation of the instructional content, rather than passive viewing of it, makes a huge difference in how deeply and permanently that content is learned. Spacing out practice and assessment sessions over a period of time, rather than doing massed practice and testing shortly after instruction, allows some time for forgetting and makes the effort at retrieval both harder and more durable over the longer term. We’ve known for a long time that cramming for a test may help you on test day, but it doesn’t help you remember things a week later. Now we’re starting to understand why.

Some education thinkers and writers use the term “productive struggle” to talk about this idea that a certain amount of sweat aids learning. It’s like the idea of the Goldilocks Zone or Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development: that sweet spot where conditions are just right for growth. Make the work too easy and you won’t learn anything new from it; make it too hard and you won’t even be able to do it. Think of lifting weights in the gym: you could bench press a 1-pound weight all day, and it wouldn’t have much effect on your muscle tone. You could struggle all day with a 500-pound weight and accomplish nothing but a headache.

This makes the work of the teacher even more complicated than it already was, because every child’s zone of productive struggle is a little bit different from every other child’s—and not only that, but his zone of struggle may not be the same in math, English, science, or social studies…OR in Unit 1, Unit 2, Unit 3, and Unit 4! Aim for the average every day—average amount of instructional time, average difficulty level of assignment—and you’ve made plans that fit no single student perfectly.

So what can we do? Assess constantly, adjust constantly, have alternative explanations and questions at the ready at all times. And most importantly…resist feeling sorry for your students when you see them sweat. Resist the urge to make things easier for them, unless you have really good data to guide you. You may not be doing them any favors.

To Be or Not to Be Educated

Our older son is home from college—his first year of art school, studying animation—and at the dinner table, while listening to us grill his little brother about his English class’ coverage of “Romeo and Juliet,” he asked this little gem of a question:

“Why does everyone have to read Shakespeare in school, anyway?”

This is a young man who is an avid reader and a vacuum cleaner of a learner: he hoovers up information from a wide variety of sources on a wide variety of topics, artistic, scientific, and historical. He wasn’t asking this question because he hated Shakespeare, or hated reading, or hated school. He was asking it because he genuinely did not know why Shakespeare mattered, or mattered more than anyone or anything else—why his works are still in the curriculum, hundreds of years after their writing.

Consider this, O English teachers. Consider the fate of the young people who should be your ideal students: engaged, curious, compliant, responsive—willing to do the work and able to do it well, but utterly ignorant of why they should be doing it.

I find it appalling, but not surprising. I’ve seen evidence in many schools, in many states, of teachers who dutifully “cover their content” and “deliver their lessons” without every pausing to make the case for why that content and those lessons matter. Their students are a captive audience; why bother convincing them to stay when they can’t leave? At most, they try to jazz up their lessons to make them fun and engaging and entertaining, hoping to hold the attention of their charges—but implicit in that action is the belief that the material itself isn’t (and can’t ever be, on its own merits) fun, engaging, or entertaining.

Why should we ask students in 2019 to read Shakespeare? Here are a few reasons that come to mind:

His plays and poems are worth it, wholly on their own merits. That’s why they’ve lasted. They’re just good. Listen, I am completely on-board with the idea that we should be broadening the canon to include voices and works that were historically kept out. But that doesn’t mean we have to throw away things that have entertained, moved, and taught people for hundreds of years. The good stuff is the good stuff for a reason. If you’ve ever taught “Hamlet” or “Romeo and Juliet” successfully to high school students, you know how engaged and excited they can be. “Hamlet” still has a lot to say, and says it better than most modern authors can.

Is it harder to read now than it was 400 years ago? Sure. That’s why we have teachers.

By the way, many of our great -great grandparents grew up in homes with only two books: the bible and a collected Shakespeare. That’s how thousands, perhaps millions of Americans learned to read English. Without schools, without teachers, without computers, and without a decent recording or performance to guide them. Guess what? If they could do it, our kids can do it.

His stories are so widely and deeply known (rivalled only by the stories of Greek mythology) that they have been adapted or referenced in countless modern stories, plays, and movies. Can you enjoy “The Lion King” without knowing that it’s basically “Hamlet on the Veldt?” Sure, you can. But if you can see Hamlet within Simba, you get the double pleasure of seeing how the modern cartoon uses, twists, and plays off the source material. “Hakuna Matata” is not “To Be or Not to Be,” but it’s interesting to compare how each one functions in the plot and affects the main character. How many English teachers include this in their teaching of a Shakespeare play—not just the play itself, but all of the tendrils snaking out from it into more modern literature and culture?

