Okay, I know it's late, but I'm watching The Hour on Newsworld. (I don't have TV in my house, let alone Canadian TV -- so when I visit my mom, I like to catch up.)
And then, I saw this:
Is that really necessary? I think not.
8.6.09
Naomi Wolf on the Male Brain
Naomi Wolf's commentary on brains and gender today in the Globe and Mail makes it clear why essentialism is such risky business. As she writes:
... in her description of our evolution, Dr. Fisher notes that males who could tolerate long periods of silence (waiting for animals while in hunt mode) survived to pass on their genes, thus genetically selecting to prefer “space.” By contrast, females survived best by bonding with others and building community, since such groups were needed to gather roots, nuts and berries, while caring for small children.
Reading Dr. Fisher, one is more inclined to leave boys alone to challenge one another and test their environment, and to accept that, as she puts it, nature designed men and women to collaborate for survival. “Collaboration” implies free will and choice; even primate males do not succeed by dominating or controlling females. In her analysis, it serves everyone for men and women to share their sometimes different but often complementary strengths - a conclusion that seems reassuring, not oppressive.
Reassuring, maybe. And anecdotally, I might be inclined to agree that women are more verbal and more inclined to "build community" than men -- but then, I certainly know men (heterosexual men, even!) who will happily spend hours gossiping around a French press. It seems more useful to suggest that it serves everyone for people to share their "sometimes different but often complementary strengths", than it does to talk about this kind of complementarity as something that exists in a gender binary. Even if these differences are 'wired in' generally, they will certainly not hold true for all men, or all women. And even if these difference are 'wired in' generally, should we accept them as the basis for a functional society?
I don't know Fisher's work well, and I'm hesitant to characterize it based on a brief second-hand report. But I would have liked to see Wolf ask some more bigger questions here.
First, I'm not sure why she so eagerly reads and accepts the suggestion that we should take gender norms that presumably existed in hunter-gatherer societies as a basis for current childrearing practices. We simply don't live in that kind of society any more, and our "survival" no longer literally depends on the norms that she outlines. I can see a lot of benefit to encouraging girls to "challenge each other and test their environment", even if for that's somehow less 'instinctive' for them. If it's also true that it's harder for girls than boys to build muscle mass, would we tell them not to bother trying? (I suppose that we do, in some ways -- and that's simply not acceptable either.) Should we really consent to be constrained by our purported biology?
Second, it strikes me as flat-out weird that any current feminist thinker would not, in fact, ask if there's anything about current socialization of young girls that makes it seem that they have less instinctive interest in challenging their peers or testing their environments than do young boys. I'm not sure that it bears explaining, in fact, why young girls might be discourage from such "challenging" or "testing". It's a major lapse on Wolf's part not to address this basic issue.
When she discusses Gurian's work, however, Wolf's comments are even more disappointing:
Feminists understandably have often shied away from scientific evidence that challenges this critique of sex roles. After all, because biology-based arguments about gender difference have historically been used to justify women's subjugation, women have been reluctant to concede any innate difference, lest it be used against them.
But now a spate of scientific analyses, based on brain-imaging technology and new anthropological and evolutionary discoveries, suggests we may have had our heads in the sand, and that we must be willing to grapple with what seem to be at least some genuine, measurable differences between the sexes.
... in her description of our evolution, Dr. Fisher notes that males who could tolerate long periods of silence (waiting for animals while in hunt mode) survived to pass on their genes, thus genetically selecting to prefer “space.” By contrast, females survived best by bonding with others and building community, since such groups were needed to gather roots, nuts and berries, while caring for small children.
Reading Dr. Fisher, one is more inclined to leave boys alone to challenge one another and test their environment, and to accept that, as she puts it, nature designed men and women to collaborate for survival. “Collaboration” implies free will and choice; even primate males do not succeed by dominating or controlling females. In her analysis, it serves everyone for men and women to share their sometimes different but often complementary strengths - a conclusion that seems reassuring, not oppressive.
