American History X
Good. Good.
I've just shamelessly sucked your attention in to read an entry that is only somewhat related to the idea mentioned in the name of a movie you probably adore. Let this be a caveat to my clever readers, however: I spend almost as much time on titles as I do the actual piece. Almost. And let this be a caveat to myself: I like to pretend that I have achieved world-wide fame in less than two weeks with this blog, so please, Dave, try not to begin with a "caveat" to an imaginary fanbase ever again.
A few brief but necessary items start me off today.
I'm finding, O noble sages of Guyton Hall, that this blog isn't nearly the mundane chore I thought it would be and that I'm oddly drawn to writing whenever something even remotely happens in my infantile career as an educator. Plus, it bails me out of grading papers for an hour two. Not that I haven't fallen totally in love with the paper-grading process, you see, it's really just that I'm quickly learning to hate the paper-grading process.
The other quick little bit that I wish to reiterate in this post is that it's a point well-taken that the hero complex we all derive from this whole Save-The-World-By-Teaching business is a hoax. God bless Mr. Rubinstein, author of the excellent if overrated book Reluctant Disciplinarian, for bringing this to my attention. One 'Mason' of Brown Hall fame (my next door MTCorps neighbor) has also provided some extraordinary research to light to reinforce this point. His brilliant induction is that since many of us, sadly, are Teach for America rejects but luckily have been saved from falling through the cracks by a certain Ben Guest, there must be a common thread among us all. I'd pit the intelligence and dedication of this program against any other any day (and anyone who knows me knows these are not light words), but therein lies the answer: every one of us who was rejected told the TfA fellows that we desperately wanted to be teachers. That it's the only thing we've ever wanted to do. That we need to make a difference. And we will sweep society off its feet into a grand Utopia of education, 17 bedroom houses and a Big Mac a day for all, regardless of age, sex, creed, and (Gasp!) race!
Whether Mason's hypothesis is true or not, the point is that we need to be teachers, and we need to be grounded in the reality of teaching before moving on the Great Crusades we will all lead some day. Ideals are ideals, justice is justice, but a pipe-dream is a pipe-dream no matter how un-American it sounds. I've written about this at length before, but it finally leads me full circle to the title of my entry today. While it's great to admire the heroes of movies who fight against all the odds, as in American History X, that movie does not portray real life. Although it is really compelling to pretend it is and believe in the all-American against-all-odds story. I still do, despite what I'm telling myself right now.
Of course, the real reason I'm writing tonight is that I visited Jackson, MS where Murrah High School is on Friday and Dr. Sullivan lectured us on the history of education and race in the Jackson area today. "Ahhhhhhh," you just breathed in relief, "That's the connection. Dave learned about history today, tried to think up a snazzy title for his post, and American History X came to mind. He slapped it down on the computer screen and got lost in all his thoughts that he's already written about. What an ***hole." Well, fine, I've got some choice words for you, buddy, and although I would hardly call the stream-of-consciousness of journal writing High Art, I've always wanted to feel akin to James Joyce ever since I read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Not that I really do now, just wanted to mention it...
Anyway, Jackson's a bigger city than I thought it was. Dr. Brookshire, my principal at Murrah High School, said that the estimate of a million people is a bit of a stretch but not too far off once the entire metro area is included. (Sidenote. I've learned that Rankin county, right next door to good ole Poor, Liberal, Black, and Proud Jackson, is the preferred destination of the White Flight from Jackson more than any other county. With Racism a factor besides crime, drugs, education, and other urban problems, Rankin county is consequently the singularly most Republican county in the entire nation. Not that I want to defame Republicans and call them all racists; Howard Dean's been setting that gold standard for years and still hasn't learned his lesson. All I'm saying is, if you haven't voted for Alaskan Independence, you are not a well-informed citizen.) I'm very pleased; it's not a huge, huge city, but definitely two or three times the size of Binghamton, NY or South Bend, IN. "But Dave, Binghamton is the Carousel Capital of the World! And South Bend used to make Studebakers!" And right you are, my astute imaginary reader, right you are.
Back to the point. Jackson is a bit of a cultural wasteland. It doesn't have much of a unique flavor like other cities have. It's just Vanilla. But it's like a Super Size Vanilla McDonald's Shake that just barely makes up for quality with its quantity, or so I've been told. There's at least one or two cool record stores, an independent film store, and at least one local bar with live blues/jazz music for every Applebee's that stands on the outskirts, despite the notorious lack of a downtown. But, I am looking into moving onto Eudora Welty's street for cheap, and I've been told there can be a young, pseudo-intellectual, pseudo-artsy, hipster-type scene if you know where to look. Being a Latin teacher and a football coach at the city's very best high school should get me somewhere. Probably Applebee's.