Outside of his plots and characters, his language, along with the language of the King James Bible, has been source material for pretty much every educated author, thinker, and politician up until, say, the 1970s. To fully understand and appreciated what people wrote, you need to recognize the allusions and references they’re making. How many teachers include this in their teaching of a Shakespeare play—not just a summary of the plot, but a capture of the lines, images, and ideas that have affected more modern literature and culture?

Understanding this allusions and references gives reading depth and dimension—it makes reading a conversation, not only between you and the author, but between the author and his or her own historical and literary influences. You are no longer simply reading words on a piece of paper; you’re reading words etched on glass, with another piece of etched glass visible behind it, and perhaps another one behind that. You are part of the long chain of civilized discourse—an endless, Talmudic discussion stretching all the way back to the Greeks, or even further.

Is all of this elitist and old-fashioned? Yes, probably so. I don’t care. When I was teaching, and later, as a parent, I wanted my kids to know their way around Western culture, so they could go to any college, any workplace, or any party, and feel like they belonged there.  What they did with their education once they got where they were going was entirely up to them—accept it whole, reject it entirely, engage in a life-long debate with it—that was the decision I wanted them to be able to make. But you can’t make a decision about something if you don’t have that something and know what it is.

Maybe that’s not your reason for teaching Shakespeare….or the free silver movement…or cell mitosis. That’s totally fine with me. As long as you know what your reasons are, and you share them with your students. “It’s next on the pacing plan” is not reason enough for them, and it shouldn’t be reason enough for us.

One Thing Leads to Another

I was flipping through a poetry book over the weekend and landed by chance on “The Destruction of Sennacherib.” If you read any poetry in high school or college, you probably encountered this piece by Lord Byron. I don’t remember studying or discussing the contents of the poem at all, but I do remember talking about its anapestic rhythm (ba-ba-BA, ba-ba-BA), which can feel like the galloping of horses:

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,

And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;

And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,

When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

Re-reading that poem made me think about another poem that made martial use of rhythm--Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Light Brigade.”

Half a league, half a league,

Half a league onward,

All in the valley of Death

   Rode the six hundred.

“Forward, the Light Brigade!

Charge for the guns!” he said.

Into the valley of Death

   Rode the six hundred.

Poetry pedants will know that Tennyson gets a galloping effect by using the opposite rhythm of Bryon’s poem. He uses a dactyl (BA-ba-ba, BA-ba-ba) instead of an anapest. But that’s not why I thought about the Tennyson poem. I actually thought about a piece of music first, the title of which I thought was “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” but which turned out to be the “Light Cavalry Overture.” If you don’t know the piece, you can listen to it here. At about 2:10, you’ll know why the Byron poem made me think of it, because it uses the same anapestic rhythm to make one think of horses galloping.

So: one poem I re-encounter after many years makes me think of a piece of music lodged in my memory, which leads me (by mistaken identity) to another poem I remember from long ago. And so goes our thinking, bouncing like a pinball (if you’re old enough for that simile to be meaningful) from memory to memory. We don’t think linearly and rationally; we think in webs of association. One thing leads to another.

And here we go again: I write the words, “one thing leads to another,” and immediately I think of the song of the same title by The Fixx, which came out when I was in college and was played incessantly at the bar where we used to celebrate and dance after performances of our comedy sketch troupe. And if I choose to linger and daydream, I can let that chain of associations roll out from one thing to another, all day.

What we think about depends on what we know—and who we are, as human beings, depends on what we think about. The self-story that each of us tells is built up of a million discrete events in memory, and how those memories connect to each other. Who I am is not simply the things I’ve done or the things that have been done to me—it also includes the things I’ve read, and heard, and seen, and touched, and how all of those things connect with each other and with my life experiences. I am who I am, in part, because of how those poems and pieces of music connect with each other in my mind, and why one thing suggests the other. All of those things are the pieces of furniture of my mind, and that’s why the room I live in, in my mind, is uniquely mine.