Reassuring, maybe. And anecdotally, I might be inclined to agree that women are more verbal and more inclined to "build community" than men -- but then, I certainly know men (heterosexual men, even!) who will happily spend hours gossiping around a French press. It seems more useful to suggest that it serves everyone for people to share their "sometimes different but often complementary strengths", than it does to talk about this kind of complementarity as something that exists in a gender binary. Even if these differences are 'wired in' generally, they will certainly not hold true for all men, or all women. And even if these difference are 'wired in' generally, should we accept them as the basis for a functional society?
I don't know Fisher's work well, and I'm hesitant to characterize it based on a brief second-hand report. But I would have liked to see Wolf ask some more bigger questions here.
First, I'm not sure why she so eagerly reads and accepts the suggestion that we should take gender norms that presumably existed in hunter-gatherer societies as a basis for current childrearing practices. We simply don't live in that kind of society any more, and our "survival" no longer literally depends on the norms that she outlines. I can see a lot of benefit to encouraging girls to "challenge each other and test their environment", even if for that's somehow less 'instinctive' for them. If it's also true that it's harder for girls than boys to build muscle mass, would we tell them not to bother trying? (I suppose that we do, in some ways -- and that's simply not acceptable either.) Should we really consent to be constrained by our purported biology?
Second, it strikes me as flat-out weird that any current feminist thinker would not, in fact, ask if there's anything about current socialization of young girls that makes it seem that they have less instinctive interest in challenging their peers or testing their environments than do young boys. I'm not sure that it bears explaining, in fact, why young girls might be discourage from such "challenging" or "testing". It's a major lapse on Wolf's part not to address this basic issue.
When she discusses Gurian's work, however, Wolf's comments are even more disappointing:
Michael Gurian, a neurobiology consultant, takes this set of insights further. [...]
He even posits that the male brain can't “see” dust or laundry piling up as the female brain often can - which explains why men and women tend to perform household tasks in different ways. Men often can't hear women's lower tones, and their brains, unlike women's, have a “rest” state (sometimes, he is thinking about “nothing”). [...]
Somehow, all this is liberating rather than infuriating. So much that enrages women, or leads them to feel rejected or unheard, may not reflect men's conscious neglect or even sexism but simply their brains' wiring. According to Dr. Gurian, if women accept these biological differences and work around them in relationships, men respond with great appreciation and devotion (often expressed non-verbally).
So -- my response is pretty similar here. It seems that there's a very basic question about the influence of social norms on this 'brain wiring', or on the way that it gets expressed in behavior, needs to be asked here, and Wolf's not asking it. And then, really, how much are we willing to be constrained by our brain wiring? If it's less "instinctive" for men to handle particular household tasks, does that get them off the hook? Or, if those are still necessary tasks, is it imperative upon them to simply learn to handle them? We can't simply allow basic inequities in the division of domestic labour (and yes, that's what laundry is) to persist because men are fortuitously wired in a way that gets them off the hook. That's bad for everybody.
And again, of course, these differences don't fall cleanly across gender lines. I'll speak from experience here. I grew up in a household where, because of various issues in the family dynamic, I wasn't terribly well trained in basic housekeeping skills. And sometimes I really "don't see" clutter, dust, whatever. I'm working on it, slowly and systematically. Why? Not because I regard it as some kind of feminine imperative, but because I want to live in decent conditions, and because I don't want to drive the people I live with insane. Just as it's harder to learn a second language in adulthood -- because of changes in the plasticity of the brain! -- this is a much trickier set of skills to teach oneself as an adult. But you know, it can be done. I don't think it's unreasonable for people to expect this of me, and I don't think it's unreasonable for me to expect it from other people (be they family, roommates, or partners).
