A reflection on "The Essayification of Everything"

Christy Wampole, an assistant professor of French at Princeton University, wrote an interesting piece today in the online New York Times, entitled "The Essayification of Everything."In it, she explores the origins of the modern essay, commonly attributed to Michel de Montaigne and Francis Bacon, and goes on to suggest that, "the genre and its spirit provide an alternative to the dogmatic thinking that dominates much of social and political life in contemporary America."

According to Wampole, the word "essay" comes from the French word Essais, which in Montaigne's day meant "attempt." An essay was therefore an attempt at puzzling over a topic or question. The essayist looked for answers without always finding any. The strength of the form was not its capacity for determining truth, but rather the progression of thought it inspired. In this respect, an essay is a bit like a walk, in which the experience is as important if not more than the destination. As Wampole quips, an essay "...impels you to face the undecidable. It asks you to get comfortable with ambivalence."

Wampole argues this attitude runs contrary to polarizing influences in society and politics today. "...for many," she writes, "the certainty with which the dogmatists make their pronouncements feels increasingly like a bothersome vestige of the past. We can either cling rigidly to dissolving categories or we can let ambivalence wash over us, allowing its tide to carry us toward new life configurations that were inconceivable even 20 years ago."

In a similar vein she later writes:

"Today, unresolved issues of class, race, gender, sexual orientation, political affiliation and other categories have created a volatile social dynamic, and, with our current economic instability to boot, it is no wonder that throwing oneself wholeheartedly toward any particular idea or endeavor seems a risky proposition to many of us."

This skepticism is a big reason why I find Wampole's piece interesting. She seems to channel the spirit of Montaigne's essays--epoché, or suspension of judgment-- into contemporary issues of social and political life. Yet I'm not sure that skepticism of this variety is the answer to dogmatism Wampole hopes. The very same technology and interconnectedness that make this suspension of judgment useful in a dynamic world also makes it easier to isolate one's self from other's arguments and points of view. The Internet affords almost anyone today the ability to read and talk with people who share many things in common, without ever coming into contact with those who hold contrary views. If the essay compels one to "get comfortable with ambiguity," this capacity to live in self-imposed bubble of opinion is liable to lead to a very different end.

Nonetheless Wampole provides an interesting perspective on the subject. A rapidly-changing world such as our own is liable to require an openness to novelty that belies the certainty of rigid ideologies. I think the message here is that our opinions have importance, but perhaps we should take them--and ourselves--less seriously.

A Gem of a Book: Mark Twain's "Life on the Mississippi"

“Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates.”

~Mark Twain, from "Life on the Mississippi" 

From time to time we come across delightfully stimulating books, the sort that--for any number of reasons-- rouses the mind from its slumbers. It's a bit like meeting a new person, whose energy or manner is just plain contagious.

That's how I felt after reading Mark Twain's "Life on the Mississippi" (1883), a wide-ranging, oft-hilarious memoir of Samuel Clemens' time as a steam-boat pilot on the Mississippi River. Like the river this book wanders, but as is usually the case Twain spins a yarn so eloquently one can hardly find a place to pause from reading. Twain's is a manner both engrossing and illustrative, with an eye for subtle detail that conveys many shades of meaning. Below are a few quotes from the book, which I hope you'll read (for free if you prefer, through the above link). Enjoy!

"In the South the war is what A.D. is elsewhere; they date from it."

"Give an Irishman lager for a month, and he's a dead man. An Irishman is lined with copper, and the beer corrodes it. But whiskey polishes the copper and is the saving of him, sir."

"Your true pilot cares nothing about anything on earth but the river, and his pride in his occupation surpasses the pride of kings."