This has been a light-hearted post, I'm realizing all the sudden now that I'm running out of gas before solving all the world's problems point-by-point. That's because my first visit seems to contrast with Dr. Sullivan's description of it a bit. Whereas he makes it sound like hell, another Detroit situation on a smaller scale but with the racism more overt and an educational system that is and has historically been disgustingly bad (what with white academies still existing today among other things I'd be happy to talk about in person), I didn't see that. Granted, I'm wearing the rosiest of rose-colored glasses at this point, but when I visited I saw a very racially and economically integrated city with plenty of great middle class neighborhoods. They're not particularly nice neighborhoods, but they're not all shot up either. Doctors live next to single moms with food stamps and the neighborhoods are very community-oriented I've been told among other things, and that sounds really appealing to me. Sometimes I feel like I should be emotionally charged up about the evils I probably won't be keen enough to perceive, but in this context I think I'm glad that I won't burn out within three (3) months. The only way to make a problem like racism go away in the long run I believe is to ignore it. But that isn't quite right. I mean that we should be mindful of past and present evils but should work to overcome it by modeling. Yowza! I just used a term I learned in the K-12 book, but it's exactly the right term. Why should I be afraid of having a black neighbor who speaks slang and doesn't have a good job? Because I've been implicitly taught to associate poverty with urban blacks? I'd rather hang out with that guy than the well-to-do white sunnuvabitch who can't handle having someone different for a neighbor.
But I think the real solution would be for me to live in a house right in between the black guy and the white guy, the rich guy and the poor guy, the asian guy and the hispanic guy, where we could all just get along. I know, it sounds hokey to me now that I read it to myself because that's just not a real-life situation, but I think in Jackson I can be in on some beginnings to a truly integrated and inclusive culture, no matter the quota numbers on any particular race. Or at least that's one issue that I will be keeping my rose-colored glasses on for, and maybe when someone else sees me they'll remember that they've got a pretty cool pair of rose-colored sunglasses they forgot to put on too.
I've just shamelessly sucked your attention in to read an entry that is only somewhat related to the idea mentioned in the name of a movie you probably adore. Let this be a caveat to my clever readers, however: I spend almost as much time on titles as I do the actual piece. Almost. And let this be a caveat to myself: I like to pretend that I have achieved world-wide fame in less than two weeks with this blog, so please, Dave, try not to begin with a "caveat" to an imaginary fanbase ever again.
A few brief but necessary items start me off today.
I'm finding, O noble sages of Guyton Hall, that this blog isn't nearly the mundane chore I thought it would be and that I'm oddly drawn to writing whenever something even remotely happens in my infantile career as an educator. Plus, it bails me out of grading papers for an hour two. Not that I haven't fallen totally in love with the paper-grading process, you see, it's really just that I'm quickly learning to hate the paper-grading process.
The other quick little bit that I wish to reiterate in this post is that it's a point well-taken that the hero complex we all derive from this whole Save-The-World-By-Teaching business is a hoax. God bless Mr. Rubinstein, author of the excellent if overrated book Reluctant Disciplinarian, for bringing this to my attention. One 'Mason' of Brown Hall fame (my next door MTCorps neighbor) has also provided some extraordinary research to light to reinforce this point. His brilliant induction is that since many of us, sadly, are Teach for America rejects but luckily have been saved from falling through the cracks by a certain Ben Guest, there must be a common thread among us all. I'd pit the intelligence and dedication of this program against any other any day (and anyone who knows me knows these are not light words), but therein lies the answer: every one of us who was rejected told the TfA fellows that we desperately wanted to be teachers. That it's the only thing we've ever wanted to do. That we need to make a difference. And we will sweep society off its feet into a grand Utopia of education, 17 bedroom houses and a Big Mac a day for all, regardless of age, sex, creed, and (Gasp!) race!
Whether Mason's hypothesis is true or not, the point is that we need to be teachers, and we need to be grounded in the reality of teaching before moving on the Great Crusades we will all lead some day. Ideals are ideals, justice is justice, but a pipe-dream is a pipe-dream no matter how un-American it sounds. I've written about this at length before, but it finally leads me full circle to the title of my entry today. While it's great to admire the heroes of movies who fight against all the odds, as in American History X, that movie does not portray real life. Although it is really compelling to pretend it is and believe in the all-American against-all-odds story. I still do, despite what I'm telling myself right now.
Of course, the real reason I'm writing tonight is that I visited Jackson, MS where Murrah High School is on Friday and Dr. Sullivan lectured us on the history of education and race in the Jackson area today. "Ahhhhhhh," you just breathed in relief, "That's the connection. Dave learned about history today, tried to think up a snazzy title for his post, and American History X came to mind. He slapped it down on the computer screen and got lost in all his thoughts that he's already written about. What an ***hole." Well, fine, I've got some choice words for you, buddy, and although I would hardly call the stream-of-consciousness of journal writing High Art, I've always wanted to feel akin to James Joyce ever since I read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Not that I really do now, just wanted to mention it...
