Biographers Who Love Their Subjects

I am having a real problem with Elizabeth Hawes's ¨Camus: A Romance¨. (I am midway in Chapter 4). Part of the problem may be that I remain under the spell of Richard Holmes, the romantic biographer par excellence. Holmes is clear about his feelings for his subjects, but he stays out of their way. It may be that I am so impressed because I knew so little about his subjects: Banks, the Herschels and Davy. Now I know them well. Of course, any biographer can and should do that. I watch them grow old, as I do with any biographical subject. But -- and it is a big but -- I know that they are exemplars, that they are astonishing, that they are -- to use a word that Holmes delights in -- thrilling.

This should be offputting. Tell me about the person, let me see him or her acting, thinking, feeling. Let me decide whether or not to be thrilled. This is what Holmes does. He never tells us that he is thrilled with anybody (unless perhaps it is Carl Hubble who figures only in footnotes). We see Londoners and Tahitians and others being thrilled. We read contemporary reports about being thrilled. We understand that not only Holmes's scientists but also their contemporaries understood that they were on the cusp of something huge, something thrilling.

I have been enamored of Camus for longer than Hawes, so perhaps there is a wee sense of her poaching on my territory. That of course is ridiculous and unworthy. But I have read two long biographies based upon written words and spoken first-hand testimony. I felt that I knew (and know) Camus quite well and I surely know how I feel about him. So at the moment, all that Hawes seems to be adding to this is a long account of how she feels about him. I have just finished her chapter about World War II, and it is clear, if a bit summary, about his activities. It is shallow though. There is no sense of Camus's anguish around the issue of executing traitors. There is a bit too much of herself withouot much indication why I should care how much she loves Camus. I shall plug on for a while thoough, and if it seems a hopeless project I shall shift to Janet Malcolm on Chekhov.

Anger? Disappointment? Resignation?

Two moves from the Obama administration this weekend and one is greeted with a cacophany of antagonistic voices, the other with mostly shrugs. But they are equally distressing, though both are utterly predictable. In the first case, the administration is moving away from a single-payer health insurance system. In the second, the administration is pushing states towards teacher evaluation based upon student test performance. It is a race to see which one of these bad ideas will undermine the country first. And both illustrate the consequences of the Democrats' move to the political center fifteen years ago. The Left, which elected Obama, is left to weep.

The two moves are different in this respect. Obama's preference is for a single-payer system - he has said as much. So it is purely a political calculation that has persuaded him to abandon it and to give the country's baser instincts and cheerleaders a cheap victory. And he is probably right; fear is a powerful weapon and reason doesn't stand a chance against it. The remarkable thing is how inept the Democrats have been in campaigning for real health reform, how easily they have conceded the field to lies, dirty tricks and blatant self-interest. But we shall never know whether a principled, reasoned, clear and forceful advocacy of a single-payer system might have carried the day. And it is possible that by conceding on this issue, a substantive reform agenda may yet succeed. But I am sad that my hero couldn't do a better job of fighting the yahoos.

On the education issue, though, he is a yahoo. The takeover of education by testing is a deliberate policy of this administration, as it has been for every administration since Clinton's. It is based on a simple one-dimensional black box understanding of the relationship between teaching and learning. Teaching in, learning out. This is wrong and it is dangerous, and I have spent twenty years of writing op ed commentaries explaining why. Those newly in control of the Amherst schools have equally simple-minded understanding of the process of learning. Perhaps this is to be expected. After all, they too were schooled, and if there is one thing schooling discourages it is deep thinking about learning.

So on the health care issue, Obama is fighting against his better judgment. On the education issue, his judgment is deficient and he is encouraging a diminished likelihood that schools will be places where learning takes place.

Excellence

I have long maintained, half seriously, that excellent people don't talk about excellence because they don't have to; they just get on with it. Along comes Humphry Davy, one of the heroes of Richard Holmes's The Age of Wonder, who in 1812 wrote in ardor to the woman who would become his wife, "If this be romantic, it is romantic to pursue one's object in science; to attach the feelings strongly to any ideas; it is romantic to love the good, to admire the wise, to quit low and mean things and seek excellence."

That Davy was excellent is beyond question, and mostly he just got on with it. And this was a sort of love letter and he can no doubt be excused for some hyperbole. But what a splendid statement! Excellence, like Truth, is a great romantic idea; indeed, it may be said to encapsulate the sense of striving and seeking that is at the essence of Romanticism.

