A Day In The Life

5:30 AM

The alarm buzzes, faint and far away in the clouds of sleep. Stone stirs at the foot of my bed, stretching across the floor like a cat, his nails catching in the carpet. I slam my hand on the top of the green, glowing clock and go back to sleep.

6:07 AM

I hit the clock for the final time, silencing it permanently. I pad to the kitchen with Stone right behind me. I prepare his breakfast and take him to the backyard to eat. I can taste spring in the air; there is a light wind and the faint smell of smoke from a brush fire in Santa Barbara sixty miles north of Los Angeles. I begin going over my day in my mind: first period, poetry; second period, Skellig; third period, final review for the AP exam; fourth period, an essay; fifth period, back to the ninth graders and Skellig; sixth period, back to the eleventh graders with AP preparation; meeting after school with the English department.

6:40 AM

Breakfast and medicines finished while standing at the kitchen sink. Now for the coffee, lots of coffee. I sit in the living room going over newspapers and magazines looking for something to use in my classes that day. I skim over the day’s readings for each class. Before I realize what I am doing, I doze off for a few minutes.

7:15 AM

In the shower, comb the hair, brush the teeth, have to remember to remind seniors to review lit terms for the exam. I dress quickly, usher Stone out into the backyard, and I am out the door.

7:55 AM

Today, it’s my wife’s turn to drive. We teach at the same school in the same department. She has college preparatory classes in English for grades nine through twelve; I have the honors and Advanced Placement courses for the same grades. Out of the twenty-two years we have been teachers, we have taught in the same school for seventeen years. It is a convenient arrangement, but it also leads us to talk too much about work at home. It is okay, though, because this is what we were both called to do. Neither one of us wants to be anywhere else.

8:15 AM

We ride the elevator to the second floor and open our classrooms. I allow the students to enter while I walk across the hall to the faculty room to put my lunch in the refrigerator, check my mailbox, and greet other teachers. In truth, I do very little greeting; I am a notorious night owl, and mornings are a real effort. My objective is to get coffee and just listen. I need to save my energy for first period and my English honors course for sophomores.

In the faculty room, the teachers are talking animatedly about the upcoming teachers’ evaluations by students. It is the first time this has been done in the school, and everyone is a little nervous about what middle and high schoolers might say about their teachers. Grades came out last week, so students may be primed for revenge. I grab my coffee and head back to the classroom.

8:40 AM

The sophomores settle down to business, I have taken roll, made the perfunctory announcements about the day ahead, and it is time for Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.” We read the poem through and then begin a close analysis. The end of the day, a pastoral scene, and the speaker watches the sun go down from a grave stone in the cemetery. No more shall the dead return to life, to kiss their children, to gather around the hearth. “The paths of glory lead but to the grave.” I do not want my students to see this as just another poem about death, but how do I get fifteen year olds to appreciate loss and missing someone’s presence. “One morn I miss’d him on the custom’d hill.” At fifteen, we believe we will live forever. I read somewhere that poetry is written for the young, but by the time they come to understand, they are too old to change their lives. Several of my students do understand; they have buried close relatives. The others are blissfully in the dark; this is just another poem to read for class, another assignment to complete.

9:20AM

Sophomores leave and the freshmen file in. We are reading Skellig by David Almond. “Blackbird singing in the dead of night, / Take these broken wings and learn to fly. / All your life, / You were only waiting for this moment to arise.” Young Michael sees blackbirds everywhere. He and his new friend, Mina, must help the winged creature they have found in the dilapidated garage. Meanwhile, Michael’s newborn sister is dying of a heart ailment.

Like the best of young adult literature, this book is so poetically written and filled with such wisdom and grace. Mina, home-schooled and obsessed with British poet William Blake, councils Michael to accept things are not what they appear to be, and sometimes, the answers are not clear. “We can’t know,” she says. “Sometimes we just have to accept there are things we can’t know. Why is your sister ill? Why did my father die…Sometimes we think we should be able to know everything. But we can’t. We have to allow ourselves to see what there is to see, and we have to imagine.”

My freshmen, on the cusp of the cynical teenage years, still have the essence of innocence about them, but adulthood is closing in fast.

