Students with Potential

I've got another major pet-peeve (have you noticed how opinionated and peevish I am, yet?) - which is when people (teachers, parents, other students) talk about intelligent, but lazy students as having potential. I suppose I have been guilty of the same, but I made a vow several years ago that I was going to refrain from this practice - especially since it seemed like the students with "potential" seemed to enjoy disappointing their erstwhile saviors. It seemed to me that the "potential" students were actually encouraged to fail by people telling them about how great they were. It was like they got the ego-boost of being told how great they were, only to reinforce those positive feelings by a sense of power and self-control. They didn't want to exercise that "potential" because it would mean doing something to make others happy (not themselves). Telling them about their "potential" only served to make them feel less control over their own lives. I am talking about teenagers, after all - masters of self-deception, selfishness and a need for control.

So, I've adopted a different attitude - I don't get disappointed with students with "potential", I get angry. When they say, "I know, I know, you are disappointed because I have so much potential," I disagree - I tell them they don't have potential at all, they are too stupid to have potential - after all, a smart person would figure out how to pass high school.

I realized today that there is another (perhaps less antagonistic) way. I realized this as I was writing a letter of recommendation for a student that truly has potential. This student, if he remains on the same path, will soon make a substantial contribution to society. I was wondering what the difference is between this student and the large numbers of students who have had "potential" and failed. I realized that this student has future potential - he has the intellectual abilities, but also enough of the work ethic to make something happen in his future. When we talk about lazy students with "potential" we are mostly talking about the ability to complete the work being assigned but not doing it. This doesn't give the student potential, it just makes them lazy.

I looked up the etymology of "potential" - it comes from the Latin potent - which means, power. In order to have the power to accomplish something, one needs to have both the knowledge and the will. Lazy students don't have potential, they have Fs. So, all you teachers out there - enough with telling students about their "potential".

(I suppose there is another, more cynical analysis of why teachers do this in the first place - rather than really engaging students and figuring out how to get them motivated, saying a student has potential, but is lazy serves to shift the blame (and onus) for the failure of the teacher in the whole teacher-student relationship, but I think I'll leave this one alone . . .)

Solving the Dropout Problem Part 2

1st - Thank you to Malik, who challenged my depression-inspired, cynical-frustration-laden post on the failure of the school system. Seriously, optimism and idealism seem all too rare out there in a world that seems to have taught us to be cynical, afterall it never fails (if you never try, you never lose). God bless the Maliks of this world - hope is an all too rare commodity, even in our "post-racial", Obama-state America (whatever happened to the "Audacity of Hope"? - seems like we forgot that we were the movement and sorta assumed that electing Obama was all we needed to do to solve all our problems - we must be lazy, scared of real change and/or really stupid).

That said, I think Malik's comment reflects a failure on my part to be clear about the larger picture and my own internal conflict vis-a-vis education, the state, and true freedom. It's not that I don't think street-workers are genuine, I just wonder if what they are really promoting is worth it. I mean, aren't the values that one applies in terms of what constitutes "success" really the values of the state? Life on the street is more tenuous, dangerous, etc. But, I wonder if it isn't a valid choice in its own right. I mean, existentialist philosophy has been challenging the idea of the quiet (conformist) life as a life of real happiness. Maybe security/safety is a trap of pathetic meaninglessness. What are the arguments that the anti-dropout crowd make? From what I hear, it's about not being in jail and not being dead. But from an anti-statist perspective, not being locked-up is hardly a compelling argument: just do what they tell you, or else you'll have to do what they tell you. As a guy who voted for the Green Party candidate in 2004 (sorry, I just couldn't stand John Kerry - plus I was voting in MA: there was no way Kerry was losing MA), the "lesser of two evils" argument is simply unpersuasive. And the idea that one is better off not dead . . . well perhaps, but as has been said: "better to die on one's feet than to live on one's knees."

I suppose it is trite and easily said, given the bourgeois life that I lead. But from a philosophical position (that is, supposedly third-party neutral: as an outsider), I can appreciate a certain value in dropping out of school. So, from this perspective, the street-workers are misguided at best, co-conspirators at worst. The system is truly fucked (I don't think this is cynical at all, actually), not that it doesn't ever work (which would be cynical), but rather the contention that the true horror would be if it worked as well as it aspired to.