"The world and the books are so accustomed to use, and over-use, the word 'new' in connection with our country, that we early get and permanently retain the impression that there is nothing old about it. We do of course know that there are several comparatively old dates in American history, but the mere figures convey to our minds no just idea, no distinct realization, of the stretch of time which they represent. To say that De Soto, the first white man who ever saw the Mississippi River, saw it in 1542, is a remark which states a fact without interpreting it: it is something like giving the dimensions of a sunset by astronomical measurements, and cataloguing the colors by their scientific names;--as a result, you get the bald fact of the sunset, but you don't see the sunset. It would have been better to paint a picture of it."

Rote learning and drill

"Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things.”

-Cicero

What is the role of rote learning in education? It is a common question I've found, whenever the subject of pedagogy comes up. In broad strokes, some (albeit, few today) hold it to be the primary means of acquiring "learning," whereby facts are conveyed from those who know them to those who don't. At the other end, you have those who see rote learning as the bain of a real education, squashing motivation and deadening the creative synergy of ideas and thought.

To put it another way, there are those who say education is acquired by drill, and others by play--that education is acquired, or created.

Such is the debate into which Annie Murphy Paul of Time.com enters with her piece, "Why Kids Should Learn Cursive (and Math Facts and Root Words." In it, she suggests the two ends of the debate are not so polar as typically imagined; that the contemporary pedagogical focus on "...collaboration, problem solving, and critical thinking," ultimately rely upon memorization and drill to be effective.

Paul points to math skills as one example to highlight this phenomenon. Higher level math requires an understanding of simpler concepts, such as addition, division, fractions, and trig functions. Advanced mathematics tends to become easier when these simpler concepts have become automatic and easily accessible; which is to say one does't need to consult reference texts whenever confronted by a tricky problem. Drills which instill "automaticity" seem therefore to improve an individual's ability to learn more complex mathematical topics. 

Later, Paul also points to handwriting, argumentation, and audible reading as important exercises for developing automacity of basic skills of rhetoric and literacy. 

At its root, Paul's argument appears to be that so-called "progressive" pedagogical theories unfairly characterize rote learning as a method to "drill and kill" intellectual development in children today. While there 's something to that progressive criticism, I think Paul also makes a good point: that drill is useful, particularly for acquiring basic skills which make all other learning possible. 

For instance, from my own experience musical pedagogy is full of drills for the beginner, such as learning scales (major, minor), arpeggios, the circle of fourths--and if one is a percussionist--rudiments. Musicians often drill difficult passages, until playing them becomes automatic. They memorize whole concertos or sonatas, so that reading the music does not get in the way of performing it. Wind players do all manner of drills to improve their tone quality and intonation, and musicians of all types seem to do some manner of drill to improve their technique. 

One might find a similar instance in learning a new language. One learns vocabulary and grammar, and through practice becomes adept at using these resources to convey intelligible ideas in the new tongue. If words and rules are not easily accessible in one's head, I don't see how one could utilize the knowledge one has acquired. 

Now some may say a list of memorized words is nothing without an understanding of them, and that I think rings true. But it does not mean memorization cannot aid the development of understanding. For instance, as a little guy just starting elementary school,I learned to read when none of the acting roles in our church's Christmas pageant appealed to me. The only remaining role included a gospel reader, which involved standing at a big, shiny lectern and reading from the Bible. Now for an illiterate like me, the King James Bible came as a terribly confusing congregation of squiggles and symbols, and my young shoulders noticeably drooped when presented with this abstruse text from the Book of Luke.

But I worked on it every day with my parents, seemingly to no avail. So many new words there were to learn, and the sounds which parts of those words made. It proved a right, frustrating exercise in futility, but after a month or two of serious labor it became easier, and on the day of the performance I gave a decent reading of my excerpt from the Book of Luke. After the King James, I found I could read most things tolerably well.

The point is, acquiring the basic skills of literacy for me required a great deal of repetition and conscious drill. Now some may scoff and say, "Yes, you could read the words just fine, but did you understand what they meant, both as parts and as a whole?" To this I could only reply no, I couldn't explain exactly what I'd just read meant. But without knowing how to convert the written word into thoughts, reading comprehension would never come, just as with mathematics if one cannot convert abstraction into more concrete ideas in one's mind. 