I think that legitimate research in evolutionary biology (as Helen Fisher's seems to be, from my other encounters with it) is fascinating, and potentially deeply revealing. But as individuals, as partners, as parents, or as teachers, we might actually do well not to be so 'reassured' by readings of this research that try to identify essential differences between the sexes. Instead, we might ask -- who do we want to be? Biology might be destiny to a point (and I don't believe that we can transcend it completely), but is it acceptable to use it as a collective excuse for perpetuating fundamental inequalities? 
21.12.08
Working where they'd forgotten
I had a dream last night that I was in my old house, one my family had moved out of about fifteen years ago. Some of the rooms had been converted into offices, and I was sharing one with a bunch of highly distracting co-workers. And then I remembered: in the finished part of basement was the study, the actual office. Everybody had forgotten it but me, and so I very quietly went down there, and found a lovely space (lovelier than it had been in life) where I decided I'd work secretly, perhaps extending invitations to a few favoured friends to use the second desk.
That means something, I think: it's a call to work in an old space, in a corner in a basemet, perhaps forgotten and unnoticed for a time.
That's okay with me.
That means something, I think: it's a call to work in an old space, in a corner in a basemet, perhaps forgotten and unnoticed for a time.
That's okay with me.
15.11.08
Margaret Wente on coffee cups and plastic bags
Margaret Wente has written a column for the Globe and Mail in which she criticizes Toronto's recycling plans as "not based on economics, or feasibility, or anything that resembles common sense, but on the simple belief that the more we recycle, the faster we will go to Heaven." Her major objection is to a proposal that would have retailers give a twenty-cent credit to customers who use reusable coffee cups. Saying that "[i]t never occurred to [her] that choosing a coffee cup for my double-double is an ethical decision", Wente goes on to argue:
Wente also objects to actions dedicated to reducing the use of plastic bags, on similar grounds:
Everybody likes to point to Ireland, which slapped a hefty tax on plastic shopping bags a few years ago. Voila! People practically stopped using them. But then they started buying plastic doggie poop bags and plastic kitchen bags and plastic wastebasket bags to replace all the plastic shopping bags they had formerly recycled.
Here's the thing: I don't use plastic liners in my garbage baskets, except for the large bin in the kitchen. They're actually not necessary. (The dog issue is different, but I don't have a dog). So the argument about shifting around waste doesn't really make sense for me. I also *like* my reusable bags better. They hold more, and they have sturdier, more comfortable handles. Of course, I notice this difference because I carry them myself when I walk back home from the supermarket, or sling them on the handlebars of my bike. I'm betting that Wente still throws her plastic bags in the trunk of her much-loved SUV.
I don't want to make this a virtue contest. Wente is probably correct that plastic shopping bags are not going to push us over some kind of ecological tipping point. But the bigger issue, the one she overlooks because it's the thing she really doesn't want to confront, is the issue of attitude. Why on earth should we defend our 'right' to generate more waste than we really need to? Superficially, Wente is defending single-use coffee cups and plastic bags; dig a bit deeper into this argument, though, and you'll find that she's defending her right to overconsume. Focusing on individual bits of garbage might allow us to justify a wasteful lifestyle. Considering a really different lifestyle, however, makes ours (mine included) seem simply absurd.
My grandmothers would never have thought twice about reusing anything reusable. My mother, for instance, tells me of her mother making aprons out of flour sacks. Why? Simply because you wouldn't waste a perfectly good flour sack if you'd grown up in pre-Confederation Newfoundland. I remember my father's mother reusing Red Rose tea bags through cup after cup, because it was the economical thing to do. (I also believe that she never bought a car she couldn't pay for outright -- on a teacher's pension.) Perhaps instead of defending our 'right' to generate garbage, we could start questioning why we allow ourselves to look at unnecessary waste as anything but a mistake. Perhaps rather than splitting hairs about whether or not we use more energy by buying a ceramic mug than a paper one, we might simply accept that it's decadent, and a bit obscene, not to make the best possible use of everything that we're lucky enough to have.
*********
Of course, my current irritation with Margaret Wente might have something to do with her recent column about "savages".