10:25 AM

Seniors are already gone. I try to reel them in, pull them back into school. They are thinking of summer, of next year, of moving away from home, of saying goodbye. They are incredibly scared. Exhilarated. Overcome with giddy excitement for the future. We are trying to review for the AP exam, but wind up talking about how life unfolds. A few of them are deeply bitter. They did not get into the schools of their choice. Some will go to community college, and they are embarrassed and disappointed. “Why did I put all this work in?” one wails. “I worked so hard, took honors and AP courses, and now I have to go to community college.”

I try to bolster their sagging emotions. We cannot know how things will turn out. They believe they are destined for a particular college, a specific job, to be doctors and lawyers. What we believe to be our destiny may not match where we end up. “It’s more important, more indicative of a strong character, how you recover from disappointment,” I tell them. “The hard work and struggles are worthless if you learn nothing from them.” I know from my own life experiences that I speak the truth, but to them, I fear my words ring hollow and empty. But their journeys have only just begun and there is so much life to live. The bell rings, interrupting my passionate speech. They file out to nutrition break.

11:25 AM

Twenty minutes later, after a quick run to the faculty room, I finish up clearing my desk from the morning detritus and prepare to greet the next class: juniors in AP Language and Composition. They have been snarky lately, mainly because of the intense pressure they are under: SAT tests, AP tests, challenging academic courses in a detrimental year for their futures. They are scared and worried about college applications months before the process even begins. I feel for them.

We argue in class. They want to spend their time prepping for the test. I want to drive them through yet another essay. They want their last test back. I have not begun to grade it yet. Someone forgot his book. Another did not bring the book to school. This class loves to argue and debate, so I push them into the essay. Everyone has an opinion. Many of the essays we are reading in this unit have to do with education. We try to relate the critical views of the essayists to their situation at this school. This causes problems, because we veer away from the writer’s style and begin debating whether we should remodel the school library, or use the funds to give students who cannot pay the tuition a way to stay with a grant. I try to redirect us back on track. As usual, we run out of time before I can bring the discussion to a satisfactory close.

12:10 PM

Freshmen come back for more work on the novel. During the class, a message arrives: faculty meeting at lunch in Room 109 regarding the upcoming student evaluations of teachers.

1:00 PM

Without time for a break or lunch, we file into the lecture hall. The principal is waiting for us. He tells us that our students will be evaluating our performance in all of our classes next week. The point of this sinks in slowly. We sit in silence. I raise my hand. “What will these evaluations be used for?” I ask. “Teacher retention? Contract negotiations?”

“It’s just another piece of evidence in our on-going self-evaluation,” he says. “You will be evaluating me too; I am on the evaluation block as well.”

“It’s not the same,” I fire back. “You will be evaluated by adults. We are being evaluated by teenagers, some of whom just received deficient grades.”

He has no answer for me other than to “take it with a grain of salt.” Sure.

1:40 PM
Back with the juniors working on their AP preparatory workbooks. They are overwhelmed. It takes us almost an entire period to read, parse apart, and come to a clear understanding of a test prompt. Forty-five minutes to do what they must do on the exam in less than five minutes. We are still discussing when the bell rings. We never get to the writing of our responses.

2:45 PM

Finally, I can re-organize my desk and plan out my evening’s work during my preparation period. I make lists—department notes for after school, tasks to do at home that night, upcoming dates and deadlines. The final bell for the school day rings, I swig some water, and wait for my teachers to arrive for the meeting.

3:15 PM

We discuss the upcoming evaluations I must write about each department member. We go over the book list for next year, eliminating several texts that were underused this year. With the economy the way it is I want to make parents buy books that we will completely use. Several teachers express concern over failing students in their classes. We try to help them, but they turn in blank tests and miss deadlines for papers. What can we do with students who literally do nothing? At least if there is effort, we can work with them. If they continue to be deficient, they will have to attend summer school to make up the class.

4:30 PM

The meeting wraps. One of the teachers, my wife, and I stay and continue our discussion about students, the department, the way things are going. We are worried about enrollment due to the economy. There is so much work to still be accomplished before the year ends in six weeks.

6:15 PM

I arrive home, change into sweats and take Stone for a walk. I have a headache. I feel like I have been running all day. Mentally, I review the tasks ahead of me tonight to prepare for tomorrow’s classes.

9:30 PM

I plan where we will go next in each class. I review the readings for the next day, write a test, and grade three papers. The last is most disheartening. If I only read three papers a night, I will never finish the set. More are coming in next week. I do not know how I can keep up.