From another perspective, consider learning how to drive an automobile. At first everything is novel, from the view of the driver's seat to the manipulation of basic controls while keeping a straight course on a lane of road. Early on, every action requires conscious thought, but at length many actions become automatic. Our minds get good at maintaining a safe following distance for instance, reading traffic patterns at a glance, and anticipating the actions of other drivers far in advance. While this automatcity can go wrong, much of the time it leaves us free to direct our conscious thought toward something else (e.g. following a complex route to someone's house). It also helps us navigate more complicated situations without becoming overwhelmed.

So ultimately, I don't think education is strictly the result of drill and rote learning, but I do think drill and rote learning can make a positive contribution to education. They make recall of relevant skills and information easier, and thereby make deeper forms of understanding possible. Practiced to the point of automatcity, actions requiring little conscious thought leave a mind free to attend to more complex things, such as performing a sonata with feeling as well as technical brilliance. To declare cooperation and creativity as superior to the rote learning and drill in education today therefore misses the point, because each support and nourish the other. Each is a tool, with the potential for utility if wielded with skill. This is not always an easy task.

“A mind without instruction can no more bear fruit than can a field, however fertile, without cultivation.” -Cicero 

I knew a maid so fair, so fair

I knew a maid so fair, so fair
With lively eyes and long, brown hair,
Her smile could warm the coldest heart,
And that is but a start, a start!

She came upon me like a dream,
So angel-like, or so it seemed,
And said 'hello' to silly old me
Thence felt I quaking at the knee.

I knew a maid so fair, so fair
With lively eyes and long, brown hair,
Her smile could warm the coldest heart,
And that is but a start, a start!

At length I said a word or two,
To this fair maid I lately knew;
Her eyes gazed focused in a stare,
I spoke as boldly as I dared.

I knew a maid so fair, so fair
With lively eyes and long, brown hair,
Her smile could warm the coldest heart,
And that is but a start, a start!

In time the maid and I were friends,
And I just couldn't comprehend
Why someone smart and fair as her
Would take the time to know this sir.

I knew a maid so fair, so fair
With lively eyes and long, brown hair,
Her smile could warm the coldest heart,
And that is but a start, a start!

A start, a start, alas it were,
I fell in love, with passions stirred,
But this here frothy, amorous soup,
Made sour fast, and me a doop.

I knew a maid so fair, so fair
With lively eyes and long, brown hair,
Her smile could warm the coldest heart,
And that is but a start, a start!

An unrequited love is hard,
To bear and give its full regard,
But that is how we learn and grow,
To love all people high and low.

I knew a maid so fair, so fair
With lively eyes and long, brown hair,
Her smile could warm the coldest heart,
And that is but a start, a start!

A reflection on cities

The past few days I've spent a deal more time than usual in the local metropolis, and the experience has compelled me to reflect upon the benefits and drawbacks of such a way of organizing human habitation. I can tell you from the start that for a number of reasons I am biased against most forms of large cities I've experienced, but have over time come to see their positive side too. It is my hope to use reflection as means of considering those biases in light of experience and what I've actually seen.

To paraphrase a passage from my developmental psychology textbook, societies in general tend to benefit  when its people organize themselves into families, but the case for individuals is less certain; a good family can make all the difference for a troubled person, but a bad family can undermine an otherwise promising individual.

A similar idea I think rings true for cities: they benefit society but not necessarily individuals. As a featured story by the World Bank in 2010 describes them, cities have been, and in the developing world are becoming, "...engines of growth, [and] incubators of innovation."