Near the end of a long social studies unit about the Miq'Maq, my sixth-grade teacher used that word, too. She only let it slip once that whole year, and mumbled it a bit -- but I can still remember her glimmer of satisfaction, and her apparent relief. I have no doubt that she'd been saving that slur for weeks.
Does it surprise you, hearing that, that my sixth-grade teacher was a truly awful woman? She was nasty and smug and more than a bit stupid, though somehow able to keep a lot of people on her side. The sliver of hate that pushed through to the surface in that mumbled slur was an absolutely integral part of this woman's nasty, smug stupidity. It was not some coincidental bit of ignorance.
Even though a full fifteen years have passed since the sixth grade, I still wish that I'd spoken up in that moment, instead of swallowing my discomfort -- so I'll speak up now. Wente's column doesn't have the bluntness of a simple slur. It pretends to be reasonable, and it pretends to rest on fact. But -- it doesn't. It simply asserts something that Wente believed before she started her research, and pretends to back it up with some selectively gathered bits of information. (Two of the authors that the cites have since written in to object to her characterization of their work.) It also assumes an unsettling degree of intellectual authority, and rests on an incredibly uncritical appraisal of value and reason and truth. Today's column, not coincidentally, does the same thing.
Perhaps the ugliest utterances are also the most revealing.
I have now spent many hours researching this matter on your behalf, and I have found entire websites, engineering reports, and university student subcommittees devoted to the environmental impact of coffee cups. The classic of the genre seems to be a study called Reusable and Disposable Cups: An Energy-Based Evaluation, by former chemistry professor Martin B. Hocking, who, I am proud to say, comes from our own University of Victoria.
To perform a proper lifecycle analysis of coffee cups, Prof. Hocking began by calculating the embodied energy (MJ) in each type of cup. Not surprisingly, he found that it takes a great deal more energy to manufacture a reusable ceramic cup than it does to manufacture any kind of disposable cup. For every paper coffee cup you use, you'd have to reuse your ceramic mug at least 39 times to break even, energy-wise (assuming that you wash it once in a while). For every polystyrene cup, you'd have to use your mug a whopping 1,006 times to break even.
I trust that clears things up.
Well, no, not really. First, it's not so unreasonable to expect to reuse a ceramic mug 39 times. That's a little over a month of once-daily use. Using the same mug 1006 times seems a bit less likely -- but then, that's less than three years of once-daily use. Shouldn't a ceramic mug last for three years? Further, the numbers that Wente gives address only the energy costs of production. Recycling and waste disposal both use additional energy. I'd like to see some numbers that take into account the differences at both ends of use. And of course, there are other issues to be considered: landfill space, pollution from production, etc.Wente also objects to actions dedicated to reducing the use of plastic bags, on similar grounds:
Everybody likes to point to Ireland, which slapped a hefty tax on plastic shopping bags a few years ago. Voila! People practically stopped using them. But then they started buying plastic doggie poop bags and plastic kitchen bags and plastic wastebasket bags to replace all the plastic shopping bags they had formerly recycled.
Here's the thing: I don't use plastic liners in my garbage baskets, except for the large bin in the kitchen. They're actually not necessary. (The dog issue is different, but I don't have a dog). So the argument about shifting around waste doesn't really make sense for me. I also *like* my reusable bags better. They hold more, and they have sturdier, more comfortable handles. Of course, I notice this difference because I carry them myself when I walk back home from the supermarket, or sling them on the handlebars of my bike. I'm betting that Wente still throws her plastic bags in the trunk of her much-loved SUV.
I don't want to make this a virtue contest. Wente is probably correct that plastic shopping bags are not going to push us over some kind of ecological tipping point. But the bigger issue, the one she overlooks because it's the thing she really doesn't want to confront, is the issue of attitude. Why on earth should we defend our 'right' to generate more waste than we really need to? Superficially, Wente is defending single-use coffee cups and plastic bags; dig a bit deeper into this argument, though, and you'll find that she's defending her right to overconsume. Focusing on individual bits of garbage might allow us to justify a wasteful lifestyle. Considering a really different lifestyle, however, makes ours (mine included) seem simply absurd.