12:04 AM

No matter what time I shut down the computer, shower and head for bed, it is always after midnight. I turn off the light, stare at the ceiling, and review what I need to do tomorrow. Consciousness fades away, and the night settles in. I reach over and set the alarm for 5:30 AM. Then I am gone, senseless and lost in sleep.

Maimonides

Maimonides: The Life and World of One of Civilization’s Greatest Minds
By Joel L. Kraemer
Doubleday, $35.00 cloth
ISBN 978-0-385-51199-5

MaimonidesBy Sherwin B. Nuland
Schocken Books, $12.95 paper
ISBN 978-0-8052-1150-4

If we are searching for common ground among Jews, Muslims, Christians, ancient Greek philosophers like Plato, and religion, philosophy, and science, we should look no further than Jewish philosopher and physician Maimonides. He is known as Moses ben Maimon, and in some circles by the acronym “the Rambam” (Rabbi Moses ben Maimon). He is the author of such essential texts in Judaism as the Mishneh Torah and The Guide of the Perplexed. He wrote philosophical treatises, works on medicine, and a thorough discussion of logic and law. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, he influenced thinkers as diverse as Thomas Aquinas, Spinoza, Leibniz and Newton.

Born in Cordoba, Spain in 1135, Maimonides spent his early years moving from place to place to avoid persecution, either at the hands of Muslims or Christians. He eventually settled in Fez, Morocco in 1160. By that date, he was already writing several works for which he would become famous. When life in Morocco became too dangerous for Jews posing as converted Muslims, Maimonides moved again with his family to Jerusalem, and finally, to Cairo, Egypt. There, life took an even darker turn for the family. Maimonides’ brother, a jeweler by trade, died in a voyage at sea. Lost in the accident was the family’s fortune in precious stones. Maimonides sunk into a bout of deep depression and sickness. To bolster the family’s sagging fortunes, Maimonides turned to medicine, becoming a well-known and much sought-after physician to commoners as well as the royal court.

Maimonides continued to practice medicine and write essential works of philosophy and Jewish theology for the remainder of his life, often working from early morning to the middle of the night. In the evening, he met disciples and students while lying down, unable to summon the strength to sit up. He eventually worked himself into exhaustion, dying in Egypt in 1204.

In his new biography of Maimonides, Joel L. Kraemer presents a thorough and involving study of the life and times of this celebrated Jewish thinker. Kraemer is the John Henry Barrows Professor Emeritus in the Divinity School at the University of Chicago and the author of several works on humanism and philosophy.

Like other important cultural figures such as Shakespeare and Chaucer, we have gaping holes in our documentation regarding Maimonides. Still, Kraemer does an excellent job of filling in these gaps with the culture and history of the times. It is interesting to note that the documentation for the life of Maimonides runs the gamut from fragments of writing in his own hand to legendary stories passed from disciple to disciple. Kraemer sorts them all out and examines each with a scholar’s eye. He tells us that “The biography is based primarily upon documents from the Cairo Genizah, the great repository of manuscripts found in the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Old Cairo and now in European, Russian, and American libraries.” These documents tell us the whole story of the region, but most are written in Arabic by Muslims. “This is because Jews wrote very few historical works,” Kraemer explains, “whereas Muslims wrote enough biographical and historical tomes to fill a good-sized library.”

Kraemer tells us that Maimonides arrived at a crucial point in history. This is where the religions, philosophies, and dogmas begin to overlap. Many Jews were forced into conversion; Maimonides wrote instructions to Jews how to appear to convert without actually doing so. Still, Jews found themselves under attack. Christians believed that Jews killed Christ, and therefore, their continued existence must be marked with pain and suffering to validate their role in New Testament theology. They were the crucial link to the past for Christians, sharing the Old Testament root.

Muslims thought that their military superiority proved that Allah favored them. They were the dominant religion and culture, and they demanded that Jews immediately convert to the true religion. A particularly difficult blow for Jews was the conversion of Samaw’al (Samuel) al-Maghribi, mathematician and physician. His father was a prominent writer and scholar. Samuel converted from Judaism to Islam and began to write a treatise with the ominous title of Silencing The Jews.