Anyway, Jackson's a bigger city than I thought it was. Dr. Brookshire, my principal at Murrah High School, said that the estimate of a million people is a bit of a stretch but not too far off once the entire metro area is included. (Sidenote. I've learned that Rankin county, right next door to good ole Poor, Liberal, Black, and Proud Jackson, is the preferred destination of the White Flight from Jackson more than any other county. With Racism a factor besides crime, drugs, education, and other urban problems, Rankin county is consequently the singularly most Republican county in the entire nation. Not that I want to defame Republicans and call them all racists; Howard Dean's been setting that gold standard for years and still hasn't learned his lesson. All I'm saying is, if you haven't voted for Alaskan Independence, you are not a well-informed citizen.) I'm very pleased; it's not a huge, huge city, but definitely two or three times the size of Binghamton, NY or South Bend, IN. "But Dave, Binghamton is the Carousel Capital of the World! And South Bend used to make Studebakers!" And right you are, my astute imaginary reader, right you are.
Back to the point. Jackson is a bit of a cultural wasteland. It doesn't have much of a unique flavor like other cities have. It's just Vanilla. But it's like a Super Size Vanilla McDonald's Shake that just barely makes up for quality with its quantity, or so I've been told. There's at least one or two cool record stores, an independent film store, and at least one local bar with live blues/jazz music for every Applebee's that stands on the outskirts, despite the notorious lack of a downtown. But, I am looking into moving onto Eudora Welty's street for cheap, and I've been told there can be a young, pseudo-intellectual, pseudo-artsy, hipster-type scene if you know where to look. Being a Latin teacher and a football coach at the city's very best high school should get me somewhere. Probably Applebee's.
This has been a light-hearted post, I'm realizing all the sudden now that I'm running out of gas before solving all the world's problems point-by-point. That's because my first visit seems to contrast with Dr. Sullivan's description of it a bit. Whereas he makes it sound like hell, another Detroit situation on a smaller scale but with the racism more overt and an educational system that is and has historically been disgustingly bad (what with white academies still existing today among other things I'd be happy to talk about in person), I didn't see that. Granted, I'm wearing the rosiest of rose-colored glasses at this point, but when I visited I saw a very racially and economically integrated city with plenty of great middle class neighborhoods. They're not particularly nice neighborhoods, but they're not all shot up either. Doctors live next to single moms with food stamps and the neighborhoods are very community-oriented I've been told among other things, and that sounds really appealing to me. Sometimes I feel like I should be emotionally charged up about the evils I probably won't be keen enough to perceive, but in this context I think I'm glad that I won't burn out within three (3) months. The only way to make a problem like racism go away in the long run I believe is to ignore it. But that isn't quite right. I mean that we should be mindful of past and present evils but should work to overcome it by modeling. Yowza! I just used a term I learned in the K-12 book, but it's exactly the right term. Why should I be afraid of having a black neighbor who speaks slang and doesn't have a good job? Because I've been implicitly taught to associate poverty with urban blacks? I'd rather hang out with that guy than the well-to-do white sunnuvabitch who can't handle having someone different for a neighbor.
But I think the real solution would be for me to live in a house right in between the black guy and the white guy, the rich guy and the poor guy, the asian guy and the hispanic guy, where we could all just get along. I know, it sounds hokey to me now that I read it to myself because that's just not a real-life situation, but I think in Jackson I can be in on some beginnings to a truly integrated and inclusive culture, no matter the quota numbers on any particular race. Or at least that's one issue that I will be keeping my rose-colored glasses on for, and maybe when someone else sees me they'll remember that they've got a pretty cool pair of rose-colored sunglasses they forgot to put on too.
posted by David Jones | 20:25
1 Comments:
You didn't explain why racism is bad. That seems to be a big omission in this post. Also, why do cities have to be diverse? What's wrong with homogeneity? I say nothing is wrong with it. In fact, it seems to cause fewer problems than a diverse culture causes. Why should areas have to be diverse? Is it wrong to live in upscale neighborhoods (or poor neighborhoods, but I think we're talking more about the wealthy)? Are you judging poorly those who choose to live in nice neighborhoods? What evils do you see in this lifestyle? It seems like your problem isn't with race but with wealth, and perhaps that's because you've been implicitly taught to associate (or at least draw a correlation from) wealth with (to) greed. I ask these questions because I (and we idealists [and I would call you one] think alike) have a lot of the same opinions you have. But I'll see if you respond to this comment before I write more.
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