My grandmothers would never have thought twice about reusing anything reusable. My mother, for instance, tells me of her mother making aprons out of flour sacks. Why? Simply because you wouldn't waste a perfectly good flour sack if you'd grown up in pre-Confederation Newfoundland. I remember my father's mother reusing Red Rose tea bags through cup after cup, because it was the economical thing to do. (I also believe that she never bought a car she couldn't pay for outright -- on a teacher's pension.) Perhaps instead of defending our 'right' to generate garbage, we could start questioning why we allow ourselves to look at unnecessary waste as anything but a mistake. Perhaps rather than splitting hairs about whether or not we use more energy by buying a ceramic mug than a paper one, we might simply accept that it's decadent, and a bit obscene, not to make the best possible use of everything that we're lucky enough to have.
*********
Of course, my current irritation with Margaret Wente might have something to do with her recent column about "savages".
Near the end of a long social studies unit about the Miq'Maq, my sixth-grade teacher used that word, too. She only let it slip once that whole year, and mumbled it a bit -- but I can still remember her glimmer of satisfaction, and her apparent relief. I have no doubt that she'd been saving that slur for weeks.
Does it surprise you, hearing that, that my sixth-grade teacher was a truly awful woman? She was nasty and smug and more than a bit stupid, though somehow able to keep a lot of people on her side. The sliver of hate that pushed through to the surface in that mumbled slur was an absolutely integral part of this woman's nasty, smug stupidity. It was not some coincidental bit of ignorance.
Even though a full fifteen years have passed since the sixth grade, I still wish that I'd spoken up in that moment, instead of swallowing my discomfort -- so I'll speak up now. Wente's column doesn't have the bluntness of a simple slur. It pretends to be reasonable, and it pretends to rest on fact. But -- it doesn't. It simply asserts something that Wente believed before she started her research, and pretends to back it up with some selectively gathered bits of information. (Two of the authors that the cites have since written in to object to her characterization of their work.) It also assumes an unsettling degree of intellectual authority, and rests on an incredibly uncritical appraisal of value and reason and truth. Today's column, not coincidentally, does the same thing.
Perhaps the ugliest utterances are also the most revealing.
8.11.08
Protecting Marriage on YouTube
It is, of course, much to my dismay that California voted in favour of Proposition Eight. It's only since the election, however, that I've become aware of some of the materials posted by the "Yes" campaign -- and I think they are instructive in understanding the real basis for objections to legislating same-sex marriage.
I have often said that I simply don't understand the argument about same-sex marriage as a threat to 'traditional' marriage. On some level, I assumed that this whole debate was about something metaphysical, some fear that if you let the gays into the Magic House of Procreative Marriage, they'll spread Sin Spores and everyone will get dirty. That kind of anxiety never made sense to me, and it left me feeling simply confused about the whole debate.
Then I watched this clip. It's predictably manipulative, in a lot of ways. The description of Jan and Tom and their family is an almost-amusing construct of the 'normal' family: they own a minivan, they have a dog, Jan cooks while Tom mows the lawn, and they sure do love their gay neighbours. (Though, G-d forbid, not too much!) The general tone of the ad is calm, and the language clearly tries to be neutral, creating the impression that these arguments against gay marriage are reasonable, and not based on blind hatred. Of course, they talk about homosexuality as a 'lifestyle choice', suggest that 'strong families' need a heterosexual nucleus, and talk about tolerance of homosexuality (as if it's something to tolerate?). If you're in the habit of reading this kind of language, you'll catch the nastiness under these euphemisms -- but perhaps not otherwise.
What I find instructive about this ad is not so much its strategies of manipulation, however, but the concrete objections that it voices in relation to gay marriage. First, they express concern about 'teaching gay marriage' in public schools; second, they suggest that legalizing same-sex marriage is likely to result in government interference in churches, who they suggest might be forced to perform same-sex marriages. I have to read these objections as showing, in part, a desire to maintain institutionalized discrimination.