According to Kraemer, “Samuel believed that human reason is the ultimate criterion of the truth and that it requires us to examine ancestral traditions.” But this turns out to be a good thing. Samuel discovers that “Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have equally valid claims,” says Kraemer.

Maimonides found himself in the middle of these discussions and arguments. He treads the thin line between angering Muslims and alienating Jews. He took the pragmatic approach to the Talmud, wanting to “revolutionize Judaism by transforming it into a religion of reason,” Kraemer writes. His “main concern was science and the study of nature, the foundation of a religion of reason and enlightenment.” In his most philosophical work, The Guide of the Perplexed, Maimonides “urges human beings to become fully human by perfecting their reason and living in accordance with nature.” Kraemer presents the Rambam as a lover of order, restraint, and moderation. “If people live by reason and in harmony with nature,” he writes, “following ethical and religious precepts and adhering to a regimen of health, they can escape the ‘sea of chance’ as far as humanly possible.” Kraemer believes that is one major lesson of Maimonides: we must pursue good health in order to study and learn more about our faith and our world. That was his focus, and why he continued to place emphasis on medicine as well as theology and philosophy.

All in all, Kraemer’s methodology as a biographer is to leave no stone unturned. It is possible to hear the voice of the lecturer in the college classroom in his prose, however this is also the problem with the book: it is exhaustive and relentless in its scholarship, which leaves the casual reader a bit overwhelmed by the mountain of information. Every detail and nuance of Maimonides is teased out by Kraemer. He does a thorough job, but it is a scholarly biography best suited for other scholars.

Far more accessible is Sherwin B. Nuland’s take on Maimonides. Nuland is best known for his book length essay, How We Die. He is a doctor and writer, that unique breed of author who can explain intricate ideas and facts with a clarity and focus that others cannot muster. He admits in his Prologue that he is in over his head when discussing the life and times of Maimonides. He writes, “how does a Jewish doctor of the twenty-first century relate his sense of calling to the legendary Jewish doctor of the twelfth?” The answer is clear—Nuland does a decent job, producing a biography for a more general audience. His book is detailed without bogging down, and his language, although less scholarly than Kraemer’s, is easily understood and appreciated.

Nuland begins with the primary directive of Jewish law: preserving and maintaining life is the “obligation of every Jew.” Maimonides is no exception. He also quickly makes clear that, in Maimonides’ own words, humans have free will. “Our Torah agrees with Greek philosophy,” he quotes the Rambam, “which substantiates with convincing proofs that a man’s actions are in his own hands; no compulsion is exerted and he is constrained by nothing that is external to himself.”

Nuland’s book takes a more narrative approach palatable to the common reader over the scholar. However, he does not shirk from examining the history, philosophy, and teachings of Maimonides. He does it, however, in clear, concise language. He also hits on several points made in the Kraemer book. “The philosophical problem of the era in which [Maimonides] lived was to find a conciliation between faith and reason, engaging thinkers as disparate in background as Abelard in Paris and Averroes in Cordoba.”

He goes on to say that “What the Rambam did throughout all of his writings—long before he composed the Guide—was to attempt an incorporation of philosophy and science into religious thought, not only because he was convinced that it belonged but also because he was bringing a progressive worldview to his theology.”

I enjoyed the cultural history of Maimonides’ times in the Kraemer book, but for sheer accessibility, Nuland is clearer and more concise. In our day, the conflicts among these constituencies: Islam, Christianity, and Judaism; and the problems present in the reconciliation of science, religion, and philosophy, all weigh heavily on civilizations in this world. Finding common ground, accepting one another in an age of strife and conflict, may be our only chance for survival. Maimonides was a man in search of such common ground. He worked until exhausted to heal the sick and council those who seek the truth. Who would have ever thought that we could use a thinker from the Middle Ages here in our own twenty-first century world?

The Library At Night

The Library At Night
By Alberto Manguel
Yale University Press, $17.00 paper
ISBN 978-0-300-15130-5

Alberto Manguel tells us in the opening pages of his book, The Library At Night that “the love of libraries, like most loves, must be learned.” In our digital world, I am afraid no one is learning this love, and worse, no one teaches it to those who do not know.

This book is a celebration, and it cuts to the heart of culture, of life, of the meaning of reading to the human animal. Manguel centers his writing on the building of his own library. “The library in which I have at long last collected my books began life as a barn sometime in the fifteenth century, perched on a small hill south of the Loire.” His rooms of books, originally part of a presbytery, become one man’s temple devoted to the printed page. When Manguel first sees this place, all that stands is a single stone wall separating his property from a “chicken run and the neighbour’s field.”