But, let us assume that Malik's optimistic/idealistic (in the best sense of the term) position is correct. Let us assume that there is hope within the system - that the system doesn't destroy when it works, that the system can make people's lives better without ruining their souls. In which case, the street-workers are to be honored and respected and held up as model citizens (well, the logic of "model citizen" works in both interpretations - only the concept of "model citizen" is negative in the first and positive in the second). The problem isn't getting kids back into the system, but rather creating a better system - thus, my proposal that there be a parallel track that understands what these students need before they are reintegrated into the system and provides it before reintegration occurs. This is what the politicians and liberal do-gooders fail to take into account - after all, for them, the problem isn't the real lives of these kids, but more of a numbers problem - "X" number of kids drop out; "Y" number of kids are convinced to return. The logic of using data analysis (all the rage in education these days - something that makes me want to vomit on a daily basis. When I was in high school, the idea of treating children as numbers was something our teachers explicitly rejected.) teaches us that the relationship between X and Y determines success - not whether "A" student actually received what they need. So then the question becomes how do we reduce "X" and increase "Y", but never - how do we get "A" who dropped out because "A" has undiagnosed dyslexia and is reading at a second-grade level, but is super-uber-intelligent and can run intellectual circles around the teachers that regularly give him (usually) an "F". And those teachers that can't keep up with his intellect berate him and make him feel small so that they can feel better about themselves. And those that understand his intelligence sigh and shake their head, but afterall, what can they do - how do you give a kid a passing grade in 11th grade English when the child reads on a 2nd grade level and can't write a comprehensible sentence to save his life?

After all this, perhaps the larger personal issue I have begins to become clear: I hate the state; but at the same time, as an educator (a position which means I am responsible for replicating the state in the youth) I hate the fact that the system fails students. I want the system to work for them - especially for those that decide to come in from the cold. It's fairly criminal that it doesn't and one reason that it fails these days is that it sees its problems in terms of numbers, not people: MCAS, AYP, The Dropout Rate. Where is the humanity in that? We've become a nation of accountants (ironically, perhaps, my first major in college). We should be a nation of artists.

School Dropouts and the State

Supposedly, the state cares about school dropouts. Especially, the City of Boston. But does our esteemed city really care about the future prospects of said dropouts? About their health and welfare and general happiness? Of course not. One senses that the desire to get dropouts back into school is either 1) so that they can be reincorporated into the discipline of state structures (ie - not on the street) or 2) so the liberals can pat themselves on the back. And yet 9 out of 10 dropouts that have been encouraged (manipulated) back into the school system (and end up in my classroom) lack the basic skills to be successful. After all, there was a reason they dropped out in the first place. Oddly enough, I find many of these students to be some of the most well-adjusted, interesting and thoughtful students - with the most interesting comments and insights. Unfortunately, they do really well in conversation but can barely read or write and ultimately, frustrated with lack of success, they drop out again. It's sad - as in the system is pathetic. If the state was really interested in serving the needs of these students it would not just send "street-workers" (isn't this what we used to call prostitutes?) to coerce students into school, but maybe it would actually try to figure out what the students issues are and provide support and remediation (tutoring?) to give students the skills they need to be successful before dumping them back into a system that failed them the first time.

Admittedly, this would only extend state power by incorporating more of us, but, well, in the end I think my brain is wired to analyze systems, like the state's, which makes me want to make it work, even though in the end I'm an anarchist and wish it would all just go away.

The Left and the Stalinist State

In this article in Dissent (sorry, you'll need to subscribe to read the whole thing) Alan Johnson takes supposed Leftist darling Slavov Zizek to task for Stalinist theorizing. What is wrong with people on the Left that Stalin/Mao can still have any appeal? Millions dead? Any revolution that needs to kill millions in order to sustain itself is, by definition, a failure. Revolutions purport to replace an old regime with a new, better one. But if the new, better one is unsustainable, how exactly is it better?

Johnson's got some great lines - for example:

"[French Maoist philosopher, and major influence on Zizek] Badiou's totalitarian political category/fantasy of "The People" has nothing to do with actual people. They can be ignored, even abused, in the name of "truth." One imposes the truth against the people in the name of "The People.""

But, he also makes a case for social democracy (Dissent is essentially a social-democratic rag) that leaves me feeling rather empty. In essence, the way Johnson puts it, it seems that social democrats want to extend the benefits of capitalistic democracy (bourgeois-life) to the working/lower classes. But as a friend of mine says, somebody has to make my fries. Within the context of the state, there will always be oppressed (and therefore, oppressors). One is either a beneficiary or a subject (and sometimes, both at once), but we can't all be beneficiaries - states exist to get somebody else to do the dirty work so we can spend our time writing/reading blog posts.

I suspect that Zizek's arguments are rooted in a "smash the state" mentality - Mao had a point when he said that a revolution is not a dinner-party. You can't make a really big omelet without breaking a whole lotta eggs. But, then, you can't bitch about the state and want to replace it with a state that is even more oppressive. Perhaps Zizek's frustrations with social democracy (I'm assuming this is true based on my experience as a/with Maoist(s) in a previous life) lie not so much in the bourgeois life, but rather in the state that creates that life (but one ought to prefer the bourgeois life than the life without living that was under Stalin's state). But if your argument is with the state, then one shouldn't follow Mao or Stalin - one must turn to anarchism.