Rather than simply labelling these objections as discriminatory, though, I want to understand them. The issue of government interference in the church is a clear extension of the conservative tendency to limit (or pretend to limit) the scope of government in general. This objection creates a bit of a feedback loop, of course. It declares a desire to maintain the separation of church and state -- but it wants to maintain that division by passing legislation that is in keeping with conservative Christian values. I can acknowledge that an individual congregation should have the right to determine its own collective values, and I quite agree that the state should have limited control over religious practices in general. But can't this objection be addressed by simply affirming the separation of church and state? If there is a provision that allows same-sex couples to be married in town hall, or in progressive churches, but still allows individual congregations to refuse to perform ceremonies -- well, that objection loses all validity, and we're back to the Sin Spores argument. (As I understand it, Canadian legislation still leaves this choice up to individual churches, and our society hasn't crumbled.)
It's the argument about 'teaching homosexuality' in schools that I find to be most revealing. Instinctively, I find this argument to be absurd. As I see it, there is literally no possibility that reading King and King is going to change the sexual orientation of a single second-grader. What it might do is make a child with same-sex parents feel a bit less excluded -- or, better yet, mean that when one of these kids hits high school and comes out (comes out anyway, to be clear), he or she will be a little less afraid, and a little less abused and persecuted by his or her peers. To me, that sounds like a good result.
Thinking about this issue a bit further, I asked -- why would a person be so concerned about what their children see and hear? Why not trust that your child will develop the skills to sort out right from wrong on their own terms, and with your guidance?
My best guess is this: if you accept the authority of religious doctrine without question, then perhaps you believe that's the only position a person can take in relation to authority, or in relation to information itself. Your concern then becomes teaching your children not to question authority, not to struggle to reconcile their beliefs and values and opinions with what they encounter in the world, but instead with controlling the authority to which your children are exposed.
I feel like this interpretation has given my some new insight -- though I'm not sure quite where it leads me. It does, at least, remind me how happy I am to have been raised as I was, to understand doubt and questioning as part of real faith.
(Christian to Christians: if the Spirit is alive, shouldn't we let Him move? And if God is love, isn't He there when two people declare it?)
I have often said that I simply don't understand the argument about same-sex marriage as a threat to 'traditional' marriage. On some level, I assumed that this whole debate was about something metaphysical, some fear that if you let the gays into the Magic House of Procreative Marriage, they'll spread Sin Spores and everyone will get dirty. That kind of anxiety never made sense to me, and it left me feeling simply confused about the whole debate.
Then I watched this clip. It's predictably manipulative, in a lot of ways. The description of Jan and Tom and their family is an almost-amusing construct of the 'normal' family: they own a minivan, they have a dog, Jan cooks while Tom mows the lawn, and they sure do love their gay neighbours. (Though, G-d forbid, not too much!) The general tone of the ad is calm, and the language clearly tries to be neutral, creating the impression that these arguments against gay marriage are reasonable, and not based on blind hatred. Of course, they talk about homosexuality as a 'lifestyle choice', suggest that 'strong families' need a heterosexual nucleus, and talk about tolerance of homosexuality (as if it's something to tolerate?). If you're in the habit of reading this kind of language, you'll catch the nastiness under these euphemisms -- but perhaps not otherwise.
What I find instructive about this ad is not so much its strategies of manipulation, however, but the concrete objections that it voices in relation to gay marriage. First, they express concern about 'teaching gay marriage' in public schools; second, they suggest that legalizing same-sex marriage is likely to result in government interference in churches, who they suggest might be forced to perform same-sex marriages. I have to read these objections as showing, in part, a desire to maintain institutionalized discrimination.