He goes on to tell us of how he designed his space—one large, long room lined with shelves for the main collection, a smaller room off of that for his writing desk and reference books. He talks of libraries that influenced his design, the way he organizes his volumes on the shelves, and finally, the atmosphere of the finished structure. “But at night the atmosphere changes,” he writes. “Sounds become muffled, thoughts grow louder…Time seems closer to that moment halfway between wakefulness and sleep in which the world can be comfortably reimagined. My movements feel unwittingly furtive, my activity secret. I turn into something of a ghost.”

From there he launches into a collection of interlinked essays exploring the facets of a library: the library as myth, the library as space, the library as power, and finally, the library as home. Along the way, he takes us through a dizzying array of libraries and literature, finding connections and parallels across several cultures.

He bemoans the state of our book culture today in the post-9-11 world. “In the aftermath of 11 September 2001, the Congress of the United States passed a law, Section 215 of the U.S.A. Patriot Act, allowing federal agents to obtain records of books borrowed at any public library or bought at any private bookstore. ‘Unlike traditional search warrants, this new power does not require officers to have evidence of any crime, nor provide evidence to a court that their target is suspected of one. Nor are library staff allowed to tell targeted individuals that they are being investigated,’” he quotes from The Observer, London, 16 March, 2003. “Under such requirements, a number of libraries in the United States, kowtowing to the authorities, reconsidered the purchase of various titles.”

The suggested shelving of this book falls under several categories: Library Studies, Books about Books, and History. It is the last that made the greatest impression on me. I love this book, and I found myself highlighting and nodding along with his thesis and examples, appreciating the nuances, the connections he makes. But I fear his love of books and libraries is moving into the shade of history. Today’s public libraries remove books to make room for computers. Budget cuts have left the buildings dark and shuttered when they most need to be open. If reading is done for recreation, would it not make sense to open the libraries here in Los Angeles on Sundays and a little later than eight o’clock most weekdays?

Further, in these troubled economic times, how many people have disposable income for books? How many people buy books with the idea of building a library? Many students purchase books required for their classes only to immediately sell them back at the close of the quarter or semester. I cannot blame them; with the expense of college, many have no choice. And the day when homeowners devoted an entire room in their houses to a library is probably a thing of the past.

Manguel’s library houses 30,000 books. I found myself salivating over the shelf space, the room of one’s own where he works. I have considerable shelf space in my home, but most of it is taken up with books I have yet to read. Most of my library is in boxes in the attic, waiting for the day when I have room and the financial resources to build a library.

Manguel loads his book with photographs, drawings, sketches and architectural plans of various libraries around the world, even some that are no longer in existence. He devotes considerable space to the ancient Library at Alexandria which supposedly burned in 47 B.C. Scholars and champions of the written word built a new Library at Alexandria in 2003, an impressive edifice as Manguel notes, that includes a virtual library set up by American artist, Rhonda Roland Shearer.

This is a beautiful, deeply felt, meditative work by Manguel. Book lovers, scholars, lovers of the endless cool shelves, the natural quiet, contemplative space of the library, should find this text and immerse themselves in it. Libraries, as those of us who love them fear, may be morphing, transitioning, becoming electronic, or disappearing altogether. If they were to disappear, our culture would be mortally wounded.

For me, I may live in many places during my life, but when I walk into a room of books, the quiet, the pools of light, the study carrels, the smell of binding and paper and ink, it is in that moment, when I step inside the repository of human thought, that I am home. In this way, I could not but love this book.

Where Are We Going With AP Classes?

In an article in The New York Times today, writer Jacques Steinberg examines teachers’ complaints about the rapid growth of Advanced Placement classes.

“More than half [of teachers surveyed] are concerned that the program’s effectiveness is being threatened as districts loosen restrictions on who can take such rigorous courses,” Steinberg writes. These same teachers are concerned that students take AP classes to pad their resumes not because they want the greater academic challenge.

Steinberg quotes some statistics to validate his point. “The number of high school students who took at least one college-level AP course increased 45 percent, to 1.6 million from 1.1 million, from the school year ended 2004 to that ended 2008.” He goes on to say that “the number of AP exams those students took…increased by 50 percent, to 2.7 million.”

