Monthly Archives: March 2008

Woolf’s Orlando

I picked up and read Virginia Woolf’s Orlando over the weekend. Generally not my cup of tea–I could do without the coy inside jokes and the motif of “barbarian” Africa, which begins on p. 1 and runs throughout. However, I found myself developing respect for two aspects of this highly unusual novel.

First, it is impressive how the narration evolves to match the historical period described on each page. The language shifts from courtly Elizabethan prose to the rapid-fire, cinematic feel of a movie. James Joyce does the same thing even more radically in Episode 14 of Ulysses. Perhaps Woolf’s subtler experiment is more satisfactory; but in neither book is this technique a gimmick. I think modernism arises when artists, in any medium, realize that you cannot simply describe the world. You always do so in a style; and styles vary. The problem is: Why should you pick one style instead of another? Why, therefore, should you make art at all? One answer is abstraction, which means dropping the pretense of objectivity. Woolf and Joyce try something different; they make the change of style itself the subject of their story.

Second, I came to see that Woolf respects her protagonist. Orlando is generally identified with Vita Sackville-West, with whom Woolf had a relationship. For quite a few pages, I thought the portrait of Sackville-West was patronizing. Orlando has great legs and lots of money. He (later she) yearns to be a writer, but writes nothing of value. I cannot imagine that Sackville-West would want to be so portrayed. But it turns out that Orlando matures as the novel progresses, and the story of his/her development is moving because it reaches a conclusion in full, self-conscious, capable and creative adulthood.

tips for student interviewers

Students often seem to be required now to interview “experts” as sources for their term papers. For whatever reason, I get several interview requests each week from students who are not enrolled at my university. I am generally inclined to help them, but I’ve developed some tips that other interview targets might want to borrow, and professors might want to recommend to their students:

  • Don’t tell me that you want to interview me because you need several sources for a required paper. Tell me that you are interested in an important topic and want to talk to me because I seem to know something about it.
  • Before you contact me, read at least some of the most prominently posted material on my organization’s website. I will help you to navigate through our site, but I want you to look first. Ideally, your questions will be prompted by something that my colleagues or I have written or said.
  • Send me the questions by email so that I can respond right away and don’t have to email you back to schedule a time for a call.
  • Be polite. For example, “thank you” is considered a nice ending to an email. (Email, btw, is an old-fashioned alternative to texting.)
  • part of the problem

    I generally don’t like to quote at length from prominent blogs, but I can’t improve on this reaction by Jay Rosen:

    I was watching CNN for Obama’s speech. Moments after it concluded Wolf Blitzer was asked to tell us what he heard in it. Wolf’s ear is the big ear for the Best Political Team on Television, according to CNN. So he went first. And according to Blitzer, Obama’s speech boils down to a “pre-emptive strike” against various attacks on the way: videos, ads, and news controversies that are sure to keep Reverend Jeremiah Wright and “race” in play as issues in the campaign. (I don’t have his exact words; if someone out there does, ping me.)

    Wasn’t the speech about that very pattern?

    This is the style of analysis–and the level of thought–we have become miserably utterly used to, especially from Blitzer, but also many others on TV: everything is a move in the game of getting elected, and it’s our job in political television to explain to you, the slightly clueless viewer at home, what the special tactics in this case are, then to estimate whether they will work.

    That Blitzer, offered the first word on that speech, did the savvier-than-thou, horse race thing tells you about his priorities (mistakenly “static,” as Obama said about Wright) and his imaginative range as an interpreter of politics (pretty close to zero.)

    Compare Wolf to active, thoughtful citizens who care:

    “The Rev. Joel Hunter, senior pastor of a mostly white evangelical church of about 12,000 in Central Florida … said the Obama speech led to a series of conversations Wednesday morning with his staff members. “We want for there to be healing and reconciliation, but unless it’s raised in a very public manner, it’s tough for us in our regular conversation to raise it.”

    Julie Fanselow: “Time and again Tuesday, speakers at Take Back America and writers on blogs like The Super Spade and Booker Rising and Pam’s House Blend echoed and dissected and even wept over what Obama had said in Philadelphia.”