Cities bring together a huge variety of people, sharing spaces, ideas, languages, and cultures in a highly stimulating exchange. As the historian Harold J Cook argues in Matters of Exchange: Commerce, Medicine, and Science in the Dutch Golden Age (2007), the "...beginnings of a global science occurred during the period of the rise of a global economy," a point which one reviewer says was "no coincidence."  Later the reviewer writes "Matters of exchange demonstrates how the values of commerce—its ways of discovering new things, of determining truth, and of assigning worth—were identical to the precepts of the new philosophy." In other words, the global exchange of matters-of-fact, ideas, and culture--driven and colored by the "values of commerce"--contributed chiefly to the emergence of modern science as we know it today. It therefore comes as no surprise that cities--centers of flux and exchange--are also centers of innovation and growth.

I personally enjoy cities for the variety of experiences they offer, and the concentration of culture which can often be found there. The vast majority of trips I make to the local metropol are for cultural reasons; to visit a museum, meet a friend, run a race, or go to see and hear the local orchestra. Mass transit makes these trips convenient, particularly since I don't like cars. Cities with good mass transit are wonderful in that respect, because it makes a car-free lifestyle viable. Maintaining such a lifestyle in a suburb like mine is not an easy task.

Yet for all its benefits, even a cursory glance about a major metropolis reveals the harm this "engine of growth" can incur on vulnerable individuals. Throughout the center-city train station I found numerous people begging or staring dead-eyed into space while smoking cigarettes and muttering to themselves. Similar instances I found throughout the downtown area, folks who babble nonsense to no one in particular in the park, go to the bathroom in city fountains at night, and sleep in the cracks between buildings because they have no other home.

Sights like these saddened me, despite their familiarity; they've appeared on every trip I've ever made to the city. It makes me wonder that, for all the ways humanity profits by the existence of cities, how many individual human lives are destroyed in the process? How many are left behind by increasing prosperity and learning which cities generally promote? How much promise is lost by crime, pollution, and mental illness left untreated by the vast scope of metropolitan areas? It is a difficult question, and a difficult double-vision to maintain; that cities are generally good for societies, but not necessarily individuals.

Unerwidert

'Tis said the hottest love has the coolest end,
Like a tree of sorts that doesn't bend.
Or a man who stands upon one foot,
Then falls and dusts his trousers with soot.

Alas, the Venus of my life said no;
From her own lips I heard it so.
It hurts--in truth--make no mistake;
I feel as sweet as a centuries-old cake.

I grope about for answers more;
To ease my heart that's grown so sore,
With thoughts that went so oft to her
To only hear, "I'm sorry, sir."

Yet then a thought to my mind came,
That Love must be as much a light, as a flame;
Thoreau said this so long ago,
And made me a feel a bit less low.

Indeed, the world's still here despite the fact,
Of the amorous affections of that Venus I lack.
The sky's still blue, the grass is still green,
And so much of life I haven't seen.

So cheer up lad, and take to heart;
Experiencing love is but a start.
Tomorrow brings another day,
And let it come, come what may.

Well done Ursinus College Class '13

I know when my nose starts to run more than my feet that it must be time for another commencement ceremony at my old uni, Ursinus College. As it so happens, that will happen tomorrow morning under the big, white tent in front of the Berman Museum of Art. Assuming little has changed since my day, a smaller white tent adjacent to the first will house the wind ensemble, who should but probably won't make a glorious prank of Pomp and Circumstance by performing it in 5/4 (imagine keeping step to that...). But yes, a speaker will say some words, a person will call your name, and many a photograph will like as not be taken. Oh yes, and apparently billions of cicadas may or may not photo-bomb it all. That'd likely bug some folks, but at least it would be unique, right?

In any case, that is all for tomorrow. I'm writing this post on the eve of all that for those lads and lasses whose industry, creativity, and personality not only earned them degrees, but also contributed to making Ursinus the wonderful place it is. Some of you I know, some of you I don't, but all of you make this alumnus proud.

So, well done Ursinus Class of 2013. Good luck, and much love always.

jc

"Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds that you plant." 

-Robert Louis Stevenson