Principals, as Steinberg discovered, often add more AP courses, and more seats for students in AP classes, to “improve their school’s ranking and reputation in the community.”

I teach all the honors and AP courses offered at my school for grades nine through twelve in English. Granted, I work at a small private school with each grade level consisting of about sixty-five students. My class size for each honors or AP section is seventeen to twenty students. If the class of juniors consists of sixty students, and I have twenty of them in AP Language and Composition, that is one third of the grade level. In a small private school drawing from a small community, it is highly unlikely that one third are qualified students in AP English.

So why are so many students in my class? My school administration and the College Board who owns and regulates AP classes and exams, support the philosophy that if a student wants the greater challenge, and can demonstrate a modest capability in the subject, she should be allowed a seat in the class. We allow students five weeks to decide whether or not they wish to remain in the course. After five weeks, if they continue enrollment, they are in the class for the year, sink or swim.

We offer two AP courses in English—AP Language and Composition for grade eleven students, and AP Literature and Composition for twelfth grade students. Over the last eight years, seventy-five percent of my students pass each of the exams on average. Considering that almost all of my students are English-as-a-second-language students, I feel this is an accomplishment we all can be proud of, but the road to passing is a difficult one.

The problems I have observed at my school are validated in Steinberg’s piece. Students want to take AP courses because their friends are in the class. Parents push their children into AP courses for a variety of reasons: competition with other parents and their children; desire for their children to have a better education, even though there are excellent teachers in the college preparatory courses; and some even over-estimate their child’s ability, thereby putting the student in a class where he may find his skills insufficient to compete at the AP level. Administrators want as many students in AP as possible because those statistics and good passing rates make the school look good. The problem is that such advocacy without fully considering capability leads to poor grades and poor results on the exams in May. If we push students who are not capable into a challenging academic course, it is a failure of logic to bemoan the results when they do not score well on the exam.

I also question what I must teach in AP English. I cannot avoid spending a considerable amount of time preparing students for the test. However, I refuse to make my class just about test preparation.

In college, in the real world, students need a greater variety of skills and knowledge than is represented on the AP exam. No real writer goes into a room and in two hours, emerges with three complete, final draft, quality essays. Journalists come close, but they work from notes and outlines and often hours or days of research and interviewing. We are asking fledgling writers to do on the AP exam what professional writers do not do. All writing books used to instruct students advocate writing as a process—notes to outline to first or rough draft to revision to proofreading to final draft. Writers write, polish, rewrite, think, reconsider, revise, and finally, publish.

A student on the AP exam must read a piece of literature, evaluate the author’s intent and ideas, and analyze how he uses stylistic elements like diction, syntax, and imagery to convey his intent and purpose. Then the student composes a coherent, final draft, polished essay where she presents her analysis using passages for support. Questions vary across the two exams, but that is a basic summary. AP work is, and should always be, challenging. If we are pushing kids into these programs to simply polish their resumes or make a school look good, we may be setting them up for failure.

Changing the Idea of the University

Amid all the breaking news today regarding the Swine flu, there was an interesting op-ed piece in The New York Times.

Mark Taylor, chair of the religion department at Columbia writes that the current model of the American university is as outdated as anything coming out of General Motors, Ford, or Chrysler these days. He advocates changing the entire system, and his argument has merit.

Taylor bemoans the fact that many courses at the university are taught by graduate students who are hired as cheap labor, often being paid “as little as $5000 a course—with no benefits.” This is less expensive than hiring a full time professor and giving her tenure.

Universities are producing doctoral candidates with little hope of finding a permanent position. Most will be doomed to pick up classes here and there at a number of colleges and schools in order to make ends meet.

“If American higher education is to thrive in the 21st century,” Taylor writes, “colleges and universities, like Wall Street and Detroit, must be rigorously regulated and completely restructured.”

He advocates replacing the isolated departments and curricula with one “structured like a web or complex adaptive network. Responsible teaching and scholarship must become cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural.”

I find that many of my most successful lessons over the years have been ones where I integrate several disciplines into literature and writing. Students must make connections among current events, literature, art and culture. Therefore, I stress the interconnectedness of their studies throughout my curriculum. I want them to make these connections and continually discuss them in my class notes and lecture/discussions.