Perhaps the Amherst Excellencers might agree with me about this. Why, then, do they rub me so vigorously the wrong way? What makes Davy inspirational and Sanderson leaden? Is it merely the difference in their prose? Or do they mean something entirely different by the word? I am annoyed by bad writing, but I have spent too long in academia training people to write badly to blame academics for their cliches, jargon and flatulence. No, the difference is emblematic of the profound malaise infecting schooling in Amherst and the United States. For the Excellencers, excellence is institutional. Excellence is achievable. Excellence is reduced to achievement.

For Davy and the other scientists so inspiringly presented by Holmes excellence is aspirational. If their achievements are awe-inspiring it is because their imaginations were restless, their interests wide-ranging, their hearts and minds engaged together. Davy described his scientific method as observation, experimentation, and analogy. To which we might add ambition and competition, since these played a significant part in his achievements, as they have for so many scientists since. We may legitimately use these Romantic scientists as touchstones and reflect that it was love that elicted so splendid a statement from so splendid a man.

Sky and Water -- and Noise

Last night offered an amazing few minutes. I had walked the Coast Guard dock; the Relemar was tied up at the end just like it had been in the old days when Jackie O was the companion of Maurice Tempelsman. This year was another dark-haired beauty whom I vaguely recognized -- but that is not the subject of this post. Last night the sky was gray, and as I stood by the Relemar hoping perhaps to get another glimpse -- no, that is not the subject of this post -- the rain began to pelt out of a leaden sky. Of course, there was not the slightest chance of a sunset.

I walked home and settled on the porch to enjoy a good Vineyard rain. Suddenly, about a half an hour later, there was a sudden change - a huge wind not only blowing the rain against the windows but pushing the cloud cover speeding to the north and suddenly it was clear in the west. The sun had long set but the afterglow was spectacular watching the black clouds speed across the red, green, orange sky. Quite remarkably and unexpectedly this was the most spectacular sunset of the summer.

But that's not what this post is about. For the past several mornings I have been awakened by the sound of piledrivers and who-knows-what-else in the Home Port parking lot. I am not a late sleeper, but for three mornings the noise has awakened me. I realize that noise is a constant in Menemsha. That's what this post is about.

No Good News

There is not much good news coming out of the Amherst School Department these days. It is not good news that Superintendent Rodriguez hired Irving Hamer, a veteran in-fighter in New York City school politics, as a consultant to help him shape an agenda for the school system. It is not good news that Dr. Hamer spent ten days (ten days!) in July (July!) talking with a few people (who?) and going over records (which records?) to produce a report breathtaking in its superficiality and inadequacy. It is not good news that school committee member Sanderson called the report "inspirational." It is not good news that the superintendent endorsed this report, as did the cheering anonyms (and a few people willing to take responsibility for their own views) in the blogosphere.

How to explain this astonishing report? It is tempting to assume that Dr. Hamer asked the first questions that most consultants ask: who's paying me and what do they want. The coincident tone of the school committee comments over the past year and the Hamer Report cannot be a coincidence. The school committee has clearly intended to exercise greater control over the schools and to centralize curriculum and assessment, so it can be no surprise that this is the direction Hamer urges the system to take.

In the debate over Mark's Meadow, the school committee insisted that our elementary schools were (or should be) all alike, so it didn't matter which school a child attended. The Hamer Report chastises the elementary schools for being different from one another, and the superintendent promises greater "articulation" (a magical -- and meaningless -- word).

So in addition to greater centralization, the superintendent desires greater uniformity. If you like bureaucracy, you'll love the Amherst schools in the coming years.

But the bad news doesn't stop with the report. It continues with comments that Superintendent Rodriguez is reported to have made in July shortly after arriving in Amherst.

"You need to sell (students) on the fact that they need to learn what you're teaching them."
Mr. Rodriguez apparently wants to replace the metaphor of teacher-as-manager with teacher-as-salesman. I wish he really believed this. Salesmen, after all, understand that consumers have choices among products or can choose not to purchase a product at all. The commercial metaphor is regrettable and unapt; in the marketplace it is consumer demand that largely determines which products succeed and which products fail. Would that this were so in schools, but I think that this is not what the superintendent and school committee want.

"Amherst teachers care deeply about students, but [Rodriguez] wants to 'change the conversation.' " Perhaps it is unfair to hold a person accountable for a newspaper interpretation of his words, but this is either alarming or vacuous. Are teachers to care less for students? Is he looking for a new Wackford Squeers to run the middle school? What does the superintendent think the conversation in Amherst's schools has been about and how does he want to change it? Or perhaps this is just another cliche.