Think about what this means for us as educators. We are introducing students to information about literature, and science, and history, and mathematics, and art—not simply so that they can regurgitate that information on tests, but because we are helping them furnish the rooms of their minds. We are giving them a place to live, intellectually. We are giving them things to think about for the rest of their lives—bits of memory that can float to the surface and attach themselves to new experiences and new information. And how they process those new experiences will depend, to some degree, on the associations and connections that are made between the new and the old. That means the furniture we bequeath to them--the things of the mind that we bring to our students and our own children--matter greatly. 

The first time I drove across the country, I thought about Walt Whitman and the words that open his “Song of the Open Road.”

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road, 

Healthy, free, the world before me, 

The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose. 

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune, 

Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing, 

Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms, 

Strong and content I travel the open road. 

Because of that association, I had a very particular feeling about driving across the country, and a feeling about the country I was driving across. I was connected to the history of my nation, and the history of exploration, and the American-to-the-point-of-cliché idea of self-re-invention. I was connected—enmeshed in my country in a variety of ways that were important and meaningful. My life was mine, but not mine alone. I was part of something vast, and part of something deep. Without those associations, I was just some guy, driving West across some rocks, hoping I could get to my hotel before the sun slanted into my eyes.

Was I attuned enough to other associations that would have made me think differently about the land I was driving across, and who had lived there before the "history of my nation?" I was not. I had learned things in school; I was not ignorant. But those other associations were not (yet) part of who I was and how I saw--and responded to--the world around me.

When my children encounter a beautiful sunset, I would like them to be able to connect it not only to memories of past sunsets, but also, perhaps, to a Van Gogh painting they’ve seen, and to happy memories of going to museums with their parents. When they hear an old, sad song as adults, I want them to be able to be able to think about what that song meant to them at a time of youthful heartbreak, and how that heartbreak has cooled in the ensuing years to a wistful memory, and how past loves and losses have taught them to be better people. The more things we put into their brains, the more things they can think about and connect to their present experiences. That isn’t elitism or snobbery; it’s just what makes life rich and full.

A world bereft of association is a thin and sad world. X = x = x = x. Everything is just itself. A world of limited association is just as impoverished. This is why arguments about the literary canon do matter. Are the "dead white males" still important to our culture? Obviously I think so, since I just made reference to some of them. But are they the only singers of songs and painters of pictures whose thoughts and ideas should be rattling around in our minds? Hardly.

The power of association is not always a happy and positive thing, but it’s always an important thing. When I encounter horror or injustice today, it connects and resonates with what I already know—about world history, about American history, about what we have solved, and about we have failed to fix. If every story in the news is simply itself—isolated and disconnected from any context or precedent—then it’s easy to avoid accountability. “Oh,” we can say, when someone shoots up a synagogue full of children and old people. “It’s just some guy who has a mental illness.” But it’s not just “some guy,” and it’s not simply mental illness. The actions are connected to a centuries-long history of Antisemitism and conspiracy-mongering, and are also connected to a decades-long history of anger, among some, at American Jewish involvement in the Civil Rights and other progressive movements. If we don’t know these things, and think about these things, then every day of horror can be dismissed as a simple and solitary event, and we cannot grow and make progress.

Everything we teach our children is a simile. Nothing is just itself; it’s powerful and worth learning because of its associations. How is it like this other thing? How is it not like this other thing? What caused and led to it? What did it, in turn, cause and lead to? What does it make you think about?

My love is like a red, red, rose…why? Because it is beautiful? Yes, perhaps. But also, perhaps, because it is delicate, and can easily be injured. Because it requires tending and care in order to thrive. Because, no matter how carefully I tend it, the fact is that the rose, and my love, are living things, and will wither and die someday. There is nothing I can to do stop that, and it makes things matter all the more.

So yes, I will love thee still, my dear, “till a’ the seas gang dry…and the rocks melt wi’ the sun.” But that day is coming, for thee and for me. And knowing it should make every moment with my love—and every moment along the open road we’re traveling—precious. Which brings me back to my old friend, Walt Whitman, for whom I always have a chair waiting in the room of my mind. He sings out to me across the years, and to all my fellow countrymen and women...if anyone has ears to hear.

Will you give me yourself? Will you come travel with me? 

Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?