Taylor believes that stressing the inter-disciplinary approach will bring students into true creative and analytical thinking about real world problems. “It would be far more effective to bring together people working on questions of religion, politics, history, economics, anthropology, sociology, literature, art, religion, and philosophy to engage in comparative analysis of common problems.”

He thinks that university curricula should not be organized by departments, but that schools should “create problem-focused programs” with a shelf life. These new kinds of departments could be modified or discontinued after reaching conclusions. They would evolve naturally. “It is possible to imagine a broad range of topics around which such zones of inquiry could be organized,” Taylor says. Some of these zones would include “Mind, Body, Law, Information, Networks, Language, Space, Time, Media, Money, Life, and Water.”

The one area I disagree with Taylor is in the writing of papers and dissertations. He wants to transform the traditional dissertation into other formats that may not include writing at all. He asks students to “develop analytic treatments in formats from hypertext and Web sites to films and video games.” We live in an age where students are urged to read less and less. Newspapers and traditional publishing models are mutating. I recognize this fact, but the idea of the university embodies wide reading. Writing is a primary method of communication. Maybe the traditional dissertation “with more footnotes than text” is a thing of the past, but we should continue to have students write and read in depth. I would think such an inter-connected curriculum as Taylor proposes would demand such reading and writing from students.

Finally, Taylor supports the need to impose mandatory retirement and the canceling of tenure. He believes tenure, although enacted to protect teachers and allow them academic freedom, has become a shield to protect teachers’ jobs and allow them to be “impervious to change.” Taylor writes that “once tenure has been granted, there is no leverage to encourage a professor to continue to develop professionally or to require him or her to assume responsibilities like administration and student advising.”

Years ago, I attended a workshop where middle school teachers took some of the same approaches Taylor advocates in their classrooms. We observed these teachers and students in action for a week. The faculty planned lessons by themes or ideas with each department contributing some aspect of the selected theme. The process worked very well and led to a richer experience for the students.

If education is to move forward into the twenty-first century, we must examine and revise our models and methodologies. We cannot retreat into theories and education school methods that do not address real life problems and experiences. Our future depends on continual evaluation and striving to improve how children and adults learn.

Columbine

ColumbineBy Dave Cullen
Twelve Hachette Book Group, $26.99 cloth
ISBN 978-0-446-54693-5

“Every Night & every Morn
Some to Misery are Born.
Every Morn & every Night
Some are Born to sweet delight.
Some are Born to sweet delight,
Some are Born to Endless Night.”William Blake
"Auguries of Innocence"

“The Secret Service studied every targeted attack at schools from December 1974 to May 2000,” Dave Cullen writes in his exhaustively researched book on the shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado, April 20, 1999. “There had been forty-one attackers in thirty-seven incidents.”

To most Americans, school shootings around the globe have become a disturbing trend. Cullen presents evidence to the contrary. The Centers for Disease Control “data pegged a child’s chances of dying at school at one in a million,” he writes. “And holding. The ‘trend’ was actually steady to downward, depending on how far back you looked.”

School shootings generate fear, terror, and press coverage, a dangerous mixture for deranged or mentally ill gunmen seeking worldwide attention. I use the term “gunmen,” because almost all of the cases have been males, although Cullen notes there have been a few female perpetrators.

Cullen’s book is riveting and disturbing, especially if you are a teacher. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold fit the typical profile of a high school student on the surface. There were warning signs, but they were most visible after the incident. Further, Harris was a psychopath, someone who thrives on the “ruthless disregard for others,” a person who will “defraud, maim, or kill for the most trivial personal gain.” Harris studied the emotional states of others and could mimic them at will, fooling most people who spoke and interacted with him, including trained psychological professionals. “Psychopaths feel nothing deep, complex, or sustained,” Cullen writes, and Harris fits the bill.

So how does one identify and treat a person who reacts “to pain or tragedy by assessing how they can use the situation to manipulate others?” Identification is difficult if a teacher does not have all the pieces to the puzzle. The warning signs were present—school assignments revealing the planned violence, Harris’ need to control, Klebold’s suicidal obsessions, thousands of pages of diagrams, checklists and journals. There was video evidence as well, made by the killers themselves, and displaying the weaponry and firepower they would eventually employ.