"I know we do things well, but that won't inform my work. I wasn't hired to be a maintenance man but a change agent." Oh dear.

Right Answers II

I am reading The Age of Wonder, by Richard Holmes, and my heart is beating faster. The book is a series of intertwined biographies of 18th and early 19th century scientists whose quest for right answers was imbued with the spirit of the romantic age. They were all, perhaps, in terra incognita perhaps an unapt metaphor since it was so often the heavens that engendered their awe, but in Holmes's inspired telling they used all of the tools associated with normal science (Thomas Kuhn's term) but were particularly well endowed with the one facility that seems to get lost in talk about schooling: imagination. The point is important. Like all scientists, they seek truth or, as I prefer to identify it, right answers, but their search is motivated by imaginative curiosity or, as Holmes puts it, wonder.

One approach to a critique of public education in this age of testing is to say that right answers in our schools are not sought but are received. The right answers sought by test makers are not answers to questions that test takers have asked. This is not necessarily objectionable; the world is full of right answers that we must learn. We must learn the multiplication tables regardless of our curiosity about how numbers work. But it is certainly true that engendering curiosity about how numbers work is a more central task of schooling than presenting it to children for memorization.

Nonsense, say testmakers and school critics. That curiosity is all well and good, but it can just as effectively follow as precede the memorization. Not everyone need be curious about the multiplication tables but everyone needs to know them. This curiosity business (they say to me) is pure romantic posturing. Worse, it is highfalutin' middle-class arrogance, condemning children who come to school hungry, ill-nurtured, neglected or abused to ignorance because their teachers, who can be made competent to teach the multiplication tables cannot be expected to inculcate curiosity or imagination or appreciation. Time is of the essence.

Further, my critics continue, abstract ideas and concepts need to be grounded in knowledge and evidence. Right answers may not be all we've got, but there are a powerful lot of them, and progress in science and, yes, the arts depend upon them. As the cliche has it, knowledge is power.

To my critics I say yes, yes and yes. But ultimately three yesses make a no. The important thing about right answers is not that they are right but that they are yours, or mine. That they are answers to questions we ask, solutions to problems that puzzle us. Abstract ideas are surely grounded in right answers, but just as surely right answers must be grounded in a conceptual foundation or thehy flit away at the end of exams. There is no one way path between the realm of right answers and the country of curiosity; the commerce is, and must be, two-way. But there can be no doubt that education must start in the country of curiosity -- and return there often.

Development and Pre-disposition

I did not intend to publish the last post but since I did, by accident, and it was long enough, I will continue my discussion in this new one.

Development - the clock and the calender are two great enemies of learning. One might add report cards and tests, which are tied to clock and calendar and not to development. We know enough about developmental rates and developmental styles to realize that tailoring the curriculum to the school year is a procrustean endeavor. If children could learn at their own rate, in their own time and their own style, more children could learn what society deems important.

More, but perhaps not all. There is the matter of predisposition, which is real and determinative in a way that "intelligence" is not. We may not have a sense of our own intelligence, but we all have a solid sense of our own predispositions - the lum, certain and activities we prefer and and are interested in. My own ability to read symphonic scores and my own inability to throw a ball with any confidence, speed or distance are both rooted in predispositions that accompanied me out of the womb. My introversion and preferences, my INFP profile mean that certain areas of the curriculum, certain teaching styles, and certain school activities will appeal to me more than others and I will thrive in circumstances that will frustrate others (and of course I will be frustrated in areas in which others thrive). This strikes me as commonplace, but then I look at schools and read comments about "excellence" and rigor" and I realize that it is not commonplace at all. Indeed, schools proceed as if they were not important considerations at all.

The current craze for testing and ranking pays no attention to either development or predispold go furthersition. All children take the same tests at the same moment; the school year -- and with it -- the curriculum for that year ends in mid-June. And because of that children's test results come to fall into the standard bell-shaped curve (and if they do not, the procrustean testors stretch and squeeze the test results until they do).

All of this is in explanation of the prior post's asssertion that schools are not supportive of learning. I could go further and assert that schooling as normally conducted is destructive of learning by stressing the uniformities and ignoring the distinctive and determinative differences among schoolchildren. Indeed, the huge and costly empire of Special Education is itself based upon this destructiveness; learning differences too quickly become transformed into learning difficulties. But that is a subject for another post, and not the next one.

In my next post, I will return to the principal theme of "right answers" promised in my last post.