Rather than simply labelling these objections as discriminatory, though, I want to understand them. The issue of government interference in the church is a clear extension of the conservative tendency to limit (or pretend to limit) the scope of government in general. This objection creates a bit of a feedback loop, of course. It declares a desire to maintain the separation of church and state -- but it wants to maintain that division by passing legislation that is in keeping with conservative Christian values. I can acknowledge that an individual congregation should have the right to determine its own collective values, and I quite agree that the state should have limited control over religious practices in general. But can't this objection be addressed by simply affirming the separation of church and state? If there is a provision that allows same-sex couples to be married in town hall, or in progressive churches, but still allows individual congregations to refuse to perform ceremonies -- well, that objection loses all validity, and we're back to the Sin Spores argument. (As I understand it, Canadian legislation still leaves this choice up to individual churches, and our society hasn't crumbled.)
It's the argument about 'teaching homosexuality' in schools that I find to be most revealing. Instinctively, I find this argument to be absurd. As I see it, there is literally no possibility that reading King and King is going to change the sexual orientation of a single second-grader. What it might do is make a child with same-sex parents feel a bit less excluded -- or, better yet, mean that when one of these kids hits high school and comes out (comes out anyway, to be clear), he or she will be a little less afraid, and a little less abused and persecuted by his or her peers. To me, that sounds like a good result.
Thinking about this issue a bit further, I asked -- why would a person be so concerned about what their children see and hear? Why not trust that your child will develop the skills to sort out right from wrong on their own terms, and with your guidance?
My best guess is this: if you accept the authority of religious doctrine without question, then perhaps you believe that's the only position a person can take in relation to authority, or in relation to information itself. Your concern then becomes teaching your children not to question authority, not to struggle to reconcile their beliefs and values and opinions with what they encounter in the world, but instead with controlling the authority to which your children are exposed.
I feel like this interpretation has given my some new insight -- though I'm not sure quite where it leads me. It does, at least, remind me how happy I am to have been raised as I was, to understand doubt and questioning as part of real faith.
(Christian to Christians: if the Spirit is alive, shouldn't we let Him move? And if God is love, isn't He there when two people declare it?)
20.10.08
Political Preference and the Classroom
There's been a heated discussion on the New York Times website about the issue of teachers declaring their political preferences, particularly in the form of wearing pins that endorse a particular candidate. This discussion has followed a blog post by Stanley Fish, which you can read here.
As a teacher, I'm in an unusual position at the moment: I'm Canadian, and teaching in the US, so I can't vote. I know who I'd support if I could -- but I have a handy, default dodge for any student questions about who I support. How would I handle this situation if I could vote? I think that I would evade the question, at least to a point. I'm not sure that there is a comfortable answer to this question, but this is why I'm taking this position for the moment:
As a teacher, I'm in a position of power over my students. I'm reasonably certain that my political view become apparent to my students at some point during the semester -- but I'm not interested in putting them in a position where they have to agree or disagree with me on this kind of point. If they think of me as a good teacher, if they respect me, they risk being swayed for the wrong reasons (i.e. because they want to please me, or because they want to emulate me. I'm not sure that my students do want to please or emulate me, usually, but in this area, I'd rather play it safe and limit my influence).
But my bigger concern is that, as a teacher, I can't reduce political issues simple binaries. It's not my job to make sure that my students vote for the 'right' candidate. It's my job to give them the intellectual sophistication and critical thinking skills to see through bad arguments and manipulation on both sides, to encourage them to question campaign strategies in general, to nudge them a bit closer to being engaged citizens, to urge them out of complacency. If I try to teach that way while I'm wearing an Obama pin, I make the discussion partisan in a way that is, quite frankly, counterproductive. I make it easy to dismiss me -- or to agree with me -- without considering the real content of what I teach. That's not what a classroom is for.
Whether I teach Beethoven or Shakespeare, Madonna or the Beatles, I'm giving my students something that I want them to bring into the world with them, something that I want to make them thinking and questioning citizens. The issue of support for a particular candidate feels huge in the run to an election, but in the long term, I want to give my students something much bigger, and much more important. That's a big task, and I'm never sure that I'm up for it -- but oh how I try.