But the ability to pull all of this evidence together and realize the extreme threat only became possible after the massacre. Harris also did not target a specific group, as news reports and scores of journalists initially reported. He wanted to kill everyone. The bombs the boys planted around the school should have brought the building down, killing 500 or more of the 2000 students. Harris failed to build them properly and nothing detonated as it was designed to do. The boys resorted to firing on students from a vantage point on campus and then hunting through the building for more victims, killing the largest number of students hiding in the school library. The boys’ cars, parked in the school parking lot, were rigged to explode as well.

Cullen takes us into the minds of the victims and their families as well. Dave Sanders’ story is heartbreaking, as all of them are. He is the career teacher who bled to death in the science classroom while waiting for rescue. The scene Cullen describes, with Eagle Scout students trying to staunch the flow of blood from Sanders’ critical injuries, is devastating.

One needs a strong disposition to make it through this book, and I can imagine the strain on Cullen to live with this story for ten years. He was there when it happened and reported for several news outlets, and continued to write and study the reports, events and investigations long after most journalists had called it a day. This must have been an hellacious journey, but he should be credited with sticking to the story. He debunks myths and falsehoods reported about the tragedy. He pursues the psychology and motivation of the two boys, and renders in plain prose the science of the violence and the mystery of the diseased minds of the perpetrators. He tells the story—killers, victims and law enforcement personnel—with a blunt, hard-hitting intensity.

In the end, the most disturbing thing about the massacre at Columbine is that those of us who work in the high school classroom see minor snippets of such behavior every day. True, statistically, an act of such intense violence as that of a school shooting rarely happens. But schools are supposed to be safe havens, like hospitals and libraries. We now know, here in the twenty-first century, that nowhere is safe, and even our children must live with fear. We are all at the mercy of the human animal. And that is not a comfortable thought at all.

Goners*

Goners: The Final Hours of the Notable and Notorious
By Gordon Kerr
Abrams Image, $18.95 cloth
ISBN 978-0810-98364-9

So there I was, buried in student papers last weekend, grades due Monday, and I needed a book to distract me in the few moments I would allow myself some time off. This is how I came to read Gordon Kerr’s book, Goners: The Final Hours of the Notable and Notorious.

“What?” you might ask. “Did Moby Dick fall behind the book case?”

I was looking for the literary equivalent of junk food, and Kerr’s book did not disappoint. In fact, I gave it rather more attention than such a tabloidesque piece of entertainment nonfiction deserves.

In short, Kerr’s book details the final hours of a number of famous people as diverse as Sylvia Plath, Tupac Shakur, Beach Boy Dennis Wilson*, and film star Natalie Wood. He takes us through the death scene, the post mortem, the conspiracy theories, the place of final repose.

Right from the get go, I need to say that this is a book badly in need of a line editor. Grammar errors abound. In addition, no sources are listed, and some of the information is a stretch of the truth, but this is entertainment first, and journalism twenty-fifth, if you know what I mean. And as a teacher I once worked with wrote on a senior English paper, “It’s bullshit, but it is entertaining bullshit!”

Take the death of young actor River Phoenix. Did you know that he was working on a film called Dark Blood where he played “a hermit living on a nuclear testing site, waiting for the end of the world” when he died one night at the Sunset Boulevard club the Viper Room? Or that he went to the club to see some friends who were playing there that night, including “Flea, bass player of the Red Hot Chili Peppers; Al Jourgenson from Ministry; and Gibby Haynes of the Butthole Surfers?” The piece de resistance? Actress Christina Applegate was at the club that night and witnessed the seizures Phoenix had before he expired on the sidewalk outside the club from a massive overdose of cocaine and morphine. She later reenacted the grand mal moment as “an anti-drug dance piece.”

Need I go on? I think not. Suffice to say, that this is reading for the rabid and morbid. It served my purposes quite well: I finished my grading for Monday’s deadline, and had something to do with my tired brain while wolfing down a turkey sandwich between exegeses on the right to think as portrayed in the drama, Inherit the Wind. Next to student papers like that, this book was infinitely superior and gripping. (Insert insane laughter and organ music here.)

Now if someone would just tell me who are the Butthole Surfers.

*As Lauren pointed out in the comments, Brian Wilson is very much alive. Dennis Wilson has departed for the big beach in the sky. My mistake and now it is fixed. Thanks, Lauren.