Running away to start an anarchist collective and drop out of the state makes more and more theoretical sense. On the other hand, it also seems rather selfish - if the Left is supposed to be about caring for our fellow men/women, then shouldn't we be doing something more than just dropping out? But, then, maybe people that buy into what the state offers don't want/need the kind of help we (I) can offer.

The State and Human Potential

Ok, ok, so I know that last time we talked I was railing against the state.

But, you know, nothing is simple - it's all so complicatedly complex . . .

For instance, could all of the great art, books, etc. have existed without the state? Why is it that all these random communities in Zomia (Southeast Asia) haven't produced a single great author/singer/etc. Is it really just because the state means media means broadcasting means audience? Or does it have something to do with stability, tradition, symbology that can't exist without a state? Scott points out that these anarchistic communities tend to see literacy as a weapon of control - a threat to freedom. And maybe I'm a snob, or maybe I'm a bourgeois intellectual in my deepest core - but I can't imagine life without Borges, or Chabon, or Silko, or Kafka, or Camus - or, for that matter, my compatriots in the blogosphere - all of which, like it or not, benefit from the state. Especially the last - thank your US military-industrial complex for the Internet.

There's an awesome beauty in the artistic endeavors that are made viable by the state - the pyramids were built by slaves. Bourgeois intellectual pursuits like writing, or painting, or music are made possible by wage-slaves.

So, if we concede this point in favor of the state, then it seems to me that the obvious question is: is it worth it? On a strict ethical/moral level - no. On a more nuanced, reality-based level: is this really some sort of weird, fucked-up "strange loop" that I'm stuck in? Human beings are inherently power-conscious and power-seeking. But we are also social animals that value equality. We love peace and we love war. We negate ourselves. In order for some of us to explore the limits of what it means to be human, some of us must suffer. We want one, but hate the other.

I don't know - I feel like I've pushed this argument to its limit and all I can think it that maybe on an individual level, the state is fucked, but on a social/community level, it is necessary, maybe even endemic. After all, isn't the state just an institutionalized version of the small community that knows everybody's business that the proverbial youngster has to flee because they just can't take it anymore? Doesn't make it right, but kinda makes it unavoidable.

Although, now that I think about it, it kinda validates a thought I've been chewing on - do modern cities create possibilities of eluding state control in the heart of the state itself? What with all those people, it becomes impossible (well, before the Internet - I love blogging, don't you?) for the state to keep effective tabs on everybody. Our proverbial youngster generally flees to the closest urban area or New York, or maybe LA. It is there that they might be able to express their individuality, fly beneath the radar of the state by getting lost in the multitudes, and be free. (The Matrix comes to mind here - probably should watch that one again.) On the other hand, said proverbial youngster also needs to eat, which entails a job (probably), which entails plugging into the state in one way or another 9 times out of 10.

We're fucked, aren't we?

To State or Not to State

I have a long and twisted relationship with the State (capital S).

On the one hand, I'm an anarchist - I hate the state.

On the other hand, US history has some pertinent things to say about the value of the state - women's rights, abolition, civil rights, etc. etc. would not have happened without the power of the state behind it. Without the state, the tyranny of the majority reigns.

So, state power has its benefits.

But I also believe it is inherently bad. The state mainly exists to perpetuate itself and its power - those who defend the power of the state tend to be the beneficiaries of the state.

I'm reading James Scott's The Art of Not Being Governed, subtitled: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia. I've loved Scott ever since I was introduced to his work in graduate school. He uses his deep anthropological research and political/historic analysis to comment on broader issues like power-relationships within communities, the arts of resistance, and in this case, how people avoid state power.

His historical analysis, in this case, describes the way states are formed by incorporating people from the surrounding land (ie - it's not so much inspiration as oppression that makes state formation possible). The people who support the state are the people who live the good life on the backs of, usually, slaves.

I keep thinking about our modern era - are there spaces to escape the power of the state? What about squatter communities? Is my unwillingness to drop off the radar of the state really fear of living a free life?

Also, I definitely benefit from the state (I'm a teacher, after all). Does my position as a teacher in an urban school make me complicit in the control the state seeks to assert over my students? After all, the vast majority will be incorporated into state systems of work and control in one manner or another - in low-wage jobs that make money for their corporate owners, or in prison. The few I've inspired may, if the opportunities present themselves, find themselves beneficiaries of the same system that will oppress the rest.