As a teacher, I'm in an unusual position at the moment: I'm Canadian, and teaching in the US, so I can't vote. I know who I'd support if I could -- but I have a handy, default dodge for any student questions about who I support. How would I handle this situation if I could vote? I think that I would evade the question, at least to a point. I'm not sure that there is a comfortable answer to this question, but this is why I'm taking this position for the moment:
As a teacher, I'm in a position of power over my students. I'm reasonably certain that my political view become apparent to my students at some point during the semester -- but I'm not interested in putting them in a position where they have to agree or disagree with me on this kind of point. If they think of me as a good teacher, if they respect me, they risk being swayed for the wrong reasons (i.e. because they want to please me, or because they want to emulate me. I'm not sure that my students do want to please or emulate me, usually, but in this area, I'd rather play it safe and limit my influence).
But my bigger concern is that, as a teacher, I can't reduce political issues simple binaries. It's not my job to make sure that my students vote for the 'right' candidate. It's my job to give them the intellectual sophistication and critical thinking skills to see through bad arguments and manipulation on both sides, to encourage them to question campaign strategies in general, to nudge them a bit closer to being engaged citizens, to urge them out of complacency. If I try to teach that way while I'm wearing an Obama pin, I make the discussion partisan in a way that is, quite frankly, counterproductive. I make it easy to dismiss me -- or to agree with me -- without considering the real content of what I teach. That's not what a classroom is for.
Whether I teach Beethoven or Shakespeare, Madonna or the Beatles, I'm giving my students something that I want them to bring into the world with them, something that I want to make them thinking and questioning citizens. The issue of support for a particular candidate feels huge in the run to an election, but in the long term, I want to give my students something much bigger, and much more important. That's a big task, and I'm never sure that I'm up for it -- but oh how I try.
5.10.08
No really, what the hell IS wrong with Russell Smith?
From today's Globe and Mail: "Ladies, Don't Pad Your Resumés"
The column is full of Smith's usual hooey, exhorting women to dress for male pleasure. In particular, he'd like us to wear skimpy bras that allow for "natural sway" and -- oh joy, oh bliss! -- the breathtaking possibility that one might see the natural shape of a nipple, "surely the most erotic sight in clothed humans". Part of me wants to commend him for celebrating the female body. That part of me is far outbalanced by my queasiness at the (recurring) suggestion that a woman who does not dress to please men is somehow not doing her job.
Which brings us to the headline. I don't know if Mr. Smith writes his own headlines, but this one is simply nasty in its implications. If my breasts are my resumé, am I in fact applying for the 'job' of being sexually attractive to men? And being sexually attractive to men is my job, then are my breasts my primary qualification?
I can't help but take this kind of thinking personally. I realize so often that in this culture, it is my failings as an aesthetic object that define me for other people. And yet, there is so much about me that simply can't be seen.
(Can you hear it, at least?)
The column is full of Smith's usual hooey, exhorting women to dress for male pleasure. In particular, he'd like us to wear skimpy bras that allow for "natural sway" and -- oh joy, oh bliss! -- the breathtaking possibility that one might see the natural shape of a nipple, "surely the most erotic sight in clothed humans". Part of me wants to commend him for celebrating the female body. That part of me is far outbalanced by my queasiness at the (recurring) suggestion that a woman who does not dress to please men is somehow not doing her job.
Which brings us to the headline. I don't know if Mr. Smith writes his own headlines, but this one is simply nasty in its implications. If my breasts are my resumé, am I in fact applying for the 'job' of being sexually attractive to men? And being sexually attractive to men is my job, then are my breasts my primary qualification?
I can't help but take this kind of thinking personally. I realize so often that in this culture, it is my failings as an aesthetic object that define me for other people. And yet, there is so much about me that simply can't be seen.
(Can you hear it, at least?)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