    Rich Harwood reflects on what we should do when someone (such as Rev. Wright) “cross[es] the line of politeness and rupture[s] norms of give-and-take.” We should, says Rich, “step forward and renounce them in ways that reflect the kind of public life and politics we seek to create. Let us take in the fullness of their argument and respond in kind – with clarity, forthrightness, and strength of conviction, even love. I do not suggest that anyone should back down, but neither do I advocate a slash and burn response that poisons the very public square we wish to invigorate.”

    Less favorable to Obama, but equally responsible and deliberative, is Bill Galston’s take.

    guest blogger: Doyle Stevick

    Doyle Stevick is an education professor at the University of South Carolina. Here is his contribution to the CANDE newsletter. (My contribution was yesterday’s post.) The assignment, again, is to describe an ideal civics class, without worrying about what might be politically palatable or practical.

    Between 2001 and 2004, I spent hundreds of hours in civic education classrooms all over Estonia. I observed teachers in different cities, sometimes on the same day, and the drives gave me a great deal of time to reflect on things I’d like to see change in civic education generally. Here, I’ll keep myself to just three.

    In my exposure to civic education materials, I have seen very little representation of children as social actors. And yet children do and have done extraordinary things. It is one thing to see the work of Craig Kielburger, who traveled around Asia at age 12, founded an international children’s organization, and the like. His is an inspiring tale, well represented in his own words in his book “Free the Children” and the Bullfrog Films documentary “It takes a Child.” Yet, as with college students who read about Paul Farmer in Tracy Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains, the sheer scale of his accomplishments can overwhelm rather than inspire and inspire a sense of civic self-efficacy in children.

    Continue reading

    civic education without constraints

    I have been asked to write a short article about my ideal version of democratic education. This is an opportunity to ignore the usual constraints: time, money, and political pressures. The venue for my article will be the CANDE newsletter.* I think I’ll say:

    We ought to treat students as citizens, giving them assignments that really matter and that stretch them both intellectually and ethically. Research shows that such opportunities boost their skills, knowledge, and habits. Besides, it is an ethical imperative to treat our fellow human beings–including our youth–as responsible members of the community.

    Too often, I think, we ask students to investigate issues and problems that arise within the adolescent world–such as drug and alcohol abuse, eating disorders, or their own stereotypes and prejudices–without asking them to evaluate and change the world that we have created for them. That world starts with the massive and powerful institutions that we have built to school them.

    If, as in many school systems, the downtown bureaucracy consumes much of the funding, the most experienced and successful teachers gravitate to the least challenging schools, or the textbooks don’t match the standards, kids will feel the consequences. Therefore, one ideal form of civic education would be research by students into how their own systems are run. They will probably find that the educational system bears some responsibility for any shortcomings or inequities. But they may also find fault with other actors, such as the government as a whole, the teachers’ unions, the taxpayers, or parents and the students themselves.

    As long as we are fantasizing (and ignoring all political constraints), we could imagine kids filing Freedom of Information requests, interviewing teachers off the record, attending public meetings, and taking photos of facilities. They could create spreadsheets to estimate the real expenditures of their school system, thereby learning valuable civic and business skills and obtaining power through information. When they uncovered waste and mismanagement, they could develop strategies for reform: alerting the media, filing class-action lawsuits, building public websites, or even working with political challengers. (I said I would ignore all real-world constraints!) They might also discover genuine choices, dilemmas, and constraints that confront their school district. Kids could promote discussion of these choices by providing background materials and convening public meetings.

    In my ideal world, research and action on educational issues would continue over years and accumulate. Often, we ask classes to develop their own plans for service or community research, because we see choice as empowering. However, short-term projects rarely amount to much, and they don’t replicate real civic work, which has to be cumulative to be successful. I would love to see new waves of students recruited into ambitious, ongoing programs that combine research, deliberation, direct service, and political action–all focused on their own school systems.

    *Citizenship and Democratic Education (CANDE) is a special interest group in the Comparative and International Education Society. With scores of participants from around the world, the SIG provides a community for scholars, practitioners and graduate students concerned about the role of education in democracy. The CIES conference will meet in March in New York City, and anyone interested could participate in March, 2009, in Charleston, South Carolina. The SIG is chaired by Doyle Stevick, University of South Carolina, and editor (with Bradley Levinson) of two books of possible interest to people concerned about civics: Reimagining Civic Education: How Diverse Societies form Democratic Citizens (2007) and Advancing Democracy Through Education? U.S. Influence Abroad and Domestic Practices (in print, 2008).